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The doors is next. There are things known, and things unknown, and in between, are the doors in all of this film. Alright, Chris Ryan is here. Chuck Closterman is here.
We brought in the big guns to discuss the 30th anniversary of one of the weirdest, most entertaining, most memorable movies of the early 90s. The doors, about Jim Morrison, it was a highly anticipated movie. It was a banged-around Hollywood project for at least 10 years before it finally happened, and it has a fascinating legacy. Chris, I'll start with you.
The legacy of this movie is Valkomer. This is the Valkomer is the guy from Top Secret and Top Gun, and we don't know if he's a star, and then he blows everybody away. And 30 years later, it still blows me away. There are biographical films like Malcolm X or Lincoln where you're watching the movie, and you can be really impressed because you know that this actor is doing a really good job in the performance of Malcolm X or Abraham Lincoln.
When I watch the doors, I'm like, that is Jim Morrison. I have actual problems understanding whether or not somehow I'm watching Jim Morrison in a movie about Jim Morrison with Kyle McLachlan and Kevin Dillon, and he, Valkomer, so disappears into the role, because I think it's just like that one in 20,000 chance that he just looks just like him, and is able to act just like him. And it's so much so that I just kind of associate everything I associate with Jim Morrison with Valkomer. Chuck, did this change how you even think of Jim Morrison where it's hard to, where Valkomer merges into Jim Morrison and it becomes some sort of double person?
Well, yeah, I mean, what Chris says is completely right. I mean, and typically like, say like, you know, when Jim Carrey was in the Andy Kaufman movie, he does a great job in the same way, but it seems like he's doing an impersonation. What is interesting about this is how much he seems like Jim Morrison without the sense that he isn't impersonating him. Like, they just, I don't even know what that means, how he could be like someone and not just trying to sort of replicate what they look like and how they talk and everything.
You know, there's a lot, this definitely, you know, when this movie came out, it was like in the spring, and I saw at the opening night, I was in college, I was a pack theatre. And for the next two months, when you walk around the college campus, you just hear the doors music kind of coming out of everywhere. So it seemed as though this sort of, you know, like restarted this resurgence of interest in the doors. But I think now it's pretty clear that this movie is really damaged the way the doors are perceived, and that this was ultimately a real kind of negative thing for the band in terms of how they remembered.
Yeah. I had the same thing. I saw this movie in college, and I've said this before in the podcast. This is like one of five or six movies in my life where I went and saw it again in the theatre.
I thought it was so great. But I always liked the doors. It started the same thing for me. Like one of those two, two month doors, deep dives where you go.
And you've bought these books. I never would have picked you four books. I had two big runs, one in high school, went away and then one in college. And it's interesting in the research of this movie, you know, there's a lot of stuff I'd forgotten about in the early eighties, there's this whole doors revival.
And it starts with, it basically starts with the apocalypse now and then playing the end in 1979. At the same time, they have a greatest hits album. This was right at the stage of when greatest hits albums were reigniting bands, careers, like the Eagles, the doors, things like that. There was a TV tribute show that I don't remember.
That was apparently a big deal. No one gets out of here alive. Was the book came out and then Rolling Stone in 1981 had to cover Jim Morrison. He's hot.
He's sexy. He's dead, which I remember. And that's when John Travolta started doing the movie. So that revival starts then.
And it really kind of goes through the decade with this, with this project. They can never get it done. They can never get it made. They can never find the right person.
And it's amazing that they catch Val Kilmer at this point of his career when he's the perfect all time guy to play Jim Morrison. And we didn't even mention he's not lip syncing. He's singing all these songs. And this is why Chris, like Rommy Malgolens for Freddie Mercury for the Queen movie, which I think we all thought.
Was, you know, as watchable as it was, was not a great movie. But he lip synced all the songs and he wins the Oscar. Val Kilmer not even nominated for an Oscar for this. And she didn't want to grab him Oscar.
Travis, he's ever he doesn't even get a best actor nomination. So who were the nominees that year? I have that. So Anthony Hopkins wins for silence.
It's hard to argue. We litigated on the silence pot, even though he's only in it for 18 minutes. It's such a powerful 18 minutes. I'm OK with best actor from De Niro's in here for Cape Fair.
I'm OK with that. Gets a little dicey after that. Warren Beatty for Bugsy. Oh, man, I remember that.
Nick Nulty for the Prince of Tides, which was a thing at the time. I can see it and then Robin Williams for the Fisher King for Val Kilmer. Not to nudge out one of those three is incredible to me considering he sang all the songs in this movie. Yeah, he's amazing in this movie and the physicality of it is the thing.
It's like for as much as I think it's notable that he sings, which is mind-blowing. He actually also gets all of Morrison's mannerisms on stage and off and creates this kind of language, physical language of the guy that is just as impressive as the as the audio stuff that he does. Chuck, people impersonating musicians over the years. Jamie Foxx wins for Ray Charles, Angela Bassett nominated for Tina Turner, Rami Malquins for Freddie Mercury, J.
Lowe career took off when she did Selena. Joaquin Phoenix got nominated as Johnny Cash, Gary Busey got nominated as Buddy Holly, Sissy Spacek, one for Loretta Lynn, Jessica Lang nominated for Patsy Cline, Diana Ross nominated for the Billy Holiday movie. I think Val Kilmer is the best of all of those. Where does it rank for you in terms of an actor playing a musician, but becoming the musician?
Is this first? Yeah, I think this is first. I mean, I think that it would probably be in contention for being first if he didn't sing the songs. The fact that he does sing the songs, you know, I think there's a lot of people who aren't even aware of that.
I think they just assume that because, you know, they're using real doors music in a lot of the film. And it's only when he's actually like on stage singing songs and, you know, early in the movie when they're on the beach and he sings the first song to Rayman Zarek and Rayman Zarek, that's a great song. You know, let's start a man. Those are great lyrics, man.
