All language subtitles for Before.The.End.Searching.For.Jim.Morrison.S01E02.WEB.H264-RBB_track4_[eng]

[ambient music playing]

[man] I've spent nearly 40 years

attempting to bring
Jim Morrison,
the human being, to light.

I worked for a decade creating
this independent docuseries

while interviewing
hundreds of people
who are connected to Jim.

And I did so
because I believe Morrison
was far more

than the one-dimensional
narcissist whose historic legacy
has largely been reduced

to Hollywood marketing
and advertising.

[woman] He was so complex.

He wasn't just the Lizard King.

He wasn't just the guy in the--
In the leather pants
and no shirt

stumbling down Sunset Boulevard.

[man] Since 1985,
I've asked myself why
next to no one has stepped up

to question the official story,
that is,
the controlled narrative.

Hey, Jeff, so I did the research
you asked me to do regarding
Jim's social security number,

and I think you're gonna be
surprised by what I found.

[Jeff] What is it?

[Bombaugh] Well, Jim Morrison's
social security number,
apparently, is still active.

[Jeff] Okay.

[Bombaugh] Jim's social
has been current as of 2014
in Rochester, New York,

less than an hour
from where you are now.

[Jeff] Holy shit.

[Bombaugh] I don't know how
to explain it. You could
really be on to something.

[Jeff] I was born
in February 1967 in Chicago,

just weeks after The Doors'
debut album was released.

Some of the earliest music
I remember

is from when I
was 4 or 5 years old.

Now legendary Doors songs
like "Light My Fire,"
"People Are Strange,"

"L.A. Woman,"
and "Riders on the Storm."

As a little kid, I referred
to these eerie classics
as Halloween music.

Like the eight phases
of the moon,

that was phase one
of my indoctrination

into Jim Morrison's
endless night.

Ten years later,

as I carpooled home
to Downers Grove, Illinois,
from a swim meet in Wisconsin,

I heard a song
that cracked open
my teenage brain.

"Break on Through
[To the Other Side]."

I was hooked,

and I've been searching
for the mysterious
and misunderstood Morrison

ever since.

With this docu-mystery,

I've reverse-engineered
a half-century of factoids,
PR spin, and suppression,

which have built up
around Jim like a shroud.

Jim has long been
like a face
on the Mt. Rushmore of rock.

But who was the actual person?

Who was the flesh-and-blood
human being?

And who, or what exactly,
drove him to such extremes

during the already chaotic era
of the late 1960s?

It's time the world finally knew
the real truth
about the real Jim Morrison.

[Jeff] Now, were you, like,
a competitive swimmer?

A what?

Did you ever swim
on the swim team?

No. Well, there was
a time I... Wait.

No, I was never
a competitive swimmer. No.

[Jeff] Check that out again.

Frank X seems to recall
a distant memory
of having been on a swim team,

but then catches himself
and freezes
like a deer in headlights.

A what?

Did you ever swim
on the swim team?

No. Well, there was
a time I... Wait.

Well, there was
a time I... Wait.

No, I was never
a competitive swimmer. No.

[Jeff] The reason I asked Frank
about swimming

was because Jim had been
a competitive swimmer

during his freshman year
at Alameda High School
in California.

[suspenseful music playing]

[ominous music playing]

Alameda is when
I really started to understand
I had an older brother.

And I don't know,
you've been-- Seen
the house in Alexandria,

the house in Alameda
was real nice.

But it was like
an old Victorian
three-story house,

and some other people
rented out the bottom floor,

and there was a stairway
up to the second floor.

Well, Jim had his own apartment
as he had
in the basement in Alexandria.

He had the top floor
that had its own little kitchen,

and it was like a turret,
the old style.

It was an interesting one.

So he's 15 years old,
and he's going through
a coast-to-coast

major geographic
and cultural change

and I could imagine
how in the late '50s,

it was at least as great a shock

just because the culture
and the weather and the style
are all so different.

I think that was
a big, big shock for Jim.

It was always a culture shock
every time we moved,
you know, for all of us,

all the military or, you know,
especially the Navy guys,

because the dads went away
every now and then.

So we had a different type
of culture shock
almost every time we moved.

But we were in classes together,
so, I mean,
he had somebody he knew.

A lot of the time
Dad would be gone.
In those days,

some of the tours of duty
would be nine months
out in the WESTPAC.

But as far as I could see,
they got along fine,

and when Dad came home,
everything was good.

It was almost like Jim
had been taking care
of things at home,

and there was,
I think, a mutual respect.

