When You're Strange: A Film About The Doors

As a long time Doors fan since I first heard Light My Fire in 1967, I am always thrilled when I can find anything new on Jim Morrison and The Doors. I saw this new release of When You're Strange and found it to be a wonderful collage of Jim Morrison clips, HWY clips, Feast Of Friends clips, meshed with The Doors clips and performances, and mixed in are many news clips from the sixties and great photos. The feeling of the sixties comes across to show how The Doors did or didn't fit in with the times.I have the film HWY- An American Pastoral, Jim Morrison's 51 minute creation, and there are some pieces of the film shown here and there throughout this 86 minute film. I wish someone would make a pristine copy of HWY and put it on dvd, as this Jim Morrison film is fascinating, and seeing the brief pieces cleaned up so perfect in When You're Strange, makes me want to replace my badly faded Darkroom Entertainment copy. The pieces taken from HWY are great, but too short. Jim made this film with Frank Lisciandro, Paul Ferrara and Babe Hill in the spring of 1969. You never know that the bits you see of Jim in his HWY film in When You're Strange, are about a man (Jim) who begins the film by swimming in the mountains, ends up hitch-hiking through the desert, kills the man who gives him a ride, taking the man's navy blue Shelby Cobra Mustang (1967 or 68 GT500 car, which I'm sure is Jim's) and driving to LA. The pieces of HWY used are mainly the shots of Jim that the director Tom DiCillo liked. It is very collage like- pasting pieces here and there for pure visual effect.There are some pictures of Jim that I have never seen before and a film of him as a teenager getting mail from his mail box that I really enjoyed seeing. There are also some great pictures of Ray, Robbie and John that I have never seen before, that were great to see. As a long time Doors fan, I really enjoyed this film, but it really is more like a collage (collage meaning glue in French) of bits and pieces of sixties, Morrison and The Doors footage. Johnny Depp does a great job narrating this collage film, which is a purely visual tribute to Jim Morrison and The Doors.If you are a Doors fan like me, every time a new dvd comes out on the Doors, it always leaves me wanting more, and because this one shows glimpses of a pristine HWY, I hope whoever gave these film pieces to Tom DiCillo, will give it to someone who will make this fascinating HWY film into a cleaned up dvd. Some never before released archival film and photos on The Doors is really great, but having a complete film with a little more substance, like HWY (1969), which is Jim Morrison's creation, or FEAST OF FRIENDS (1970) is much better!The 2 BONUS FEATURES included are:THE THEATRICAL TRAILER.INTERVIEWS with Jim's Father Admiral George Stephen Morrison (1919-2008) and Jim's Sister Anne Robin Morrison-Chewning (1947-present).The interviews are so very touching to hear what Jim Morrison's family have to say about their Son/Brother. It was so nice to hear about Jim wanting a complete set of Nietzsche Books for graduation, when most boys wanted a car and how as a little boy Jim loved going to his grandmother's house, because she had a library. I wish the interviews had been longer and had more of Jim's family involved, but sadly, Jim's Mother Clara Clarke Morrison passed away in 2005 at the same age of 89 that Jim's father died. It would have been nice to hear from Jim's younger brother Andrew Lee too. These interviews are priceless, especially now that Jim's Father, Admiral Morrison passed away in 2008.One thing I never knew about, was that Jim's Father placed a flat stone on Jim's grave in the 1990's. We had always heard of Jim's original 1971 grave marker being stolen in 1973, and that the 1981 bust of Jim (made for his 10th anniversary of his death by sculptor Mikulin) was always defaced and then stolen in 1988, always leaving no marker. It was so touching to hear Jim's Father speaking of this marker he had made for Jim in the 1990's. Admiral Morrison asked his Greek teacher what he should write on his famous son's marker. The Greek teacher said to write KATA TON ALMONA EAYTOY- in English, ACCORDING TO HIS OWN DAIMON (True to his own spirit). There is also another bust of Jim Morrison in bronze made by Mikulin, waiting for a license to be once again placed on Jim's grave.These interviews, were for me, the icing on the cake of When You're Strange. After listening to his family speak in this rare interview, you can see how Jim Morrison was born to be a poet, singer and film maker. Jim had a genius I.Q. of 149, but sadly he was a man who did not know his own limitations.

Good documentary all in all. Includes a lot of good information and footage, considering it's only about an hour and a half long. Not star-struck nor overly or unfairly critical, establishing mood without resorting to sensationalism, the narration gives us a pretty decent depiction of Jim Morrison and his time with the Doors. I would have liked it to be a little longer, as I think somebody like Jim Morrison could easily provide a lot of material for a series of documentaries. It could have included more about his poetry and more on his literary influences, et cetera. More interviews with Morrison and people who knew him would have been cool as well. The shortness of the documentary is honestly my only real complaint, aside from the fact that the chronology is a little back and forth, which could be confusing to people not already familiar with the Doors. All in all, it's one of the better documentaries circulating about the Doors and their singer Jim Morrison.

To tell you the truth, I was extremely unsure about buying this and almost did not do it. I thought it would be another low-rent,poorly made documentary aimed at one thing.... getting your money. I will never make that near mistake again. This is by far one of the most straight ahead films I've seen on the Doors. Number one, they used the real Doors music,not some "fake" music or copy studio band. The film brought out a lot of lesser-known facts about the Doors and the back up musicians they used on their albums.One fact was Jerry Scheff (Elvis's bass player)played on the LA Woman album. Also, the fact that Johnny Depp narrated the story and did a fine, uncompromisingly good job. Also, it was apparent throughout the entire film that no corporation (or any big company for that matter) was pulling the strings to create this beautiful,well done documentary,therefore it did not wreak of commercialism which was extremely refreshing. The Doors were true geniuses, all of them, and this film certainly is a credit to them. My advice,if you want to see the real Doors as they really were,get this DVD and know it's money well spent.

This film finally makes good use of footage from Morrison’s HWY vanity project as JM listens to the radio and hears of his own death while driving through the desert in his Shelby Mustang. It’s a powerful opening to what ends up being a definitive portrait of this most unusual band.