Here is yet another classic documentary about Jim Morrison and the Doors, titled "Doorstown". A short glimpse into the making of a genius called Jim Morrison and how he went on to form the legendary, Doors. Jim was less of a Showman and more of a Shaman ... who always seemed to be in a state of deep trance while performing on stage.


Jim was one of the few people from his time, who were able to elucidate their pain and angst in life through their music. In this documentary film Jim's family and friends speak about Jim Morrison's formative years when he started to get interested in Language and Philosophy ... in particular Nietzsche's work.


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Jim Morrison, aka The Lizard King, the legendary Doors' frontman was a visionary, a mystic way ahead of his time ... a rebel at heart, he wanted to break down all the barriers to free expression of creativity through his words, his music ... Jim was a Shaman, a wild man ... A legend ! Here is an interesting documentary film made on the last 24 hours in Jim Morrison's life as he breathed his last lying in a bathtub at a hotel in Paris, attributed to an overdose of Heroin.


Morrison historian Laurie writes, "I have found that Jim hated needles and never used heroin. Many of the fights that Jim and Pam had were ignited by the fact that he found out about her heroin use and did not approve of it. Jim went to Paris because he wanted to write, and also to become a poet but the demons of alcoholism finally caught up to him. He was downing 2-3 bottles of whiskey a day and was lucky to have lived as long as he did.

There still seems to be a lot of speculation surrounding Morrison's death ... some say he collapsed in the toilet of a Paris Bar due to an overdose of Heroin and was later taken to his hotel room and placed in the bath tub. The documentary suggests that he snorted Heroin that night which led to his demise ... some wonder if he is really dead ?



Some interesting quotes from the man himself ...

"I wouldn't mind dying in a plane crash. It'd be a good way to go. I don't want to die in my sleep, or of old age, or OD. I want to feel what it's like. I want to taste it, hear it, smell it. Death is only going to happen once. I don't want to miss it."

- Jim Morrison


"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free."

― Jim Morrison


Jim had fantasized about telling the world he was dead, and starting a new life elsewhere. He planned to contact his office by an anagram-name he had devised: Mr. Mojo Risin'.

There is one unconfirmed report that Morrison was seen boarding a plane that weekend. :)



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"The Doors" movie is Oliver Stone's homage to the 60's rock outfit "The Doors" which also doubles as a biography of the group's lead vocalist, the "Electric Poet" Jim Morrison. The movie follows Morrison from his days as a film student in Los Angeles to his death in Paris in 1971, at the age of 27.

The movie features a tour-de-force performance by Val Kilmer, who not only looks like Jim Morrison's long-lost twin brother, but also sounds so much like him that he did much of his own singing. It has been written that even the surviving Doors' band members had trouble distinguishing Kilmer's vocals from Morrison's originals.


The film opens during the recording of Morrison's An American Prayer and quickly moves to a childhood memory of his family driving along a desert highway. Young 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 studying at UCLA; his introduction to his girlfriend Pamela Courson, his first encounters with Ray Manzarek, and the origin of The Doors: Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore.




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"When You're Strange" is a 90 minute documentary film on "The Doors" ... One of the first ever made about them ! The crowd-pleasing movie has been featured at the Sundance, Berlin, Deauville and San Sebastian Film Festivals and most recently played to sold-out shows at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Produced by Wolf Films/Strange Pictures, in association with Rhino Entertainment, and released by Abramorama.


“They say if you remember the ‘60s you weren’t there,” said producer Dick Wolf. “I can state definitively that one of the things I do remember is buying THE DOORS first album the day it came out and then listening to it about ten or twelve times in a row. Both sides. Every song. I’ve been a fan ever since. This movie is the story of the band but it is also an insight into a moment in time that will never be repeated.”

WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE uncovers historic and previously unseen footage of the illustrious rock quartet and provides new insight into the revolutionary impact of its music and legacy. Directed by award-winning writer/director Tom DiCillo and narrated by Johnny Depp, the film is a riveting account of the band’s history.

Said Depp, “Watching the hypnotic, hitherto unreleased footage of Jim, John, Ray and Robby, I felt like I experienced it all through their eyes. As a rock n’ roll documentary, or any kind of documentary for that matter, it simply doesn’t get any better than this. What an honor to have been involved. I am as proud of this as anything I have ever done.”

The film reveals an intimate perspective on the creative chemistry between drummer John Densmore, guitarist Robby Krieger, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and singer Jim Morrison — four brilliant artists who made The Doors one of America’s most iconic and influential rock bands. Using footage shot between the band’s 1965 formation and Morrison’s 1971 death, WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE follows the band from the corridors of UCLA’s film school, where Manzarek and Morrison met, to the stages of sold-out arenas.



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Aldous Leonard Huxley was a British author, most famous for his novel Brave New World. One of the psychedelic pioneers who brought to the modern world an eclectic view of the raving psychedelic culture that stemmed from the use of psychedelics such as Mescaline and LSD to attain altered states of consciousness, to tune into other higher realms and parallel universes !

Aldous Huxley wrote 'The Doors Of Perception' inspired by these words of William Blake ... "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

Later on, Jim Morrison drew inspiration from Huxley's Book and started 'The Doors' alongside Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger ...

Aldous Huxley's The Gravity of Light is a feature film essay on Aldous Huxley's cultural criticism and social prophecy in light of the new millennium, the dawning of the age of Aquarius.

Narration: Dr. Jean Houston.

