When You're Strange

I had another day off today and went along to the city centre. I got a few books in the sales, namely The Soft Machine by William Burroughs, The Ticket That Exploded by William Burroughs and Mr. Nice: An Autobiography by Howard Marks (I saw the movie adaptation a couple of weeks ago at the Film Festival).

After that I went up to the Cameo Cinema and saw When You're Strange, directed by Tom DiCillo. The movie is a documentary about the influential 1960s rock band The Doors. Mostly the film focuses on the group's charismatic lead singer and songwriter Jim Morrison. It's made up of concert footage and some backstage footage along with clips from the rarely-seen 1969 film HWY, which was written by and starred Jim Morrison as a murderous hitch-hiker. The movie, narrated by Johnny Depp, will probably not have much new for Doors fans, but it is a good overview of the history of the band and of the period which they helped define. The concert footage shows just how powerful a performer Morrison really was. The only real omission is that it doesn't have anything about what the surviving Doors (organist and founder Ray Manzarek, guitarist and songwriter Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore) did after Morrison's death. It's definitely worth watching though. Actually in the audience while I was watching the movie there was some guy who must have been kind of drunk or something who was singing along with some of the songs and pumping his fist and making heavy metal style devil horns at the screen.

After the movie I went along to the Rutland Hotel and had a pint of Heineken beer and a club sandwich before heading off home.