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back-and-totheleft · 3 years

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“The Doors” Turns 30

Oliver Stone, 74, is seated for a Zoom interview at his home office in Los Angeles. He’s just finished reading an email proposing he direct a film about Led Zeppelin. “I don’t know much about them, frankly," Stone admits. "They were never really my band.” The Doors were his band. On March 1, 1991, the universe got its first look at The Doors — Stone's beautifully irrational biopic about the late '60s rock group led by Jim Morrison (played by Val Kilmer, then 31, amid a Method-acting spectacle). The result is an R-rated feast that acts as an extravagant rejection of puritanism and "Just Say No." It is campy, erotic, deeply disturbing and smoldering like a pagan bonfire.

On the occasion of its 30th anniversary, Stone talked to The Hollywood Reporter about the legacy of his film, psychedelics, Bohemian Rhapsody and Val Kilmer's masterclass as Hollywood's first and only Jim Morrison.

The cinematography in this film produces some astonishing eye candy.

We used a lot of filters. We had to go back into the past. We had everyone dressed in period, which was very expensive. We were also taking chances that we normally wouldn’t. We were growing in our boldness. We wanted to challenge all the ideas. We had no rules, no limits, no laws.

At least for my generation, the film has come to symbolize a darkly funny and dizzying parody of the “cock rocker.”

That was never my intention. I’m a little square, perhaps, for your taste, but I worshipped Morrison. I thought he was a great force breaking through to the other side. He was saying things that needed to be said. It was being said by others: Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, and so on. But he was the only one that was really going into the erotica as much as he was. Of course, he talked about Indians, shamanism, but back then, we were coming out of the '50s. It was a very different time. He was liberated. He was sexy as a man. He felt at ease with himself. And he carried on as if he were a free man. I worshipped a free man. I’m actually one of the people who really likes his lyrics. Some people make fun of them.

The Doors feels like a rebuke of the Bush era and "Just Say No." Was Morrison acting as your mouthpiece when he was screaming at us that we were all "a bunch of slaves?"

Yes. The things I say sometimes don’t go down so well. But I don’t agree with so much of what’s going down. I still don’t. I haven’t changed. If anything, I’m worse. His timing may have been off when he said, “You’re all a bunch of slaves.” He was a philosopher.

Critics focused on the lack of historical realism in this film. But it’s a fantasy. Morrison himself was a kind of myth-maker. What do you think is rooted in the obsession for realism in a film about Jim Morrison?

By this time, I had been taking so much flak. I don’t mean to self-pity, but my God, I had just done Born on the Fourth of July, Talk Radio and Wall Street. I was exhausted by trying to be realistic. This was freedom. It was like tearing your clothes off and breathing. It was about going out and having fucking fun making a movie. After JFK and Heaven & Earth, I did Natural Born Killers. Again, I wanted to be free. I get off on those films.

I first discovered this film as a teenager. It somehow captured rock 'n' roll at its purest.

Thank you. I didn’t really have the connection to music that other people had. A lot of filmmakers study music. I didn’t. I just followed a god that I liked. You see, I heard him in Vietnam for the first time. I was doing LSD on R&R [rest and recuperation] — not in the field — but we were discovering LSD and realizing you really had to pay attention. Morrison had done enough LSD to really understand it. It’s a powerful consciousness journey. I never stopped. I kept going in that direction with all kinds of drugs.

Did you experiment with any psychedelics while you were making this film?

I was high, in a sense, by osmosis, but I had the attitude to just free your ass and your mind will follow. I think people would say I was pretty wild as a director. But I was not getting high on the set. Yeah, the occasional grass here and there, but I wouldn’t do anything on the set. Off the set, I had some fun. I had a friend, Richard [Rutowski], who played Death in the film. I wanted to go back to South Dakota, with the Sioux, and do this peyote ceremony with a very powerful shaman. And we did it. We got to this place on the reservation and got fucking high beyond belief. It was a big trip. A lot of Indians were involved. Strong peyote. And then we flew back. I was dead on Monday morning when we shot the peyote scene. I had no energy as a director.

What were some of the political challenges involved in making this film?

I guess I didn’t know the barriers back then. Paul Rothchild [the band’s producer] was a key figure. He was with us all the way. I never got that from the bandmates. They didn’t seem to know him that well. Certainly Ray Manzarek thought he knew him. Ray did not cooperate in any way. In fact, it was a very disagreeable relationship for me. And of course, when the movie came out, boy, he was tearing it down from the beginning.

