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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Dec 22, 2004 18:06:41 GMT
Any thoughts on Jim's film exercise?
THE HITCHHIKER (Screenplay by Jim Morrison)
THE SCREEN IS BLACK.
We hear a young man's voice in casual conversation with friends.
"No, this guy told me you can go down across the border and buy a girl and bring her back and that's what I'm goin' to do, I'm gonna go down there and buy one of them and bring her back and marry her. I am."
An older woman's voice
"Billy, are you completely crazy?"
We hear the good-natured laughter of the woman, a man and another friend as Billy's insistent voice rises through saying:
BILLY "No, it's true. Really. This guy told me. It's true. I'm really gonna do it."
The film changes to COLOR. A couple sit at a small table in a simulated border town nightclub. It is a CLOSE shot, reminding us possibly of Picasso's "Absinthe Drinkers." The atmosphere is suggested by peripheral sounds such as boisterous young voices, curses in a foreign language, the tinkling of glasses and music from a small rock band. Perhaps a dancer is visible in the background. Perhaps topless. An anonymous waitress could enter the frame and leave, serving drinks.
The HERO is drunk and he's trying to persuade an attractive Mexican girl, a waitress in the bar, a whore, to cross the border and marry him. The girl tolerates him. She is working, hustling drinks, and has to listen but also she likes him. In some way, he interests her.
BILLY "I bet only reason you won't come with me is because I ain't got any money. Well, listen. I'm tellin' you. I'm gonna go back up there and get me some money, lots of it, maybe even ten thousand. And then I'm comin' back for you. I'm comin' back."
He weaves offscreen, determined, drunk, camera hold on girl, smiling wistfully and ironically after him. Then she grabs another young American and pulls him down beside her.
THE GIRL "Hey, man, you want to buy me a drink?"
TITLE
THE HITCHHIKER (An American Pastoral)
Film changes to BLACK and WHITE. It is dawn on the American desert; it's cold, and he stands hunched in his jacket, by the side of the highway. The sun is rising. We hold on him as a few cars go by at long intervals. We hear the car coming, watch his eyes watching, he sticks his thumb out. CUT TO profile shot, as a car swishes by. The third car stops and he runs, not too energetically and get inside.
INTERIOR car. Middle-aged man in a business suit. He asks the hitchhiker where he is going.
BILLY (mumbling) "L.A."
He is obviously reluctant to do any talking.
THE DRIVER "I can take you as far as Amarillo and then you'll have to go on from there."
BILLY (No reply. No recognition.)
DRIVER "What are you going to do when you get to L.A.? Have you got a job lined up?"
BILLY (No answer. He is beginning to nod.)
The man drives on. We see glimpses of the American land scape out the window of the car. The man glances sideways occasionally at Billy who is sleeping.
CLOSE UP of the man's right hand moving snakelike to wards the hiker's left leg. He hesitates and then touches it above the knee. Immediately, a .38 revolver appears from Billy jacket and points at the driver.
BILLY "Pull over."
Profile of car, left side, extremely long shot. We hear a shot. The hitchhiker comes around the rear of the car, opens the door, and pulls the driver toward camera, his corpse that is, to the gully, and, after stripping his wallet of all the cash, gets into the car and drives away.
The kid is standing beside the car with his thumb out. The hood is raised. The engine has failed. A State Patrolman (we learn this from his uniform, western hat, and badge) stops in his own unmarked car. Billy gets in the car. The sheriff is friendly. He talks a lot. He tells Billy that he's just getting back home after delivering two lunatics from his local jail to the state asylum.
SHERIFF "I had to put them both in straight jackets and throw them in the back of the wagon. I had to. They were totally uninhibited. I mean, if I let 'em loose, they just start jerking off and playing with each other, so I had to keep them tied up."
The killer is trying to stay awake. He's strung out on ben nies, and also just plain exhausted, and he's fighting to fol low the man's conversation. The sheriff rambles on. Billy is in that weird state between what's being said in reality and what he hears in his dream. The sheriff asks a question. He an swers and then jerks up suddenly to realize that he's been inventing his own dialogue inside his head. Finally, he can take it no longer. He pulls the gun out and orders the sheriff to pull over to the side of the road. Then he forces him to unlock the trunk, orders him inside and slams the lid.
INTERIOR of car. The hitchhiker is driving on.
As the car slows down for an upgrade, the trunk flies open and the sheriff tumbles out into the dust. Billy sees it in the rearview mirror. He slams on the brakes, jumps out of the car and runs back to the spot. From off in the desert, we see the sheriff racing insanely toward the camera. He suddenly leaps and throws himself flat on the ground behind a sand dune, next to the camera. From this point of view, the sheriff crouched and breathing in heavy gasps, we watch the kid stand on the side of the road, stare out into the desert and finally get back into the car and drive away.
Billy is hitchhiking again. Obviously, he has ditched the sheriff's car somewhere along the way. A car pulls over. There is a young man driving and in the back seat are his wife and two small children, a boy and a girl. The driver is friendly, tells him he used to hitchhike a lot himself and volunteers the information that he has just returned home from two years in Viet Nam, where he was a pilot. Billy pulls out the gun and lets them know immediately that he wants them to take him anywhere he wants to go. Other wise, he'll kill them.
It is NIGHT. They pull into a gas station. Billy is hungry, so are the kids. So he goes with the exaviator into a small country store that's part of the station. He warns the family to keep quiet or he'll kill everyone.
INSIDE the country store. A seedy old man behind the counter. They ask him for a bunch of ham sandwiches. In closeup, we watch him slice the meat, the knife hesitating minutely, deciding on the thickness of each slice. The two men stand there watching him. Suddenly, the husband wheels around and gets a grip on the hitchhiker from behind. They whirl madly around the store, the father screaming for the proprietor to call the police.
