Ten years ago, I attended a book signing for Ray Manzarek’s memoir, Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors, and I asked the author/keyboardist why he doesn’t just make another movie about The Doors. Manzarek had spent most of the event complaining about Oliver Stone’s 1991 film, and he did graduate from film school, so I figured he’d at least thought about the idea. But he responded by saying he had other films he wanted to make, from original scripts he’d written.
I’m pretty sure one of the scripts he mentioned then became his 2000 film Love Her Madly, which has a nice exploitive title. And now according to Billboard, he’s got four more scripts, including one based on either the song or album L.A. Woman (the best driving album of all time, IMHO) and another that sounds suspiciously like the scene from Stone’s film in which the band and friends do drugs in the desert. But apparently he’s still not up to the challenge of writing something that will go against Stone and Randall Jahnson’s script for The Doors.
Fortunately, he’s doing the next best thing — or, maybe really its actually the better thing — and consulting on a comprehensive documentary that will chronicle the band’s whole career. It’s unclear how involved he is with the project, but he told Billboard that he recently saw a cut of it and that it’s still six months away from being releasable. He also mentioned that it will be filled with footage we’ve never seen before. Most importantly, though, he stated that it’s “the anti-Oliver Stone. This will be the true story of the Doors.”
From what I remember, the scene from Stone’s movie that’s most objectionable to Manzarek is the Andy Warhol party sequence, in which he, Robbie Krieger and John Densmore are portrayed as abandoning Jim. But whether or not it happened that way, the sequence (watch it above) is one of many great music video montages disguised as legitimate narrative in the film. And it should be appreciated as nothing more.
Still, regardless of the fact that Manzarek should probably just let it go about Stone’s movie after 17 years (especially since he’s supposedly at least happy with Kyle Maclachlan’s portrayal of himself), and even ignoring the fact that this is all just his latest way of milking his old band for all its worth (not that I don’t encourage it with my buying his book and attending the “Doors of the 21st Century” concert), this new film sounds like a great idea. Aside from hopefully allowing Manzarek to vent some more, it comes at a time when rock docs are doing pretty well (of course, they have to when they’re either in 3D or directed by Scorsese). Plus, it might appease any fans who, like Manzarek, aren’t happy with The Doors.
But are there actually a lot of people who like The Doors’ music who can’t enjoy more than two hours of scenes set to The Doors’ songs? I’m probably one of many Doors fans that will always love Stone’s biopic, despite its inaccuracies (or whatever else the problem). And I’m one of the many who will really appreciate this new nonfiction film, despite its probable lack of dramatization, sensationalism and Val Kilmer. Hooray for having different ways of cinematically telling (roughly) the same story.
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