I found Ray Manzarek accusing you of “assassinating” the character of Jim Morrison to be pretty remarkable. I honestly don’t think anyone knew the real Jim Morrison (not even Manzarek).

Jerry Hopkins, who wrote the book [No One Here Gets Out Alive, 1980] left me 120 documents of interviews he did with people who knew Morrison in the beginning, from grade school to the very end. And if you read these 120 versions of his life, it’s like Citizen Kane. That’s what he was to this person or that person. In the interviews, there were several women, my God, sexually, he was all over the place. He wasn’t necessarily impotent. Perhaps that occurred later, when there were issues — which did bother him. But you saw in the loft scene with Kathleen Quinlan, when he has an orgasm. And that’s the truth of the matter, he had orgasms with intensity that came from intense situations. That was the only way he could get off — dangling from a window may have worked for him.

Morrison seems like the original “cock rocker.” I think he understood that he was a sex symbol.

Well, they made him a sex symbol. Part of the reason he started drinking was to probably run from that. He was not comfortable with publicity. I do believe he was inherently shy. Girls would come at him, and according to Paul [Rothchild], he ended up talking to them all night. He loved women. He talked them to death. But it wasn’t about sex. It was about something in his mind he had to work out. He was running toward death.

He was a sex symbol who was said to have been impotent. He seemed to be struggling with some kind of imposter syndrome. Was he crucifying himself?

I do believe there was a lot of self-hatred. He’s a deep man. If you really want to know him, look at the lyrics. There’s a lot of depth there that people often miss.

JFK (1991) provides a panorama of possibilities regarding the JFK assassination. With this film, you end with Morrison in a bathtub under a kind of amber glow. We don’t know what has happened to him. He’s just beautiful and dead. Were you trying to leave the cause of his death open to interpretation?

It didn’t make any difference to me if he was on heroin or not. In the movie, you have to assume he was. But he was half in love with death all his life. An American Prayer is filled with images of death. I don’t think Morrison made the normal difference between life and death. It was a boundary that he crossed many times. He was ready for death. I found the scene tranquil. Like the ancient Romans cutting their wrists, I didn’t see the fear of death in him. As a shaman, he saw it as a transition to continue life in another form. I would have loved to see him survive Paris. I think he died by accident. I do feel it was an overdose of something. I do feel like he was doing it to accompany somebody he cared about. I think his plan was to come back and be a writer. I think he would have been a really interesting writer and philosopher for American society into the '80s, '90s and even today. He got robbed early.

Looking back at his phenomenal performance, do you feel Val Kilmer was snubbed for an Oscar nomination that year?

I do feel he was slighted. It was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of performance. I certainly know the pain and the sweat he put into it. But I kind of knew The Doors was doomed because of the hijinks Morrison was going through. In other words, it was a crossing-the-line kind of movie. It’s become more acceptable now. But this is 1991. You gotta look back. Certainly Val deserved it, but also the sound: There were so many sound breakthroughs and editing breakthroughs in that movie. We were using some new methods. The sound work by Paul Rothchild and that group was unbelievable. The fact that Val was singing about 70 percent of his stuff was pretty significant.

I feel like a lot of today’s rock biopics, like Bohemian Rhapsody, are pretty sterile. They feel more like marketing films.

I don’t want to be negative on that. I wish we had made the money Bohemian Rhapsody had made. Look, every film has to be marketable. The Doors was not. We just made an outlaw film because [producer] Mario Kassar was out of his mind. He was willing to gamble. He didn’t give a shit about all that stuff. He was a pirate. He made films against the grain.

In the final shot at Père Lachaise cemetery, we zoom in to a bust of Jim Morrison placed on his gravestone. It’s a beautiful documentary-style shot scored to “A Feast of Friends.” It really takes us to the end. Wasn’t the bust stolen in 1988?

It was. The bust was our creation. It was based on Kilmer and not on Jim. But what the press never seems to understand when they describe it as a “rise and fall” is that he wasn’t falling. He was moving through life as an explorer. Some of his best work is in [1978's posthumously released L.P.] An American Prayer and [1971's] L.A. Woman. I didn’t see the decline. I guess what I’m saying is that you don’t die when you’re Jim Morrison, you just move on.