THE MAN "Stop him! He's got a gun!! He's gonna kill us!!! Help me!!!!"
Billy somehow manages to get his gun out and forces the man to the car. The store owner stares after him, mouth agape, then picks up the receiver to call the police.
MORNING. A young boy finds the car, pulled off on a side road, splattered with blood. He opens the door and sees the little girl's baby doll, the naked, fleshcolored rubber kind, and in closeup, we see blood on it.
The EXTERIOR of a run-down shack in the country. We hear the sounds from inside. INTERIOR of shack. Televi sion and radio and newspaper reporters, including an attrac tive woman with a notebook, are interviewing the killer's father. He's a very old man, an alcoholic, who is slightly pleased to be thrust suddenly into the spotlight, but who treats the situation with a grave sense of public image and self-irony.
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Dec 22, 2004 18:07:17 GMT
THE FATHER "He was always a pretty strange boy, specially after his mother passed away. Then he got real quiet. He didn't have many friends. Just his brothers and sisters."
GIRL REPORTER "Mr. Cooke, is there anything you'd like to tell your son?"
FATHER "Yes, there is. Billy, if you can hear me, son, please turn yourself in. Cause what you're doin', it just ain't right. You're not doin' right, son. And you know it."
During this appeal, the camera has moved slowly into a CLOSEUP of the old man's face.
INTERIOR. Car. Night. Rain. A car radio. The light glows yellow in the dark car. The radio is playing a country gospel hour. A revival meeting. The preacher and his flock. As Billy listens, we flash back into his past, over the rain and wind shield wipers. We see an old man and a young boy in the woods. The man is Billy's father and the boy is Billy himself at about age seven or eight. The father teaches his son how to shoot a gun. He tell him to aim at a rabbit.
THE FATHER "Don't be afraid, son. Don't be afraid. Just squeeze one off."
We see a rabbit pinioned in a rifle's telescopic sight.
A small town high school, 3:30, bell rings, school is out. The kids gush from the building and flow like a human stream to the favorite drive-in restaurant.
INTERIOR of car. Billy is eating a cheeseburger and Coke. Through his windows he watches the movements of one of the carhops. She is wearing slacks and with him we watch her ass and thighs. When she comes to collect, he asks her to come for a ride with him. We hear him say this but the ensuing dialogue is shown in pantomime. The actual voices are drowned out by the sounds of radios, kids talking.
They are driving up a mountain road. The Rolling Stones' "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" comes on the radio. Billy sings along with the record with wild abandon and squirms in his seat like a toad.
The car is parked on a rocky view overlooking the ocean. He gets out of the car and dances around it, acting crazy, and howling like an Indian. He ducks up and down, appearing and reappearing in different windows. She laughs at his clowning.
The couple are in the back seat, vaguely we see their move ments, hear them whispering, laughing, talking. CUT TO outside of car. They get out of the back of the car, hair and clothes disarranged and move side by side into a rough ter rain behind some rocks. Camera holds on the rocks. A pri meval rock formation. At a rhythm that is peculiarly excruciating, we hear three gunshots.
A rest room in an LA service station. EXTERIOR. Billy enters rest room.
INTERIOR rest room. Billy shaves with soap in rest room mirror, runs his wet hands through his hair.
EXTERIOR, downtown LA. Camera follows him from a car, as he wanders through the downtown crowds of Broad way and Main Street. Many times he is lost to our view. We see him in an arcade, where he plays a pinball machine.
CLOSE-UP of pinball game in progress.
Billy in photo booth. Flash of the lights.
CLOSE-UP of four automatic photos: flash flash flash flash. Four faces of Billy.
Billy in downtown hamburger stand. He is eating, seen from behind, Gun enters frame left. He turns and sees it, stares back blankly.
CUT TO EXTERIOR, street. In handheld confused close up sequence, we see him dragged and shoved into the back seat of a car (police car). He is kicked and beaten. During the struggle, we hear many men's voices, gloating righteous ex clamations.
MEN "So you're the little bastard that killed all those people! (Kick) You had a good time, didn't you? (Kick) You really killed 'em, didn't you?"
Hands cuffed behind his back, he looks up with a confused expression and says:
BILLY "But I'm a good boy." The men laugh.
Film switches to COLOR. A montage of extant photo graphs representing death. The body of Che Guevara, a northern Renaissance Dutch crucifixion, bullfight, slaugh terhouse, mandalas and into abstraction. A nature film of a mongoose killing a cobra, a black dog runs free on the beach. FADE INTO BLACKNESS.
EXTERIOR night. On the steps of City Hall of Justice we see the hitchhiker descend dreamlike in slow motion, move languorously across a deserted city square toward the camera until he covers the lens and seems to pass through it.
Seen now from behind, as he moves away from lens, he enters a desert outskirt region where he finds an automobile graveyard. He is wandering in Eternity. In the junkyard, three people squat around a small fire. They're cooking po tatoes in the coals, an older man named DOC pokes the fire with a stick. There is an older woman, funky, glamorous, and the third person is a young boy, a mute, of indeterminate age. He is slightly made up with white makeup. They are hoboes in Eternity and are not surprised to see him. He nears the fire.
DOC "Well, how ya doin', kid? I see you did it again. Ya hungry? There's some food here if ya want it."
Billy doesn't speak. He stares at the moon. The woman has kept her head down, her hair covering her face.
DOC "Billy's back. Blue Lady, didja hear me? I said Billy's back."
She looks up for the first time.
BLUE LADY "Hi, Billy."
BILLY "Hello, Blue Lady."
He looks at the boy.
Hiya, Clown Boy.
CLOWN BOY claps his hands and nods, his face contorted grotesquely in greeting. They sit for a while like this, and stare at the fire. They eat the potatoes. Then Doc rises and says:
DOC " The sun's gonna be up in a while. I guess we'd better move on."