I know that he was gone a lot,
just that he was deployed
on a ship,

and so, like a lot
of military families, you know,

the mom probably ends up
having to kind of run the show
and be the disciplinarian.

I would imagine
that that was kind of the way
things work there.

I think it certainly
doesn't help anybody
when you're moving all the time.

And it seems like Jim's family

moved more frequently
than average
for military families.

And when your father
is literally disappearing
in space

as well as time, being away,

that can't help
but affect somebody, you know?

How did this all...

conspire to produce
the effects in Jim?

I can't tell you that,
but I'm sure it played a role.

[Jeff] George Stephen Morrison

was an aviator who rose
to the rank of rear admiral
in the United States Navy.

He served during World War II
and the Korean War,

and in August 1964,

he played a major role
in the escalation
of the Vietnam War

after he commanded
the naval carrier division

during the Gulf
of Tonkin incident.

Known as Steve
to family and friends,

he believed Jim,
his first born son, would follow
in his military footsteps,

but he couldn't have been
more wrong.

[Jeff] How would you describe
Alameda in general, in brief,
at the time you knew Jim,

- 1957 to '58?
- [chuckles]

If I had to describe Alameda,
it would have been Mayberry
and American Graffiti mixed.

I met Jim in...
It would have been 1957
at the high school.

And some reason,
I remember him
when he first got there.

You know,
I'm not quite sure why,
you know.

I just remember him being
a really sweet looking guy,
and had a plaid shirt on,

and we all started
talking about, "Who's that?"
You know, "Who is that guy?"

Became friends
with some people right away,

but not outgoing
in the traditional sense,
you know?

Kind of shy.

The Jim that I knew
was pretty serious, and quiet,
and sensitive, and very kind.

I kind of put him
as kind of a loner

because he was always
with Fud, or Gerard Ford,
most of the time.

Well, I met him when I was
a freshman in high school,
at Alameda High School,

through our youth group
at Christ Episcopal Church.

We had quite
an active youth group.

There were
about 20 or 30 members,
and Jim was one of them.

And we used to...

We all became very good friends
in that particular group,

and so we would go
on different retreats and things
like this, where we all...

There was a lot of meditation,
a lot of religious things
going on with that,

and he was
very involved in that.

[Jeff] No one seemed to be aware
that Jim had musical leanings,
even those close to him.

There was never anything
that I can recall

that would've led you to believe
that he was gonna be a musician.

He had pretty good rhythm,
and as I remember,

there's a couple of music pieces
that he really loved.

"Topsy I," "Topsy II."

It's a drum-- Drummers.
It was all drums. He loved that.

[Jeff] Amazingly, Bonnie relates
the earliest firsthand account

of Jim playing music
with a group

nearly a decade
before his work with The Doors.

[Boller] And I remember
going over
to Jim Morrison's house,

and they were just playing,
you know?

Just seeing
how they played together.

- [Jeff] You're kidding me.
- They each played
different things.

I think Jim Tolman
played the bass
for as far as I remember.

I don't know
what Jim Morrison played.

I know that Fud played a guitar
because he later
had a guitar shop.

So Fud would've been
the guitarist.

And I guess Jim
might have been singing,
I would think.

Maybe all three of them
were singing,
as far as I remember.

And I just sat there
and watched, you know?

I felt very honored
that these guys
would include me.

You know, I was just a friend,
and I was a girl, you know,

to listen to them
while they did this stuff

Because it was
all kind of improv.
It wasn't planned. It wasn't...

I don't remember sheet music
or anything like that.

But I remember that they were...

[Jeff] You're blowing my mind
in the best way,
and it's incredible,

because we've been trying
to pinpoint...

- When he started.
- ...when he started
or had any musical leanings.

- Because...
- Oh, yeah,
that was definitely then.

He liked to claim
that he hated rock and roll
at that time.

Even after he left here
and went to Virginia,

he would put down
rock and roll except for Elvis.

And we don't really have
any record of him
actually holding an instrument

or a microphone or anything
until UCLA,

which was years and years later,
you know.

So we're trying
to backtrack in time,

- and you just blew my mind.
- Yeah, that's definitely--
They were.

I mean, that's--
My biggest memory of him
is that day.

[Jeff] Did Jim play everyone,
and know all along that music
would be his chosen profession?

Later, I learned more
that supports this theory.

Then Jeff showed me
a fascinating handwritten letter
Jim had sent him.

So this is
after Alameda High School,
and while Jim was in Alexandria?

That's correct.

I've only shown
about three people this
in the last 50 years, so...

That's amazing.
Absolutely amazing.

Quite frankly,
I kept it all pretty private.

