When You’re Strange: Critique?

[kristyob]

Ah, that was beautiful! Well put!!!

Yes, it is so hard to sum up the appeal, meaning and magic. Maybe that is why people have relied on broad strokes when telling the tale. Like you I'm always discovering something new....which seems to parallel my own personal growth.

Jim wasn't a devil and he wasn't a saint. He was an artist trying to find his own voice in the first generation that lived their lives publicly. If you take a close look at all his personal work, this appears again and again in the theme of the voyeur. Looking, watching, seeing vs. active participation.

There was something in WYS that baffled me a bit. It looked like there was actual footage of the Miami show. Was that just a clever use of photos or a re-enactment ?

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Apr 26, 2011 16:01:38 GMT kristyob said:

There was something in WYS that baffled me a bit. It looked like there was actual footage of the Miami show. Was that just a clever use of photos or a re-enactment ?

Just smoke and mirrors Kristy. there is no footage of Miami.....as far as we know

[kristyob]

Hmmmm.....

[adam]

the trouble is that the truth is soooooooooooo boring compared to the hyperbole

who wants to read

"well jim tried drugs, but not that much he preferred drink"

"hell yeah jim fucked a lot of women, but only cos he saw it as his job, he was actually completely in love with his long term partner"

"yeah jim got himself arrested, but only pushing the limits of artistic freedom, not cos he was out of control"

"yeah jim got high on jacob's roof top & had ideas for great songs, but they required hours of re-work & honing to make them the gems you get on the albums"

"yeah jim could've faked his death, but most likely he died alone 1000s of miles from his home country"

the truth can't ever come out... the records sales would stop dead... the diff between myth morrison & real jim is far too much to risk.... its not just the sales, the whole thing becomes void without the madness of jimbo

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

I understand your point mate but the truth is far from boring but I concede it's not as exciting as the Myth.
A lot of the truth is there wrapped up in the Myth but as you say Crazy jim makes it far more exciting and keeps those cash registers going.
The way Manzarek constantly feeds the Myth by twisting and turning in contradictory circles to suit his agenda adds so much flame to this fire. The truth would starve the Myth of much of it's air and would indeed affect sales from those who sign up to the Doors for the Manzarek/Stone view.
This is not to say that either of these views is a pack of lies because it's not. Exaggeration and embellishment to the tales take them into another stratum of Doors Myth and History. Both these men have cleverly used the truth to their advantage. Stone to make a very high profile movie and Manzarek to line his pockets.
The odd thing about all of this is that Doors Myth is not all myth and Doors Truth is not all true.
It’s very complicated and even after 40 odd years I sometimes find myself bemused at it all. The Doors are not only unique because of the art they produced and the resonance that they have with regards future generations but in the complexity of the layers within the story of the band.
I have pretty much read it all and seen it all and heard it all and lived it for most of my life but I still find a fascination with this group.
Something I have never had with the hundreds of other great bands and artists that I have a huge amount of love for.
It’s odd to think that this could come from a series of late night listening to a foreign radio station and become a life changing event in that I began to listen and understand so much about rock music as a result of becoming enamoured with an American band that died pretty much when I began to really get into them.
That’s what The Doors gave me. Without that I would not have gained the curiosity to listen to so many disparate musical forms and gain affection for so many artists and bands that I love and respect to this day.

The Truth would not hurt my perspective of The Doors Adz but I agree it would damage the individuals and have a knock on effect sales wise.
But it’s been 40 years and maybe time for the truth to out.
Of course Jim Morrison was no saint nor an angel.
He was a complex man full of contradictions. Some of them not very nice at all.
But he was not just the man Manzarek, Densmore, Krieger, Stone and DiCillo present.
The guy had a lot of good points as well. It’s just as you rightly say that they don’t bring in new converts or sell albums.