Slowly, one by one, the other two rise. Doc puts out the fire with dirt and says:
DOC "Ya comin' with us, Billy?"
BILLY (thinking hard) "I don't know, Doc, I just don't know."
Doc smiles.
DOC Well, we'll see ya later, kid. The rest of the gang will be real glad to see ya. They sure will. Well...
Doc, Clown Boy and the Blue Lady start moving toward the rising sun into the mountain desert. Every now and then they turn and wave, Clown Boy leaping up and down madly and waving goodbye.
As they slowly disappear, camera changes focus to Billy, the hitchhiker, the kid, the killer, hunkered over the dead smoldering fire.
THE END
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Dec 22, 2004 18:07:57 GMT
WHY: An American Travesty
"Cinema was one of Morrison's lifelong passions. Attracted by the poetry of the filmed image, he also realized its power to hypnotize, dominate and enslave." -- Frank Lisciandro, Film and Vision
"Did you have a good world when you died? Enough to base a movie on?" -- The Lizard King
"QUEEN OF THE HIGHWAY"
When Jim Morrison died in 1971, he left behind a will, with simple instructions that the rights to his intellectual property, including all of his writings and his share of the rights to the music of the Doors, were to go to his so-called "soul mate", Pamela Courson. Being a heroin junkie, Pamela's time on earth was destined to be brief. When she died of an overdose three years later, she left no will. The rights to Morrison's work reverted to Pamela's next of kin, her father, Columbus "Corky" Courson. The parents of Jim Morrison sued the Coursons numerous times over the years to get their share of the estate. They finally won, and the rights were split. Yet, "Corky" remains the executor of the estate to this day.
Pam's father took on his new assignment as guardian of Morrison's work with gusto. During the making of The Doors, Courson proved troublesome to director Oliver Stone. According to James Riordan's "Stone: The Controversies, Excesses, and Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker": "The Coursons weren't at all pleased with Stone's script and tried to slow the production down. The producers had already agreed not to portray Pamela Courson as having anything to do with Morrison's death. The family didn't want Pam to be shown taking drugs in the film. Though she died of an overdose, the family believed that the trauma of her lover's death had driven her to the drug. Stone disagreed, whereupon the Coursons refused to let him use Morrison's later poetry. They wanted to exchange the poetry for more control over the film, and he refused."
Courson has released bits and pieces of Morrison's writings over the years, but still sits on a wealth of priceless material. Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek told Rockmine Magazine, "[The surviving Doors] are not in control of James Douglas Morrison Publishing Incorporated Corporation; that belongs to Corky Courson. So, there's a sixty-five year old retired high school principal that has Jim Morrison's poetry and he's been cataloguing it and categorizing it for the last decade. There were boxes of stuff. He has it all, and he's done absolutely nothing with it."
Unfortunately, Courson's legal control of the Morrison work is not limited to his writings. It also includes Jim's one attempt at cinematic expression, his legendary 1969 experimental film, HWY: An American Pastoral.
"KILLER ON THE ROAD"
Already getting a taste of filmmaking while attending UCLA with Ray Manzarek, Paul Ferrara, and Frank Lisciandro, Morrison and The Doors found themselves featured in a 1969 short documentary. Created by Lisciandro, Ferrara, and Ferrara's high school chum Babe Hill, Feast of Friends is an underrated classic of rock cinema, with glimpses of a performance by The Doors that caused a near-riot. Well-shot and edited, and loaded with classic Doors tunes throughout, it still has yet to see the light of a legitimate video release, although bits and pieces of it are scattered throughout various Doors releases. Of course, its been available in bootleg form for years.
Inspired by this cinematic excursion, Morrison founded his own production company (in order to keep these efforts as a separate entity from The Doors) and hired Lisciandro, Hill, and Ferrara to help him create a new, fictional work. Writing and financing the project on his own, production of HWY began in the spring of 1969.
HWY is a stark 50-minute-long film, almost completely without dialogue. The references to '60s cinema are abundant. The influences of Jodorowsky, Antonioni, Warhol, Anger, and Godard seem to be present. Created by former film students, the references were most likely intentional (especially in the case of Morrison) and, in this way, HWY will likely have a much deeper meaning to experimental film students than to the average Doors fan.
In a 1969 interview with Howard Smith, Morrison summarized the film: "Essentially, there's no plot, no story in the traditional sense; a person, played by me, comes down out of the mountains and hitchhikes his way through the desert into a modern city, which happens to be L.A., and that's where it ends."
"The only reason I [acted in HWY] is because I couldn't think of anyone else to do it, you know, and it was just as easy for me to do it. I might do some films. I don't know. I'm not that crazy about being an actor, I'd rather be a director or a writer, something like that, but you know, if I had the chance, I'd probably do a few films. Why not?"
As with any experimental film, no written description can do it proper justice. The easiest way to describe the film is probably as a synopsis...
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Dec 22, 2004 18:08:25 GMT
HWY: AN AMERICAN PASTORAL
00:00 Full moon in daylight, a jet contrail rips across the blue afternoon sky.
01:00 A waterfall and a small pond. Jim swims calmly as a piper plays on the soundtrack. Jim emerges, stands up out of the water.. he is wearing his infamous Leather Pants!
02:00 Slow zoom in on a tree, with a peace symbol carved into the bark.
02:30 Jim rests on the shore, laying back, using his coat for a pillow, as an "Om" plays on the soundtrack, strongly reminiscent of El Topo.
02:45 Jim sits on a sandbank, getting dressed. The rocks in the background are graffiti-ed with names and numbers. The music changes and becomes joyful and jazzy, as Jim walks out of the canyon. He looks up and watches the plane pass overhead.
