NEW BOOK Celebrates Jim Morrison's Films

 

The power and magic that surrounds the music of Jim Morrison & The Doors is legendary, but a little known fact is that Jim Morrison was also a passionate cinephile, and now finally a book has been released detailng his talent as a filmmaker from 1965-71. The book Jim Morrison: The Genius of an Unsung Filmmaker, written by underground film director Fabrizio Federico, is a unique and razor-sharp look into Morrison as a shamanic artist. ''This book is essential to Jim's story, he loved cinema it was his life, even his lyrics are cinematic. I really enjoyed researching this book, I've been a Doors fan since I was ten years old so being able to write about Jim's love of film was a dream come true, because not many people even know that he was a filmmaker. It's like a hidden secret, but he really understood how to hypnotize an audience with his vision, and you can see that in his wild performances too. This book is also a manual into what techniques Jim used to create mass-madness.''

After studying cinema at UCLA, where he met fellow bandmate Ray Manzarek, they incorporated this unique cinematic quality into The Doors dark psychedelic music, making them the kings of Acid-Rock during the turbulent sixties. Proving that the devil has the best songs. The Doors were also one of the first bands to make artistic music videos, and in 1968 they even made a fly-on-the-wall documentary called Feast of Friends, which chronicles their spring tour, while at the peak of their powers. The film is full of riots and transcendence and is now a cult classic. Morrison's independent movie HWY was screened only a few times before his tragic death in 1971, making him a member of the notorious 27 Club.  

Jim Morrison could have been an amazing independent filmmaker had he lived longer and it would have enhanced his already solid legacy. His movies prove that there is an unbreakable bond between alchemy/ritual/shamanism and the power of cinema.

In this book his film projects and thoughts on performance are examined through interviews he gave talking about his films, giving us a glimpse into the real artistic heart of Jim Morrison. Plus how he used mind control through media manipulation to achieve superstardom. Additionally, there are rare and previously unpublished glimpses into Morrison's cinematic wisdom, and his point of view on the dark powers of cinema. Through trace and hypnosis he could spellbind an audience and for the very first time this is examined. An unremittingly exhilarating journey into the psychosis of an alluring yet enigmatic artist. A must read for fans of The Doors. 

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Jim Morrison's Lost Love

Mary Werbelow is polite but firm: She doesn't do interviews. Ever.  

Jim Morrison was her first love, before he got famous with the Doors. Friends from Clearwater say that for three years in the early 1960s, Jim and Mary were inseparable. He mourns their breakup in the Doors' ballad The End.  For nearly 40 years, all manner of people have tracked Mary down and asked for her story, including Oliver Stone, when he was making his movie starring Val Kilmer as Jim. Others waved money. Always she said thank you, no.  

"I have spoken to no one."  She can't see what good could come of it; some things are just meant to be kept private. Besides, journalists always get it wrong. They focus on Jim Morrison as drunk, drug abuser, wild man. They don't know his sensitivity and intellect, his charm and humor.

"They take a part of him and sensationalize that. People don't really know Jim. They don't really have a clue." Mary is afraid to share. Because nobody could ever fully understand him, or her, or them. Not to mention how painful it is, even 40 years later, to relive something she would rather forget. She still aches for love lost; her regret never relents. She lives in California, alone, in an aging mobile home park. By phone she is told that back in Clearwater, they're tearing down the house on N Osceola Avenue, the place Jim lived in when they met, to make way for condos. His room was in back, books stacked everywhere save for the path to his bed. "That was a lovely home," Mary says. "It's a shame to knock it down." Across a dozen conversations, she amplifies on stories the old Clearwater crowd tells, and adds some of her own. She says she's not sure why she's talking now. Maybe it's just time. Summer 1962, Clearwater: Nine years before Jim died Mary and best friend Mary Wilkin spread their beach blanket near Pier 60. 

Our Mary was 17, wearing a black one-piece, cut all the way down the back, square in front - a little daring for the time, especially for a buttoned-down Catholic girl. Amid the flattops on the pier, the guy with the mop of hair stood out. Jim had been sent here by his father, then a Navy captain, after he blew off his high school graduation ceremony in Virginia. He had just finished the year at St. Petersburg Junior College and lived with his grandparents, who ran a coin laundry on Clearwater-Largo Road.

On her beach towel, Mary turned to her friend and uttered the first sexual comment of her life: "Wow, look at those legs!" Jim tagged along when his friend came over to flirt with Mary Wilkin. He told our Mary he was a regular pro at the game of matchsticks, a mental puzzle in which the matches are laid out in rows, like a pyramid. Loser picks up the last one. Jim challenged Mary and suggested they spice things up with a wager. 

If she won? "You'll have to be my slave for the day." If he won? Mary had to watch beach basketball with him. As Mary's first command, she marched Jim to the barber. She was just finishing her junior year at Clearwater High, where all the boys had flattops; she was not going to be seen with such a hairy mess. "Shorter," she told the barber. "Shorter. "Shorter." To a buzz cut. 

He must really like me, Mary thought. I'll see if I still dig him by the time his hair grows out, and if I do, it won't matter. Slave order No. 2: Iron and clean. And wash her black Plymouth, a.k.a. "The Bomb." Jim had begun the wax job when Mary's father rescued him with a picnic basket and suggested the couple adjourn to the Clearwater Causeway. To cap slave day, Mary had Jim chauffeur her to St. Pete, in the shiny Bomb, to see the movie West Side Story.

