Post by darkstar2 on Aug 16, 2008 15:40:47 GMT
Are You Manzarek Enough?
Metro Active News - Silicon Valley
May 19 2004
By Sarah Phelan
Ray Manzarek built his directional debut
around his own musical history when he made 'Love Her Madly.'
Truly, 'Madly,' Deeply
Ray Manzarek pays tribute to Jim Morrison and realizes his own
filmmaking dreams with 'Love Her Madly'
Somewhere in a parallel universe, Ray Manzarek is a lawyer instead of
a rock icon. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in this dimension
who thinks we got the short end of the stick.
"Even my own mother and father told me, 'Raymond, we're glad you
didn't become a lawyer,' which coming from my parents was like, holy
cow!" says Manzarek.
Instead, he dropped out of law school at age 24 to enroll in UCLA's
film school, where he met Jim Morrison. The pair recorded eight
platinum albums and three platinum singles, but they never made a
movie together in the seven years between that meeting and Morrison's
death at age 27, leaving yet another of Manzarek's alternate-reality
ambitions unfulfilled.
This one, however, has finally been realized with Love Her Madly, the
film he directed that was selected for this year's Santa Cruz Film
Fest. Manzarek will make an appearance with his film noir when it
screens at the Rio on Friday, the festival's closing night.
In fact, Love Her Madly brings together Manzarek's musical and movie
dreams. It's somewhat of a Morrison tribute, given that it's based on
one of his short stories and offers new insight into the meaning of
the Doors' hit by the same title.
"'Love Her Madly' is a love song, a hard-rocking love song about a
femme fatale, who, 'Don't you love her as she's walking out the door/
all your love is gone,'" says Manzarek, breaking into the song's
famously catchy words, as he speaks by phone from his home in
Sebastapol. "It was always intended to be a part of a movie about my
femme fatale, but I just didn't know it. It was always waiting there
to be brought to life."
"Waiting to be brought to life" is how the three men in Love Her
Madly view Hadley (Jennifer Lothrop), an exquisite femme fatale.
after whom they all lust. Indeed, Hadley's boyfriend Gram (Richard
Danielson), her videomaker friend Dills (T. J. Thyne) and her
professor Gabriel (Madison Mason) all try to interpret her through
their art, but only as they want her to be. Meanwhile, the equally
artistic Hadley has other ideas of her own--a clash of wills that
turns out to have fatal consequences.
Set on the campus of the California College of the Arts, Love Her
Madly opens with the discovery of an unidentified corpse in the
school's Greek amphitheater, then cuts back to cover the events of
the previous 24 hours, revealing a web of intrigue that gives us
plenty of reasons to believe that any one of the protagonists could
have been the killer or the one to get killed.
"Men all try to shape women--and disaster befalls us," says Manzarek,
who credits director Joseph von Sternberg (Blue Angel, Shanghai
Express) for influencing him stylistically.
"I had a class with Joseph von Sternberg at UCLA, which changed my
life, if not my attitude towards women, which has always been
lustfully wonderfully beautiful, but in terms of style," he says.
Wonderful is also how Manzarek describes Lothrop, who he says
was "huge fun to work with," despite the prima donna role that she
had to portray.
"What's great about working with unknown actors is they don't bring
any star ego trip to production," he says. "They simply love to
work."
Work in Lothrop's case also included having to stand and be plastered
as various molds and castings of her body were made-- a necessary
step given that Hadley's boyfriend Gram supposedly has a studio
filled with life-size sculptures, not to mention photos and drawings,
of Hadley, who he has chosen as the only subject of his life's work.
Strange as literally getting actors plastered may sound, the weirdest
part of the film for Manzarek was appearing as himself playing
keyboard alongside Beat poet Michael McClure.
"For us to be performing at a club, as we have in real life, but
while filming for a movie, left me wondering, 'Am I playing at a club
with Michael or am I directing this movie?'" he says.
The hardest part, on the other hand, was the "much too short" 17-day
shooting schedule.
"The upside was that the actors had the luxury of doing lots of takes
since we were shooting digital, which only costs $20 an hour," says
Manzarek, recalling that such luxuries were not possible back when he
was in film school and using what he describes as " virtually
indestructible 16 mm cameras, the same as were used in World War II."
"You could kill someone with one of those little cameras,
consequently we were using them all the way up to 1960s," he jokes.
Then suddenly that gets him thinking about how said cameras would
make a great murder weapon in a film noir about film noir students
making a film noir.
"I have a thousand ideas for movies in my head, plus novels and
stories," says Manzarek. "And God, the music I still want to make
would alone leave me with no time to tend to my garden and check out
my tomatoes. But that's the wonderful thing about taking LSD. You
find out that life is more than a series of events, failures and
successes. You realize that the sun is out, and you've done what
you've done."
Manzarek thinks Jim Morrison would be very disappointed with the
state of America in 2004 and with the current war in Iraq. He himself
has been booed onstage since 9/11 by people who don't like
entertainers using their shows to tell Americans what they could or
should do.
"Not that that's gonna stop me," he says. "Our direction should be
love, peace, hope, beauty and tending the garden of America. Last
week, I was onstage in New York playing "The Unknown Soldier" just
like the Doors did in New York in '68, '69 and '70. It's ridiculous
how similar the situation is. And then we have senators
saying, 'They're more savage then we are, ergo, let's kill the
motherfuckers!' So, it doesn't matter who Kerry is, because who the
fuck wants Bush?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ray Manzarek performs at the Santa Cruz Film Festival's closing night
after the 8:30pm, May 21, 2004 screening of Love Her Madly at the Rio
Theatre.