06:00 Jim sits on the grass, under a tree, chewing on a twig, contemplative.
07:00 A long shot of Jim hitchhiking goes on for several minutes as we hear his famous rap about witnessing an Indian car crash as a child (as heard on An American Prayer, an album of spoken-word poetry backed by Doors music).
13:00 Jim plays "toreador" with his coat, using passing cars as "bulls."
14:00 Jim investigates the desert. He finds a "walking stick" and scratches the sand with it.
16:00 Jim emerges from a car buried partially in the sand, and then throws a large boulder onto it. He jumps up and down on the roof, ending with a pirouette before jumping off.
17:00 The hitchhiker stands by the side of the road and levels his thumb in the calm calculus of reason. A GT500 Mustang pulls over. Driver's POV as Jim grins at him expectantly through the passenger-side window, then enters the car.
18:00 POV shots driving through the desert, eyes on the road, hand upon the wheel. Bald Mountain, a great folksy tune written and performed by Paul and Georgia Ferrera, plays on the soundtrack. (These scenes kind of remind me of similar sequences in another short "road" film made around the same time, Amblin, directed by young Steven Spielberg.)
20:00 Flash cut to Jim driving. The owner of the car has disappeared...
21:00 Jim in a roadside store, examining a rack of books. He spins the rack slowly, and the camera lovingly pans over the titles, as the rack starts to "whine" rustily. The sound continues into the next scene.
22:00 A helicopter flies overhead in the afternoon sun, as motorists stop and gather around a small coyote that has been hit by a car. The "whine" of the bookrack has turned into an unearthly whining on the soundtrack, as Jim looks around uneasily and then walks into the sunlight, silhouetted against it for an instant. The coyote trembles, dying.
24:00 The highpoint of the film: A sudden jump cut to Jim, driving the car at breakneck speed, slamming a beer. He lets out a fierce and truly spine-chilling scream (which is blended on the soundtrack with a vicious, animalistic growl). almost as if the spirit of the coyote has jumped into him. The scream continues for several incredible seconds as Morrison's face twists into a demonic grimace, eyes rolling back in his head. When he finally ends it, a lascivious, self-satisfied satyr leer crosses his face, and he calmly continues to drink. This is a priceless Morrison moment!
25:00 Desert driving and "doing donuts" in the sand.
26:00 Jim stops for a second, looks around, then drives off again as an unearthly tumult blares on the soundtrack
26:30 Jim dances Indian-style with a group of children.
27:00 The camera takes the children's POV, as Jim looks back at them from the window of the car. He grins and drives on.
28:00 Scorpio Risin : The leather-clad legs of the Lizard King as he hovers over a map in the middle of the night, with the headlights of the car in the background.
30:00 Jim pulls into a gas station, gets out and greets the elderly attendant cheerfully, "Ahhh... hot motherfucker, ain't it?" He shares a smoke with another attendant and shows him his walking stick. He pays with a credit card (stolen?), looks back through the window at the camera and, with a friendly wave, he drives on.
32:00 POV traveling shot through driver's window while churchly organ music fills the soundtrack.
33:00 More POV through the driver's window, as we start to enter L.A. in the afternoon. The soundtrack is a changing blend of children laughing, a preacher giving a sermon, the various sounds of the city in passing. This rather impressive sequence goes on for several minutes and has a similar quality to some of the traveling shots in Easy Rider. Yards, slums, resorts by the ocean, police directions, organ music, seagulls, chime music.
40:00 A time-lapse shot of an L.A. street corner, afternoon to evening. Prominent in the shot is a sign, PHONE BOOTH.
42:00 Distant shot of the phone booth with Jim inside. On the soundtrack, he "confesses" to poet Michael McClure about a killing in the desert. (This famous sound clip also appears on An American Prayer).
45:00 The Lizard King takes a piss.
46:00 Jim stands outside of a club, talking with others and smoking. "Is this T.J. or L.A.? I get mixed up sometime."
48:00 Now inside of the club, Jim takes an elevator, turns to the camera, talking and grinning while jazz plays in the background.
49:00 Jim's dark silhouette against the Los Angeles skyline as he dances dangerously. He is literally "on the edge," seventeen stories above Sunset Boulevard.
50:00 Shots of the city at night, getting closer and closer, as air-raid sirens scream and bombs explode on the soundtrack. Without further fanfare (or end credits), the movie is over.
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Dec 22, 2004 18:08:51 GMT
"ENOUGH TO BASE A MOVIE ON?"
"It's an uncommercial type film," Morrison told the Los Angeles Free Press in 1970. "I had always been fascinated with a story of a hitchhiker who becomes a mass murderer. I set out to make that film but it turned into a different film. A much more subtle fantasy."
The potential for enjoyment of HWY depends on your patience. If you are familiar with the pacing of experimental films and it doesn't bother you, then you'll probably find HWY very interesting. If you are looking at it from the sole perspective of a Doors fan, you might find about ten minutes of it riveting and be bored stiff the rest of the time.
Morrison biographer (and professional Doors coattail-rider) Danny Sugerman definitely falls into the latter category. Unfortunately, as manager of the latter-day Doors organization, he is also in a position to do damage to the film. "I always thought it would be cool to cut and edit the best parts to L.A. Woman and Riders on the Storm. But then everyone would complain, 'you edited it, we wanted to see the whole thing.' You don't want to see the whole thing. An hour of Jim hitchhiking. Jim pissing. A dead coyote. I love watching Jim and I can't watch HWY for a third time."