[kristyob]

Lol @ Adz! What if the story was this:

What happens when an outsider misfit says no to 9 to 5, mortgaged existence and dreams the impossible and strange dream of connecting people together through art ? Well it works, but comes with a price.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

It's been stated here that the biggest crime WYS is guilty of is letting the surviving Doors have a voice in the film but denying that voice to Jim Morrison.
Just because the guy had been dead nearly 40 years did not mean he had not left a record of what he believed The Doors to be. His interviews were used in WYS to amplify points Tom DiCillo was making rather than used to bring attention to points Jim Morrison was making.
It is this misrepresentation and not allowing Morrison his own voice that present Morrison as attention seeking and disruptive. Doors shows become riots in DiCillos eyes and the band victims.
Morrison's words twisted to show him as some kind of psychotic vain superstardom obsessed freak rather than an artist.
Morrison's words could have been used to good effect to tell The Doors story in the hands of someone with at least a little vision. But DiCillo preferred to suck up to Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore and tell their side of the story denying Jim his.
They covered up their involvement in the fall of The Doors with tales of Jimbo and rashes breaking out. They with the help of DiCillo managed to come out of the last 40 years scot free whilst Morrison is forever painted as the rock madman who destroyed The Doors and achieved legend by dying.
But Morrison saw the art in The Doors and strived to keep it. The others saw the profit motive and decided that was the way forward.
They lived and he died.
History is written by those left at the end of it all.
The Doors History exclusively in the hands of the three who ended up seeking profit whilst the one who sought art got a patch of dirt in a Paris graveyard.
But oddly enough he was the one who saw that The Doors stood for something. He said that himself.

"We didn't start out with such big ideas. We thought we were going to be just another pop group, but then something happened when we recorded 'The End'. We saw that what we were doing was more important than just a hit song.
We were writing serious music and performing it in a very dramatic way. 'The End' is like going to see a movie when you already know the plot. It's a timeless piece of material . . . It was then that we realized we were different from other groups. We were playing music that would last for years, not weeks."
Jim Morrison

Morrison saw that what he was part of was special.
He tried to keep it that way but was doomed to failure the moment he achieved success as that very success would condemn him to singing LMF for the rest of his life.
He used an idiom for The Doors to roadie Doug Cameron in a poolside conversation they had in 1969.
He alluded to them as an Albatross.
He also alludes to this in the song Who Scared You with his mention of a burden and a heavy load.
There is a lot of information out there that disputes WYS from the point of view of Jim Morrison.
You just need to look with open eyes to be able to see it.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Once again this bullshit film gets shown for the garbage it is. This time via Uncut mags July special on LAW.
DiCillo sets the scene for his LAW segment with the information that Botnick brought in Elvis bass player to keep Jim interested.
Now this is a huge statement as it alludes to the fact Morrison was indolent to the LAW sessions but as he was an Elvis fan they brought in Scheff to get him motivated.
This is a huge lie as Jim was enthusiastic about LAW and it's nice to see some information to nail this DiCillo garbage.

In July's Uncut LAW special we learn that Botnick had been working on a Marc Benno album before LAW.
The bassist on the album was Jerry Scheff who was Elvis old bass player. When Botnick mentioned about bring Scheff over Jim said 'Oh I'd like that! Elvis bass player.'.
Botnick asked Benno along as well.
But this was just icing on the cake to a Jim Morrison who was indeed ready willing and able to deliver on LAW.

Uncut mentions that it was excusable to think Jim would not be in the frame of mind to work on LAW after the events in Dallas and New Orleans but this fantasy is nailed by The Doors, Frank Lisciandro and Botnick themselves.

Fewer than 10 people witnessed the sessions and the most persuasive testimony comes from Frank Lisciandro who attended the sessions and co producer Bruce Botnick..
Lisciandro assures us that Morrison far from being reluctant, going through the motions and struggling to stay focused, had a wonderful time and was the principal cheerleader for the music they were making.
Uncut LAW special July 2011


The three surviving Doors too can confirm that Morrison was the driving force, as well as being a Lot of fun during the LAW sessions.
Uncut LAW special July 2011

Botnick found Morrison 'a prince' to work with during the LAW sessions. 'There were no drugs, no women, no sycophants. Jim still liked to drink and there was plenty of beer around. But he wasn't drunk. He was really creative and he really led the sessions. And since he was living in the Alta Cienaga right across the street he was usually at the workshop before we were.'