I don't play a conventional rock instrument, but let's start to you come. He doesn't, when he sings that little section, he doesn't sound that good. Let's swim to the moon. Let's climb through the tide.
Can I trade the evening that the city sleeps too high? You know, it doesn't sound as though, boy, this person is a credible vocalist. So then I think a lot of people watch the rest of the film assuming, like in most of these films, that he is just sort of lip-syncing along. And so, you know, it's good.
It goes beyond, though, like the performance stuff, which is great. I mean, it just has more to do with kind of the effect of his expression. Like early in the film, when he's in LA, he's kind of wandering around there, when he hitchhikes there the first time, he has this look on his face that, you know, the kind of expression is just the kind of person who's like on drugs all the time, even when they're not, kind of has that look. And that was a very, you know, but I will say this, I'm not sure how much I know what Jim Morrison was like for real.
And I think that this movie in some way says replace that in my mind. So I think it's almost not like I'll see footage of Jim Morrison from the period he was alive and I'll be like, oh, well, he's doing Bell Kilmer very well. But that was also a big point of contention among the other band mates was that they that Stone didn't quite capture like the totality of like, I'm sure Jim Morrison was a guy who was like, you know, would watch a USC game on TV or something like that. You know, like, it sounds like he was funny.
It sounds like he was personable in various times. And he wasn't always, always, always on acid. Well, I mean, if you watch this movie, you would have to come away with the residence, all you knew, you would have to assume the other doors hated being in the doors. They're never happy.
And yet I can't really think of a band where they're surviving members have worked harder to promote the legacy of that band. I mean, the remaining doors are more interested in the doors than the beals and leads up and combined are interested in their groups. Well, it's not even close. I mean, it's like they're just like, they, I think that now it's possible.
Some, it could be that like, that really was a tough period and we need to get something out of this. We need to be remembered as being important or whatever. But I think because this movie did change the way the doors are remembered, it is almost sort of galvanized their desire to kind of take hold of the legacy of it. Because like I say, it's like, I do like the Queen movie ultimately helped Queen, like it's going to help them over time.
This hurt the doors. I think there's no way around it. There's just like no way to argue that the way the doors were perceived, certainly in the rock circles prior to this movie was not superior to how it was perceived by at the end of the 90s or now. And it became a cautionary tale for any band or any like singer in their state or whoever.
If you're going to make a movie out of it, don't let it be like the doors movie where basically the last hour of the movie is about what a drunk maniac actually more so it was. But at the same time, he kind of was a drunk maniac. And this is 20 years after the doors basically break up. And I think it's really important to put in a context, this is 1991.
They've been around for about 20 years. And you just think about like the Britney Spears documentary, which wasn't even that good. And revived this whole nostalgic Britney Spears, Britney Spears, that era, TRL, all that stuff. And you know, it's the right amount of time to look back at that stuff.
And with the doors, this was the right amount of time. And this is why people were trying to figure out how do we make this doors movie because classic rock was still gigantic. People were still really nostalgic for, you know, the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Woodstock, all these things from that kind of love, love piece of war, the Vietnam era, like all that stuff was in vogue. And there was a lot riding on this movie with all of her stones.
People were like, this is going to be amazing. And I don't think it was totally what they thought it was going to be. Well, you know, like in 1990, Jim Morrison was on the cover of spin. I mean, it was really weird.
But the issue was 35 years of rock, okay, because they were like, basically standing rock and started in 1955, now we're in 1990. This guy, you see like, you know, he was like this kind of this alcoholic drug addict, Madman, that is true. That's how he was perceived in 1990. But an alcoholic drug addict, Madman, who was sort of tapping in to kind of the fantasy or illusion of what people like about rock after this movie, it seemed like people thought of Jim Morrison as an alcoholic, drunken, madman.
It was shit. That really is kind of, you get that sense as this movie moves on that a lot of the things, you know, it also plays up certain aspects of his interest that makes it seem, you know, like, I think that they're really more tied now in the concept of like rock pretension than they were prior to this. Bill, your point though. So there, you know, I've just done another movie in 1991, very important to us.
JFK might be coming up later this year, the rewatchables. I saw JFK in the theater. I don't think I saw the doors in the theater. I was just in the beginning of high school, but I saw JFK with my mom.
And I remember being out in the parking lot after we saw that movie. And the way she reacted to that movie was so which is really vulnerable. You know what I mean? Obviously, like JFK's assassination was this huge, huge moment in her life.
And to see it depicted on screen like that really shook her up. And I kind of didn't get it because to me, that was like ancient history. That might as well have been like, you know, the wild west, like the 60s didn't register for me. But the same thing is true for this movie, for people who maybe grew up with the doors and like this movie is not as when this movie was made, it was not as far away from the actual thing that it was talking about as we think it is now.
You know what I mean? We think of this as like, Oh, yeah, that's like Mad Men era. You know what I mean? Like, that's like so long ago, but for 1991 to do a 19 late 60s, early 70s project was it would be like doing an Nirvana movie now.
Right. No, but it's not, it's not though. You know, so well, the gap, the cultural gap between say 1971 and 1991 is much greater than even the gap from 1991 to now. And so the way that these, I disagree.
Well, OK, like, oh, it absolutely is built because when you get big up, there's this idea that there's this maybe the slow cancellation of the future. Is this guy Mark Fisher? Are you familiar with him, Chris? No.
He's like, he's written a book about horror films, like the weird and the eerie. He was kind of going to Simon Reynolds bodies. He talks about the slow cancellation of the future, which is that once basically the internet became central to everything, our relationship to time change. And then if you took music from 1991, so that they took like Nirvana and like a low end theory and electric sex magic, I think all those records came one same day.