"[The filmmakers] went to the desert to shoot "ten minutes," got stoned on mushrooms and shot hours and hours of Jim hitchhiking. Jim wasn't great at formatting, he needed a editor and a director. Unfortunately, Paul Ferrara was a great cameraman, but Frank Lisciandro was no filmmaker and it shows. Interesting only as a glimpse of Jim during this period and how unfocused he became without some disciplined, Apollonian sensibility working with him. Ray, Robby and John took his ideas and refined and expanded on them, making them coalesce and work. Frank, Paul and Babe were, alas, incapable of providing him this support in this film endeavor."
The voice of opposition to this narrow-minded view of the film is Frank Lisciandro, who told Cashiers du Cinemart, "Poetry is not for every taste, nor is HWY. Morrison seemed to have his own notions about images, story telling, and pacing in a film, and I believe that his style had its origins in poetry. As a poet, he used imagery, symbolism, allusion, allegory, metaphor and rhythm to create a poem. He brought these tools to the making of HWY."
"However, Jim was not a film technician, although he knew the importance of lighting, camera placement, editing, etc. He didn't say, 'Put the camera here and I'll walk over there.' Instead we would discuss the scene, look at the location, all of us make suggestions, and walk through the action. Paul Ferrara would indicate where he thought the camera should go; I would ask for places in the scene where I could make cuts. For example, I'd request that Jim walk into the shot or that in the next shot we needed to change the camera angle for a close-up. In all of this, he trusted us to do our jobs."
"The film wasn't made in a conventional way. It was improvised from a Morrison scenario, which he had entitled The Hitchhiker. At no time during the filming of (what is now called) HWY did any of us believe that the film was to be completed in a few days of shooting. We considered this initial production phase a warm up for the actual filming of the scenario, which included other characters and many more locations."
"We went out to the desert near Palm Springs, California to shoot some scenes and put together a sort of trailer for the film that he wanted to make. Our idea was that once a studio or independent film producer saw what we had created, they would fund the production with Jim as the screen writer/actor and the rest of us as the primary crewmembers. We shot at an incredible ratio of about 1.5 to 1. Mostly everything in HWY was done in one take."
"While editing the film, I added whatever music or sound effects I felt the scenes needed drawing from my own collection of ethnic music and effects. It had become my practice to add bits of music and other sounds to a film as it was being edited. Jim mostly approved of whatever I added. His enthusiasm spurred me to find other sound textures, which eventually were mixed with the music that Fred Myrow composed and recorded."
"We edited the footage, added music and sound effects, and a title sequence and made prints. By the time the editing started, Jim was certain that the original footage contained what he wanted to say. Despite our opposition, he was adamant about his refusal to continue shooting more scenes, although many more scenes were originally (and often) discussed."
"Maybe he just ran out of money and felt he had done enough to show potential investors what he could do as an actor and filmmaker. I had the feeling that he was very pleased with the way the editing was progressing; and that he became aware that with these arid, symbolic scenes he was establishing his signature as a filmmaker."
"Each phase of the production of the film was more or less unstructured. Every moment was an opportunity to be spontaneous and creative and to try new techniques and approaches. This method of filmmaking might sound unprofessional, undisciplined, and somewhat haphazard. However, it allowed us to shake off preconceived, and UCLA learned rules of how a film should be made. The result is a work that doesn't look like a traditional film, that has little or no narrative, and that forces the audience out of their habitual stare-at-the-screen-and-be-entertained passivity."
"Viewing HWY is unlike watching TV. The experience is more like reading a 'difficult' poem where the meaning, or meanings, is not readily accessible. The enjoyment of poetry consists, at least in some part, in the intellectual and intuitive exercise of unraveling and understanding the poet's symbols, references and metaphors."
"LEATHER BOOTS"
As a lifelong Doors fan, I had always wanted to see HWY. It only had a very few semi-public showings. At a Morrison anniversary celebration in Paris several years ago, a screening of HWY caused a near riot outside the small theatre showing it, such was the demand for a viewing. Recently (for the 30th anniversary of Morrison's death) it was shown once again in this manner in Paris, in a theatre with only 400 seats! And in the mid 90s, it appears to have been shown at an Italian film festival (due, no doubt, to the valiant efforts of Lisciandro, who resides there). Otherwise, the film has remained "lost" for over three decades, needlessly rotting away in the private vault of "Corky" Courson ... until now.
"TAKE IT AS IT COMES"
Now that HWY has become available, the debate has been raging over the probity of bootlegging such a significant entry in American independent cinema. Some self-righteous individuals believe that HWY breaking into the bootleg video market is a bad thing. Patricia Butler, author of Angels Live and Angels Die, an amateurish tome that is pure Courson propaganda from start to finish, has stated publicly, "No one deserves to have their rights violated just because a relatively miniscule segment of the general population wants to satisfy its curiosity." Butler is a loyal toady.
I have a different opinion. I believe this is "poetic" justice. The only crimes being committed are by Columbus "Corky" Courson, and also by the likes of Butler who defend his "right" to bury this film (they must have paid her well). After investigating the story behind the film for CDC, it is painfully obvious that the Morrison estate is controlled by a clueless old man from Santa Barbara, California who never should have been given the rights to Morrison's work in the first place. Courson only received these rights by "benefit" of his daughter's relationship with the Morrison and her untimely death, and he holds them as hostage in a lame attempt to whitewash his sleazy daughter into some kind of hippie sainte. He is a leech. In my opinion, Frank Lisciandro deserves the rights to HWY, since he actually had something to do with the making of the film, and since he is apparently the only person in the Doors circle that cares about it. Im sure Jim would agree.
Will HWY ever get the legitimate release it deserves? Says Lisciandro, "When the bootleg sales of HWY started over the Internet, I initiated a campaign to convince the copyright owners to allow an official release of the film. I think it's going to happen sooner than later."