'He was the most relaxed I had ever seen him in a studio. He was in an optimistic mood. I think the absence of Rothchild gave him the opportunity to step forward as a band leader.'
Frank Lisciandro Uncut July 2011

'You ask how we handled him. He didn't need handling. He sang most of his vocals in one or two takes. He really rose to the occasion.'
John Densmore Uncut July 2011.

But watch WYS and you get a different story of the producer having to keep Morrison's interest.
The Doors allowed this fool to make such ridiculous statements about Morrison but then correct them years later in a magazine article. It shows how opportunistic all three of them can be when they see a chance to promote their back catalogue.
If something as simple as Jim Morrison's demeanour during the LAW session can be misrepresented so badly it is easy to see that the bigger misrepresentation of Morrison comes down to the mixture of know nothing fool (Jampol), weak direction (DiCillo) and a chance of a buck (Manzarek, Densmore and Krieger).
Instead of a landmark documentary on one of the worlds greatest rock band we end up with a pathetic remake of the Stone movie and NOHGOA.
A great opportunity missed to tell a tale worth hearing.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

It's funny and probably ironic that you don't hear much about WYS 2 years after it was released. I first saw it in October 2009 at the London Premiere and saw instantly what garbage it was.
Once the video became available I was able to refine my critique to what became this thread on John Densmore's forum.
It's noticeable that the ex Doors went out of their way to praise this film even though it was an obvious hatchet job of Jim Morrison which reduced him to a fool rather than a principled artist.

DiCillo has moved on to his next straight to bargain bin project and Densmore has become a monk. Manzarek and krieger have ditched any pretense and are now in a full on Doors tribute band. Ironically they ended up joining one rather than being one.
The very singer Ray dismissed as a Doors imitator now boasts both of them in HIS band. Wild Child of the 21st century

I firmly believe that those three expected WYS to pave the way for a good couple of years of mooching from Morrison but it backfired spectacularly. Basically a damp squib which even supporters admitted it was trite and banal once you got past the pretty pictures.
Oliver Stones Doors movie created talking points for decades and is still discussed today. WYS made little impact even in The Doors world.
A movie that should have been awesome was not even that interesting to Doors fans.
I do not believe everything has been said about this band.
A lot of Doors History has not been touched on. WYS should have been the first chapter in a 21st century examination of the greatest rock band of the 60s. Instead it has stifled this examination and as a result all we have left are some stupid Hollywood type films due out based loosely on Jim Morrison.

of course there are always books and some are due out soon but it seems sad that an important chance to tell a story that could have gotten to the heart of The Doors was missed in favour of trivia and sensationalism.

The fall out from this damp squib is there for all to see. The delay in the proposed 40 year celebration of LAW until 2012 probably would not have happened if WYS had actually lit a fire.
Despondency and apathy rife within The Doors community fueled by lies and deceit from the Doors and their clown of a (part time) manager.
Where does the interest for the next decade of two come from.
Of course the music stands the test of time and will continue to do so but are The Doors doomed to be lost in a web of lies, myth and rewriting History.
Seems so sadly.
This can all be traced back to 2002 and the big fall out which hamstrung the operation completely as nobody talked to anybody.
Arguably because of this the WYS project ended up in the hands of a weak fool who did not know his Doors arce from his elbow and produced a totally warped view of Jim Morrison and The Doors. Advised by an idiot (the aforementioned Doors manager) who knew even less than the film maker we ended up with something less than an MTV view of the band.
90 minutes later The Doors had been reduced to mockery.
2 years on I can still not see the benefit WYS had to The Doors.
That cannot be said of Stone's epic which still has an effect today.
Now considering WYS was supposed to answer Stone that is truly ironic

[casandra]

Despite everything that Ray Manzarek criticized Oliver Stone's film, it is clear that he made much richer with “The Doors” than “When you're strange”.