And he brought him back to 1971 and played them for people. They would be like, this isn't music. What is it? It would make no sense to them.
But that sort of ends when we move into the 21st century, you could take any music that's kind of available now and played to people in 2001. And it would not seem crazy. And in fact, his example is he talks about like an art of monkey song that he hears in like say 2010. And he actually assumes it's a post-punk band he missed entirely that everything is sort of marginally retro now.
So like when the doors came out in 1991, it seemed like they were talking about a band that's pretty distant, but I wouldn't say any more distant than we think of them now. OK, that's interesting. I got what you were saying. The greatest hits album factor cannot be underestimated.
It was a huge part of the 80s, you know, and like the Eagles greatest album, I think is the greatest selling album of all time. The doors had a really good greatest hits album. And it was when we listened to in high school and in college and it had the perfect blend of songs and there's some songs on that album that I still think are really great. Like I think I like women is I still really like that song.
Even now, if it came out, I would get fired up. So I do feel like there were stakes with not only the musical performances in this movie, but who was playing Jim Morrison, because at that point he was a little bit mythical, right? And Kilmer, who was basically goose from Top Gun. I mean, I'm sorry, I spent from Top Gun, the guy who just went toe to toe with Cruz and was on HBO a few times.
I think that's why I went to see it in the theater twice. I just couldn't believe how good he was at Jim Morrison. So I did some research. He learned 50 songs, 15, which were performed the film.
He spent his own money on an audition video to try to convince Stone to give him the gig because Stone wanted a bigger star spent hundreds of hours with Paul Rothschild, the doors producer, who's in the movie being played by an actor. And then when it finally got to the point where he performed, they played it for the doors and they couldn't tell who was who between him and Jim Morrison. Like that's how good he was. And the concert scenes did all the own, did all his own singing.
They played the doors, master tapes, but removed Morrison's vocals. And he would just sing and they would have these concert sequences, which Stone said it took several days to film and Kilmer's voice would start to deteriorate after a couple of takes. So they had to be really careful about how they did. Same thing with the end, which took that sequence took five days to shoot 24 takes and then Kilmer between takes is doing that whole thing where he's like, I'm Jim Morrison, I'm not Kilmer.
I'm talking, I'm behaving, talking like Kilmer the entire time. He puts so much of himself into this. He said afterwards he had to like see a therapist, like he couldn't break out of the character. So it was one of those things.
Um, I bet he was surprised they didn't get a best actor nomination. But to me, it's one of the most memorable performances in 90s. Like, I don't know what the complete list is, but if you, if you just asked me to list off top of my head, most important performance of 90s, I would put this on there and I don't think it has that kind of legacy check. Oh, like the memory of him as an actor.
The Delcomer in the doors. I feel like should be discussed with the great 90s performances. And I'm not sure it is. Well, it is odd because I feel like very often when people talk about like the great valed Kilmer performance, they use tombstone as the example.
And that there seems to be more of a positive feeling toward his performance in that movie. Um, I think that there is generally a negative feeling toward this film, which I, you know, I've seen probably five times and I watching it again, it is interesting because it is a very flawed movie. And yet in this kind of the conceit, you have a rewatchability. It really does kind of fit that quality that it should just happen to see it.
Because also it's any kind of, you know, a fictional version of nonfiction events, you can kind of just drop in anywhere. Um, it seems to be clearly like his, but the best performance of his career. Uh, but I also prone to think of that because I like Rockstar is more than Cowboys. Well, we talk about, you know, if you played this piece of music for somebody in 2001, or if you played this piece of music for somebody in 1970, I don't think that this movie is very in vogue right now.
I don't think this movie, it's, it may have, it may have aged well for the three of us, but I don't think this is how people do, um, biopics anymore. You know what I mean? Like they don't make these sort of, hey, geographies. Yeah, it's an, but it's also an impressionistic fever dream.
You're often just like, wait, so did they record two other albums here or, you know, it's basically broken up into four major live performances, I think, and a bunch of these other scenes that are kind of sprinkled throughout. But as a biography, a very little understanding of why Jim Morrison became who he was and what happened to the doors? It's a, it is a strange, you're right. It's a strange combination of things because it is in some ways, impressionistic, you know, like when they're watching them on stage and suddenly he's dating, dancing with these Native Americans again and the whole like, like he doesn't ever explicitly say that he believes that he became possessed by the spirit of this guy, but you can kind of figure that out.
And yet at the same time, it often does the thing that makes me love biopics because I have a weird obsession with biopics. I love insanely expository dialogue. Like, I love it when they're like, it's like, we took drugs to expand our mind, not to escape. Like, you know, like, they're walking on the beach and Ray Panteric looks out over the water and goes, Vietnam is over there.
I love that. I love when we do that because I always think about this as like, okay, so like, let's say, like they made a biopic about you, Bill. Okay. So it's about your life.
It's exactly like the doors. At one point, at one point, there'd have to be a situation like where like, Chris looks at you and it's like, we gotta do something different with the ringer. It's like, you gotta basically boil down. Donald Trump is over there, man.
Yes, yes, yes. It's because what happens is in life, you know, and in mediated life and for regular life, we're always sort of talking around the idea of what we really feel. Like we're trying to explain what somebody represents or what we think of something, but we don't directly say it. In a biopic, you do.
You have someone say exactly what say six months of thought and conversation boils down to. And I just find it hilarious. And in this movie, they go back and forth between kind of an abstraction of Jim Morrison's life and people literally reading from a really poorly written story about him. Like when he's in the movie class, okay?
So he makes this movie and then it creates this polarizing effect in the class. So one guy in the class is like, it's better than a Warhol movie. And someone's great responses. No, it isn't.