-Art Tevana, “Oliver Stone Recalls 'Doors' Inspiration as Jim Morrison Biopic Turns 30,” The Hollywood Reporter, Mar 11 2021 [x]

#art tevana #jim morrison #oliver stone #the doors #val kilmer #the hollywood reporter #bohemian rhapsody #music #rock and roll #led zeppelin #30th anniversary #cinematography #drugs #LSD #peyote

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svexchange2k19 · 4 years

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Treat List!

What’s a treat list? It’s an anonymous list of exchange participants’ requests that I’m posting here so that anyone (regardless of if you’ve signed up to do the exchange or not) can create gifts matching these prompts if they want to :))

This part of the exchange is strictly optional (no obligation from anyone to do this) and it’s also not an exchange (i.e. if you make a treat, you don’t get something back ... other than the knowledge that you’ve made someone very happy :)).

Treats can be basically anything you want! E.g. a quick doodle, a few lines of a drabble, or anything more complex/long if you choose :)

How to submit a treat:

Please email [email protected] with ‘Treat for Prompt [x]’ in the subject line, e.g. ‘Treat for Prompt 1’

If you want to post your treat publicly on your Tumblr/AO3 account, please only do so after the exchange’s gift reveal date (25 January 2020). Close to this date I will let you know who the treat recipient was and you can then tag/link/mention them in your post, send it to them if you want, etc.

The Treat List

/// PROMPT 1 ///

First choice of ship: Ed Chambers/Richard

Second choice of ship: Big Head/Jian-Yang

Additional ships: Jared/Richard / Gilfoyle/Monica

Do you have rating preferences out of the following: general (no age restriction); teen and up; mature; explicit? Teen and Up. Mature and Explicit Welcome.

Content preferences: Evil!Richard or Possesive/Jealous!Ed Chambers. Angst with happy outcomes.

Prompts/suggestions:

Ed Chambers secretly hiring himself as an employee. Richard hates him and always hears Jared talking about him.

Pied Piper actually succeeds AU. Jared dealing with super powerful Richard who needs to be brought down a peg.

Big Head secretly knowing what’s up and handling Jian-Yang, playing him like a fiddle.

Content weaknesses: I will reject nothing. Everything involving SV is good.

Content limits: No limits. The dirtier the better.

Anything else you want to share with your gift creator? If you've ever stopped yourself from writing something because you thought the fandom would judge you. Give me that.

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/// PROMPT 2 ///

First choice of ship: Jared/Richard

Second choice of ship: Gilfoyle/Monica

Additional ships: Dinesh/Gilfoyle

Do you have rating preferences out of the following: general (no age restriction); teen and up; mature; explicit? If so, please list in order of preference. Mature, Explicit, Teen, Everyone

Content preferences: Fluff, angst with a happy ending, porn with plot/porn with feelings

Prompts/suggestions:

Pied Piper Christmas Party

Finale fix it fic

Sick fic

Meet the Parents

Pretty much any AU other than high school

Content weaknesses: Preferably not Erlich x Richard, Richard x Gavin, Richard x Bighead, or Jared x Gilfoyle

Content limits: Non-con, domestic violence, gay bashing

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/// PROMPT 3 ///

First choice of ship: Jared/Richard

Second choice of ship: Gilfoyle/Monica

Do you have rating preferences out of the following: general (no age restriction); teen and up; mature; explicit? No preference

Content preferences: Content: fluff or h/c, comedy, but most importantly, romance.

Prompts/suggestions: Boy howdy do I love tropes. I love hijinks, farce comedy, fake relationship stuff, and bad, fumbly sex where they get to giggle and be nervous without inhibitions. But also, if you have a hankering for something specific, throw it at me! no story is going to be better than one You genuinely want to write.

Content weaknesses: gilfoyle/dinesh, anything with Erlich

Content limits: rape/ non con, underage (Like if they're 17 or something that's fine but they gotta be the same age ish)

Anything else you want to share with your gift creator? Uh... I love you

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/// PROMPT 4 ///

First choice of ship: Jared/Richard

Do you have rating preferences out of the following: general (no age restriction); teen and up; mature; explicit? As much as I love explicit art and fic, I would prefer not to receive any in this exchange. Teen/mature/whatever is all good for me

Content preferences: I enjoy humor, fluff, and drama. Please no angst

Prompts/suggestions:

Historical AU

Fantasy AU

arranged marriage/marriage of convenience

established relationship

Content weaknesses: none

Content limits: No explicit violence or gore please. hurt/comfort is ok as long as the focus is on comfort. Oh, and no major character death!