You can compare the revenues.

When you're strange

Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $246,078 + Foreign: $900,926 = Worldwide: $1,147,004

boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=whenyourestrange.htm

The Doors

Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $34,416,893

(These data don’t show foreign revenues).

boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=doors.htm

I remember “The Doors” movie was at least three months in cinemas in my country. Instead, “When you're strange” just spent a month. True, it was another time, when people went very much to the cinemas, but the difference is enormous, both in promotion and impact of the film.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Exactly.
Stone's movie spent a month in London when I was living there and made #1 in the UK film charts.
The queue on the opening night I went was massive and remained steady like that for over a week.
You could not go to a shopping centre in London without seeing Jim Morrison.
The hype and interest was awesome.

Compare that to the WYS film.

Mediocre interest and mainly dismal reviews and it's UK distribution deal meant the odd night here and there a year after it was released.
Of course Doors fans wanted to see it but it never created the stir Stones movie did.

The main reason for me was it was poorly made.
A weak director with no great CV behind him more a cheap alternative to someone like Pennebaker or
Scorcese.
The Doors deserved a better director.
Coppola should have been approached as he was there at the beginning of The Doors.
The script was garbage and even with Johnny Depp on board to provide a focal point for media interest it never rose above mediocre.
Even the image side was poorly edited.
I attack DiCillo often but don't blame him. He is a mediocre director and was given the task of writing a narrative for a band he knew little about. So he fell back onto NOHGOA and the Stone movie and the result was a poor documentary.

I doubt over the next 10 years that WYS will add much to it's gross. The DVD was as pathetic as the film with nothing in the way of extras. The soundtrack was unimaginative and having Depp read Jim's poetry a huge mistake.

Stone's Doors movie was ground breaking whilst DiCillos WYS was little more than a fart in a hurricane.

For me this was the last chance to tell a proper tale and now all we will ever see is the Crazy Jim bullshit told from the perspective of three liars with money to make.
Kriegers lies in the media about Jim punching him setting up his so called autobiography next year.
Once I would be waiting at the bookstore for the Doors to open to get that.
Now I doubt I will even bother reading RKs bullshit.
John told the nearest to the truth in his but he did not have the integrity to ensure WYS told a balanced story and even got in his rashes caused by Crazy Jim.
But nobody cared to tell the tale from Jim's side and as such WYS is just another bullshit Morrison doc.
Shame really.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

It seems to me as if this tripe has failed miserably as an answer to Oliver Stone and even as a documentary in it's own right.
It has been put forward for awards and even won a Grammy for a Micky mouse made up section which it was not even relevant to.
Stone's movie touched a raw nerve with it's audience and sent an entire generation Doors daft.
I saw it myself in London as for months The Doors were everywhere.
The film played to packed houses and was #1 in the film charts.
Posters were in the windows of bookshops and record stores. people were everywhere wandering around in Doors T Shirts.
Stone's film capture the zeitgeist of the times.
DiCillo's film on the other hand whilst professing to be some kind of documentary instead of a wishy washy version of the Stone movie had all the effect of a fart in a hurricane.
For years we Doors fans salivated at the prospect of a definitive film about The Doors.
After it's damp squib of a release at Sundance we realised it was gonna be awful.
And even with a rewrite and Hollywood A lister on board it had all the impact of a wet lettuce trying to stop the Mongol horde rampaging across Europe.
Pathetic probably the nicest thing I could think to say about it.
Stone's movie wipes the floor with this sad limp dick excuse for a Historical Document.
Stone's movie was bollocks Historically as it was entertainment but it did more for the Doors than anything in the last 25 years.
DiCillo's film has never really engaged Doors fans in any real way.
Even it's supporters admit it is pretty bad but the pictures are nice.
It's got to be viewed as the worst portrayal of Jim Morrison ever with it's pitiful whining Jim was a fame junkie hook line.
DiCillo moved on a quickly as he could when he realised Doors fans were not licking his arce as much as he had hoped.
I doubt we will hear Tom mention it much in the near future

