The Cult Section
Cult Manifesto: Ben Tracy on "The Doors"
The Doors I've been a part of a few fandoms in my life, but I think the first one might be The Doors. My father once told me never to trust anyone who doesn't prefer the long version of "Light My Fire". He raised me on The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Three Dog Night, The Grass Roots, The Hollies, The Monkees, and CCR. I took to The Doors the most, captivated by the mysticism of frontman Jim Morrison. For the longest time, my fledgling record collection consisted of songs from the above artists taped off the radio, Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA (my first album), a Weird Al cassette, and a dubbed copy of The Doors movie soundtrack that my friend Nik made for me. He also introduced me to Tom Waits, asking his father where to start with his catalog since I'd never heard of him, and sent me a copy of Rain Dogs, but that's another story for another time. It was The Doors soundtrack that really blew my doors off. It wasn't made up entirely of Doors songs; it also featured "Heroin" by the Velvet Underground (I thought this was The Doors for the longest time), Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana," and some selections from Jim Morrison's An American Prayer. It also marked the first time I'd ever heard "Love Street," so of course I had to go buy Waiting for the Sun, which doesn't feature the song of the same name; it's on Morrison Hotel, so I had to buy that one too, setting me off on a streak of buying all their albums. There were a few movies that I rented on VHS over and over again: The Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal from Jim Henson, Beetlejuice, and The Doors. Val Kilmer is utterly transcendent as Jim Morrison. For all intents and purposes, he becomes the enigmatic singer, embodying him in the most mesmerizing way. It's totally transformative and transfixing, and he nearly loses himself in the role, even changing his voice to sound and sing exactly like Jim. It wasn't my introduction to Val; that would be Top Gun, and I remember being impressed by him as a swashbuckling rogue in Willow, but The Doors made me a Val Kilmer fan for his entire career, and the rest of his life. I was thrilled when he became Batman (my first favorite actor was Michael Keaton, so this progression worked well for me) and even more thrilled to report that the movie gave me another of my absolute favorite cinematic soundtracks. It's a pure slice of 90s alternative radio heaven, featuring some of my all-time favorite artists like PJ Harvey and The Flaming Lips. More rabid fandoms are represented here; Michael Hutchence of INXS covers Iggy Pop's "The Passenger," and the inclusion of Nick Cave's "There Is a Light" prompted my purchase of Murder Ballads, starting me down a lifelong path of following Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I'm proud to say my top two movie soundtracks are both from movies starring Val Kilmer. When I think of Oliver Stone, I think "conspiracy theorist." His revisionist takes on his subject matter always seem to point to some big reveal or angle on what REALLY happened. The obvious take on that regarding The Doors would be addressing the question of whether Jim Morrison faked his own death or not. There are a lot of strange circumstances surrounding his death, as there are around a lot of celebrity deaths, but Stone doesn't appear too interested in that. Instead, he pursues the man as myth, painting Jim as a literal shaman, a mystic who has had his whole life laid out before him, painted on the scales of the snake that winds itself around and through the universe. He even sees his own dead body in a cave on a peyote trip in the desert, lying pale and Christlike in a bathtub, lifeless arms spread out as if to say, there, I've done it, I've given all, it is finished. The real conspiracy here seems to be that Jim was some savior, tapped into a higher plane of existence, pushing the boundaries of being alive, living through excess, telling all the people, his followers and the denizens that lifted him, that he was on the path to enlightenment, freedom, rebellion, nirvana, and if only we could see what he sees, we would understand and be truly free. The burden is that he is the only one who can do that, and his short, blazing life as presented in the movie is proof that we can't all be the prophetic one, and his death, something he chased his entire life, was the price for that spiritual insight. If you believe that the way Jim believed his own bullshit, the way Oliver Stone believes it, or at least, tries to sell it to us, then this movie works. If not, the film is a pastiche of rock and roll rebel, shamanic desert imagery, swirling naked bodies, all drug haze without the drugs. Oliver Stone wants so badly to BE Jim, and as close as he can get is casting his own son as young Jim, witnessing the harrowing and unexplained Native American car crash where Indians are scattered across the highway, bleeding, a scene that the film revisits over and over and haunts Jim for his entire life. Stone himself appears in the movie as the film professor who prompts Jim to say "I quit," a detail that never happened, like a lot of the elements of this movie, used to propel the film, uh, forward, or at least in another dazed and confused stumbling direction through his life and eventual death, locked in step with the fame machine. The movie was supposedly based on a memoir by one of the band members, Robby Krieger's Set the Night on Fire, but it was definitely altered by Oliver Stone, who co-wrote the script. I think the surviving Doors were rather proud to be part of the filmmaking process, and happy with the overall look and feel, and how it captured the 60s. They were also as caught up in Kilmer's performance as anyone else, proclaiming that he perfectly adopted his mannerisms and affectations. And then there was that voice. When Val Kilmer sings, he sounds exactly like Jim Morrison. It's often hard to tell the difference. Even the band said they could close their eyes, listen, and couldn't tell whether it was Val or Jim. My wife, who hated the movie because she hates The Doors, heard it and asked, "he won the Oscar for this, right?" He should have. It's a performance for the ages. But I don't think he was even nominated. (He wasn't.) Some of the choices regarding the band's music are also interesting. At one point, it struck me that you have four actors who look the part and either could play instruments or learned to play them in a way that copies the real people they are playing. What Oliver Stone really did, maybe before anyone else did anything like this, was make his own little Doors band that looked like them and played their music, and then film the whole thing. It's like a cosplay fetish passion project. We get a peek into a fantasy, a little fucked up version of the band as imagined by Oliver Stone. And even when The Doors aren't playing their own songs or in concert, almost all of the rest of the music that serves as the soundtrack to the movie is made up of Doors songs. It's like they are the action and the action behind the