Sandra and I received this video cassette as a wedding present from Boz, so we watched it together.
The movie consists of live performance footage shot for PBS interspersed with archival footage of the band hanging around backstage and some other miscellaneous live performance footage. It is perhaps better appreciated by die-hard Doors fans. It contained nothing substantial or very interesting. It was apparantly released as an attempt for the film owners to make a quick buck.
Backstage.
Jim Morrison being hassled by a bored cop.
I think the best material was the backstage footage where we see the band sitting around all day with groupies:
The Doors' guitar player and an adoring groupie.
The live show footage is ok, but nothing special. Jim Morrison is wearing a thick beard and the organ player is smoking a cigarette well down past the butt:
The Doors' PBS performance.
Smoking the butt.
Bearded Jim Morrison.
In their interview, the band is rambling all over the place, probably stoned and speaking just above a whisper to the Village Voice interviewer, who is apparantly some kind of hippie himself:
The Interviewer.
The Interviewees.
The band is taking themselves way too seriously which I expected; but what surprises me is how seriously the interviewer and everybody else seem to be taking them as well. The Doors are not treated as just a rock and roll band in this video, which is kind of annoying.
The interview discusses the Doors' live concerts as a "religious experience". They're seriously talking about a "communion" that occurs and how great it would be if that communion occured in the larger outside society as well.
Jim Morrison talks about himself as a "rock shaman" and you can almost see that he even annoys his bandmates when he starts in with that nonsense. The interviewer is eating it up though.
At this point in the video, Sandra was reminded of a King of the Hill episode in which Hank Hill tells a Christian rocker, "You aren't making Christianity better, you're making rock and roll worse.
Then there is more footage of girls flirting with Jim Morrison followed by a backstage improvised Ode to Friedrich Nietzsche which he composes spontaneously on a piano and which is nonsense, but it's funny to see Jim Morrison bobbing around all manic for a change.
Ode to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Then there's a long performance of The Unknown Soldier which is interspersed with real war photos as well as footage of the doors walking around on a beach where Jim Morrison is hanging on a cross. It goes on like that for what seems like forever.
Some of the best footage was shot in the recording studio. The organ player's head hovers just slightly above the keys, he is so into it:
In the studio.
Then there is an older intellectual gentleman who is talking about religion with Jim Morrison. The gentleman is almost giddy when the singer tells him he will give him his address for future correspondence.
The video ends with the Doors performing "Hello, I Love You" while a lady dances and the credits roll:
Credits.
Conclusion - I greatly prefer Doors songs to NKOTB songs, but I greatly prefer the NKOTB video to the Doors video. For that matter, I prefer almost all the videos I've viewed to the Doors video (except for Samurai: Reincarnation. I prefer the Doors to that because, at least the Doors video takes up less than an hour of time to view).
The seriousness with which the band and their fans regard the Doors is a real annoyance to me. I just don't get what was so great about them.