Mary was on the high school homecoming court. Her friends did cotillion dances at the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel, hit Brown Brothers dairy store for burgers and malts, and shopped Mertz's records for Ben E. King, Del Shannon and Elvis Presley. Hair shorn, Jim still attracted attention, shy behind granny glasses, army jacket and a conductor's hat. The local law stopped him multiple times to check his ID. He read his poetry at the avant-garde Beaux Arts coffeehouse in Pinellas Park and visited St. Pete's only live burlesque show, at the Sun Art Theater on Ninth Street. Friends who thought they knew Mary couldn't fathom why she would want to hang out with the likes of Jim Morrison. What they didn't know was how out of place Mary felt in her social circle. Jim talked like no one she had met. "We're just going to talk in rhymes now," he would say. 

He recited long poems from memory. "Listen to this, listen to this," he'd say, "Tiger, tiger, burning bright . . ." excited, like it was breaking news, not William Blake. This was not puppy love, Mary says, like the earlier boyfriend who played guitar, wrote songs and serenaded her by phone. This was different. This was intense. "We connected on a level where speaking was almost unnecessary. We'd look at each other and know what we were thinking."

She liked her alone time, in her bedroom, dancing and drawing. Jim liked his alone time, in his bedroom, reading. They skipped dances and football games and hung out, at her house, his grandparents' house, wherever. "I hated to let him go at night. I couldn't shut the door." When it came to sex, Mary's answer was no. "It was not happening. And it didn't for a long time. I'm surprised he held out that long." Mary's grandparents were strict Catholics. She had visions of them at the last judgment, watching her. "It was too much for me to bear." The poet Everybody, everybody, remembers the notebooks. Any time, any place, Jim would fish one from his back pocket, scribble and chuckle. Chris Kallivokas, Bryan Gates and Tom Duncan. And Phil Anderson, George Greer, Ruth Duncan, Gail Swift and Mary. They all remember. 

Around Jim, you always felt watched. He'd bait and goad, get a rise, take notes. "There was no one who wasn't under observation," Gates says. "His only purpose in life was observation." When Jim drove, Mary kept a notebook at the ready. "Write this!" he'd say, dictating an observation. Or he'd pull over and scribble himself. Everyone has a story about Jim's brainy side. Kallivokas remembers the night his Clearwater High buddies and a new kid came by Alexander's Sundries, his father's drugstore on Clearwater Beach. They wanted Kallivokas to come party, but he had a term paper due the next day, on Lord Essex. Naturally, he had written all of two sentences. 

"I know all about him," the new kid volunteered. Jim wrote the paper off the top of his head, with footnotes and bibliography. "To this day, I don't know if it was right," says Kallivokas, who says he got an A+. They would rag Jim that the books crowding his living space were for show. He'd look away and challenge nonbelievers to pick any book and read the beginning of any chapter. He'd name the book, the author and more context than they cared to hear. "He was a genius," Mary says. "He was incredible." She says his heroes were William Burroughs, William Blake, Hieronymus Bosch, Norman Mailer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Arthur Rimbaud, Aldous Huxley, Jack Kerouac. Mary didn't have heroes like that. "Jim was my hero." The provocateur Pre-Mary, Jim's buddy Phil Anderson brought him to a house party on Clearwater Beach. Jim was dazzling with the dictionary game. People would pick obscure words, and Jim would tell the definitions. Phil turned, and his pal was standing on the couch, peeing on the floor. "Needless to say, we were asked to leave."

That was Jim. He'd charm, then provoke. It was worse when he drank. He got epically drunk on Chianti at the all-day car races in Sebring, crawled around in a white fake fur coat like a polar bear covered in dirt and tried to launch himself onto the track. Friends grabbed his ankles. "He'd get a real pleasure out of shocking people and being a little eccentric and peculiar," Kallivokas says. "And that came to the forefront when he had a couple drinks." Mary says he rarely drank in her presence. "It was out of respect for me. We were in love, and he didn't want to do things that I didn't like." "That's a real key to understanding Jim," Gates says. "She was the love of his life in those days. They were virtually soul mates for three or four years."

In the fall, Jim transferred to Florida State. Most weekends, rain or shine, he hitchhiked back to Clearwater, 230 miles down U.S. 19. Most days in between, letters postmarked Tallahassee arrived at the Werbelow mailbox on Nursery Road. Mary's father intercepted one, read the page about sex and never got to the part that made clear Jim was writing about a class. Furious at her father's snooping, she burned all Jim's letters, a move she came to regret, deeply. She wasn't much of a letter writer herself. At Jim's direction, she wrote once a week and included the number of a public telephone in Clearwater and a time he should call. On his end, Jim would put in a dime for the first two minutes. They would talk for hours. When the operator asked him to settle up, he'd take off. Free phone service. 

On her end, Mary would loiter by the phone at the appointed hour, glancing about, certain it was the week the cavalry was coming to arrest her. "I was so scared," she says, laughing. "I just thought it was normal. I see now it wasn't." She always assumed he had her wait at different phones for her protection; now she's thinking it was his way of making sure she wrote him at least once a week.

March 30, 1963: Eight years before Jim died

 It's hardly something Mary brags about; she says she would have declined. But when the Jaycees called to recruit her for the Miss Clearwater competition, Mary's mother answered the phone. "Oh, yeah," mom said, "she'll be happy to do it." The third and final night of competition, more than 1,000 people packed Clearwater Municipal Auditorium. Five finalists matched "beauty, personality and poise." Mary was looking good, not that Jim was thrilled. If she won, it was on to Miss Florida. Less time for him. Mary performed matadorlike body twirls. She did the bossa nova. Time for her big question: "If your husband grew a beard, what would you do?" What a stupid question, she thought, and answered: "I'd let him grow it. Whether he would kiss me or not would be another matter."

She told the judges she was headed for college, torpedoing her chances because it meant she would not be available to fulfill all obligations of Miss Clearwater. Sitting through other contestants' routines, Mary scanned the darkened hall until she spotted Jim, bored senseless. But there. She got first runner-up. 1964-65, Los Angeles: The breakup Mary's father banned Jim from the Werbelow house. Mary won't say why; she doesn't want to add to the Morrison myth.

