Was the movie The Doors supposed to make you hate Jim Morrison?

The movie portrayed him in a way, in which I hated the character so much, the way he treats everyone around him, and

And unlike a movie like Raging Bull or even Lawrence of Arabia, for example for which makes you still generate enough sympathy for the character; this portrayal and execution of Morrison, had no sympathy from me whatsoever, and I couldn't wait for him to die.

By the end of the movie I was thinking "Thank goodness, that sadistic sonofab$%^h is dead!" But was it the movie's intention to make me feel that Jim Morrison is nothing than a piece of trash that just needed to be taken out?

Never trust Oliver Stone. He's probably still working for the government, taking great topics (he did JFK right after) and distorts them, probably to delegitimize the entire thing. People who consider themselves Doors fans sometimes mistakenly reference that awful movie in a conversation.


I wonder why people don't bypass fiction and go straight to the source. There's a few really good audio interviews w/ Jim Morrison, who I love, along with The Doors.

Society has a complicated relationship with lots of celebrities, particularly artists, particularly musicians, who are very often huge jerks, but which everyone expects at this point, so it's seen as weirdly charming when a rock star is a huge a**hole who does lots of reckless things. It's not that the behavior is okay, it's that it's already priced into rock stars existing, mixed in with a bit of "yeah, I might behave like that too if I were in their position."

If anyone knows the real Jimbo it should be Ray.

True. I've known and read books about The Doors for 25 years, and that movie had SO many flat-out lies.. Maybe he thought showing nothing but debauchery would be successful. I didn't like Val Kilmer, who wasn't even close to Jim Morrison... Here's one good interview.

Oh okay. I know that celebrities can be jerks but movies like Raging Bull or The Disaster Artist for example, still manage to generate sympathy for those jerks, where as The Doors, did nothing but condemn the character, and seemed it it wanted to be a constant middle finger to the person they were portraying. Or at least that is how I read it.

As for making things up for dramatic license, I liked JFK even though I read that a lot of it was made up, but it was still entertaining, and it still generate sympathy for it's protagonist, who is based on a real life person. But maybe JFK is just as for being about lies also?

Out of curiosity, did anyone check out the interview? If so, how does that square with the image you saw from the movie, "The Doors" by Oliver Stone?

I was going to watch it as I am interested, but it was fairly long and so far I haven't had the time. I hope to watch it sometime in the next few days and then I'll answer your question.

Celebrities are easy moving targets. Dead celebrities are easy targets that don’t move.

I think it's as simple as Oliver Stone idolised Morrison and has a thing for countercultural martyrs, and appropriated the story to tell his particular version of US history of that period

Cool.. I think you'll like it a lot.

I have always been a fan of Jim Morrison and The Doors, but, I found the film was a bit shocking to me--I couldn't get over how Jim's life was so crazy...I never would of picked Val Kilmer to play Jim, I would of thought they would of chosen another actor to play Jim...Anyhow, that's my 2 cents...8-]]

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Great interview Saved in Keepers List. Thanks for posting!

Jim Morrison was a brilliant, reflective and highly talented man with a very healthy attitude to life until whatever suddely went wrong for him.

I saw the movie when I was quite young and it was new and don't remember all that much other than finding it both bad and depressing. Never had any urge to see it again.

I later discovered that, much unlike most vocalists, Morrison was primus motor and main brain in The Doors and I remember thinking back and resenting how he had been portrayed in the movie as an ubnoxious, egoistic and superficial manchild with no real interest in music.

Same goes for how Manzarek was portrayed as the overly serious, boring party pooper. This is also obviously false, which can be heard clearly just by listening to his playing, or from interviews and such showing the complete opposite of how he's portrayed in the movie.
Brilliant musician with a highly original, adventurous, humoruous and mind altering approach to music.

If you haven't seen it I highly recommend watching Live at the Hollywood Bowl some relaxed friday evening in the near future. Just watching these guys on stage clearly reveals that the movie is a deliberate, malignant lie.

It's weird though. Any research would have steered Stone in a very different direction than the one he chose. I guess the question is what his motive was for portraying the group the way he did. It certainly didn't serve his reputation. Thoughts?

I remember an interview where Stone said he took dramatic license for the sake of drama in his movies like The Doors and JFK. Could it be that maybe The Doors just was not an interesting enough true story to make a movie out of, so he had to make things up to really get your blood pumping?

Yeah that's doesn't sound unlikely at all. Pretty tasteless, but I guess that's the mindset when you're not capable of making a movie about The Doors interesting.

Oh okay, I can't find that interview anywhere, but I remember he said something along those lines.