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/// PROMPT 5 ///

First choice of ship: Jared/Richard

Second choice of ship: Ed Chambers/Richard

Additional ships: Gilfoyle/Monica

Do you have rating preferences out of the following: general (no age restriction); teen and up; mature; explicit? 1) Explicit 2) Mature

Content preferences: in no order - angst with a happy ending; comedy; pining/mutual pining; romance; gratuitous smut; tenderness

Prompts/suggestions: in no order - bed sharing; soulmate AUs; Alone on the Water AU; high school AU with misfits finding each other and pining SO MUCH PINING; Richard sees Jared in a tux for the first time; inappropriately timed proposal; Richard bids on Jared at a date auction for charity; Jared works as a stripper, Richard becomes a regular; Pied Piper Christmas party complete with mistletoe and drunken shenanigans; any version of Richard and Jared confessing their love for each other

Content weaknesses: Dinesh/Gilfoyle, Big Head/Jian Yang, Dinesh/Gilfoyle/Monica.

Content limits: non-con (references to past abuse, like mentions in Jared's past, are ok, just nothing onscreen)

Anything else you want to share with your gift creator? Thank you for making a gift for me!

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/// PROMPT 6 ///

First choice of ship: Jared/Richard

Second choice of ship: Ed Chambers/Richard

Additional ships: Dinesh/Gilfoyle/Monica

Do you have rating preferences out of the following: general (no age restriction); teen and up; mature; explicit? No preference.

Content preferences: hurt/comfort, pining, angst with a happy ending, porn with feelings, domestic life, AUs, established relationship, humor

Prompts/suggestions:

Richard comforting Jared;

pirate AU;

I just really like established relationship… when the characters know each other really well, when they have their own shared stories, jokes etc;

For the Ed Chambers ship – maybe something using that whole “Richard trying to be alpha” storyline from 6x04

Content weaknesses: any hints of Gavin/Richard

Content limits: Omegaverse, mpreg, hardcore violence, unusual specific kinky stuff like that. And fluff. Cuteness is cute, but in ships it often makes me cringe, sorry *covering eyes with hands* Tenderness though! Tenderness is good. Good Shit™

Anything else you want to share with your gift creator? Tbh I just want you to have fun doing this! So I hope you do (have fun I mean) :)

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/// PROMPT 7 ///

First choice of ship: Dinesh / Gilfoyle

Second choice of ship: Big Head / Jian-Yang

Additional ships: Jared / Richard

Do you have rating preferences out of the following: general (no age restriction); teen and up; mature; explicit? No.

Content preferences: Hurt/comfort, angst.

Prompts/suggestions: Season six.

Content weaknesses: None

Content limits: None

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/// PROMPT 8 ///

First choice of ship: Dinesh/Gilfoyle/Monica

Second choice of ship: Gilfoyle/Monica

Additional ships: Big Head/Jian-Yang

Do you have rating preferences out of the following: general (no age restriction); teen and up; mature; explicit? Any is fine

Content preferences: Any as long as there’s a touch of comedy in there.

Prompts/suggestions: Depending on pairing, some ideas:

Monica wants to try something new, Gilfoyle is into compersion, and Dinesh is into … well, Gilfoyle, mainly, but hey, Monica is kind of hot. So they get together and do a little experimenting.

5 times someone found out about Gilfoyle and Monica when they were trying very hard to hide it, and once time they told everyone. Bonus points for the 5 times being a range of reactions from turned on to disgusted, with a lot of astonishment thrown in.

Jian Yang moves back from China and everyone else moves out, so it’s just him and Big Head, chillin’ out, playing some games, shooting some cans, hooking up and kind of digging each other’s radically different vibe, like, a lot.

Or whatever the author has in mind for those pairings, I’m easy!

Content weaknesses: N/A

Content limits: N/A

#sv exchange 2k19 #announcements #sv squad #silicon valley winter exchange #silicon valley #silicon valley hbo #treats

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