When she followed Jim to Tallahassee for a semester, her parents objected. When he started film school at UCLA and Mary announced she was following him to Los Angeles, they were devastated. To bribe Mary to stay, her mother bought her an antique bedroom set, no competition for a 19-year-old following her heart. Mary says Jim asked her to wear "something floaty" when she arrived in Los Angeles. "He wanted me to look like an angel coming off the plane." Instead, she drove out a week early and surprised him. Together again, in an exciting, intimidating city, they kept separate apartments. Mary got her first real job, in the office of a hospital X-ray department. Later, she donned a fringe skirt and boots as a go-go dancer at Gazzari's on the Sunset Strip. Jim studied film. At the end of the year, a handful from among hundreds of student films were selected for public showing. Jim's was not among them.

Shortly after, Mary says, he told her he was humiliated, considered his formal education over and needed to forget everything. He built a fire in his back yard and incinerated many of his precious Florida notebooks. Mary says he started doubting her commitment. "You're going to leave me," he would tell her. "No, I'm not. How can you say that? I'm in love with you." After one fight, Jim went out with another woman. He wasn't home the next morning. Mary went to the woman's house, but she said Jim wasn't there. Mary called: "Come out wherever you are!" Jim slinked forward, a hand towel around him. Mary bolted and, in a blur, hit the woman's fence as she sped off. "That was the beginning of the end."

He was drinking hard and taking psychedelic drugs. The darkness she had always seen seemed to be overtaking him, and she didn't want to watch him explore his self-destructive bent. And she felt he had swallowed her identity. Whatever he liked, she liked. "I had to go out and see what parts of that were me. I just knew I had to be away from him. I needed to be by myself, to find my own identity." She enrolled in art school. The day Jim helped her move to a new apartment, she told him she needed a break. "He clammed up after that. I really hurt him. It hurts me to say that. I really hurt him." They split up in the summer of 1965. A few months later, Jim got together with a film school buddy, Ray Manzarek, who says he wanted to combine his keyboards with Jim's poetry. They started the band that became the Doors. Friends from Clearwater never saw it coming. Back then, Jim didn't have much interest in music. He didn't even appear to have rhythm.

"He didn't sit around and sing," Mary says, laughing. "Jim, no, he was a poet. He wrote poetry." By phone from his home in Northern California, Manzarek says all the guys in film school were in love with Mary. She was gorgeous, and sweet on top of that. "She was Jim's first love. She held a deep place in his soul." The Doors' 11-minute ballad The End, Manzarek says, originally was "a short goodbye love song to Mary." (The famous oedipal parts were added later.)

Within two years of their breakup, Light My Fire was No. 1 on the charts and Jim was the "King of Orgasmic Rock," the brooding heartthrob staring from the covers of Rolling Stone and Life. He took up with other women, notably with longtime companion Pamela Courson, but Mary says she and Jim kept up with each other. She says she was his anchor to the times before things got crazy. "I'd see him when he really needed to talk to someone." Before a photo shoot for the Doors' fourth album, she says Jim told her: "The first three albums are about you. Didn't you know that?" She says she didn't have the heart to tell him she had never really listened to them. She had heard Doors songs on the radio, but she didn't go to his concerts, she didn't keep up with his career. Mary vehemently denies it, but Manzarek says she told Jim, "The band is no good and you'll never make it." He says Mary wanted Jim to go back to school, get a master's degree and make something of himself.

When Mary moved, she says, Jim had a knack for finding her. He would eventually ask if she had changed her mind. "Why can't we be together now?" Not yet, she would answer, someday. More than once, she says, he asked her to marry. "It was heartbreaking. I knew I wanted to be with him, but I couldn't." She thought they were too young. She worried they might grow apart. She needed more time to explore her own identity. 

In late 1968, Mary moved to India to study meditation. She never saw Jim again. March 1, 1969, Miami: Two years before his death With the Doors coming for their first Florida concert, Chris Kallivokas left a message with his old friend's record company. He says Jim called him back, loving life. "The chicks we get, the money. . . . It's great." "So that crowd control works," Kallivokas teased, talking about theories that intrigued Jim in Collective Behavior class at FSU. He said Jim answered: "You've got to make them believe you're doing them a favor by being onstage. The more abusive you are, the more they love it." They planned a reunion in Clearwater.

Some 15,000 fans cram into the 10,000-capacity Dinner Key Auditorium, a sweaty, converted seaplane hangar in Miami. Jim Morrison announces his drunken presence with dissonant blasts from a harmonica. The cover boy, 26 now, has a paunch and beard, a cowboy hat with a skull and crossbones and noticeably slurred speech. One stanza into the second song, Five to One, he berates the crowd. "You're all a bunch of f - - - - - - idiots!" Confused silence. Uncomfortable laughter. "Letting people tell you what you're gonna do, letting people push you around. How long you do think it's gonna last? . . . "Maybe you like it. Maybe you like being pushed around. Maybe you love it. Maybe you love getting your face stuck in the s - - -." Screams from the audience. "You're all a bunch of slaves. . . . "Letting everybody push you around. What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do! What are you gonna do! What are you gonna do!" He talks as much as he sings. He wails about loneliness and rants about love. Three songs after berating the crowd, the music softens and he lets loose a plaintive: "Away, away, away, away, in India "Away, away, away, away in In-di-a "Away, away, away, away in In-di-a "Away, away, away, away in In-di-a."