Stone on the other hand has ridden the storm of criticism well this last 20 years. He has put forward decent enough arguments for his poetic license and stands even today as one of the greatest film makers of his generation.
DiCillo a pathetic figure by comparison to the man he sought to humble with his answer to Stone Doors flic.

Stones Doors film sits proudly in the DVD racks today whilst WYS has forlornly been shoved into an anonymouscorner of the shop somewhere trying to screw 20 quid from the gullible.

If these morons had attempted to just make a true documentary about the Doors and not made it a clash of the Titan (Stone) and the nonentity (DiCillo) we would not be in this mess.
But arrogance prevailed and they went out of their way to nail Stone and instead made themselves look stupid with the most garbage pile of worthless made up drivel imaginable.

Even the bargain bin would baulk at having copies of this trash.
I would imagine most of us have a copy.
But how often do we view it?

Stone's movie is a perfect pizza and beer movie with some class music and a great turn from ole Val.
DiCillo's movie is not. It's an embarrassing chore of a movie made by greedy men who were so tight they employed an idiot who was cheap rather than get a proper film maker.

Will this like NOHGOA and the Stone movie end up as our only view of Morrison.
Looks that way although WYS was not particularly influential as the other two were.
The first real 21st century view of Jim Morrison botched up by The Doors greed and DiCillos ineptness.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Doors themselves pander to this ridiculous Myth of Jim Morrison as a way to generate interest and therefore cash.
They did it with the Converse sneaker using three images of Morrison and none of them including an image of a seemingly flat out Jim onstage in Copenhagen.
Which to the young demographic the sneakers were aimed at would seem like a spaced out or drunk Jim and considered cool.

They did the same with Backstage & Dangerous a ridiculously titled BMR release from the day after the 1969 Aquarius gig.
It used images of Miami to make it look like it's dangerous part of the title and give the buyer the idea that this was in some way similar.
It was nothing but a duplicitous way for Paul Rothchild to con Doors fans by recording songs at the Aquarius the next day minus audience and pass them off as real live tracks. Fortunately it failed descending into a complete farce.
But the fact still remains the Doors tried to give it the look of something it wasn't and that look involved crazy Jim as usual.

Backstage & Dangerous

WYS simply adds to the weight of inaccurate selling of an image of Jim that whilst it cannot be claimed not to have existed was not all there was to Jim Morrison and there is plenty of evidence to show that the other Doors were not exactly innocent victims in all this controversy.

Jim is always portrayed as the perpetrator with The Doors as victims of this crazy Demon.
The luxury of still having life afforded to them and one they use relentlessly in selling their POV.

Morrison gets a bad rap constantly and they escape unscathed.
sad really as we show on this forum that the 3 musical Doors were indeed no angels AND it's little wonder Jim could not stand being sober in their presence.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors DMC Rhino

Short on music but heavy on the lizard king and company, this is The Doors laid bare.

During the New York media screening for When You’re Strange, a critic stormed out after a minute because he thought he was watching an actor portraying Jim Morrison. Certainly, When You’re Strange lives up to the title, plucked from a song on The Doors 1967 debut. For one thing Jim Morrison, who died in Paris in 1971, comes alive again with spooky regularity.

Director Tim DiCillo (Johnny Suede, The Real Blonde, Delirious) claims this isn’t strictly a documentary. Despite Johnny Depp’s voiceover narration – quite easy to ignore – the avoidance of those ubiquitous rockdoc talking head ‘I remember’ recollections allows for natural mystery.

