OK, I saw the Doors movie when it first came out, and was duly impressed by Val’s performance.
I just watched The Doors again tonight on DVD at home and if this isn’t the greatest performance of an actor imitating a rock singer, then I don’t know what is.
Gary Busey was good as Buddy Holly and Lou Diamond Phillips was good as Ritchie Valens, but Val Kilmer was amazing. And the thing is that he sang most of the songs on the soundtrack and although it was clearly not Jim it was a fantastic interpretation. Val Kilmer should have been granted an Oscar for this.
(As a Doors fan I know the film takes poetic licence in some spots, but damed: what a wonderful performance by Val Kilmer.
I have to agree. The image, the ‘atmosphere’ I got from the Doors at the time is exactly what is reproduced by Oliver Stone and Val Kilmer. Apart from looking like a dead ringer for Jim, he seems to inhabit Jim’s persona to an almost spooky degree.
I’ve read that many of the people in and around the Doors say it wasn’t really like what Stone depicts, but from a fan’s point of view, the correlation between my vision of the Doors and the film’s depiction is uncanny.
See, I have to disagree. There’s no question that it’s an excellent imitation, but doing an impression is not the same as creating a character. Kilmer replicates Morrison’s mannerisms exquisitely, but he does very little to flesh out something resembling a real person and not just an Icon (though, obviously, the quality of writing contributes to this shallowness). Morrison has been called a poet and a genius and a malcontent, but you see very little complexity in the Stone film–it completely meets our expectations of what we perceived Morrison to be, but what it should do is subvert it, to give us something deeper and more interesting. Kilmer does the best he can in convincing us we’re watching the Real Deal, but as a full-bodied characterization, it’s simply not enough. I’d rather take Busey, who also did his own singing and playing but brought an inner life to Holly that eludes us in The Doors.
For someone new to the Doors, maybe the film would be just right. Kilmer’s performance was incredible. When I remember it, I remember Morrison. Your comment is poignant to me because I realize that nothing will ever be “enough” until someone can figure a way to “break on through to the other side” and give old fans something new by Morrison.
Parisians have cleaned up the site where he is buried and roped it off so that it can’t be marked up so much again. Polite fans take turns giving each other a chance to take close up photos and a guard stands inconspicuously a couple of rows away. It’s very shady and peaceful.
Those that knew him thought the film made him into a caractature. He wasn’t the Lizard King all the time. He actually had a sense of humor, wasn’t drunk 100% of the time and could be related to as if he was human. The ridiculous mugging for the camera during the Ed Sullivan Show scene took me right out of the movie. Its not like the most of the rest, we can see film of the event. It looked nothing like that.
Caricature? I thought it made him look like some kind of ridiculous cartoon character. There was absolutely no complexity to the character at all. It was as if Kilmer decided to portray Morrison’s every day persona as the weird guy who put on an act for the public. I was really interested in seeing the real Jim Morrison when I sat down to watch that movie, and was extremely disappointed at the piece of garbage that Kilmer & Oliver turned out.
As someone said it above, it was a great impersonation. Abysmal character development, though.
I thought it was a great performance but I thought the movie was very weak. I was a huge doors fan and 17 when the movie came out. I was so excited to see it in Dublin. Saw the movie, was mezmerized by Kilmer but left the film thinking it was utter shite.
Even as a huge Doors fan I felt Stone went too far. He basically portrayed Morrisson as a messanic figure which I just had no time for. I mean, come on, some good music but really that’s about it. I think my reaction was common enough and the dislike of the movie has distracted people from Kilmer’s performance.
Kilmer was great though and I do think it was one of the best actor-portraying musician perfomances I have ever seen.
A great thing about The Buddy Holly Story was not just Busey’s performance, but that the band performances were all done live. The actors weren’t just playing and lip synching to a recording as is usually the case (even if they do their own singing), when the director yelled “action”, the actors (all of them really playing their instruments) jammed out live. The concerts were really the actors playing live concerts. I don’t know of any other rock biopic which has ever done that.
It must impossible to portrait an extremely charismatic personality - think Jim Morrison (of course), Elvis Presley, Bob Marley, Dean Martin, Muhammed Ali, just to throw out a few that comes to mind while writing. - If you are able to do it, you’d probably be such a star you’d do something else, wouldn’t you?
That said, that taken into consideration, Val Kilmer did one heck of a job, definitely. Agreed to the OP.
My wife had a series of dreams in which she was production assistant in Heaven to a column of fire (I think he’s a seraph) named Mort Coil, who had a talk show on a channel run by St Catherine of Sienna. The guests, living and dead, that are easiest to book are the ones least aware of their surroundings. Don’t expect much; Morrison is a regular.
I get the impression that Oliver Stone was trying to represent the Doors from a fan’s point of view. In depth characterisation was never on the agenda because he was trying to capture, and display, the public persona.
I’ve read a lot of biographies of the Doors, including ones by the members of the group, and I’ve never felt that they showed a greater insight into Jim’s character than the film. Maybe he was all for show.