Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Feb 20, 2011 15:10:11 GMT
Pinman Jim Morrison's first film!
It is widely thought among Doors fans that Jim Morrison's first film project was whilst he was attending UCLA.
Certainly Ray Manzarek would have us believe such a tale but in fact it was when he lived in Alexandria Virginia that his interest in film made him experiment with his first foray into film.
It was called Pinman.
Here are the recollections from 'The Lizard King Was Here' of some of the people who helped the budding director realise his first project.
PINMAN
Morrison’s first attempt at making movies took place in Alexandria.
The short Super 8 film he wrote and directed was entitled, “Pinman” and the production crew included his classmates Bob Hemphill and John Huetter.
The fellow cast in the lead role was Randy Maney, who was short on acting experience, but agreed to lend his presence to the production.
Filming was conducted at various locations in Alexandria.
Randy Maney:
“Morrison wrote the screenplay and directed it and Bob Hemphill worked on it with him. I remember running in a lot of scenes and how Morrison was not happy with the fact that I didn’t look tired. I thought the movie was something do about life of an artist but I can’t really tell you for certain.”
Bob Hemphill:
“Oh yeah, we had Randy Maney running into a tunnel, I do remember that.
Nothing ever came out of that, but it was certainly fun.
It was called “Pinman”.
We got Randy to be the hero of it and we were never able to pull this off because we didn’t have the equipment or the training and probably we didn’t have the talent.
Bascailly it was going to be a short film with a kind of analogy of Randy, which cuts back and forth between a pinball machine with the ball kind of coming out of the slot, slowing bouncing back and forth, bouncing off things, going down, being hit by flippers, coming up, and eventually going down the middle of a standard pinball chute where it disappears into that open slot and you can’t play anymore.
Randy coming out of his house in the morning and have him move slowly here and intersecting with something else and being bounced against something and sort of moving more and more frenetically.
The final shot was going to be of Randy running into the street car tunnel on Wilkes Street in Old Town.
We were going to shoot it from the street and into tunnel.
It probably wasn’t a Nobel Prize winning quality idea, but there you go.”
“I presume the film itself was about how life is pointless and random. We thought it was kind of cool.”
John Huetter:
“The Movie – we shot in Alexandria and it was sort of going to be an existential thing like the French New Wave guys and that was the influence.
It was young man’s search for truth and meaning.
Randy Maney was the unwitting star of it and we’d just tell him to do stuff and Jim held the camera, which was one of those hand held cameras because you had no choice at the time.
I was sort of along to shout instruction and Hemphill was involved in it and the three of us thought we were going to be great auteurs in film and of course Jim did go to film school later on.”
It is widely thought among Doors fans that Jim Morrison's first film project was whilst he was attending UCLA.
Certainly Ray Manzarek would have us believe such a tale but in fact it was when he lived in Alexandria Virginia that his interest in film made him experiment with his first foray into film.
It was called Pinman.
Here are the recollections from 'The Lizard King Was Here' of some of the people who helped the budding director realise his first project.
PINMAN
Morrison’s first attempt at making movies took place in Alexandria.
The short Super 8 film he wrote and directed was entitled, “Pinman” and the production crew included his classmates Bob Hemphill and John Huetter.
The fellow cast in the lead role was Randy Maney, who was short on acting experience, but agreed to lend his presence to the production.
Filming was conducted at various locations in Alexandria.
Randy Maney:
“Morrison wrote the screenplay and directed it and Bob Hemphill worked on it with him. I remember running in a lot of scenes and how Morrison was not happy with the fact that I didn’t look tired. I thought the movie was something do about life of an artist but I can’t really tell you for certain.”
Bob Hemphill:
“Oh yeah, we had Randy Maney running into a tunnel, I do remember that.
Nothing ever came out of that, but it was certainly fun.
It was called “Pinman”.
We got Randy to be the hero of it and we were never able to pull this off because we didn’t have the equipment or the training and probably we didn’t have the talent.
Bascailly it was going to be a short film with a kind of analogy of Randy, which cuts back and forth between a pinball machine with the ball kind of coming out of the slot, slowing bouncing back and forth, bouncing off things, going down, being hit by flippers, coming up, and eventually going down the middle of a standard pinball chute where it disappears into that open slot and you can’t play anymore.
Randy coming out of his house in the morning and have him move slowly here and intersecting with something else and being bounced against something and sort of moving more and more frenetically.
The final shot was going to be of Randy running into the street car tunnel on Wilkes Street in Old Town.
We were going to shoot it from the street and into tunnel.
It probably wasn’t a Nobel Prize winning quality idea, but there you go.”
“I presume the film itself was about how life is pointless and random. We thought it was kind of cool.”
John Huetter:
“The Movie – we shot in Alexandria and it was sort of going to be an existential thing like the French New Wave guys and that was the influence.
It was young man’s search for truth and meaning.
Randy Maney was the unwitting star of it and we’d just tell him to do stuff and Jim held the camera, which was one of those hand held cameras because you had no choice at the time.
I was sort of along to shout instruction and Hemphill was involved in it and the three of us thought we were going to be great auteurs in film and of course Jim did go to film school later on.”