Fortunately, the Doors organization has been making efforts to put out a lot of unreleased Doors material in "authorized" releases, under their Bright Midnight label ( www.thedoors.com/), and for that I applaud them. Danny Sugerman has a major influence on what is released and in what form (uncut as Morrison meant it to be, or sliced and diced, as Sugerman would apparently prefer it). "I hope that the Estate will let the Doors use it for Bright Midnight's release of FEAST OF FRIENDS on DVD and home video. We have a good print at least."
The film is there, complete, and that's how it should be released. Until then, we will have to resort to watching it via bootleg video. Don Alex Hixx
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 5, 2005 19:36:08 GMT
A truly tedious but essential (for a Doors fan) 50 minutes. Jim shows he like his pal Ray has all the film-making ability of a gerbil as he plods aimlessly from the desert to the sea....buys some gas.....has a piss and goes for a beer.....
Having said that for us Doors fans its a bloody amazing look at Jim without The Doors in tow having fun with his mates a camera and a car......we see some cool Doors haunts...Room 32 and The Phone Booth and see Jim playing a cruel joke on Mike McClure via telephone.... Be nice if someone in Doors PLC got round to getting permission to include this on a decent Doors DVD release which could feature Feast Of Friends and maybe some of the other gems they have stashed away....
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Post by jym on Jan 5, 2005 21:29:26 GMT
That guy who wrote the Enough to Base A movie on article is crazy, Frank Liscindro should get the rights to it because he worked on it? Or because he cares about it. I care about Citizen Kane can I get the rights?? Whoops, there I go making a simile again. I don't think I'd be to crazy about The Doors getting the rights either, they're know to chop stuff up, edit the crap out of things, HOW ABOUT JUST THE WHOLE FINISHED PROJECT, instead of cutting the fuck out of it to leech mo' money out of us.
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 6, 2005 11:26:11 GMT
The only way it will ever see the light of day is IF The Doors get their hands on it. HWY and FOF are dead in the water as a commercial release as they are pretty dire. FOF could have been so good but its basically a mess. Ray was dead right when he criticised Jim and Frank over that. The only way we will ever get this is if its part of the special features of a Doors disc. There must be plenty of footage we have not seen..... more IOW for starters....it does not seem as if there is a full concert there or we would have seen it by now but what there is of IOW along with some of the bits and pieces filmed at concerts and maybe some out-takes from FOF and some home movie footage would make a decent DVD release. The Coursons and the Morrison estate are never gonna let us see any of this so only a commercial release by The Doors is our only hope......I don't give a damn if money grabbers like R$ay or R$obby get thier greedy little mits on it as long as WE get a chance to own a copy....
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Post by ensenada on Jan 7, 2005 16:41:08 GMT
STILL have to watch this. i got sent it ages agoi by someone, just not got round to watchin it.
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 9, 2005 23:34:09 GMT
A flyer from Jim Morrison Film Festival. This was the first public showing of Jim's film HWY. JIM MORRISON FILM FESTIVAL I met The Doors when they were still a local L.A. band, and I instantly took to their music, becoming one of the first persons to write about them. "Strange Days" was the first recording session I ever attended, and that was prior to my photographer and I turning on local college DJs to "Light My Fire" with its extended instrumental from two boxes of 25 each copies of their great debut LP, which we had been given. Requests for that song soon led Top 40 KHJ radio to ask Elektra for a single-length version of it. Because I soon found what I had been doing for fun was being taken seriously and quoted, I decided to take a vacation to England, check out the scene there and "clear my head" with new perspectives. However, another powerfully innovative group of the period, The Collectors, suggested maybe I might want to go up the coast, check out Vancouver, BC, cross Canada, THEN go to England. When I was told I'd like Vancouver so much I might never leave there, I decided to do that instead. So January 29th, 1969, I grabbed maybe a hundred albums (including the Led Zeppelin debut which I said could be "the next Cream"), some clothes, put them in the passenger section of my two-seater 1955 MG TF1500 and, unaware, left sunny California to drive into one of the worst storms to have hit the Pacific Northwest. (There were "I survived Winter" T-shirts soon on sale up there.) Anyway, I'll leave the other details for my book and say that when I finally got to Vancouver, I found a jewel of a beautiful city in awesome surroundings peopled by some of the most artistic and interesting persons I had ever met. The Collectors had been right. I decided to stay, especially after I met graphics artist-painter Ihor Todoruk, who asked me to join him and Graham Thorne in publishing a new magazine he was getting ready for the press, POPPIN. Started with only $700, POPPIN Magazine was indeed a "labor of love." It wasn't just a music publication like the others, but more of an artistic and social blend of the things that people like us would talk about and share when we got together. To survive, Ihor, his wife Judy and I eventually shared a couple of rural farm homes. But I knew the artistic combination of Ihor and I was one that could bring success to our vision (for which I coined the phrase "rock culture" to describe our magazine's scope). Ironically, our success came too quickly for the magazine's survival. Roger Schiffer, a friend who had operated Vancouver's Retinal Circus nightclub and managed some musical artists (including Nick Gilder), got involved as our advertising manager. Since we knew our efforts would eventually find a ready audience in the U.S., Roger realized his commissions could be considerably greater if he scored such a distribution deal for us. As it were, despite letters from Europe and Vietnam, we were really just a regional magazine in Western Canada not able to get more than 500 copies into such eastern centers as Toronto. So, one day he presented us with our doom: a U.S. distribution contract from ACME News. Ihor, Graham and myself, the publishing partners, discussed and agreed it was a good thing. But, I felt we didn't want to rush into it. As Graham agreed, we should have a lawyer go over the document, and we should plan an American debut issue for maybe six months away, allowing Roger time to familiarize American advertisers with our publication, secure advertising contracts and make special arrangements for our Canadian advertisers (which included