However, perhaps I am being double standard-ish about this, because I liked Raging Bull, which I compared this, saying that Raging Bull is about a monstrous character, but it makes you care about him... However, if Jake LaMotta was a worse person than Morrison in real life, than does that make Raging Bull more of a waste of time, if the real life person is more monstrous to care about compared to Morrison?

I'm so glad you checked it out. I think if EVERY person who saw the movie were to check out that interview, they'd be confused. I think Oliver made stuff up to sell a movie. I also think he would insert his own problems (Ray mentioned this, too) so he and Jim would be linked together, projecting his cocaine problem.. It's too bad, because I think most Doors fans can't discern the information, and usually reference that stupid movie as truth, because movie is the most totalitarian of all the arts. In every YouTube video, it's usually "Jim is stoned here, Jim is on this or that"... He got into alcohol early (people forget he was arrested at the age of 19 for stealing a police cap, public drunkenness), then pot, LSD, then booze.. But so does half the population, but that isn't stressed because they're not famous. It's too bad many are only interested in the trivial gossip, instead of going to the source - him..

Yeah Stone went complete character murder on him, and as usual the media will spin on any lie that will suit them. I would still say anyone more than superficially into a band like The Doors would eventually figure this out on their own by just listening to their music and watch a few concerts. I'd argue it's pretty self evident what kind of people the band consisted of. I think their rebel status probably just gathered lots of young fans that never really shared the mindset or were even able to grasp it as much as just being into the hedonism for its own sake. Nothing wrong with that, but pure nihilistic hedonism is not what The Doors was ever about in my head. They were way more dangerous than that. As it turns out, isolated hedonism our corrupted societies can accept and integrate qute easily. What the real mindset represents they can not.

By self evident I mean not only would they all have to be way more diciplined and dedicated than what's possible while being dysfunctional obnoxious drunks, but there's a curiousity and celebration to existance itself in their music that should make the interview you posted less of a surprise than what's likely to be the case for lots of people. I really enjoyed listening to it and have to admit Morrison comes across as even deeper than I initially though. He was most certainly no low browed arrogant punk running around drunk all the time as mr Stone wanted us to believe.

This was just uploaded hours ago... Ray Manzarek interview, discusses the movie. I'd recommend reading the transcript afterwards, as the audio isn't very good.









Ray Manzarek: Oh God, I hated that movie.
Marc Allan: Yeah, that was one of the things, I mean, one of the things that bothered me about the movie, was it didn’t have anything to do with the band.
Ray Manzarek: No it didn’t, not at all.
Marc Allan: And I’ve always thought that what you did was one of the, I mean, I don’t care how simple you say it was, it to me was one of the more amazing things that rock and roll ever did. So, I wish there had at least been a little bit of paying attention to the band and what the band did.
Ray Manzarek: Well again, there’s that charisma that gosh, darn charisma of Jim Morrison, that was just, absolutely overpowered Oliver Stone. I mean, let’s face it. Oliver Stone fell in love with Jim. It was definitely a sexual relationship going on. Fortunately, Jim wasn’t around. So, Oliver couldn’t make a fool of himself trying to actually have intercourse with Jim Morrison. You know, something of that nature. I mean, Oliver Stone was in love with Jim Morrison, physically, so.
Marc Allan: Could you have stopped that movie?
Ray Manzarek: No, no I couldn’t, because we had already signed our rights away to Bill Graham in an act of self, another act of self-immolation. I thought Oliver Stone would be good. I mean, I must say when we first got together and it was Oliver Stone who wants to make up “The Doors” movie, it seemed like a good idea. Nobody knew at the time that Oliver Stone was actually that crazy guy that then began to twist everything and twist everything, twist the sixties around, up until that time I think that, I think he was coming off of “Born on the Fourth of July”. So it was like “Platoon” and something else, and “Born on the Fourth of July” and Oliver Stone wants to make “The Doors”. Sounds great, let’s do it. Then I read the script. I thought, Oh my God, don’t make this movie. I told Oliver Stone, I told him over the telephone, he wanted to get together and go over the script. I said, the script is completely wrong. Don’t make this movie. If you want to make the right movie about The Doors, please call me. I’m at your disposal. I’m at your beck and call. I want us all to make the best movie about The Door’s and the sixties we possibly can. Please call me. I never heard again from Oliver Stone.

Oh okay thanks. I find it strange that Manzarek says that Oliver Stone fell in love with Jim because, the movie makes you hate Morrison and feel no sympathy for him. It feels like the message of the movie is that the world is a better place, without Jim Morrison, so it's weird that Manzarek would think Stone was in love with him.