And the guy goes, he made a movie of a guy sleeping. It's like, okay, this movie has no social conscience. Yes. And then Ray comes to him and he's like, Jim, don't believe him.
This is brilliant. Okay. Just so you know, I'm kind of your hype man and all your crazy ideas. I might lose patience later, but right now I like what you're doing.
Like, I think that is just, you know, I find like a biopic. I know it's like considered almost like the lowest level of filmmaking in some ways. And yet I will watch anyone about any figure who is legitimately famous. Because what these movies are trying to do is somehow explain the way people understand fame.
And they have to do it in the fastest way possible. Right. Bill, did you, did you take peyote and turn to house and say, what if I wrote about the draft as it was happening? Draft diaries.
That's what happened. It'd be like, how's going like, boy, you know, we really like the draft. But I wish somebody would write about the way it feels to watch it. That's like, what about a diary?
And then I climb on a car and I start time stamping it. Yeah, I'm with you Chuck. Some of my favorite scenes in this movie, like, I love, we'll get into it with the rewatch most. But I love the last time he sees the doors when he's going around.
Yeah. He goes to Frank Whilly and Frank Whilly is like, I played music with Dionysics. Yeah, he's just like, who says that to another human being as a farewell. Even when he walks up there, the guy's like, hey, we added rain effects to writers on the door.
That's like, oh, you're doing that right now? Five minutes before this child's birthday party, we're putting rain effects on the pub. Yeah. Hold on, hold on.
The cake's coming out. Can you press pause on the rain effects? We should mention the Allverstone piece of this. So this is the direct moment in Allverstone's career where he loses his mind.
Because up to now, he's done, you know, he does platoon and Wall Street, born in the 4th of July. Those are movies rooted in sanity, but he's gone for big themes. Starting with the doors is when he just unravels as a filmmaker for better or worse. He's got the doors JFK, natural born killers.
He does Nixon. He does that crazy any given Sunday, which we love, which we've done on the rewatchables. But he almost has to do the Allverstone on steroids for any movie he does. And there's no better example of this.
There was an easier way to do this movie. And he's just like, fuck it, I'm doing the weird way. Well, I would say that what you're talking about. I feel really that happens during natural born killers.
I feel like that is when, like, these movies, like JFK. I can't believe you don't think that happened to JFK. Well, JFK is insane. Yeah.
I know it is, but have you guys been watching that? Evan Curtis documentary? Yeah. It's been like, OK, like he talks about Garrison in that.
And it's odd because he's kind of like takes Garrison seriously, which hadn't happened in so long. So maybe that did work out. Like maybe all of you. What's also interesting is Allverstone was perceived as being so insane for forwarding the idea of like the JFK conspiracy.
But at the time, a majority of the United States believed that there was some kind of conspiracy involved with JFK. That's me. Right. So it was like, that's how different conspiracies were looked at in the early 90s.
That if you made a movie about a conspiracy that most people believe, he was still widely criticized. Bill, I think that it talks right. I would almost be curious to see the version of the doors made by the natural born killers filmmaker. Like doors to me, for as much as they have like those vision quests and stuff, it is pretty straightforward in places.
It's pretty linear. It's pretty much like there are these five or six major events that we need to capture. There's Ed Sullivan show, there's this show in San Francisco, there's New Haven, there's Miami. But I kind of watching back some of his movies from that era and especially JFK and natural born killers where he's doing all this multimedia stuff and all this wild cutting.
I kind of think it would be kind of neat to see like a recut of the doors using that technique of of just like adult sort of channel flipping, all this different lighting, all this different multimedia. It probably wouldn't necessarily fit because it's so rooted in like that like sort of late 60s classic rock era. But yeah, I do think it's really natural born killers where he completely goes off menu. Well, you also have the doors doing the doors are involved in this movie, Raymond's Eric.
In a limited passage. They're protecting the legacy. And I think they felt even this version was way worse than I think what they were hoping. And they just don't get pretty much immediately hit it.
It's like it sounds like Stone talk to every single person and just did the exact opposite. Right. So the quick background. So we mentioned 1981.
There's this huge revival rolling hitting on the cover rolling stone is amazing. I'm trying to think of what the sports illustrated equivalent of that would be, like 1981 where there have some dead athlete on the cover. 82 Travolta is now really into it. He studied Jim Morrison for months, gets Brian DePalma to get involved because they've just done blow out together.
But then there's this other part of people also trying to make the movie they have William Friedkin. And so there's two different things going on and everything falls apart. Travolta calls it the biggest disappointment of his career. He said quote, I had it down.
I worked on this guy for months. Next five years, multiple people multiple scripts all these deals fall apart. 1988. The rights are about to expire.
And somebody jumps in. Guess who jumps in Chris Ryan? Guys, Mario and Andrew Vodja. We still don't know if their fictional characters are real.
They keep popping up with the rewatchables. They own Carolco, how do you say it? Yeah, Carolco. Carolco, yeah.
So they buy it last minute, get stoned to direct, give them three to four million plus gross some gross points and the film is on $32 million budget, $34.4 million made. So it barely broke even. Roger Ebert, any guesses for one out of four stars for this? Two and a half.
Oh, I would guess you would have liked it. I would quote the experience of watching the doors, not always very pleasant. These are the songs, of course, and some electrifying concert moments. But mostly there is the mournful self-pity and descent of this young man into selfish and boring stupor.
Not wrong. We're going to take a break. Come back to the categories. Most rewatchable scenes.
So I really do like the opening in this, but I'm not going to put that in though. The first rewatchable scene to me is the, I do enjoy the film, the film's cool thing for all the reasons Chuck mentioned, but the first Jim and Ray scene when they're on the beach, and Ray's like, those are great fucking lyrics, man. And then he starts talking about the 60s. He's like, people want to fight or fuck.
