In When You’re Strange, they say that Jim made one film at UCLA and he got a D for it.
It was a poetic collision of images. It was Eisensteinian. There wasn’t any narrative or dialogue. Oliver Stone did a version of it in his movie. He made it seem like it was a Nazi movie when all it was a big German girl doing a hochi cuchi routine on top of a TV and Jim turns on the TV and there are Nazi storm troopers on the TV. It was a terrific image. All that Oliver Stone heard was Nazis and he constructs this whole insane Adolf Hitler thing.
Why has Densmore not rejoined you in any of the various reformations of the band?
I don’t know, you’d have to talk to him. We invite him to play, but he declines the offer.
We’ll be playing Boston in May [as] Manzarek–Krieger.
Was it true that when Jim died you were going to replace him with Iggy Pop?
True.
And why did that not happen?
Who knows? Gremlins, the spirits, the kachinas didn’t want it to happen? I have no idea. We never even got to rehearse together.
Is there anything beyond music that you’re passionate about?
I like to put my hands in the soil. I try to be at one with the earth and realize that for all our silliness and screaming and shouting at each other, Republican verses Democrat, the earth, like the Dude, abides us. The food here [Napa area] is fantastic. You guys have great food there too. I always love the fresh seafood there.
DiCillo, recused himself as narrator and brought in Johnny Depp, any insight into that?
Wouldn’t you? I mean what a great choice and what a great voice, he’s almost hypnotic.
Like Jim?
Absolutely.
What do you want fans to take from the movie?
Just to open your own doors of perception and let it wash over you and join the Doors on our quest into the infinite.