A contemporary reading of Huxley's oeuvre, a rendition and interpretation, inspired by an immersion into his life and thought. Complex, iconoclastic, psychedelic, and historical.

Aldous Huxley: The Gravity Of Light incorporates rare archival footage, computer rendered 3D animation, speculative fictions, and selections from his essays.

Personal in tone, the film also recalls the impact of Huxley's LSD-25 and mescaline experimentations and writings for a whole generation of youth and examines the utopianistic impulses associated with the recent Rave scene. The work reflects the aesthetics and poesis of the psychedelic state without collapsing into the tie-dye cliches that have trivialized the '60's era.

Doctor Jean Houston, a senior advisor to the United Nations on matters of Human Development, eloquently speaks on the immense contribution Huxley has made concerning the possible human.

Special thanks to Laura Huxley and Jean Houston.


"Hockenhull's simultaneously thoughtful and carefully conceived approach to the subject has made for a kind of documentary I would not hesitate to compare with the works of Trinh T. Minh-ha in form and self-reflexivity and Derek Jarman in style and composition. Hockenhull's approach to this "hybrid" form of cinema manages to aggressively question our presumptions and preconceptions around the current Zeitgeist while simultaneously exploring the knowledge and impact of one of the twentieth century's greatest minds."

~ Alex Mackenzie, Curator/Programmer


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Jim Morrison the front man for the psychedelic rock outfit 'The Doors' had a deep mystical understanding of death which sprung from his first encounter with death as a child when he saw a truck full of Indians lying scattered along the highway ... bleeding to death ! His fascination with death reflected in his poetry and can be seen in 'HWY - The American Pastoral', a project he started in 1969.

Morrison financed the venture and formed his own production company in order to maintain complete control of the project. Paul Ferrara, Frank Lisciandro and Babe Hill assisted with the project.

Morrison played the main character, a hitchhiker turned killer/car thief. Morrison asked his friend, composer/pianist Fred Myrow, to select the soundtrack for the film.


Jim Morrison : The Indian & The Coyote


Like the man himself, HWY: An American Pastoral is complex and mysterious. He hits the road like Kerouac, wandering, searching for meaning.

Following is an excerpt from a HWY review by John Kolak ...

In comparative literature we are taught that nothing exists by itself, but only in comparison to something else. So the first clue as the movie opens is that Jim is in the desert, but we are shown a waterfall. So, desert represents death, water represents life, and the waterfall, the fountains of life. When we first see Jim, he is immersed in water, a symbol of the womb, and his emergence from the water represents birth. Tribal music here, contrasted to civilized music later, suggests the birth of a shaman.

We then see images of Jim basking in the joy of life, and then he undertakes a journey. One of the common complaints about the film are these long passages of shots of Jim's journey. There has been some comment that this is just Jim's working in the milieu of his time where these long passages were typical of art house cinema of the time. But it is more than that. The version of "2001 - A Space Odyssey" that was commonly shown was a shortened version. The first version released contained long, boring shots of the space ship traveling through space. Kubrick's intent was to illustrate the immensity of space and how long it takes to engage in space travel.

In "HWY," the lengthiness of the journey is also deliberate, but it serves multiple and different functions. The first clue is to get you to understand that this story is about a journey, so Jim had to make the journey passages long enough to make sure you got the point. Any shorter, and it would have looked like just another scene. More specifically, in artistic terms, it is about the hero's journey. Since the days of the story of Prometheus breaking on through to the other side to steal fire from the gods and bring it back to earth to benefit mankind, the genre of the hero's journey has always been about crossing the threshold to the divine and bringing back something for mankind. This is what Jim does when he breaks on through and brings his music and poetry back for our benefit.


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Jim Morrison's poetry ( originally recorded in 1969 ) backed with music by 'The Doors' was released as "An American Prayer" in 1978 becoming an instant hit with Morrison Fans all over the world ! Here are some words from a track called 'Newborn Awakening' ...

Gently they stir, gently rise

The dead are newborn awakening

With ravaged limbs and wet souls

Gently they sigh in rapt funeral amazement

Who called these dead to dance?

Was it the young woman learning to play the ghost song on her baby grand?

Was it the wilderness children?

Was it the ghost god himself, stuttering, cheering, chatting blindly?

I called you up to anoint the earth

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin

I called you to wish you well

To glory in self like a new monster

And now i call you to pray ...



Awake

1. "Awake" – 0:35
2. "Ghost Song" – 2:50
3. "Dawn's Highway" – 1:21
4. "Newborn Awakening" – 2:26

To Come of Age

5. "To Come of Age" – 1:01
6. "Black Polished Chrome" – 1:07
7. "Latino Chrome" – 2:14
8. "Angels and Sailors" – 2:46
9. "Stoned Immaculate" – 1:33

The Poet's Dream

10. "The Movie" – 1:35
11. "Curses, Invocations" – 1:57

World on Fire

12. "American Night" – 0:28
13. "Roadhouse Blues" – 5:53
14. "The World On Fire" – 1:06
15. "Lament" – 2:18
16. "The Hitchhiker" – 2:15

An American Prayer

17. "An American Prayer" – 3:04
18. "Hour For Magic" – 1:17
19. "Freedom Exists" – 0:20
20. "A Feast Of Friends" – 2:10 (also known as "The Severed Garden")

Bonus tracks:

21. "Babylon Fading" – 1:40
22. "Bird Of Prey" – 1:03
23. "The Ghost Song" [Extended Version] – 5:15

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