And he does that all basically tries to set up the 60s and three sentences with the bad Rayman's Eric way gone. All of it is just great. I just love it. Oh, Jim can feel it in the air.
People want to fight or fuck love or kill. Vietnam is right out there. Sides are being chosen. Everything's going to fight, man.
The planet is screaming for change. Morrison, we've got to make them hits. They are the great origins, man. Like when Dionysus arrived in Greece, made all the women mad, leaving their homes and dancing off in the mountains.
It's a great four minutes. I love Kilmer. I also like that Kilmer. Yeah, as Chuck pointed out earlier, he's not singing that great yet.
And then we see Peach and Morrison. And then there, the end he figures out how to do drunk Jim Morrison, where it's almost like a different, very little raspy herd, a little like, so he has all these different Jim Morrison parts. But I love what Peach would you think that was? You think that was Santa Monica?
It's Venice. It was Venice. Yeah, OK. Next rewatchable scene.
This is probably going to be my pick unless you guys can talk me out of it. The first band rehearsal, where late my fire comes together in two minutes. Literally two minutes. I know that it would be untrue.
I know that I would be a liar. If I was to say to you, well, we couldn't get much higher. Come on, baby, let my fire. G-A-D.
You're good. Just like a man on fire. That's great, Rob. You got some nice changes.
Are you going to lose? Yeah, yes, I'm. I call it light my fire. If I'm going to compete with yours, that better be about Earth.
Snakes are fires. I like it. Sounds like a bird, though, man. But you know, there is one particularly good detail about that scene.
It's when he's showing the song, and he's kind of playing it in a rough version. And then at one point, he goes like G-A-D, where it's like, it's like that. Yeah, I can remember seeing that in the theater and being like, well, they wouldn't have needed to include this. It's like, it does mean like, it does now seem when I watch it again, it seems crazy how fast that song is put together.
But it does sort of have some qualities of how maybe it's always a mystery, how like when a guy comes up with a song, and there's four other people, or the other people in the band, and they sort of have to figure out from his version, how to make it the full version. And I kind of appreciate that they did that. Then it was interesting, then they got to work on the organ intro. It's so great.
It's like inside. It's like five minutes, and you come back and it's there, it's like nailed it. Got it. Thanks for that two and a half minutes, guys.
I figured out the organ to show. I also love when somebody writes a song and they play a version, and then the lead singer's like, let me see that. And just immediately remembers all the words and has the perfect way to spin it up. That scene hits all of my favorite things.
I've said this before, but I always love in these music movies, when they're trying to figure out basically the path to a hit song, and it all comes together in five minutes. This is not the only movie where this is a device. I enjoy it every time. Yeah, there's the first time they play that thing you do, where he speeds it up with the drums.
I think that's like a very famous version of that. The NWA movie has that one too. They have a moment like that. They all kind of do that, and they all have to condense it.
The first live performance of the end is just incredible and hilarious. I think it was, yeah. Oh my god, that whole scene. We could put some other stuff in there from the early 60s, but I was just grabbing that one.
I also like that it's short, but the scene when he won't face the crowd and then turns around and gets it. It's just really good performance. It's a very attractive crowd at that show. Oh my god.
That's like, I went to many, many rock shows. It's never like at a poison show. It's not like I've never seen a crowd look that way. But the scene that I really like is, I think that one thing Oliver Stone does do a good job of, is when he sort of simulates their initial mania over the band, and people are rushing up to them.
I had that coming up. The everything's taking off montage. And he shoots it with a camera that kind of looks like news footage from the time. And then they get on the plane and they all say who they are.
And they do a good job of that. It's like, it's in some ways, it's like a device. Let's remind the audience who all these people are. So they're like, who's the drummer again?
Let's say him say his name and who he plays. So he'd be like, per question. Yes, but then he has them sort of describe themselves in ways that do, to a degree, reflect how we're supposed to assume these characters perceive themselves. So like, remains there, it takes themselves pretty serious.
And then Daniel Manderik, 1, 2, 12, 39, is the vision of Orton. The drummer takes himself a slightly more seriously than he should. John Densmore, percussionist, 22 years old. The guitarist seems like a normal guy, Bobby Beaker, the top player.
The girlfriend seems like I don't even have any agency in any of his mind. I'm an ornament, yeah. I'm an occupation. Pamela Morrison, ornaments?
And then Morrison just says like, I'm Kim. Dame, occupation. Anna Jimin. Which I remember everyone in the theater laughing hilariously when he does that.
Now it seems like, it's so hard for me in some ways to jump back into what my mind was like when I was 19 or whatever I saw this movie. It's like, I can't remember what I knew about the doors. If I knew anything, I must have known some of their songs. But I think that it really was, I don't know if I read, if I read, no one gets out of your life before, after this movie, I can't remember any of that.
And it's hard to sort of think of what the impact would have been at the time. I love the everything's taking off montage as we discussed in previous episodes. I also love what Chuck just mentioned. The, we're resetting the movie right here with little snippets of what each person's really liked.
Cause it's like, my favorite boogie nights that we'd had seen is that one with Dirk, when's the word the second time. And it's just slow motion cuts to everyone at all the different tables. And each person is like doing the perfect thing that you would know their character for. And I still don't know why you cut it.
But that's that reset of them all introducing themselves. You're right. It's all you need to know about each person and it also resets who their names are leads in the Ed Sullivan. I really liked that part.
New Haven 1968 is just really, like I don't remember, I have to go, I don't really remember anybody filming giant concert scenes like this before. No, I don't know what's happening. It's not even the Miami incident. You know what I'm saying?
Like an actual movie where they're like, we have 4,000 extras for five days of shooting for this New Haven concert sequence. I feel like this was a new thing, right? Well, I was like the only one who really thought the guy introducing the band to talking to the crowd at New Haven sounds exactly like my princessa. But it sounds just like it.
