In 1965, four university students came together to form a band that would only make six albums over the course of the next six years, but albums that would go on to sell over 75 million copies worldwide in the forty years since their singer’s untimely demise. That band was The Doors–Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, John Densmore and the late but legendary Jim Morrison–one of the groups from the ’60s that would become hugely influential on waves and waves of rock groups trying to integrate poetry and psychedelia they made famous into their own music.
Fast forward to a few years ago when downtown New York filmmaker Tom DiCillo was hired to put together a lot of newly-found and rarely-seen footage of Morrison and The Doors into a documentary feature called When You’re Strange: A Film About the Doors. Part of the footage available for him to use as the running narrative for the film is never-before-seen footage of Morrison late in his life wandering around the desert in a movie called “Highway.”
It’s a fascinating doc, not just due to the amazing amount of concert footage and home movies of the group from that time, but also because DiCillo decided to use the infamous group as the basis for his first foray into the world of documentary filmmaking. It’s quite a departure, but it maintains much of the laid-back zen sensibilities the director has often exuded, which led to some of his most inspired writing in telling the story of The Doors.
When You’re Strange premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year, and since then, DiCillo did a lot of work, including getting actor Johnny Depp to replace his own initial voiceover track for the narrative. Unfortunately, our interview was done before those changes–and in fact, before we actually had a chance to see the movie–but we sat down with DiCillo to talk about the movie a bit before The Doors drummer John Densmore joined us midway through the conversation. (Due to his long-running and ongoing feud with the other two surviving members of The Doors, they were all doing interviews separately and wouldn’t even agree to be in the same space together.)
ComingSoon.net: How long ago did you think of doing this? I remember talking to you maybe a year-and-a-half ago, and don’t remember you mentioning it. Was this already something you were working on?
Tom DiCillo: I got the first nibble from the producers, they contacted me. “So we have all this footage, would you be interested in directing a documentary feature about The Doors?” I instantly said “yes.” That was in January…
CS: Basically, a year ago. That’s a fast turnaround for a documentary.
DiCillo: Fast, and also the producers were not that experienced. They had me start in February and they though we were going to make Cannes. Just so you know, that was in January… this is now January. We just finished the final print two weeks ago, so they weren’t quite realistic. But yeah, they approached me and said, “We have all this archival footage. We need someone who can come up with a concept, something to pull it all together.” You’ll see when you watch the film what I discovered as a concept. It’s not a strict documentary. I found some footage of Jim Morrison that’s never been seen before or seen by very few people. He made a personal film, outside of The Doors, called “Highway.”
