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Only Jim can ever be Jim

As much as he respects Val Kilmer, Doors guitarist Robby Krieger figures the best person to portray Jim Morrison onscreen is Morrison himself.
FILM The Doors 20100630
Members of The Doors

TORONTO — As much as he respects Val Kilmer, Doors guitarist Robby Krieger figures the best person to portray Jim Morrison onscreen is Morrison himself.

So he says the new documentary When You’re Strange — out on DVD and Blu-ray this week — puts together a much more accurate portrait of the late rock singer than did Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic.

“This gives you a realistic image of how Jim really was,” Krieger said in a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home.

“I think when you see the Oliver Stone movie — I’m amazed how good Val Kilmer did — but, you know, the problem with that movie is that the script was kind of stupid. It doesn’t really capture how Jim was at all.

“This gives you a much better insight into how his mind worked, I think.”

When You’re Strange, directed by Tom DiCillo and narrated by actor Johnny Depp (a big Doors fan, Krieger says) — is the first feature documentary about the influential California psychedelic rockers.

DiCillo blends historic footage (shot between 1966 and ’71) and some more rarely seen material, including precious snippets of HWY (the short film written and shot by Morrison himself), and Feast of Friends, the band’s long-shelved concert film.

And while Krieger praises the film’s presentation of Morrison — who died in a bathtub in Paris in 1971 — it’s not because he thinks it’s fawning.

Morrison is presented as a special talent, to be sure, but the film also delves into his alcoholism (and its toxic effect on the rest of the band), his hunger for attention and his wandering sense of priorities.

Krieger was pleased that the film didn’t pull punches in its presentation of the rock icon. In fact, he says the band’s surviving members opted not to get too involved in the making of the film to preserve its honesty.

“That’s why you can’t do it yourself, because you wouldn’t put any negative stuff in if you were doing it yourself,” he explained.

“You have to have that balance.”

The film explains how the Doors — which also featured keyboardist Ray Manzarek and drummer John Densmore — came together and quickly rose to become one of the most controversial bands to come out of America in the 1960s, an ascension that began after the kaleidoscopic Krieger-penned tune Light My Fire hit No. 1 on the charts.

Even for fans, the movie features bits of interesting trivia: that the band liked Morrison’s poetry better than his voice, that Morrison worshipped Elvis Presley and later Frank Sinatra and that the group’s first royalty cheque amounted to a tidy sum of $50,000 apiece

(“I think we kind of blew it,” Krieger says of the cash).

And the film tracks the rare hysteria generated by the group.

In particular, the infamous 1969 Miami concert where Morrison’s provocative behaviour led to allegations that he exposed himself to the crowd (no photographic proof has been produced that this happened) creates some compelling footage.

The film doesn’t linger on Morrison’s deterioration the way Stone’s movie did. But DiCillo’s script suggests that after a certain point, fans were as much attracted to the unpredictable exhibition of Morrison’s unravelling as they were to the Doors’ hypnotic, drug-addled psychedelia.

“It kind of got out of hand after a while,” Krieger says of the band’s slide into spectacle. “In those days, the audience was very square. They didn’t have long hair. Nowadays, you can’t tell the audience from the performers. Back then, it was totally different.”

Krieger says he’s “really happy” with the film, giving particular credit to the crisp editing.

And he says revisiting footage of his former bandmate wasn’t a painful process, given how much time has passed.

“It’s not as though we haven’t seen any footage,” he said. “It’s always there. I try to remember the good things.

“And, you know, you kind of block out the painful stuff.”