action, which feels strange in a disconcerting, unnerving way. The funny thing about the movie is that it doesn't really know what it wants to say, even though it's essentially a rock biopic based on a book written by someone who literally was there, experiencing the events of the movie, and presumably gave his blessing during filming. Of course, after the fact, there was the whole blame game, saying they changed things, that's not what really happened or what I said, or that's not exactly what I meant, or maybe we all remembered it the wrong way. However, my friend Nik, who I have already mentioned, went to see the movie with his mom because she wanted him to see what life was like during that time, and she described the wild, drug-fueled hippie music scene as "highly accurate." My biggest beef with the script as a Doors fan (and don't let me forget the Bruce McCulloch song… "Doors" where he claims Doors fans aren't made, they're born…you might already be one, and you don't know it yet) is that song lyrics show up as dialogue, lifted right out of the songs and out of context, ostensibly to give the viewer some cohesion or clarity as to the veritas and genesis of these things. But it doesn't feel like that. It feels lazy. This trope is meant to reinforce that Jim lived the bullshit he projected, therefore proving he was tied into something spiritually bigger, but it feels disconnected instead of solidifying. Whatever Jim was- rock god, shaman, or narcissist- several scenes depicted him as a total monster, capable of torture, death threats, and psychotic behavior. While he was probably drugged out of his mind and extremely volatile, I doubt he was the raging asshole this film made him out to be. I think he had a highly addictive personality, prone to terrible behavior while under the influence. He was a petulant child, most likely, and Pam certainly treated him like one, again, strongly Oedipal ("Mother… I want to…"), but I don't think he ever had murder on his mind. Some of these scenes take place in private moments that I think were played up for dramatic effect, except for the Thanksgiving duck-stomping scene, which may or may not have actually happened, at least not exactly as it was depicted. I was happy to see Billy Idol as one member of his posse. He shows up as Cat, counterpart to Dog, an injured biker who pals around with the band and all their groupies. Billy Idol desperately wanted to play Jim Morrison, and even cut a cover of "L.A. Woman" for his 1990 Charmed Life album, so named for his near-death experience in a motorcycle accident, hence his use of crutches in the movie. Billy was convinced he was born to play Jim, and blames the accident for his losing out on the role. Not only did he survive, he apparently got penis extension surgery in the process, but still wasn't cast as Jim. While he certainly had the vocal chops for it, I can't imagine anyone other than Val in this role. There were more than a few scenes that made me pause, exhale, and say, damn, he really did look, act, and sound like Jim. There he is, right there on the screen. It's uncanny. That will always be the most impressive thing to me about this movie. If you take that performance and put it into lesser material, it still works, and if you were somehow able to elevate all the rest of the proceedings in this film, he would still stand out as magnificent. For all its faults, I do credit this movie for making me discover The Soft Parade, though, their most reviled and commercially disappointing album. It's one of my favorites. My friend Pat, shortly before his death, bequeathed me all his Doors memorabilia. He gave me Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison, Light My Fire by Ray Manzarek, and Set the Night on Fire by Robby Krieger, the book the movie is based on, then told me to listen to The Soft Parade. After hearing it, I went to the room where my father lived and asked him, "Why didn't you tell me about this album?" He said, "Because it's not very good." But I disagreed. I loved it. And I still listen to it all the time. "Touch Me" is the crooning Doors song for people who don't like The Doors, and it's one of their biggest hits. Yes, the horns are a bit of a surprise; yes, as shown in the movie, Jim is more or less mailing it in, but some songs on it sound like nothing else in their catalog, including the album closer and title track, a long, warped, and rambling funk number which borders on disco and blasphemy, but remains unique and unforgettable. The wheels really do come off the fame wagon in the second half, and the demise of the band is mostly blamed on Jim's legal troubles and his growing distaste for becoming an act. He was no longer leading the people to the waters so they could drink in the juices of glorious decadence, and like the Dionysian figure he is made out to be, this dampens his creative spirit. Maybe his spark goes out. Maybe the people turn on him, or he turns on them. Maybe he does achieve his goal. We are made to believe that Jim was obsessed with death. The number of references to being most alive when close to death and feeling like death was the ultimate high are numerous. He wavers, though, between wanting to experience every facet of this life and chasing the thrill of death, because in the rare instance where he's not strung out or glowering, humanity creeps in and, like Jesus himself, is unsure he wants the burden that is supposedly laid upon him. The Doors, as depicted in the movie, a band of brothers, all for one, one for all, almost don't ever really interact, at least not believably. The other three take a backseat to Jim in almost every scene. I kept thinking, man, this band wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the unflappable Ray Manzarek, a steady and terrific Kyle MacLachlan. Jim treats the other two as means to an end. He is downright shitty to them during shows, rehearsals, and the final scene with all four members, where they kind of rib each other for all the ecstasy, chaos, and both interpersonal and legal troubles they caused in their epic pursuits. Like, whoops, we really fucked shit up and ruined some lives, oh well. If they planned to use the music to break on through to the other side, I'm not sure they succeeded, since, in the language of the film, one can only do this by striving for and touching something sacred. Everything - the money, fame, sex, drugs, success - ultimately pales in the face of becoming something larger, something immortal. It feels like whether Jim reached that level or not, this movie immortalizes his effort to do so in the most zealous and uneven of attempts. The film was a moderate box office disappointment; it was not profitable, but it introduced the band to a whole new generation of fans, irritated some die-hards, and preyed on the rabid bloodlust of an already built-in cult. In my lifetime, I've heard enough people ask, and asked some myself, "Have you seen Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison?" If the answer is no, this movie is required viewing. I don't know if it's a hit, a flop, or a secret success. But a cult movie? You're goddamn right it is. Ben Tracy