Morrison invited the crowd onstage, and the concert disintegrated. Amid the chaos, he supposedly unzipped his pants, exposed himself and simulated sex with guitarist Robby Krieger. With the country debating indecency run amok, Jim Morrison was Exhibit A. He was charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, a felony, plus indecent exposure and two other misdemeanors. The courtroom in Miami was packed. State witnesses saw what they saw. Others said it was hype, Morrison only simulated what he was accused of. There wasn't a single damning photo. Bryan Gates hadn't seen Jim in ages. They caught up during a break, and talk inevitably turned to Mary. What ever happened to her? Gates asked. Jim said he had lost touch, California seemed to have swallowed her up psychically. He was acquitted of the felony but convicted of indecent exposure. On Oct. 30, 1970, he was sentenced to six months of "confinement at hard labor" in the Dade County Jail. Out on appeal, he moved to Paris, where he shared an apartment with Courson. The Doors released L.A. Woman in April 1971, with hit songs Love Her Madly and Riders on the Storm. Months later, Jim Morrison was dead. On July 3, 1971, Courson found him in the bathtub. The listed cause of death was heart attack; many suspect drugs. He was 27.

September 2005 

34 years after Jim died Mary is 61, unemployed and rarely leaves her mobile home. Married and divorced three times, she has no children. "I can't find anybody to replace Jim. We definitely have a soul connection so deep. I've never had anything like that again, and I don't expect I ever will." She painted, mostly realistic oil portraits. She won a small legal settlement after she said she developed multiple chemical sensitivities from rat poison that seeped through the vents of her art studio over the years. It makes it difficult to be around scented products, and she gave up her art. She doesn't think the early Doors albums are all about her but says the lyrics include references to her and Jim's shared experiences, including the "blue bus" in The End. She considered writing about the references but decided against it. An artist herself, she didn't want to spoil people's various interpretations. For decades, she says, she brooded over how things might have turned out had they stayed together but finally concluded it was destiny. "He was supposed to go into that deep, dark place." His grave in Paris draws pilgrims from around the world, but not Mary. Quite the opposite, she says. She wants to forget, and still she feels his ghost checking on her. Lines in Break on Through especially pain her, lines she interprets as Jim saying she betrayed him by not getting back together: Arms that chain us Eyes that lie

"I promised it wouldn't be forever, that I'd get back together with him sometime. I never did. It's very painful to think of that. For a long time, any time I would think about him, or anyone would talk about him, I'd cry. "It used to make me so sad. I never gave him that second chance. That destroyed me for so long. I let him go and never gave him that second chance. I felt so guilty about that." Mary says she is tired. She has trouble sleeping. She says she's not sure if she has done right by talking so much. She's worried that others will seek interviews that she does not want to give. She wants that made clear: She does not want to talk about Jim anymore. From Jim's notebooks into the song book Everyone who remembers Jim Morrison from his Clearwater days remembers him scribbling notes everywhere he went. Snippets became lyrics. "That's where the songs came from, out of those notebooks," said Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek. In the song Soul Kitchen, for example, Manzarek said the reference to "minarets" came from the University of Tampa.

A 1990 letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times suggested that the Doors song Crystal Ship was about crystal methamphetamine: The ship stood for a hypodermic needle, the kiss meant drug injection. Doors drummer John Densmore responded with a letter of his own: "Jim wrote The Crystal Ship for Mary Worbelo (sic), a girlfriend with whom he was breaking up. . . . The song was a goodbye love song." The first two stanzas: Before you slip into unconsciousness I'd like to have another kiss Another flashing chance at bliss Another kiss, another kiss The days are bright and filled with pain Enclose me in your gentle rain The time you ran was too insane We'll meet again, we'll meet again Jim's college days in Florida Before starting film school in Los Angeles, Jim Morrison spent 2{ years in college in Florida. He attended St. Petersburg Junior College for the 1961-62 academic year, then transferred to Florida State University. 

He was at FSU for the 1962-63 academic year and the fall trimester of 1963. The top section of his transcript shown here is from SPJC, where he got B's and C's in basic classes, including English, math and biology. The bottom four sections are from FSU, where he got A's in Collective Behavior and Essentials of Acting, and a B in Philosophy of Protest. Source: The Doors archive The Doors burned bright _ and were done Two UCLA film students put their talents together in 1965 _ Ray Manzarek and his keyboards, Jim Morrison and his poetry _ and started the band that became the Doors. The other members were jazz drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger.

They derived the name of the group from the poetry of William Blake ("If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it truly is, infinite.") and from Aldous Huxley's book about psychedelic drugs, The Doors of Perception. The group's music gets lumped with other psychedelic rock of the '60s, but it defies simple description, influenced by flamenco, Indian, blues and classical music. Their debut album, released in January 1967, included Light My Fire, Break on Through and The End. When they performed live on The Ed Sullivan Show, CBS censors demanded that the band change the lyrics in Light My Fire from "Girl we couldn't get much higher" to "Girl we couldn't get much better." Morrison sang the original line instead, much to Sullivan's chagrin. The third album, Waiting for the Sun (1968), was their first No. 1 record and included their second No. 1 single, Hello, I Love You. Morrison nicknamed himself Mr. Mojo Risin' _ an anagram of his name _ and is said to have referred often to the overdose deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and predicted he would be No. 3.