Using hitherto unseen on-stage footage from (various stage riots, the Singer Bowl concert being choice mayhem), DiCillo’s major coup is the discovery of pristine film stock from the on-the-road Feast Of Friends project, and Morrison’s post-Miami bust movie HWY: An American Pastoral (1969), in which he Joshua Tree desert back into Los Angeles.

The extraordinary film stock, with its equally unsettling car radio soundtrack, captures all the rock star’s undeniable charisma. Is he acting? Is he being himself?

Given these godsends and some choice Elektra promotional films, DiCillo can hardly fail to deliver. The musical excerpts (although much too short, unfortunately) and Morrison’s superstar demeanour fill the screen with sound and beauty.

The film doesn’t fudge Jim’s descent into debauchery. There’s a great run of imagery taken at the LA Woman sessions depicting the singer as drunk as several skunks, and his beleaguered band mates looking on in disgust.

For the rest, Morrison’s role as erotic politician makes sense when you actually see him in close up; whether bare-chested or bearded, he is the real deal.

The film unravels slightly towards the end.

Morrison’s fatal Paris sojourn follows the party line. But the chance to see the Doors in their pomp, spearheading a dangerous rock revolution, is irresistible. They definitely were not just another band from LA.

Max Bell
Classic Rock Magazine July 2010

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Now Max Bell just so happens to be the rock critic I have more respect for than the rest put together.
His Doors articles from NME to Classic Rock are always worth reading but he like a lot of Doors fans..... And Max is indeed a Doors fan.....could not see the wood for the trees.
I dunno where Max saw "the singer as drunk as several skunks, and his beleaguered band mates looking on in disgust" during LAW because that just does not happen in this film although images are used by the fool DiCillo to promote his ridiculous viewpoint which does include the sequence with Jim seemingly having a spasm to indicate drug/drink abuse and the disgraceful image of Jim seemingly attacking a camera man to introduce the mythical figure 'Jimbo'.

Max is the sort of person I would just love to sit down with a beer and talk about this crap movie.
But DiCillo seems to have pulled off a neat trick as a lot of Doors fans seem to have watched this crap without the aid of those two flaps either side of their heads.
I think they are called ..ears.
Weird

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

A CD sized flyer for WYS.
I think I picked this up in the Camden exhibition in 2011 which was done in conjunction with WYS.

'Spellbinding' is not a word I would use to describe this useless crap I would use another word beginning with S that rhymes with 'right'.

And Johnny Depp probably says that about his latest project all the time.
His contribution was pretty poor and considering he is one of the greatest actors of his generation was a HUGE disappointment in a film that underachieved in all departments.

[wplj]

I dig that the four-star review is from a publication called "Little White Lies."

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Jim had changed. You look at him when I met him, and he looked like Michelangelo's statue of David.
When he left, he was overweight with a beard.
That was a conscious reaction against the Mick Jagger sex-symbol image.
John Densmore, Doors drummer:

Another little snippet that contradicts the ridiculous view of Morrison presented in When You’re Strange by the fool DiCillo.
By Densmore's own admission Jim deliberately railed against the very popular image he himself had created.
So how can someone so obsessed by fame do his utmost to destroy that very image that gave him the fame in the first place.
The film never bothers to mention the dozens of instances that contradict the DiCillo Morrison content with an obtuse populist vision of The Doors singer that feeds the mob mentality brought up on the NOHGOA and Oliver Stone Jim Morrison.
The very Morrison this garbage was supposed to be answering.
The level of hypocrisy in this useless film is quite mind boggling.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Jac Holzman, Elektra Records head:
"Love Her Madly" was the clear AM radio hit. The band wanted "The Changeling," but I insisted. Jim once admitted to me that they never got the singles right.

Read more: Love Her Madly

Another example of pandering to the populist view by DiCillo and The Doors. In this silly film they claim that ROTS was first choice for the first LAW single. Here we see that nonsense contradicted by the man who owned the record company.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

9-4-2010
The Boston Globe MA


August 2010
Uncut



9-4-2010
Chicago Tribune IL