Like it's like, it doesn't even bend. You know, it's like, I've tried the big concert scenes where you, you know, I'm trying to think in the 80s of that. Cause I remember like the blues brothers have a good one, but it wasn't 4,000 people. It was probably like 1,000 people.
Well, I mean, the idea of big crowds at rock shows doesn't really start until 1964, 63, where they were like big crowds or whatever. So there probably wasn't there. I can't, like, were there movies in the 80s about the early days of rock? There was Buddy Holly, of course.
But that is, you know, all the scale is small. Yeah, it's all the scale is small. Like a lot of that is like televised appearances or small shows. But a lot of the stuff they would cheat cause they would do the same stuff with sports movies, right?
You watch the first two rockies and they have all the extras on one side or they make the seats in the back black or whatever. This was someone being like, no, we're fucking doing this. We're bringing 4,000 people. I'm gonna have topless people standing on guy's shoulders.
And this will be a rock concert for the entire time. It was really ambitious. The dinner party scene is really funny when Meg Ryan meets the mistress and they're making a duck. And they all said a knife's out and it's just like, hey, it's another average day with Jim and his girlfriend.
Patricia Camilly, are you Patricia Camilly? You must be Pamela. You actually put your dick in this woman, Jim? Well, sometimes you.
Well, I understand. I really do. But just don't you ever expect that Jim's gonna love you or take care of you because you're one of a hundred. Come on, you don't know when to stop.
Look who's talking. Well, I'd like to think that Jim can make up his own mind if he loves him or he doesn't. Well, don't get yourself sweetheart. He's crazy, but he's not that crazy.
He loves me. Come on, Pamela, let's go check on the sweetheart. But now though, like I say, this damaging the way the door is are perceived, that scene and the scene where he locks the girlfriend in the closet like the fire. Well, they're both made up of vents.
So it's like, I mean, the Thanksgiving scene is particularly deceptive because it seems as though this must have had to happen partially because it's Thanksgiving and they're making a duck. So when there's some weird detail like that that you're not using the obvious example of what you'd make on Thanksgiving, your mind tells you this must be from real events because these little strange details of burnt duck taking acid before people show up and all that. But I guess that didn't happen at all. Yeah.
That's a stone trick though, isn't it? Like he would do that in JFK too. These like really detailed things that turned out wasn't real at all. And I mean, that is fine, I guess.
But it does, you know, the idea of locking her in the closet and letting down fire. Like I don't know where that came from if there's even a myth about that, but it's made up. You're basically saying, this guy who's crazy, actually he's a murderer. Like he's like, there's a big shift, you know?
And it's a, so when you want like, like what's good about that Thanksgiving scene is like, I think many people have been in situations like this where you're going with a small party or something that's going on. And you're on acid and then a bunch of bikers show up and your lover is there while you're there with your girlfriend. Yeah, well, I guess what Morrison does in this movie, it's like there's certain guys who are like that. It was like, hey, I'm gonna invite my ex girlfriend or the girl I'm sleeping with on the side to this situation just because it almost kind of extends my power over both of these women.
Although I guess I just read this after watching this movie this last time, I guess that like the Pam character and like the Patricia, nearly, nearly, nearly, nearly, nearly, I guess they were actually very cordial to each other. They had no issues with each other because it was a different time where the idea of him being this way wasn't that weird. Yeah, I was curious, do you know if his sobriety is something that she advocated for at this time? Cause that's another thing that's sort of like kind of passed off in the Thanksgiving scene is when they're walking up the hill and she's like, you promised me you wouldn't drink.
And he's like, well, I just took some low grade acid. And I was like, were they trying to get Jim Morrison? Because her family was involved with the making of this movie because there was some, there was some, yup. The rumor sheet that she was responsible for his death.
That she bought the hair with people. So like, was she really advocating for his sobriety? I mean, even in that scene, she says, it's like you were supposed to wait to take acid because now you're gonna peek early. So it wasn't like she was teetotaled, she was just like, let's not burn the dock.
Right, one thing I like about that scene, I like the, like Jim's friends, I know Chris would sign off right now for a prequel with just his friends, like Michael Manson and Hells Angels. Michael Manson, Billy, I don't, yeah. Billy, I don't think that could have been its own movie that Chris would have watched. A couple more rewatchable scenes.
I love when Drunk Jim records touch me. It might be Kilmer's single best scene. Fuckin' fuck it, don't bring it down, it's too drunk to fucking see. I'm gonna love you till the heavens start the rain.
He's just on it. He doesn't hear all the bunch of fucking slaves, and then he's fine, and then he's not fine. And then he hears the light by fire commercial, and he flips out. How much?
75,000. Look man, we couldn't reach you. We figured it out. He's a shit, baby.
It's not a big deal, man. Song has already been commercialized. Please, see, I know it's already sold to me copies. Fuckin' you.
Fuck it. There's some other stuff to unpack that we'll get to later, but I just think he's really good at that scene. I also love the plane scene with Manson, even though it's short, when they're late for the Miami concert. And this goes back to Chuck's point about the terrible dialogue that's secretly great, where he's like, you tested all the limits, man.
What you gonna do for Act Three? Like, who says that? You're just hanging out on a plane. But I love, I really like Manson.
If you're hanging out with somebody at the age of 27 or 26 or whatever he was, and they ask what you're gonna do in the third act of your life, they basically say like, hey, I don't think you're gonna live more than 10 years. You know, it's like, we're in Akron. It's a little odd in that scene that like, Jim just turns to his producer and says, hey, can you give me some heroin? I mean, it's just a great snapshot of like, now we get annoyed if somebody has like a teacup Yorkie in the seat next to us on an airplane.