On July 3, 1971, Pamela Courson reported that she found him dead in the bathtub of their apartment in Paris. The cause of death was listed as heart attack; drugs were suspected. There was no autopsy. The coffin was sealed before his family or the American Embassy were notified. It was not until six days later that the Doors' manager announced Morrison's death to the world. Conspiracy theorists had a field day. A popular theory was that to escape the demands of celebrity, Morrison faked his death and vanished. The band recorded six studio albums before Morrison's death. The remaining members released two more albums and split up in 1973. The Doors were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

Summer 1961. Jim's parents, living in Virginia, send their increasingly incorrigible son back to Clearwater to live with his grandparents. He enrolls at St. Petersburg Junior College. Summer 1962. Jim Morrison and Mary Werbelow meet on Clearwater Beach. She is finishing her junior year at Clearwater High. He just finished a year at SPJC and will head to Florida State in the fall. January 1964. Jim starts film school at UCLA. Mary joins him in Los Angeles. Summer 1965. Mary and Jim break up. He and Ray Manzarek start the group that becomes the Doors. January 1967. The Doors release their first album. By July, Light My Fire hits No. 1 on the Billboard charts. Sept. 17, 1967. The Doors perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. Late 1968. Mary moves to India. She never sees Jim again. Jan. 24, 1969. A month after performing before a television audience of 27-million on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the Doors play to a sellout crowd of more than 20,000 at New York's Madison Square Garden. March 1, 1969. Doors concert at Miami's Dinner Key Auditorium. Morrison is later arrested, accused of exposing himself. Promoters in city after city cancel scheduled Doors concerts. Sept. 20, 1970. Morrison convicted of indecent exposure. Sept. 23, 1970. Morrison and Darryl Arthur "Babe" Hill arrested for public drunkenness in Clearwater.

Oct. 30, 1970. For indecent exposure, Morrison sentenced to six months "confinement at hard labor" in the Dade County Jail. The judge lets him stay free on appeal. Dec. 12, 1970. The Doors' final concert with Morrison, in New Orleans. July 3, 1971. In Paris, Morrison found dead in the bathtub of the apartment he shared with Pamela Courson. He was 27.

Jim Morrison & The Power Of Crowd Control

On August 3rd 1968, while 'Hello I Love You' is 1# on the national charts The Doors are on the road, having just rocked The Singer Bowl in NYC, Morrison is at his career best, creating controled chaos, resulting in riots and gaining them front page national headlines. By this stage Jim was now a charismatic psychedelic preacher winding up his fans with his dark poetry, shamanic dancing and antagonistic experimental theatre. The Cleveland gig starts off very shambolically, Jim had been backstage with fans smoking joints and drinking whiskey so by the time Break On Through ramps up the audience it sounds like satanic sludge vamp. 

Filmmaker Fabrizio Federico has studied crowd control and is amazed by Morrison's tactics.  The band are on form keeping a nihilistic demented nightmare vibe going as Jim threatens the audience ''if you dont keep quiet and get real soft im gonna come down there and kill some people!". The shenanigans continue when he starts teasing them ''hey listen I wanna tell you the history of me. I dont know how I got here but here I am''. Jim was fascinated with crowd control ever since attending college, even devouring Crowds & Power' by Elias Canetti. He states on asking questions: "On the questioner the effect is a feeling of enhanced power. He enjoys this and consequentially asks more and more questions; every answer he receives is an act of submission. Personal freedom consists largely in having a defense against questions. The most blatant tyranny is the one which asks the most blatant questions." During the gig Jim asked the crowd ''hey what do you guys wanna hear?'' and also ''what are we gonna get? We're gonna get everything!" Jim once told his Florida classmate Chris Kallivokas, from his Collective Behavior class, "You've got to make them believe you're doing them a favor by being onstage. The more abusive you are, the more they love it."

Canetti also describes a crowd as being a single living organism ''Ideally, all are equal there; no distinctions count, not even sex. The man pressed against him is the same as himself. He feels him as he feels himself. Suddenly it is as though everything were happening in one and the same body. This is perhaps one of the reasons why a crowd seeks to close in on itself: it wants to rid each individual as completely as possible of the fear of being touched. The more fiercely people press together, the more certain they feel that they do not fear each other. This reversal of the fear of being touched belongs to the nature of crowds. The feeling of relief is most striking where the density of the crowd is the greatest.''

Jim talked to the audience as one, ''Get it real soft, you know what im talking about, feels real good, you got a real dirty mind doncha'' - "i want you to feel it deep inside.''

Two years before his death with The Doors coming for their first Florida concert, Chris Kallivokas left a message with his old friend's record company. He says Jim called him back, loving life. "The chicks we get, the money. . . . It's great." "So that crowd control works," Kallivokas teased, talking about theories that intrigued Jim in Collective Behavior class at FSU. He said Jim answered: "You've got to make them believe you're doing them a favor by being onstage. The more abusive you are, the more they love it."

Canetti goes on to classify crowds according to their prevailing emotions, exploring how these dynamics shape everything from political movements to religion to music concerts and how they shed light on the complexities and true meaning of power.

Canetti outlines the four key defining attributes found in varying degrees in any crowd: The crowd always wants to grow. 1) There are no natural boundaries to its growth. Where such boundaries have been artificially created — e.g. in all institutions which are used for the preservation of closed crowds — an eruption of the crowd is always possible and will, in fact, happen from time to time. There are no institutions which can be absolutely relied on to prevent the growth of the crowd once and for all. 2) Within the crowd there is equality. This is absolute and indisputable and never questioned by the crowd itself. It is of fundamental importance and one might even define a crowd as a state of absolute equality. A head is a head, an arm is an arm, and differences between individual heads and arms are irrelevant. It is for the sake of this equality that people become a crowd and they need to overlook anything which might detract from it. All demands for justice and all theories of equality ultimately derive their energy from the actual experience of equality familiar to anyone who has been part of a crowd. 3) The crowd loves density. It can never feel too dense. Nothing must stand between its parts or divide them; everything must be the crowd itself. The feeling of density is strongest in the moment of discharge. One day it may be possible to determine this density more accurately and even to measure it. 4) The crowd needs a direction. It is in movement and it moves towards a goal. The direction, which is common to all its members, strengthens the feeling of equality. A goal outside the individual members and common to all of them drives underground all the private differing goals which are fatal to the crowd as such. Direction is essential for the continuing existence of the crowd. Its constant fear of disintegration means that it will accept any goal. A crowd exists so long as it has an unattained goal.

