THE DOORS DOCUMENTARY TO DEBUT AT SUNDANCE FESTIVAL

Legendary Doors Keyboardist Ray Manzarek discusses the upcoming Documentary “When You’re Strange” and why it’s the Anti Oliver Stone version

The Doors are set to unveil the true story of the band in the upcoming documentary “When You’re Strange,” which will premiere Jan. 17th at The Sundance Film Festival. “When You’re Strange” uses previously unseen footage of The Doors and chronicles the bands start and lead vocalist Jim Morrison and keyboardist Ray Manzarek time at UCLA’s Film School all the way until Morrison’s death in 1971. Written and directed by Tom DiCillo the band feels this is the true story of The Doors, unlike the sensationalized movie from 1991 “The Doors” by Oliver Stone, which starred Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison.

Artisan News caught up with Ray Manzarek to get his thoughts on the finally being able to tell the true story of The Doors using real unseen footage of Jim Morrison and the band.

“Well there’s going to be Doors documentary telling the story of The Doors, which will tell the real story of The Doors unlike the Oliver Stone story of The Doors. Which was sort of Oliver Stone in leather pants as opposed to Jim Morrison but we’re going to try to tell the real story of The Doors using the real Jim Morrison all the film footage that we shot back in the day.”

So how did Ray Manzarek feel about Oliver Stone’s film “The Doors?”

“Oliver Stone’s movie was not very good. It was a gross exaggeration of cutting together Jim’s drunken moments and you know taking a drunken moment and all the good stuff, no no no we don’t want any of that. Let’s take another drunken moment and let’s put those two drunken moments together. Drunken moment after drunken moment. It’s kind of absurd and rebellious and wild and crazy. You know a friend of mine watched the movie and said ‘How did you guys write songs. You can’t…I mean it doesn’t make any sense. I mean how did Morrison compose any poetry or write any songs?’ I said ‘Exactly.’ So Stone just took the sensational moments and put them all together.”

The soundtrack to “When You’re Strange” featuring classic studio and live tracks from The Doors will be released in the Summer of 2009 on Rhino Entertainment.