Oliver Stone's The Doors

Been on a Doors kick lately and was thinking about getting or streaming this film. But I'm not an Oliver Stone fan plus I watched the trailer on Youtube and it wasn't encouraging. This looks less about the Doors and more about wild, crazy, drunk shaman Jim Morrison. I understand covering that inescapable aspect of the band, I just don't want 2 hours of that.

Anyway, was hoping someone here could share their opinions on this film.

 

I love the movie. I used to watch it with all the real documentaries and concert footage. To me it was no different. Val Kilmer is great in it.

 

I dont remember it well, but I believe it was pretty well all about Jimmy, not the band

 

When he performs "Reading Rainbow", that's the best!

 

Val Kilmer becomes Jim Morrison. You need to watch it for his incredible performance.

 

I thought that the film was a tour de force, but you have to take it with a grain of salt. There was so much BS in that movie, but as entertainment I really enjoyed it.

But ultimately, it diminished the legacy of both the band and Jim Morrison - unfairly in my opinion - through the ridiculous caricature of Morrison, in a similar way that the book No One Here Gets Out Alive did.

If you want to get a realistic sense of Jim Morrison, the human being, then I suggest reading the book Friends Gathered Together by Frank Lisciandro.

 

Val Kilmer is great as Morrison, but everything I've learned about The Doors since I've seen the movie prevents me from ever wanting to watch it again. A great opportunity wasted IMHO...

 

I'm a long-time Doors fan. Despite owning the film on DVD, I'm not a fan of the film. I've watched it multiple times. It's a film I really wanted to like. Unfortunately, it's a very unbalanced film. The majority of the film focuses on Morrison's exploits, many of which are fictionalizations.

 

Exactly. And why you would have to fictionalize anything about Jim Morrison is beyond me...

 

Yeah I had a feeling that was the case. I'm probably gonna skip it.

 

Yeah it made me sad and really turned me off to the Doors.

 

The film should be titled The Adventures of the Lizard King, as it diminishes The Doors in favour of perpetuating the myth of Morrison - and often ridiculously.

It also feels very much like a product of its time, in terms of being a late 80's rendering of the 60's, and thus mired somewhat in the popular conception of rock stardom at that particular moment - i.e. a Sunset strip hard rock mentality that saw Axl Rose as an authentic voice of rebellion. Ironically the film was released in 1991, the same year Nevermind showed just how ludicrous that myth was, and I'd wager that if made in, say, 1993, The Doors would have looked and sounded a whole lot different...

 

Dreadful film. I haven't seen it since it came out and plan on keeping it that way.

 

Typical Stone film, over the top and loosely based on fact.

 

As long as you pair it with Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors: Ray Manzarek and Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doors: John Densmore, it's not a bad watch.

Val Kilmer is a frighteningly accurate Morrison...except when he's not (and that "not" is driven by the script/story, not by the performances).

 

On paper it's the kind of film I would absolutely hate, but I loved it when it came out and own a copy. It all comes down to Val Kilmer, whose performance is just stunning.

It's not a film you watch to learn more about the Doors, however.

 

I dislike it! It really makes Morrison look like a goof 24/7. The drug culture as acted out of Oliver Stone's mind is just silly and exaggerated.

 

No disrespect intended, but is your time that valuable? Watch the movie.
Hell, send me a private message with your address. I'll send you the DVD. Watch it whenever you have time.

 

I have a few stories centered around this movie....

In my aerospace days when I worked at McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach, my foreman was Tony Funches who was Jim's bodyguard/minder for a few years. He almost never talked about Morrison and if he did, it was usually in praise and admiration. He hated the Oliver Stone movie.

A good friend who was a out-of-time stereotypical hippy at the time auditioned for a "featured extra" part in the movie, meaning no spoken lines but as an extra in a concert crowd scene who was supposed to crazily strip off his clothes and thus, get a few seconds of camera time. He did an audition in which the casting director spent a *lot* of unconfortable time photographing him nude to the point he bowed out of a follow-up audition.

Val Kilmer kind of got lost in the Morrison persona for a few years after filming finished. There's outtake footage from the 1997 concert documentary of Jane's Addiction's 1997 reunion "Relapse" tour where Janes played a private show at a Hollywood mansion and at one point in one of the barely lit rooms a bunch of people including Kilmer are getting high and Kilmer is basically being "Jim."

Oliver Stone at one point in the late 90's after The Doors wanted to do a similar "biopic" about Stiv Bators.

 

Drugs are bad m'kay !

 

I was an extra in one of the concert scenes (I didn't make the final movie) and as someone already said, I wanted to like it but it was just kind of a drag. Kilmer was exceptionally good as Morrison.

 

I didn't really like it. Title was a misnomer. It was all about Jim.

 

The things I remember from the film.
Jim's ego and bulls**t
Accepting a Wiccan wedding and then blowing it and his bride off.
Its all about Pamela at times.

On the other hand , they recreated a number of the events of the band scary accurately. The casting is near perfect. To the point that you may forget its not a documentary.

Its problem is when Stone asserts his favored conspiracy theory on Jim's death. In my mind the impression is that blowing off his Wiccan wife led to REALLY bad karma.

Val Kilmer amazes me sometimes.

 

IIRC, the joke among film critics back in the day was that there were more Indians in Oliver Stone's The Doors than there were in the movie Dances With Wolves. Most agreed that Val Kilmer's performance was amazing, though

 

It kinda reminded me of Where The Buffalo Roam. It bore little resemblance to Hunter's stories and the facts of his story about the Brown Buffalo. But Murray was doing a killer Hunter impersonation. And the script called for 60's music, some actin, and slapstick, which has nothing in common with Hunter.