“He was always like that, even from the beginning,” Doors guitarist Robby Krieger tells me today. “We just dealt with it. That was part of the reason that people wanted to see us, they wanted to see what would happen next. It was kinda crazy but we were not a band that just played the same set every night the same way. It was always different and Jim would always lead us somewhere that we didn’t go the night before. He just liked to f*** with people. He hated the fact that some of these bands would just play the same songs night after night the same way and all of us were from a jazz-influenced place, where you did improvisation. So every night the song was different, which kept it interesting.”

The Doors take the stage, and the delay further aggravates the impatient audience. As soon as the Doors appear, they are greeted with a thunderous assault of screaming fans, and segments of the crowd begin rushing the stage. A column of policemen are stationed at the front of the platform to curtail this onrush of people, while Morrison fiercely jostles his way through them to face the crowd. The chaos escalates continuously during the performance, with fights erupting throughout the hall. Morrison who usually sings with a very precise and articulate emphasis on the lyrics, and most of the time actually appears to be substantially more sober than the crowd, but in Cleveland he is blind drunk and stoned. Morrison spun around and ground the songs out half-heartedly, ad libbing, improvising, doing an ominous dance. Hysteria was building. Morrison shrieked, moaned, gyrated, and minced to the edge of the stage, hovering. Hands reached out and grabbed him and the cops had to pry them away. The camera crew ducked a piece of broken chair which came flying onto the stage. Morrison caught it and heaved it back into the crowd. The Doors were hardly visible from any angle because there were about twenty cops onstage." By the time the Doors begin to perform "When The Musics Over," the crowd is in an incredible uproar. Morrison vainly attempts to "sssshhhh" the audience and bum cigarettes ''anyone got a Marlboro? They're the best'', but there is no response and he begins the opening stanzas of the song, Morrison drifts into an expansive passage of poetry. With decidedly steady pacing, he advances through a series of poems, then teases the rowdy audience ''are you reeeeaaadddy???", until he unexpectedly screams, "We want the world & we want it NOW!!!".

On some nights Jim has the atmosphere of 'I'm going down and I'm taking you guys with me' but that did disguise his power to evoke an audience reaction wherever he played. He then starts asking the audience ''hey you guys what do you wanna hear? - one at a time!'' as the whole crowd screams out song titles. During the gig Morrison has a playful but genuine menace in his voice, especially while screaming 'Five To One' over its relentless proto-heavy metal riff. Sounding both threatening and sinister. ''Hey listen we travel from city to city, and we're from California so lets have some fun''. By the time the funky Soul Kitchen and the finale Light My Fire rolls around the audience is in a rapture of excitment. By the end of the Light My Fire solos are over Morrison is trying to quiet the audience down ''come on do it, be quiet!". And then just like that in a flash The Doors have left the building.

Freud said that a crowd demands “strength or even violence” of its leaders: “It wants to be ruled and oppressed and to fear its master”. Sigmund Freud stated that groups tend to have the characteristics of “weakness of intellectual ability,…lack of emotional restraint,...incapacity for moderation and delay, [and] the inclination to exceed every limit in the expression of emotion.” Freud went on to say that groups “show an unmistakable picture of a regression of mental activity to an earlier stage such as…children” 

How to deflect questions

1. Enlist the help of a friend - "oh come on you know they dont want to talk about that.''
2. Prepare a canned answer in advance - Let's say you're going into an interview and [you know they will] ask about your managerial experience and you don't have much," she says. "You can use their question as the topic of your answer or just a pivot point. Say, 'I'm so glad you asked! One of the reasons I'm looking for new opportunities is that I anticipate much growth opportunity for managing teams, and that's work I really enjoy and do well."
3. Use a bridge response to chance the subject - if you really don't care to discuss your views on healthcare with someone, talk about a headline-grabbing (and non-controversial) news story that's tangentially related. According to manuals your classic bridge phrases are going to be "I don't know about that, but here's something interesting…" and "I can't tell you that for sure, but here's something I do know…"
4. Restate & Re-frame the question - Here are your key phrases: "I think what you're really trying to ask me is…" and "I think what you're really trying to get at is…." For example, if Aunt Margaret asks when you're going to finally get promoted, you can respond with something like, "I think what you're really trying to ask me is how I'm enjoying this exciting time in my career," and go on from there.
5. Excuse your self - tell them you need to go to the restroom.
6. Be straight forward about feeling uncomfortable - "Be direct and then pivot,". It's always within your rights to respond to an unwanted question with something like, "It's kind of emotionally fraught, so I'd rather not talk about it. But I'd love to hear about your new [project/job/baby/house]!" See, that wasn't so hard!
7. Use humour - For example, an intrusive "How much money do you make?" can be waved off with a simple joke, like, "Not enough!" Most people will realize they've overstepped and change the subject.
8. Answer ambiguously - If someone asks why you haven't quit your miserable job yet to look for a new one, a simple "Who knows? I've still gotta pay the bills in the meantime!" will do. To, "When are you going to graduate?" respond with a vague, "I'm not sure, I guess we'll see!"
9. Offer advice instead of an answer - For example, if someone asks about your recent weight loss and you don't want to get into the gritty details, simply share a tip about your favorite trainer in town and offer to put the person in touch with them. Or, rather than answering an invasive question about your recent breakup, tell the group about a book recommendation that helped you heal after the separation.
10. Shame them - Do it in a joking way to keep things light. Something like, "Wow, you're quite the curious one, aren't you?" or "Whoa, I think that's a bit heavy for a party" will shut things down pretty quickly.
11. Deflect with a compliment - If someone comments on your weight loss or gain in a way that makes you uncomfortable, for example, you could compliment their own appearance. Or, if someone asks you the inevitable "When are you getting married?" or "When are you having kids?" you can change the subject by complimenting the asker's beautiful wedding a few years ago or saying something nice about their child's latest accomplishment. Distraction is key!
12. Ask a question of your own - If they ask about your relationship status, try something like, "Are you worried that I'm lonely?" To a question about your dissertation or job search, you can say, "Are you concerned about my financial status?"
13. Ask for advice - For example, if a married person asks you why you're not engaged to your partner yet, you can ask them for their tips on making a relationship work long-term. If someone asks you personal questions about your children or parenting, ask them for tips on how they raised their own kids effectively.
14. Turn the tables - If they ask about your relationship, evade the question by asking about theirs. If they ask about your frustrating boss at work, ask them how their own job is going.
15. Create a distraction - ''does anybody want dessert?'' or pop in a movie, or to start a game of football. Especially in a crowd, it's easy to pretend you didn't hear the asker's question and turn to another family member to start a new activity.
16. Address a related but safer topic - When you're asked about your finances, for example, shift into a story about how you recently started crafting a more effective budget. Instead of answering questions about why you were recently laid off, talk about your new job or how you're approaching your job hunt. Act as if you're addressing exactly what they asked, and the questioner will probably drop it.
17. Respond with a general answer - For example, if someone asks you about your personal political views around a controversial subject, talk about how frustrated you are with the political climate in general, or mention how great it would be if everyone could come together to have a productive dialogue. In particular, if you shift the tone from negative to positive, the nosy questioner will have to be the downer if they want to bring the conversation back to the original question.