the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and restaurants as well as Canadian record companies). However, an additional 50,000 copies of our very next issue were printed and shipped to ACME, whom quickly raised the order to 80,000 copies. It may not sound like a lot now, but we had begun with an initial printing of only 3,000 and no true seed funding. And the revenues from our local sales and advertising couldn't even come close to supporting this, so we were now totally at the mercy of ACME News and our printer's extension of credit. But, in the long run it would work right? Well, it makes me think of what happened to Rocky Burnette who released two great albums to critical acclaim on Enigma and Core Records only to have both labels go under as national picks started coming in. As expected, we were an instant hit in the U.S., soon getting lots of letters and subscriptions from American readers. Capitol Records ran a full page ad for Pink Floyd's "Ummagumma" double set in Billboard, quoting, at the very top, only the last line from my Poppin review. But we had no national American advertising accounts yet - nor where we getting any other checks from ACME. The contract that had been quickly signed against my advise, stated the penalties we'd be charged if we didn't deliver issues on schedule as well as how much ACME would pay us. But, it said nothing about when their payments to us would be due. Just a minor point that threw us into a major cash crunch. We had to continue with the ballooning printer bills and deliver monthly, or lose everything. Somehow I mentioned this to Jim Morrison, whom I had "killed" in an imaginary traffic accident in our September, 1969, issue (pictured above) to make a point about how he was being thought of more as a sex symbol than the artist he was. To my surprise, Jim suggested maybe he could help our cash flow problem with a benefit. There was talk about a poetry reading and a feature film he was almost finished with. When it became apparent that he was serious and a time frame was discussed, I quickly booked the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, the most prestigious and acoustically correct auditorium in Vancouver. Ihor, however, wanted to make sure this would happen so he went down to Los Angeles with Stephen Sky to check things out. He also took a copy of our signed QE contract to show we had committed ourselves. What he found, however, was Frank Lisciandro editing what he said would be a 60 minute film at best, clearly not a feature length movie. When Ihor called me from L.A. with this news, we decided to turn the World Premiere of Jim's film into a "Jim Morrison Film Festival," something for which Jim told me he'd make other Doors films available. Unfortunately we didn't get some of the UCLA films Jim and Ray had made prior to The Doors, as I had hoped. But what we did get did make for a show that would delight any Doors fan: In addition to "HWY," which we were initially told was spelled "Hiway," was the Granada TV documentary "The Doors Are Open," which had aired only once previously on British TV (footage has since been incorporated into "The Doors LIVE in Europe 1968"), The Doors' "Feast Of Friends," as well as the "shorts" (this was before they became "videos") for "The Unknown Soldier" and "Break On Through," plus a "Lobby Exhibit Of Leading Canadian Kenetic Light Sculptures." As the date, March 27, 1970, approached, it became apparent Jim wouldn't be able to attend, although he had no problem with people thinking he might indeed be there. So, to cover our butts, I asked him if he could send us a last minute telegram that he couldn't attend. The real problem, however, became apparent when I was told "HWY" was in 35mm and the QE only had a 16mm projector. I remember saying, "Ok, so we'll rent a 35mm projector," then being told "Alright, but it's not that simple. We'll have to tear a hole in a wall or two to get it into the QE" Ihor made the practical suggestion that we quickly arrange to have a 16mm copy made in Vancouver. But, I felt that was an artistic violation of our friend Jim, so I said "no" to that and when it became apparent that, because of the Customs problems we had had getting the original in, there was no guarantee we'd get a 16mm copy from Jim in time for the show which was just days away, the stage was set for....
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 9, 2005 23:40:31 GMT
The Walk
The Orpheum Theatre is one of the grandest movie houses anywhere, and it could hold three thousand persons, so I called them up and asked them at what time their final show ended that Friday. When it looked like we could get in at about midnight, I made a deal: "we'll give you $250 and bring 3,000 people you can keep your concessions opened for."
Now, how would we deal with these logistics? We certainly couldn't tell the public in advance about what was up. So we hired a band to play at an "intermission," and we made arrangements for the police to temporarily close a major street at midnight and supervise the escort of 3,000 persons from the Queen Elizabeth several blocks over to the Orpheum. Dorio Lucich, one of our staffers, was given the task of getting up on stage at the appointed time and telling the audience of this added adventure. A phony "cover" story Ihor gave a reporter ended up in Rolling Stone:
"Morrison stipulated when loaning his new feature-length Highway to Poppin that the viewing audience would somehow have to participate actively in its premiere. For individual participation (and because a 16mm print had been destroyed in the mail), Poppin staffer Dorio Lucich led a police-supervised march of 3,000 viewers through the centers of downtown Vancouver to the Orpheum Theatre where a 35mm print had been rushed by air from Los Angeles only an hour before. For many, it was a disappointing walk. Several left the (Orpheum) theater halfway through Highway, and the rest of the crowd stayed on to leave silently and perhaps puzzled at its conclusion."
And, sure enough, the film, which I saw only that once, was "different." It began with Morrison bathing in a desert stream only to rise up dressed in leather pants. Then he's hitchhiking and a fellow driving a Mustang (his) pulls over to pick him up. In the next scene Jim is driving and there's no sign of the fellow who picked him up. You see Jim drinking beer, pissing, being suicidal and walking along the ledge of a highrise building. Then he gets on the phone and confesses he's killed a man. There's no Doors music - just some country music. But the movie is full of metaphors, and as Ed Jeffords wrote in his Rolling Stone review: "The film is Morrison...The picture's beauty lay in its honesty. Morrison, the star, was totally free of everything - but himself. For those who missed the point, the film ends with a short "love is where it's at" rap by four persons bathing in a mountain stream. Through the series of films, from the TV special to Highway, a portrait of Morrison the person emerged."
