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The Doors (film)

The Doors is a 1991 American biographical film directed by Oliver Stone and written by Stone and Randall Jahnson. It is based on the history of American rock band the Doors and their influence on music and counterculture. The film stars Val Kilmer as singer Jim Morrison, Meg Ryan as Morrison's girlfriend Pamela Courson, Kyle MacLachlan as keyboardist Ray Manzarek, Frank Whaley as lead guitarist Robby Krieger, Kevin Dillon as drummer John Densmore, Billy Idol as Cat and Kathleen Quinlan as journalist Patricia Kennealy.

The Doors

  • March 1, 1991 (1991-03-01)

141 minutes

United States

English

$32 million

$34.4 million (US/Canada)[1]

The film portrays Morrison as a larger-than-life icon of 1960s rock and roll and counterculture, including portrayals of Morrison's recreational drug use, free love, hippie lifestyle, alcoholism, interest in hallucinogenic drugs as entheogens, and his growing obsession with death, presented as threads which weave in and out of the film.


Released by Tri-Star Pictures on March 1, 1991, The Doors grossed $34 million in the United States and Canada on a $32 million production budget. The film received mixed reviews from critics; while Kilmer's performance, the supporting cast, the cinematography, the production design and Stone's directing were praised, criticism was centered on its historical inaccuracy and depiction of Morrison.

Plot[edit]

In 1949, young Jim Morrison and his family are traveling on a desert highway in New Mexico where they encounter an auto wreck and see an elderly Native American dying by the roadside. In 1965, Jim arrives in California and is assimilated into the Venice Beach culture. During his tenure studying at UCLA, he meets Pamela Courson and they fall in love, becoming a couple. He also meets Ray Manzarek for the first time, as well as Robby Krieger and John Densmore, who form the Doors with Morrison.


Jim convinces his bandmates to travel to Death Valley and experience the effects of psychedelic drugs. Returning to Los Angeles, they play several shows at the famous Whisky a Go Go nightclub and develop a rabid fanbase. Jim's onstage antics and lewd performance of the group's song "The End" upset the club's owners, and the band is ejected from the venue. After the show, they are approached by producer Paul A. Rothchild and Jac Holzman of Elektra Records and are offered a deal to record their first album. The Doors are soon invited to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, only to be told by one of the producers that they must change the lyric "girl we couldn't get much higher" in the song "Light My Fire", due to a reference to drugs. Despite this, Morrison performs the original lyric during the live broadcast and the band is not allowed to perform on the show again.


As the Doors' success continues, Jim becomes increasingly infatuated with his own image as "The Lizard King" and develops an addiction to alcohol and drugs. Jim becomes intimate with rock journalist Patricia Kennealy, who involves him in her witchcraft activities, participating in a mystical handfasting ceremony. Meanwhile, an elder spirit watches these events.


The rest of the band grows weary of Jim's missed recording sessions and absences at concerts. Jim arrives late and intoxicated to a Miami, Florida concert, becoming increasingly confrontational towards the audience and threatening to expose himself onstage. The incident is a low point for the band, resulting in criminal charges against Jim, cancellations of shows, breakdowns in Jim's personal relationships, and resentment from the other band members.


In 1970, following a lengthy trial, Jim is found guilty of indecent exposure and ordered to serve time in prison. However, he is allowed to remain free on bail, pending the results of an appeal. Patricia tells Jim that she is pregnant with his child, but Jim convinces her to have an abortion. Jim visits his bandmates for the final time, attending a birthday party hosted by Ray where he wishes the band luck in their future endeavors and gives each of them a copy of his poetry book An American Prayer. As Jim plays in the front garden with the children, he sees that one of them is his childhood self and comments, "This is the strangest life I've ever known" (a lyric from the Doors song "Waiting for the Sun"), before passing out.


In 1971, Jim and Pam move to Paris, France, to escape the pressures of the L.A. lifestyle. On the evening of July 3, Pam finds Jim dead in the bathtub of their apartment. He is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery, besides other famous figures as Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust and Moliere. Pam also dies three years later at the age of 27.

Release and reception[edit]

The Doors was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival.[51] In April 2019, a restored version of the film was selected to be shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.[52]


In a contemporary review, Roger Ebert gave The Doors two-and-a-half out of four stars. Ebert wrote that he couldn't be invested too much to the film's story, but praised the acting performances, particularly Kilmer's.[53] Contrary, Rolling Stone wrote a glowing review, rating it with four out of four stars.[54] In a 2010 piece for Q magazine, Keith Cameron stated that "few people emerged from seeing the film having raised their opinions of that band and especially its singer Jim Morrison." The problem, as critic Cameron put it, was not so much that "Stone dwelled upon Morrison the inebriate, the philanderer, or the pretentious Lizard King", but rather the "clichéd Hollywood devices for sucking the wonder from the pioneering band: actors with fake hair saying silly things ..." and "a self-important director's turgid attempts to make grand statements about America."[55]


On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 56% approval rating based on 61 reviews and an average rating of 5.90/10. The site's consensus states: "Val Kilmer delivers a powerhouse performance as one of rock's most incendiary figures, but unfortunately, Oliver Stone is unable to shed much light on the circus surrounding the star."[56] Metacritic reports a 62 out of 100 rating, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[57]

Home media and The Final Cut[edit]

The Doors was released on DVD in 1997 and again on August 14, 2001[58] and was later released on Blu-ray on August 12, 2008.[58] The film was released on 4K Blu-ray on July 23, 2019, with a new version of the film dubbed The Final Cut. Supervised by Stone, it features remastered sound and removes a scene where Morrison, following his trial, almost commits suicide.[59] Stone later noted that he had cut 3 minutes for The Final Cut as he initially felt the film was too long but shortly after realised he had made a mistake as it left unanswered questions. He has said he prefers the theatrical version and wanted to ensure that version is available on home media.[60]

List of films featuring hallucinogens

 – a 2009 documentary film about The Doors

When You're Strange

(1991). Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doors (1st ed.). New York City: Dell Publishing. ISBN 0-385-30033-6.

Densmore, John

; Doors, the (October 25, 2006). The Doors. Hyperion. ISBN 978-1-4013-0303-7.

Fong-Torres, Ben

(1998). Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors. New York: Berkley Boulevard Books. ISBN 978-0-425-17045-8.

Manzarek, Ray

Riordan, James (September 1996). Stone: A Biography of Oliver Stone. New York: Aurum Pres.  1-85410-444-6.

ISBN

Goldsmith, Melissa U. D.; Willson, Paige A.; Fonseca, Anthony J. (October 7, 2016). The Encyclopedia of Musicians and Bands on Film. . ISBN 978-1442269873.

Rowman & Littlefield

; Sugerman, Danny (1980). No One Here Gets Out Alive. New York: Warner Books. ISBN 978-0-446-97133-1.

Hopkins, Jerry

Weidman, Richie (October 1, 2011). The Doors FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Kings of Acid Rock. Rowman & Littlefield.

Welsh, James (2012). The Oliver Stone Encyclopedia. Lanham, Md: . ISBN 978-0810883529.

Scarecrow Press

Official website

at IMDb

The Doors

at the TCM Movie Database

The Doors

at AllMovie

The Doors

at Box Office Mojo

The Doors

at Rotten Tomatoes

The Doors

at Metacritic

The Doors

at IMDb , a documentary of The Doors, included with the 2001 DVD

The Road of Excess