1. Acknowledge the question without answering it.

(“That’s a good question, and I think we should consider the implications by looking at…” [avoiding an answer].)

2. Ignore the question completely.

However, this is a high-risk approach because the interviewer may repeat the question or reword it slightly to return to the subject. This tends to make the interviewee look evasive.

3. Question the question.

(a) Request clarification or further information about the question. This works as a delaying tactic in a short interview.
(b) Reflect the question back to the interviewer (“Why do you ask me that?”)

4. Attack the question,

on the basis of:
(a) The question fails to tackle the important issue.
(b) The question is based on a false assumption.
(c) The question is factually inaccurate.
(d) The question is too personal or objectionable.

5. Decline to answer.

Refuse to answer on the basis that it is not your area of responsibility. (“You will have to ask [name, or ‘someone else’] about that because I’m not involved at all in that part of the situation.”)

6. Give an incomplete answer.

(a) Partial answer.
(b) Start to answer but change the subject.
(c) Negative answer. You state what won’t happen instead of what will happen.

7. State or imply the question has already been answered.

(“I’m not going to go over old ground.”)

8. Defer to the will of others.

Refer to the will of constituents or shareholders etc and imply you are doing your duty by complying with their will. (“Shareholders have asked me to take a firm line on this issue.”)

Jim Morrison: THE GENIUS OF AN UNSUNG FILMMAKER

A tribute to one of my favorite unsung filmmakers and an inspiration to my own films
Written by filmmaker Fabrizio Federico

*Fabrizio Federico: OFFICIAL WEBSITE

*Jim Morrison: The Genius of An Unsung Filmmaker (book): Amazon

The power and magic that surrounds Jim Morrison & The Doors is their mythic status, and in an age before Youtube the holy grail in for a Mirrison fan was these stories about how he also made films that were now either lost or impossible to ever see, locked away in the bands archive safe forever. In my mind this created a holy need to experience them. Unfortunately out of the many brilliant achievements Jim Morrison realized in his short life his true love of becoming a film director never flourished, due to his other commitments. But in his short life he did manage on a couple of occasions to leave some examples of how he could have easily changed the face of cinema just as he did with his music.

''Cinema returns us to anima, religion of matter, which gives each thing its special divinity and sees gods in all things and beings. Cinema, heir of alchemy, last of an erotic science'' Jim Morrison

Starting his film studies in 1964 at UCLA his experiences there were not what he originally hopped for, he was misunderstood by both the teachers and many of the students for his forward thinking free-form ideas. From an early age his main influences were Cinema Verite & Surrealism, some of the films he saw in this period were Von Sternberg's - The Blue Angel, The Devil Is A Woman, and his favorite Anatahan. 

Jim managed to cause an uproar after he completed his only untitled student film, which was screened in front of his senior class on May 1965. The film consisted of mixture of primitive chanting's by priests and children, a fuzzy test pattern similar to the Outer Limits sci-fi TV Show, then cut to a group of men smoking and getting ready to watch a pornographic stag film. The film breaks and the screen fills with crude hand-shadow puppets, then they throw darts at Playboy centerfolds taped to the walls of Jim's apartment, over insistent peyote chanting Navajo Indians. A woman is seen from behind walking down the street and disappearing into an elevator, Jim is then seen taking a huge toke on a joint, as his eyes bulge he cuts to stock-footage of an atomic bomb exploding. The he delivers a cheeky wink to the camera. Cut to a wooden console TV with a blonde Aryan bombshell stripteasing on-top of the TV which is screening Nazi storm trooper marches. Finally the girl licks an eyeball to cleanse it of all the toxic imagery from the TV. 

Porn. Drugs. Television. Nazis. Sex. Music. Irony.

No plot, no beginning, no middle, no end. For his minor masterpiece Jim received an F grade, and the film was thrown away, no copy has ever surfaced.
Ridiculed for being an original, he quit UCLA shortly afterwords. But fast forward to 1968 and The Doors are now the biggest band in America and Jim has convinced the rest of the band to make a documentary of their summer tour, a documentary that will perplex just as many people as his first film.

