The Doors (film)

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The Doors
Film poster for The Doors
Directed by	Oliver Stone
Produced by	Oliver Stone
Written by	Randall Jahnson Oliver Stone
Starring	Val Kilmer Meg Ryan Kyle MacLachlan Frank Whaley Kevin Dillon Kathleen Quinlan Billy Idol Jennifer Tilly
Editing by	David Brenner Joe Hutshing
Distributed by	Tri-Star Pictures
Release date(s)	March 1, 1991
Running time	140 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$38,000,000 (estimated)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Doors is a 1991 film about Jim Morrison and The Doors. It was directed by Oliver Stone, and stars Val Kilmer as Morrison, Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson (Morrison's companion), Kevin Dillon as John Densmore, Kyle MacLachlan as Ray Manzarek, Frank Whaley as Robby Krieger and Kathleen Quinlan as Patricia Kennealy. The Doors movie was in development for years with different studios. For a long time John Travolta was the front runner for the part of Jim Morrison and lobbied hard for the part.

Kilmer was reportedly Stone's second choice for the role, the first being British rock singer Ian Astbury, who in fact went on to join the reformed Doors, but turned down the offer to play Morrison out of a reluctance to take up acting (particularly as the lead in a major motion picture despite a lack of experience in the craft). Kyle MacLachlan, a longtime Doors fan, was quoted as saying that he had wanted to portray Morrison himself and firmly believed that he could play the part, but settled for the role of Manzarek after Kilmer was selected.

The film portrays Morrison as the larger-than-life icon of 1960s rock and roll, counterculture, and the drug-using free love hippie lifestyle. But the depiction goes beyond the iconic: his alcoholism, interest in the spiritual plane and hallucinogenic drugs as entheogens, and, particularly, his obsession with death are threads which weave in and out of the film. Attentive viewers (or those who listen to Stone's DVD commentary) witness Death personified throughout the film by Richard Rutowski, who even appears in drag in one scene. The film is marketed with the tagline "The ultimate story of Drugs, Sex and Rock 'N' Roll."

The film's soundtrack contains over two dozen of The Doors' songs; in the film, original recordings of the band are seamlessly combined with convincing vocal performances by Kilmer himself. So eerily accurate was Kilmer's portrayal of Morrison, that even the remaining band members sometimes found it difficult to distinguish between his vocal renditions and Morrison's original recordings.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Historical inaccuracies 3 Film trivia 4 External links

[edit] Plot summary

The film opens during the recording of Jim Morrison's An American Prayer and quickly moves to a childhood memory of his family driving along a desert highway. Jim sees an elderly Native American dying by the roadside. The film picks up with Morrison's arrival in California and his assimilation into the Venice Beach culture, followed by his film school days at UCLA; his introduction to his girlfriend Pamela Courson, his first encounters with Ray Manzarek, and the origin of The Doors; Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore.

Jim convinces his bandmates to travel to Death Valley and experience the mind-expanding effects of psychedelic drugs. Returning to Los Angeles, they play several shows at the famous Whiskey A-Go-Go club and develop a rabid fanbase. Jim's onstage antics and occasionally improvised lyrics often raise the ire of club owners; however, the band's popularity continues to expand.

As the fame of The Doors grows, Morrison's obsessions with death, sex, and drugs increase. The rest of the band grows weary of Morrison's missed recording sessions and absences at concerts. Morrison is depicted arriving late to a Miami, Florida concert, becoming increasingly confrontational towards the audience and possibly exposing himself onstage. The incident is a low point for the band, resulting in resentment from the other band members and Morrison's trial for indecent exposure.

Morrison sinks deeper into an alcoholic haze and has mystical sexual encounters with Patricia Kennealy, a rock journalist involved in witchcraft. In 1971, Jim Morrison is found dead in a bathtub by Pamela in Paris, France, at the age of 27. Pamela Courson dies three years later of a drug overdose, also at the age of 27. The final scenes of the film before the credit roll are of Morrison's gravesite in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France.