Months later, in the dressing room of the PNE Coliseum, Jim told me he was interested in helping finance my publication endeavors. I told him that since I enjoyed writing about his own art so much, people might make accusations that The Doors had "bought" us out. After the Coliseum show, Ihor drove Jim to Tommy Chong's Velvet Parlor, where the place was electric because word got out we were coming. Jim sang blues till 4 or 5 in the morning, impressing the heck out of Ihor, who previously wasn't sure if Jim Morrison was "for real."
The benefit wasn't enough to save Poppin, financially as well as because miscommunication and a butchering of my most recent interview of Jim led to a drift between Ihor and I. I became a concert promoter with the hope of doing my own "Apple" and coming back to Ihor with the bucks to do media in what I thought would be better organization. Ihor ended up being chased out of Vancouver by the police after he promoted an Erotic Film Festival. And, on his last day in L.A., I gave Jim a painting Ihor wanted him to have in appreciation for his effort to help us.
ACME News, which had been a major national magazine distributor, quickly went bankrupt and took such "underground" press as the Chicago Seed down as well. Rolling Stone managed to survive only because Jann Wenner made a deal to have A&M Records distribute them through record stores for several months to keep the revenue happening. Ihor recently told me he got the idea from a comment in Rolling Stone back then that the manner in which ACME picked up so much counter-culture publications then sucked them under was "a C.I.A. plot."
The film, as a result of Jim's death at only 27, has never again been shown publicly and is in the possession of The Morrison Estate from what I've been told.
That Walk was something else. Jim did love hearing about it. And I've often wondered what those persons coming out of the Orpheum's movie presentation for the night thought of when they saw all these "heads" coming in a huge line to take over the very place they were just exiting. You should have been there. Tickets were only $2.50, $3 and $3.50. Jim told me he wished he had been able to have been there. 1998 Hank Zevallos
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 19, 2005 21:15:36 GMT
Heres an idea.....now Ray is back in the directing mode. Why does he not do a remake of HWY?
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Apr 17, 2005 10:29:21 GMT
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Apr 18, 2005 9:29:59 GMT
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on May 25, 2005 15:26:43 GMT
A rather interesting review of HWY over on DCM if you are interested.....by John Kolak who seems rather impressed with it....... I myself thought it was a pile of old crap... www.doors.com/magazine/HWY-Review.html
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Post by ensenada on May 25, 2005 20:37:28 GMT
cheers dude! this place has everything...come on, i'll show you........
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Post by eressie on May 29, 2005 19:51:58 GMT
I have tried to download them a few times, but get cut off because the download takes too long. I have broadband so I don´t know what the problem is. I would very much like to see these movies. Any other place I can try to download them from?
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on May 30, 2005 12:27:11 GMT
Thats odd I had a 500 connection when I downloaded FOF and it only took about 6 hours and I had no problem with it........ They are the only ones I know of I am afraid........
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Mar 11, 2011 9:54:52 GMT
Hwy (aka HiWay) Productions. Clear Thoughts Building Los Angeles.Also in March 1969. Jim establishes a company called HWY Productions with the intention of realising several of his cinematic ambitions. He employs the technical crew from FOF and during Easter Week begins filming his screenplay HWY outside palm Springs California. HWY is intended to be a condensed avant garde film which is intended to be a taster for a possible full lenght production that would expand on this original idea. Morrison commented on the film's progress toward the end of 1969. "Well it's about a hitchhiker who......essentially it's just a movement from a state of nature to a city. I don't want to say too much about it now because I don't want to ruin the trip. But it's a pretty good film. I had an idea for it and I play the hitchhiker. I won't say that I directed the film but I'm producing it and overseeing the whole production. The film created itself. We finished a version of it and I think what's going to happen is instead of ending up with a short 40/50 minute film we're going to add to it and make it longer. It's really interesting in it's present form but we would like toget it seen by people and unless it's feature length it's not going to be taken very seriously. We are going to have to shoot a lot more and then edit it all."To Hank Zevallos Poppin Magazine 1969"There is no story really. No real narrative. Except there's a hitchhiker who......we don't see it but we assume that he stole a car and he drives into a city and it just ends there. He checks into a motel and he goes out to a nighclub or something. It just kind of ends like that"To Bob Chorush for LA Free Press January 1971Further reading for Jim Film Projects. "Unknown Soldier" Promo FilmBakersfield Civic Center Harrison Ford & The DoorsFeast Of Friends Film Editing Has Money Problems Jim Morrisons' Hitchhiker Screen Play Is Finished
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Mar 18, 2011 9:51:33 GMT
Frank Lisciandro remembers the film HWY.
Q. It's strange and somehow ironic that Ray doesn't like HWY.
A. Maybe it's a matter of taste. Maybe he doesn't like experimental films, or films that turn their back on convention. Jim thought HWY was complete (he says so in interviews) and he thought that it was something of a break through film. He was proud of it, proud enough to bring it Paris with him to show to his friends Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy. In matters of artistic taste I'll side with Jim Morrison every time. Ray didn't like the film "Feast of Friends" either, but he cut it up and used sequences from that film for the Doors home videos. Maybe he didn't like it because he wasn't much involved in the making of the film? And you know, he was very unfair about those home videos. He never did credit me for my camera work at the Hollywood Bowl Concert.
I filmed about 50% of the footage that is used in the Doors video. Com'on Ray, give credit where it's due. You know that I shot at the Bowl and that most of the good footage of the concert came from my camera, but not once have you ever given me a line of credit for my work. Why is that Ray? And you didn't ever credit me for any of the sequences in "Feast of Friends" which I edited and you lifted from the film and used in the Doors videos. Not a single word crediting me for my creative editing. That's very petty, Ray. I've never mentioned any of this before but now that the question has come up, I thought it was time to reveal the facts.
From Ship Of Fools Interview with Frank Lisciandro 2002
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