The Doors

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell


I am not really a fan of Oliver Stone at all. In fact I really think that the best thing he has ever done was to write the original 'Conan the Barbarian' film and pretty much everything else has been overwrought shite. But since I have Netflix and I find myself with a lot of time on my hands right now. I end up watching a lot of movies as I apply for jobs and as I work on my writing. This means that sometimes I watch things that I would not watch at other times in my life. One of those films which I watched just today was Oliver Stones' 'The Doors'.

I hate to say it, but, I like this film. Now I am not sure if that is because I like The Doors as a band. Because I really do. I love their music and in high school I spend a lot of time listening to just The Doors, Jimi Hendrix and Cream. So I really kind of immersed myself in their music and in the ideas of Jim Morrison. Now as I grew older I also began to realize that while I really enjoyed the music and liked his singing, as a person Jim Morrison was seriously flawed and had a serious drug and alcohol problem. In the movie it is really easy to get the impression that he is high or drunk almost all of the time so it is not a real shock that he died young. Though to be fair it seemed like a lot of those musicians from that time period were competing to see who could die the youngest and in the most extreme way or the saddest. (Look at that, I got sidetracked)

The other reason that I think I probably enjoy the film is because of the presence of Val Kilmer. While it is true that Kilmer has become somewhat of a sad joke now there was a time when he was arguably the biggest actor in the world. I really enjoyed his work in almost every film of his (Not Batman Forever) that I have ever seen pretty much regardless of the subject matter. Seeing him put on Jim Morrisons' skin is almost freaky because near as I can tell he almost becomes him. His method style of acting can become unnerving for the people around him because he almost becomes the role and when he is playing a dangerous or deranged character he goes all in and there does not seem to be a separation from  the stage to the real life.

I want to recommend a couple films of his for you to watch along with 'The Doors' film. The first is a film that I have talked about before .'Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang'

This film also stars Robert Downey Jr and I think is vastly underrated and kick started the comeback for RDJ. He is amazing and so is Valk Kilmer in this one. The other film is one called 'The Salton Sea'

He plays a drug addicted Jazz Musician in that one. Check them out and you will see a couple of really excellent performances.