And he's smoking a cigar, and he's like, where's my heroin? So the Miami scene, I like when drunk Jim starts insulting everyone, but really the key part of the scene is after when the Native American all of a sudden, the police come on the stage as he hallucinating, and he ducks the police and he sings break on through and he just glides through the crowd, and they're just following him around. I think that's one of the coolest two minute scenes, not just in this movie, but of this era. Like how they film that, everything about it, like his performance, you don't know if it's real or not.
That's like kind of when the movie, I think, Peakes as whatever Stone is trying to achieve with his fantasy or real type thing. It's really good. So you can go on YouTube and hear the entire Miami concert, though there's like a 14 and a half minute video where you can hear Morrison berating the crowd. With Kilmer singing.
No, no actual thing, okay. You can hear it, there's no video, but you can hear Jim Morrison do that whole thing. And I know that this is weird, but the Kilmer version is better. Like the Kilmer version is equally unhinged and everything, but it is actually, it's just so captivating.
Miami sequence is my favorite from the backstage stuff, with everybody coming up and saying the exact way they feel about the doors to him. And then him dropping to take in Peyote with Krieger before they go on stage. And you'll play like an orgasm. Even that's the scene also where like it opens with, for some reason the journalist is there writing a review into his favorite corner.
Speaking into his microphone, the soft parade has been a disappointing, but it's like, it's, it's, it's. And the drummer is right behind and like listening. And then he's just like, man, there's rock critic completely took us apart. I mean, this is why this movie is rewatchable.
This is why this movie, if you're with four people, it's actually more fun to watch. Cause there's some. But if the line when Den's more when Kevin Dylan says, we took drugs to expand our minds, not to escape is not something anyone who has ever taken hard drugs to say. It's like, definitely poor to say.
And he's acting like you betrayed me by kicking, kicking. You know, I had no idea that we liked doing it. I thought this was like, band practice. How, you know, it's like, I've been.
The funniest thing about some of those lines is like, you know, Allverstone wrote this with Randall Johnson. You know, they're in front of some typewriter in the early 90s. And Randall's like, what about this? We took drugs to expand our minds, whatever it says.
Like, just some of those lines fucking kill me. What do you guys think about the fact that Allverstone for whatever reason felt he needed to really amplify the idea of Jim Morrison often being impotent in the movie? I love it. He makes that a pretty critical part of the story.
Yeah, why don't people want to have an affair with him? Was that notorious for that? Like, I looked it up and there are, you know, but I mean, there are women who did say that about him. But of course, you know, he was an insane drunk too.
Yeah, you know, and in fact, they're like an interview who gave once where Jim Morrison was like, the best drug is alcohol because I can't waste time when I go to a new city trying to get other drugs. Like, I can just go to a liquor store and buy booze or whatever. So, you know, he's just a drink of it. But like, in a one scene, he's having an impotent issue.
And like, she's like, here, give some coke. Do some coke a lot. Cut yourself. I love it.
I love it. Yeah, and then he drinks blood or whatever. Yeah, I got it. I know that usually comes up later, but I feel like the whole kind of wicked blood marriage, that is the thing of the movie that's like, I wouldn't get that out.
This is a long fucking movie, man. It's like two hours and 20 minutes. I don't, I feel like there's a lot of space in this film that could be wiggled out. The Morrison impotency thing, it's like, when you read about all the JFK affairs and all the women are like, yeah, it had a bad back.
Pretty mature Jack-O-Later. Wasn't really that much fun to have sex with them. It's like just a report over and over again on JFK. Same thing with Morrison.
I realize that in some way, he's trying to be like, okay, this very sexual person that was part of the illusion of the sexuality or it was a dichotomy or whatever, but it seems a bigger part. And he's trying to get a boner. It seems like a bigger part of the movie than I would have guessed. Somebody would have- I would definitely say that if I had a critique of this movie or if this movie was being made now, the stuff that's in the background, like, you know, when they go on Ed Sullivan and he, and they sort of break the rules there or when they sort of break all these decency laws, that's like handled within, I don't know, like a minute or two.
And yet there's so much time dedicated to his like, rantings and wicking, you know, ceremonies that he goes through, but it's like Charles Manson is like a quick cutaway. You know, like there's all this stuff that's happening in the background that seems really important, but the stuff that Oliver Stone is interested in is like wandering around the Mojave desert and commuting. But this is why I say it's confusing to try to remember like what I knew at the time or what most people knew at the time. Like, now it seems very odd that he kind of goes into a detailed description at one point of what shamanism is and what a shaman is and other.
Like, but then another part of me was like, another first time I ever heard of what a shaman was, like I could have been. Like, I don't totally remember which of the things now that are so ingrained in that kind of like, I don't know how weird weirdness culture or whatever, how much popular that was at the time. But you're right, that there are like, like the Ed Sullivan stuff too is like another, I guess I understand why they kind of manipulated that scene to make it seem more dramatic. But now that, when you know what actually happened, it's kind of dumb that they did that.
Well, it's definitely a little dramatized in the movie. Okay, so the Rolling Stones had done that and they had changed the lyrics to let's spend the night together. As Rayman Derek thought, he points out and he points out. And, but when Mick Jagger did that on the Ed Sullivan show, like he rolls his eyes real melodramatically every time he sings the line and really signals to people, it's like, we're being forced to do this.
The doors, if you watch their actual performance, they just play the song. They just play the song and he doesn't change the lyrics. It's not even like, I, you know, I bet most of the people watching the Ed Sullivan show at the time didn't even connect the term higher with drug use. That was, you know, they were just like, oh, higher, some higher plane of romance.
