Film Threat 2008 SXSW Guide

I just watched the “Doors” movie for the 3445th time.

I’m sick and tired of these European rags/magazines with FREE CDs always dismissing Jim Morrison, the Doors and their legacy as “Los Angeles pomposity, sheer egomaniacal bullshit and rubbish” - Bottom line is this…

I was 16 in 1991 - Oliver Stone’s “THE DOORS” came out in theaters and I demanded that my father (a well respected doctor in the Tucson community, and HUGE Doors fan) take me to see this new risky bio pic full of drugs, sex and rock-n-roll. We went and watched it one Sunday afternoon together, without my straight-laced sister or my way-too-young-to-realize-what-was going-on-brother - and I winced in horror as Jim Morrison sexxed up, drank up and snorted up everything he got his hands on. BUT the reason I was so skittish was because my father, a pinnacle of health, sort of watched the film with a bit of disdain and disbelief … His reaction made me think this was all so bad for me to see… I asked him, “Dad, was that how the 60’s really were?” Dad broke it down like this: “Well, yeah, I knew a lot of people who lived like that, but we all experimented to some extent. Only, a few of us had long term goals and were the few that are still here today…” I thought to myself, “YEAH, but by age 27, i will probably have had enough - seems like a good age to die…”

My father’s willingness to take me to see the film made me kind of cool at school. Suddenly, I was the Doors liaison for kids whose parents had forbidden them to see the flick… I was a God amongst the prudish types I had grown up with because I had seen the hedonism up close (with my dad,I know) - but it was considered to be bad ass - whereas everyone else I knew was scared to make the pilgrimage to Park Mall for the actual filmgoing experience. When the VHS tape came out, I dropped 45 FUCKING DOLLARS to BUY IT!!! (Fuck pre-digital age prices, that was 4 times my allowance). True Story.

Now, initially I went to see “The Doors” for 2 reasons. My dad liked the Doors, and I dug the song “Love Me Two Times,” and it starred Val Kilmer, young bad ass actor I had seen in “Real Genius” and “Top Secret,” “Top Gun” and everything else I idolized innocently. This was a different role for him. A DEEP role. When all was said and done, and Jim had died mysteriously in Paris, I left that theater a lifelong Morrison/Doors convert. A year later, at Venice beach for a summer camp trip, I first noticed the early 90’s Morrison adulation and worship. By the time I realized how awesome these tunes were I was listening to regularly, I had convinced myself that Los Angeles was the place for me to move to. I applied to every single school on the southern California coast that next fall for college, getting into ONE. USC.

So there I was, 1993 - 18 years old, Venice beach with a shitty handful of kind bud and an even shittier wooden pipe, huffing down smoke as the waves crashed upon the beach. Suddenly, I became an outlaw, a poet, a journeyman, a traveler, a wanderer, a mystic, a shaman, a sage, a savior and a teacher. I introduced 45 people in my dorm to the powers of pot and music and Jim and Los Angeles and eventually the band LOVE with Arhtur Lee (Thanks to my step dad - the war story-sharing drug fiend-turned drug counselor who had lived with me since I was 9 - AND who had told me that the “Doors” movie was a bunch of inflated egotistical Hollywood bullshit…)

My stepdad, however, had given me “Forever Changes,” saying “This is who Jim Morrison wanted to be…” Lo and behold he was RIGHT. That record “Forever Changes” - (Oh man, what a soundtrack to my psychedelic lifestyle) is the single greatest collection of original songmanship I have ever heard TO THIS DAY… Still, it was easier to like the Doors and their capricious ways - My intake? I began on the pot - and  further down the road, started experimenting with LSD and mushrooms, cheap canned Mexican beer and lyricism… My buddies and I would smoke for weeks on end analyzing “Waiting for the Sun” and “Morrison Hotel” before deeper records like “The Soft Parade” invaded our senses. Jim Morrison, Robby Krieger, John Densmore and Ray Manzarek were the instructors to a life well lived - and a life well balanced. When analyzing these guys and Oliver Stone’s vision of what they meant to late 60’s Vietnam-riddled and war-torn America, I felt like a lost soul stuck in a world 30 years too late. YET, I marched on, forraging new territory as they dazzled me with lyrics of the American night.

“Blood in the street it’s up to my ankles…” - Peace Frog

MAN!!! God bless the Doors. Check me out in any photograph from 1994. There I am, my hair long and unruly, suede jacket framing my skinny body, beaded red-and-white patterned necklace around my collarbone, cigarette in hand and beer in pocket. All I wanted was to head to Laurel Canyon with a young girl, some LSD and a guitar when I felt like writing a song…

My life’s progression eventually led me back to the Laurel Canyon hideaways where these heroes of mine squatted  - I became a throwback to 1968 - wallowing in Laurel Canyon for anything miraculous to happen. Unfortunately, in those times, other “Hootie and the Blowfish-like” tunes owned the atmosphere - and aside from Counting Crows, Tonic, Toad, Jayhawks, early Wilco, even dudes like Willy Porter, Black Crowes, Dave Matthews and the Spin Doctors, I felt lost to any current musical revolution. I only wanted to listen to the late 60’s and early 70’s.

So, when I left college, I embarked on my own journey, and for a few years, I tried to live in that Jim Morrison-like mode - drugs, whiskey and women. Went well, too, aside for the fact that I wasn’t making any music…  But eventually I discovered my talents laying dormant in the back of my mind… Met a beautiful woman and then my real journey began — love, companionship, trust, music, spontaniety, togetherness and eventually fatherhood. I’m only 34, but fucking A - I am 7 years older than I thought I’d be when it should have all fallen apart - and I have never been stronger. Still, I watch this film whenever its on TV and it makes me want to drift back into an unknown land of experimentation and self discovery.

Now you must excuse me, I'm off to Laurel Canyon to find some LSD and a guitar - Feel like writing a song…

ZACH SELWYN Los Angeles, California July 2, 2009 12:20 a.m.

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Sorry this week's podcast links are a little late, but better late than never, right?

Episode 128: Arthouse on Disc & Cannes Talk: With Ricky & Al away, Simon runs wild with an all arthouse line-up. Listen to Simon, Ali & special guest Eduardo Lucatero wax poetic on Wendy & Lucy & Peter Greenaway's Nightwatching & as a bonus Eduardo provides a special Cannes wrap-up.

Episode 129:  Dance, Eat, Fight: New Docs on Screen: Simon & Ali are joined by returning guest Derek Gladu to discuss Tyson, Every Little Step & Food, Inc.

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