''Early film makers, who—like the alchemists—delighted in a willful obscurity about their craft, in order to withhold their skills from profane onlookers.'' Jim Morrison

The end product was called Feast Of Friends which was self financed by the band and shot through out different cities with the help of Jim's friends Paul Ferrara, Babe Hill, Frank Lisciandro and a young intern called Harrison Ford, in 1968. In many ways the film shows the boredom of touring mixed with the complete anarchy of The Doors shows that summer, causing riots at New York's Singer Bowl, Chicago and in Cleveland. It shows the generation gap between the band and America's mainstream society (ministers at large, cops, promoters).
Jim is seen interacting with his adoring fans (a memorable scene of a wild eyed groupie grabbing his crotch in a limo - and of his consoling a bleeding fan backstage) the band lazily playing cards before a show, a tongue in cheek terrifying Frederick Nietzsche inspired piano improv, we see the band being escorted funeral pyre like from backstage similar to lambs sent to the slaughter, travel and anti-war propaganda announcements fills the movies soundtrack along with many of their greatest songs. 

Jim had a cinematic mind that is clearly reflected in The Doors songs, images are mirrored with sound to create mini-movies for the ears. But what leaves the greatest lasting impression of all is the raw charisma that Morrison had over his fans. Like a witch-doctor he sends them into a frenzy time & time again, they come across as children of the damned in an inferno of magic, a seance of worship towards their favourite band. Jim had clearly learned his stage craft from the magic and alchemy of cinema. The film finally ends with the Hollywood Bowl infamous acid induced performance of The End, try watching it with the light out. Finally the band are whisked away to enjoy the sun on a boat in Hawaii, once again the film ends with a catharsis, the sun clears away the voodoo aura that is so attractive and new to rock fans. Morrison brought ancient shamanism to the rock stage for the first time and it was captured brilliantly in the film.

Feast Of Friends was another disappointment for Jim. The film was received badly at film festivals and was met with a lot of booing. But I wonders whether this is what Jim actually wanted, maybe he was winking at us, some people get irony some don't.

''Cinema derives not from painting, literature, sculpture, theater, but from ancient popular wizardry. It is contemporary manifestation of an evolving history of shadows, a delight in pictures that move, a belief in magic. Its lineage is entwined from the earliest beginning with Priests and sorcery, a summoning of phantoms. With, at first, only slight aid of the mirror and fire, men called up dark and secret visits from regions in the buried mind. In these seances, shades are spirits which ward off evil.'' Jim Morrison

Finally in 1969 he created his cinematic masterpiece, HWY: An American Pastoral. A lonesome hitchhiker (inspired by the serial killer Billy Cook & Charles Starkweather) stalks the desert as he makes his way back to Los Angeles. Filmed with the same team that made Feast Of Friends (excluding Harrison Ford), photographer extraordinaire Paul Ferrara who co-directed with Morrison this mystical poetic film, that conjures up a trip that is seldom seen in cinema. Jim is in full beard and looking every bit the rock start before he shed his Lizard King persona forever, the song Riders On The Storm is essentially a plot synopsis of HWY. 
The film is exquisite, once again Jim proves that cinema does not have to include an ordinary structure. 

The journey starts with Jim swimming in a beautiful desert oasis, as night falls he sleeps rough in an abandoned car which he then proceeds to destroy in a rage as morning arrives, after what seems like hours trying to hitch a ride he mysteriously kills the driver of the vehicle that picks him up in the hot desert sun. 
Morrison financed this low-budget gem with a soundtrack composed by Fred Myrow, the film is a soft parade of desert children dancing away in the wilderness, to images of black ghetto children looking lost and shaken to the sounds of Frank Sinatra's My Way. By 1969 the chaos of the 60's had taken it's toll on the counterculture and you could start to smell the rotting dream of flower power. Because of it's Death Valley imagery HWY brings to mind the Manson Family, who at the time of filming were in the desert plotting Helter Skelter, waiting to put a nail through the 60's coffin. Death lingers in this film, one of HWY's most moving images is of the dying coyote seen making his last gasp's for air on the highway tarmac.

HWY's hypnotic pacing finally brings Jim back to Los Angeles where he mysteriously makes a late night phone call to his friend Michael McClure, confessing to him that he wasted someone ''hey man I really got a problem, I was out in the desert, man...I dont know how to tell ya..but...I killed someone...it's not a big deal I dont think anyone will find out about it - the guy started to give me some trouble and I couldn't take it... so I wasted him.'' 
Then hangs up. 
We seen Jim taking a leak at his favorite local motel, the Phone Booth, to the soundtrack of a lonely piano, then climbing onto a roof top and walking on the ledge of the building in a suicidal death gait. He finally takes a walk down to the Whiskey A Go-Go where he memorably asks the clubs bouncers ''got any groovy pussy in this joint?'', ''any LSD..any LSD in there?''. The film ends on a melancholy note, leaving the viewer feeling almost like an isolated barfly. The LA night skyline stares back at you in disarray.

Once again Jim received no praise or respect for his unique cinematic efforts. The film was screened only a few times, first in Vancouver in 1970 then finally in Paris just before Jim's tragic death. 
From watching his films I consider Jim Morrison to be one of the first true independent filmmakers and there is no doubt that if he had lived he would have created many more incredible films. They enhance his already solid legacy and his films prove that there is an unbreakable bond between alchemy/ritual/shamanism and the power of cinema.

Jim's fav films

The Blue Angel

The Devil Is A Woman

Anatahan

Un Femme Est Une Femme

Pull My Daisy

Rules Of The Game

Un Chant d'Amour

Easy Rider

Morroco

Blonde Venus

8 1/2

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)