I think the whole point of that scene, because there's that whole shot of all the other acts that are kind of getting ready for the Ed Sullivan show. And it's like ventriloquist dummies. And it's all like very kitchen 1950s, really wholesome entertainment. And then these guys show up and they're all fucked up and they're singing about getting much higher.
So I get why, you know, he shows it the way he shows it. But you would think that I'm surprised that Stone doesn't spend more time kind of getting into the nitty gritty of why they were so transgressive at that time and instead spends way more time kind of like wallowing in the like, this sort of poetics of being on acid. A few years ago, Grill Marcus wrote a book about the doors. It's like a short book.
It's called The Doors. It's a 195 pages. I don't know if it's true. It's apparently a character, but sometimes Grill Marcus will just take one month and just write a book as much as he can and then that becomes a book.
And he's in it's about the doors, right? He loved the doors. He saw the doors like 12 times during the early part of their career. The book itself is odd.
He talks about like an Aaron Weiss as much as he talks about the band. But he does a much better job of describing. Like people didn't lose their mind over like the end when it was actually performed. Like I can't believe he's talking about fucking his mom or whatever.
He got to imagine who was at the whiskey and stuff at this time. We're not people who were gonna be offended by things. What it had more to do, I think, just with the combination of the sound of the music and rock lyrics that really like prior to that, like you look at like Beatles lyrics or Stone's lyrics or whatever, it's like without being specific, the doors lyrics are clearly indicating that there is a different way to live. That you should like live in it.
That like that culture's at a point where you can live differently. And I think, you know, that's not really part of this movie. But then again, how would you illustrate that? No, I mean, that's why they probably have such an on the nose scene on the beach where Ray Men's Eric and him are just like, we have to start living differently.
Right. Last rewatchable scene for me, we mentioned earlier when he sees the band the last time. I just, I like when the band's together. Those are my favorite parts of the movie.
I like when he hands up. When I saw that, I think the first time I was like, are they in? Is he in heaven? Who's, I guess, trying to push forward the thing that this guy just didn't like Jim Morrison, but kind of did like him.
And they're just trying to do 90 things with that scene, I enjoyed it. My favorite rewatchable scene, though, is I love the light, my fire. Basically, all the way through to the everything's taken off montage, Ed Sullivan. I think if that's not TV, I'm probably going to watch it.
If I got nothing to do, what do you have for most rewatchable check? Well, so is most rewatchable like the best scene? I guess I would agree to you. My favorite scene is the first time they're practicing.
I think that is, um, and I think that he does the best job with that, like I say, that manian stuff where the people can't get, it looks very realistic. And he doesn't, you know, that sort of like that. The woman comes up and kisses them and like the girlfriend hits them with a purse or whatever. Like, I like that stuff.
The live performances, I do feel go on a bit long in this film. But, uh, OK, Chris, what do you have to the whole Miami sequence from backstage to the performance? What's age the best? We mentioned a lot of stuff already, just a couple of things.
The concept of selling out with commercials, which was a big part of, I don't know, my twenties and my thirties. And now it's just somebody has a song that becomes a commercial right away. But it was interesting, like the genesis of that. Oh my God, we sold our song for a commercial.
What are we doing? As it so often happens with movies about like the past, they end up telling you more about the exact time the movie was made. So like that concern over selling out in 1991 is huge. Yeah, at the time, you know, like the Rolling Stones had like sold a song to like, I think it was Rice Krispies or whatever.
It wasn't that odd that you have done that. Like, I wonder how much Jim Morrison was actually bothered by that. Because, you know, there was less of a meaning like selling out. It was like that's people knew what that meant, but in a different way.
But in 1991, of course, it's like that was the most critical aspect of any band or artists had to decide. So like Michael's side would have rather killed himself and had a Ram song and a commercial. He really would have. And the reaction of Morrison in this movie is like closer to what we expect of the reaction of like Kurt Cobain or something.
If it happens, like, you know, that's that's kind of what he's, I mean, Cobain wasn't famous yet when this movie happened. But someone like that, more Wednesday to the best. Chris, you have the floor. Give us 15 seconds on Oliver Stone's cameo as a USC phone professor.
The thing that really hits home is the goatee because it's, it's a really thick goatee, which you know, Stone either had at the time or had them manufacture for him as a fake goatee. It looks very fake to me. Yeah. Really, really fake it.
And I just love the idea that they're having this workshop where they're just, everybody is just pacing on this movie from a great height and he has to get up there and be like, well, let's hear it from the filmmaker himself. I love it. The top connection is age the best in a fun way. You have Iceman and Goose's wife as the leads in a movie.
I like Jim turning around during the break on through performance. The theme of death, which I didn't pick up the first time really. And then the second time in the theater, I remember being like, Oh, the ball guy, he must represent that. But Stone's really trying to hammer home.
Like, Oh, when you see that ball guy, that's going closer and then he moves closer and closer to Jim by the time we get to the movie. It's actually kind of well done. He looks a lot like Jeff Bezos. Oh, interesting.
That's all you would say is the best. It's a good thing though. The last one for me for what's age the best because we mentioned a lot already. I really like the closing credits because I was so mad the first time I saw this movie that didn't have LA women because that was my favorite door song and then they bring it in closing credits and they go around and it's like kind of the glory days of when the, but then it goes to Fat Jim, like basically sitting in the phone, singing it.
But the whole thing, it's just really good. And I like how they do all the credits. There's a pause and then it's like, and Val Kilmer is Jim Morrison. It's just well done.
I like, you know, closing credits always get screwed up. That was actually pretty good. And the other one's age the best for you guys. I want to go to this is a two-parter.
This is the doors music, which when I was in high school, I, so I was, I never had a doors period. Like when the, when classic rock was kind of taking over in my high school, people were more into Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin than they were the doors. Like the doors weren't heavy enough, I don't think. And then I kind of really got back into them until I really got into Apocalypse.