Strange days of a dead rock icon revisited

Dionysus for the 20th century or a self-destructiveFlorida drunk? Jim Morrison lives on in a new film biopic, through some astonishing concertfootage. Tony Earnshaw reports.

"He's hot, he's sexy and he's dead."

Those seven words both rehabilitated and resurrected rock singer-cum-poet Jim Morrison when they were emblazoned across the cover of the September 17, 1981 issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

The article inside coincided with the 10th anniversary of his death. Now, 29 years later, a new documentary traces the fast, furious and, ultimately, agonisingly brief life of a performer whose arrow flew and fell within a timespan of just six years.

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When You're Strange: A Film About The Doors is director Tom DiCillo's attempt to

set aside 40 years of mythologising to present the band's story via authentic footage from 1966 through to 1971.

It was a time of great flux – politically, sociologically, emotionally, psychologically. The times really were a changin' and The Doors and their music provided a soundtrack to a dark period of transformation.

As DiCillo puts it in the documentary, The Doors' music was strange. It was indeed "music for the uninvited".

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"The Doors' music is the rock equivalent to film," says DiCillo.

"It has great drama, sex, poetry, and mystery. Their music is for all those who've ever felt the cool chill of isolation and oddness in themselves; which, in effect, is all of us."

When You're Strange opens with footage of Morrison in HWY, one of his so-called "lost" films. He's driving along a desert highway, listening to the radio which suddenly announces his death, at 27, in Paris. It's a creepy, inspired piece of fantasy that Morrison, the UCLA film student turned rock deity, would doubtless have appreciated.

From then on DiCillo and narrator Johnny Depp rocket through The Doors' career highpoints: their rapid rise, their near transformation to legendary status la The Beatles or Rolling Stones, their sensational implosion via Morrison's drunkenness and drug-taking and the singer's eventual death in a bathtub on July 3, 1971 while in voluntary exile in Paris.

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As a viable, working unit The Doors were together for just 54 months. In that time, they recorded six albums of varying quality, created a mystique around their peculiar brand of song/ poetry-cum- performance art and drove the charismatic Morrison to the edge of his sanity.

One sequence sums it all up. On stage in Miami in 1969, Morrison baits the crowd. He's about to push the US Establishment too far while simultaneously driving a wedge between the band and their fans.

"You're all a bunch of f***ing slaves!" he taunts them. DiCillo claims Morrison had reached the point of no return. Audiences no longer wanted to listen to his lyrics; instead, they flocked to a Doors concert expecting to witness savage stage pyrotechnics and an out-of-control frontman. In Miami, they got it all, and more.

Eschewing on-camera interviews for authentic period footage, DiCillo captures the fading zeitgeist of the era as personified by a jaded rock star who just seems to want out of the whole circus. It's a form of public suicide, and at times deeply unsettling.

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"So much mystery and legend surrounds the Doors, the challenge was to find some personal truth and present it accurately," reveals DiCillo.

"Delving into the original footage was like falling into a mirror of America; only one that was tilted back at a 40-year angle.

"It all had an intensity and immediacy as if it had been shot two days ago. It carried the drama and intimacy of a narrative film.

"As a result, I decided to bend the documentary form a bit and not use contemporary interviews with talking heads referring back to a past event.

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"I was much more excited by letting the film exist in a living moment as if it were happening in the present."

It's a canny decision and represents the film's raison d'etre.

Packed with clips of live performances, fascinating back stage glimpses and a sequence showing a drunken Morrison recording the song Wild Child for The Soft Parade album, When You're Strange portrays Morrison (and The Doors) as victims of a time that has passed and will not come again.

The film is a fairly straight re-telling of the band's highs and lows.

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It avoids any comment on the mysterious nature of Morrison's death or the conspiracy theories that have erupted in the years since. And it is scrupulous in side-stepping any reference to the addictions of Morrison's girlfriend Pamela Courson.

Instead, it traces the lineage of a band that cranked into gear, jumped countless red lights and finally crashed and burned as they spun hopelessly out of control with a drunk driver at the wheel. Watching Morrison's decline is heartrending.

Adds DiCillo: "The Doors insisted on complete artistic freedom in their music. They had a strange, completely original sound and were committed to the truth as they saw it.

"It was not always pretty – as Morrison's excesses increased it was frequently disturbing. But, as an independent filmmaker, I related to this commitment.

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"The Doors, they never sold out. It was deeply inspirational to be reminded that not everything is for sale."

When You're Strange (15) is on staggered release at venues across Yorkshire during July and August.

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