[edit] Historical inaccuracies

The film is based mostly on real people and actual events, but some parts are clearly Stone's vision and dramatization of those people and events. For example, when Morrison is asked to change the infamous lyric in Light My Fire for his appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, he is depicted as blatantly ignoring their request because of his rebellious, anti-authority principles. In truth, the real Morrison insisted that it was an accident, that he meant to change the lyric but was so nervous about performing on live television that he forgot to change it when he was singing. The film suggests Morrison shouted the word "higher" into the TV camera, while, in fact, he highlighted "fire" during the performance. One questionable scene featured Morrison and Courson getting into such a nasty argument that he tries to jump out the window and then throws the frightened, apologetic Courson on the bed and performs what looks like a near act of rape against her. Morrison is also depicted locking Courson in a closet and setting it on fire, which never happened. Dialogue that took place between Kennealy and Morrison is reassigned to Courson, and Courson is depicted as saying hostile things to Kennealy, when by all reports their interactions were polite. Morrison is further depicted as telling Kennealy he did not take their marriage seriously, another fabrication among the many in the film. Drummer John Densmore is also questionably portrayed as hating Morrison as Morrison's personal and drug problems begin to dominate his behavior.

Krieger, Densmore, and Kennealy are all credited as technical advisors for the film, however they have commented that though they may have given advice, Stone very often chose to ignore it in favor of his fabrications. The settings for the film, particularly the concert sequences, are depicted somewhat realistically and in mostly chronological order, although the crowd scenes contain many blatant exaggerations, such as portrayals of nudity that did not occur. Liberties in wardrobe, supervised by Marlene Stewart, are grotesque parodies of the original article, for example, a bloused black shirt and prominently exaggerated concho belt replace a perfectly dignified white button-top and leather jacket. The surviving Doors members were said to be somewhat unhappy with the final product, heavily criticizing Stone's portrayal of Morrison as an "out of control sociopath".

As the credits point out and as Stone emphasizes on his DVD commentary, some characters, names, and incidents in the film are fictitious or amalgamations of real people. Stone states in particular in the 1997 documentary The Road of Excess that Quinlan's character, "Patricia Kennealy", is a composite, and in retrospect should have been given a fictitious name. Kennealy in particular was hurt by her portrayal in the film. Ryan's character, "Pam Courson", involves liberties of a different sort: Courson's parents had inherited Morrison's poems when their daughter died, and Stone had to agree to restrictions about his portrayal of her in exchange for the rights to use the poetry. In particular, Stone agreed to avoid any suggestion that Courson may have been responsible for Morrison's death, though Alain Ronay and Courson herself had both said that she was at least partially responsible.

In Manzarek's biography of the Doors,"Light My Fire" he often goes out of his way to bash Stone and also includes a myriad of details which discredit Stone's account of Morrison. For example, in Stone's "recreation" of Morrison's student film at UCLA, he has Morrison watching a D-Day sequence on TV and shouting profanities in German, with a near-nude Germanic exchange student dancing on top of the TV sporting a Swastika armband. According to Morrison's best friend and bandmate (Manzarek) the only similarity between Stone's version and Morrison's was that the girl in question was indeed German.

[edit] Film trivia

• Doors drummer John Densmore has a cameo as the recording engineer for Morrison's spoken-word "American Prayer" sessions.
• Patricia Kennealy appears briefly as a sword-wielding high priestess in the handfasting scene.
• Oliver Stone makes a cameo as the film professor during the UCLA scenes.
• At the birthday party scene, Mark Northover is in the background. Mark Northover played the role of Burklekutt in the fantasy film Willow, also starring Val Kilmer.
• Billy Idol appears as a roadie on crutches.
• Val Kilmer got the part after making a recording of himself performing Doors material and playing it for Oliver Stone. He told Stone that songs were mixed up between his own singing and Morrison's. He asked Oliver Stone to tell them apart; after he made his guesses as to who was singing what songs Kilmer admitted that the entire recording was him singing
• If you listen to the commentary track on the last scene of the movie, Oliver Stone calls the song they are recording Roadhouse Blues , but in fact, it is L.A. Woman

[edit] External links

• The Doors at the Internet Movie Database
• The Road of Excess at the Internet Movie Database, a documentary of The Doors, included with the 2001 DVD
• The Doors at All Movie Guide
• The Doors at Rotten Tomatoes