Source: www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/05.19.04/manzarek-
0421.html
Metro Active News - Silicon Valley
May 19 2004
By Sarah Phelan
Ray Manzarek built his directional debut
around his own musical history when he made 'Love Her Madly.'
Truly, 'Madly,' Deeply
Ray Manzarek pays tribute to Jim Morrison and realizes his own
filmmaking dreams with 'Love Her Madly'
Somewhere in a parallel universe, Ray Manzarek is a lawyer instead of
a rock icon. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in this dimension
who thinks we got the short end of the stick.
"Even my own mother and father told me, 'Raymond, we're glad you
didn't become a lawyer,' which coming from my parents was like, holy
cow!" says Manzarek.
Instead, he dropped out of law school at age 24 to enroll in UCLA's
film school, where he met Jim Morrison. The pair recorded eight
platinum albums and three platinum singles, but they never made a
movie together in the seven years between that meeting and Morrison's
death at age 27, leaving yet another of Manzarek's alternate-reality
ambitions unfulfilled.
This one, however, has finally been realized with Love Her Madly, the
film he directed that was selected for this year's Santa Cruz Film
Fest. Manzarek will make an appearance with his film noir when it
screens at the Rio on Friday, the festival's closing night.
In fact, Love Her Madly brings together Manzarek's musical and movie
dreams. It's somewhat of a Morrison tribute, given that it's based on
one of his short stories and offers new insight into the meaning of
the Doors' hit by the same title.
"'Love Her Madly' is a love song, a hard-rocking love song about a
femme fatale, who, 'Don't you love her as she's walking out the door/
all your love is gone,'" says Manzarek, breaking into the song's
famously catchy words, as he speaks by phone from his home in
Sebastapol. "It was always intended to be a part of a movie about my
femme fatale, but I just didn't know it. It was always waiting there
to be brought to life."
"Waiting to be brought to life" is how the three men in Love Her
Madly view Hadley (Jennifer Lothrop), an exquisite femme fatale.
after whom they all lust. Indeed, Hadley's boyfriend Gram (Richard
Danielson), her videomaker friend Dills (T. J. Thyne) and her
professor Gabriel (Madison Mason) all try to interpret her through
their art, but only as they want her to be. Meanwhile, the equally
artistic Hadley has other ideas of her own--a clash of wills that
turns out to have fatal consequences.
Set on the campus of the California College of the Arts, Love Her
Madly opens with the discovery of an unidentified corpse in the
school's Greek amphitheater, then cuts back to cover the events of
the previous 24 hours, revealing a web of intrigue that gives us
plenty of reasons to believe that any one of the protagonists could
have been the killer or the one to get killed.
"Men all try to shape women--and disaster befalls us," says Manzarek,
who credits director Joseph von Sternberg (Blue Angel, Shanghai
Express) for influencing him stylistically.
"I had a class with Joseph von Sternberg at UCLA, which changed my
life, if not my attitude towards women, which has always been
lustfully wonderfully beautiful, but in terms of style," he says.
Wonderful is also how Manzarek describes Lothrop, who he says
was "huge fun to work with," despite the prima donna role that she
had to portray.
"What's great about working with unknown actors is they don't bring
any star ego trip to production," he says. "They simply love to
work."
Work in Lothrop's case also included having to stand and be plastered
as various molds and castings of her body were made-- a necessary
step given that Hadley's boyfriend Gram supposedly has a studio
filled with life-size sculptures, not to mention photos and drawings,
of Hadley, who he has chosen as the only subject of his life's work.
Strange as literally getting actors plastered may sound, the weirdest
part of the film for Manzarek was appearing as himself playing
keyboard alongside Beat poet Michael McClure.
"For us to be performing at a club, as we have in real life, but
while filming for a movie, left me wondering, 'Am I playing at a club
with Michael or am I directing this movie?'" he says.
The hardest part, on the other hand, was the "much too short" 17-day
shooting schedule.
"The upside was that the actors had the luxury of doing lots of takes
since we were shooting digital, which only costs $20 an hour," says
Manzarek, recalling that such luxuries were not possible back when he
was in film school and using what he describes as " virtually
indestructible 16 mm cameras, the same as were used in World War II."
"You could kill someone with one of those little cameras,
consequently we were using them all the way up to 1960s," he jokes.
Then suddenly that gets him thinking about how said cameras would
make a great murder weapon in a film noir about film noir students
making a film noir.
"I have a thousand ideas for movies in my head, plus novels and
stories," says Manzarek. "And God, the music I still want to make
would alone leave me with no time to tend to my garden and check out
my tomatoes. But that's the wonderful thing about taking LSD. You
find out that life is more than a series of events, failures and
successes. You realize that the sun is out, and you've done what
you've done."
Manzarek thinks Jim Morrison would be very disappointed with the
state of America in 2004 and with the current war in Iraq. He himself
has been booed onstage since 9/11 by people who don't like
entertainers using their shows to tell Americans what they could or
should do.
"Not that that's gonna stop me," he says. "Our direction should be
love, peace, hope, beauty and tending the garden of America. Last
week, I was onstage in New York playing "The Unknown Soldier" just
like the Doors did in New York in '68, '69 and '70. It's ridiculous
how similar the situation is. And then we have senators
saying, 'They're more savage then we are, ergo, let's kill the
motherfuckers!' So, it doesn't matter who Kerry is, because who the
fuck wants Bush?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ray Manzarek performs at the Santa Cruz Film Festival's closing night
after the 8:30pm, May 21, 2004 screening of Love Her Madly at the Rio
Theatre.
Source: www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/05.19.04/manzarek-
0421.html