I didn't really particularly
like the way that others had
depicted him afterwards, and...

I'm somewhat very happy
that you're doing this

so you can show him
maybe a little bit more
the way he was.

He was a pretty darn good guy.

Pretty normal, good guy.

Well, not totally normal,
but who was?

[both chuckle]

[Jeff] While in Alameda,
I met with Joy Allyn

to learn if an infamous passage
fromNo One Here Gets Out Alive
was true.

The story goes that Jim
and high school friend Fud Ford

spied on Joy and her mother
as they changed
into their swimsuits.

Well, it was really funny
because nobody wanted to tell me
that I was in this book.

And it was like,
"Have you told Joy yet?"

Told me what?

"Have you read Jim's book?"
Jim who?

And I had no idea.

And finally, I had
to actually pull it
out of somebody.

They said,
"you're in Jim Morrison's book."

And I didn't know
he went to Alameda High School.
I didn't know anything about it.

So, of course,
I had to go buy the book

because nobody would tell me
what it said.

Then my mother was mad.
She said, "That's ridiculous.

"He couldn't see that.
No way he could do that."

Of course,
this story wasn't here.
We were downstairs.

and the bedrooms
are more towards
the front of the house.

So if you stand on the bridge,
there really is no way
you can see anybody change.

But it was a cool story.

It gave me a little notoriety.

Even though I didn't know Jim,
I said, "Wow,
I was in his book."

[Jeff] Someone
obviously must've--
It must've been Fud...

- It had to have been Fud.
- ...told the author the story.

- Who else would've known that?
Because Morrison was gone.
- Yeah. Yeah.

[woman] He had a prankster side,
as you've been told by others.

One of the times
we visited them in Alexandria,

he was a little older then,
maybe 14 or 15.

He was dressed up
in nice clothes.

You know, the family wanted us
to do that for pictures
and so on.

But in contrast
to that demeanor,
he had the family cat.

He was pretending
to strangle it.

And at one point,
he draped it around his neck,

and in the picture that my dad
or his dad took
of him and his siblings,

there he is with the cat
draped around his neck.

Always finding some funny angle.

[Andy] They all got into
Mad Magazine,

which was a little bit different
than your regular comics

because it had
a lot of social comments,

but from a very,
I guess, liberal angle.

Anti-establishment, maybe.

They were all into, you know,
cartoony-type drawings
and stuff like that,

but I think it was more
about his personality.

And this was one of two pictures
that appeared one morning
with Jim, and Jim gave me this.

[Jeff] Thanks to the late
Fud Ford, Jim's disturbing
Alameda-era drawings survive.

During my first interview
with Jim's friend
Mirandi Babitz,

I showed her a number
of the explicit pencil drawings
Jim created circa age 14

in his Alameda bedroom.

Mirandi, a cognitive
behavioral therapist,

asked if she could show
one particular drawing
to her colleague.

The colleague, who had no clue
they'd analyzed
a late 1950s drawing

by the adolescent Jim Morrison,

recommended Mirandi
immediately contact
Child Protective Services

regarding a possible case
of sexual abuse.

That there is
a kind of a tendency
to become a hypersexual

is one of the ways
people respond to that,

or to become sexually anorexic,
like, no sex at all.

Sometimes
if it's a family member,

and then the person
tries to speak about it,
and isn't believed, you know,

then that kind of compounds
the issue.

[Jeff] Have these crude drawings
revealed onion layers
with the passage of time?

I'll soon learn
chilling information

which will lead me
to believe that's the case.

From kindergarten
to first grade to sixth grade,
there was no difference.

He was the class president
of the sixth grade,

which meant
you were the class president
of the whole school, you know?

But something happened
in seventh, eighth, ninth,
or something, for Jim

that he was very different,
as far as I could see,
when he came in,

in terms of just his attitude.

[Jeff] Are Jim's Alameda
drawings a dark window

into his later Alexandria
church visit?

At that time,
he seemed so disturbed,

Tandy Martin's mother took him
to speak with a youth minister.

Jim's lover, Linda Ashcroft,

claimed he told her
he'd been sexually abused
by his father

starting around age 4

in a bathtub
of the Morrison home
in Albuquerque.

The family then moved
to Los Altos, California.

It's May 29th, 2016.

I'm back
in Los Altos, Mountain View.

And there's Jim's home
that he lived in
for two brief years.

I said to him, well, um,

it must have been
horrible for you.

And he said, "Well, no,
I was told that that was
the way you expressed love

for somebody who loved you.

You could express love
for your father that way."

Oh, he hated his father.

He hated his father
in a big way.

That's what I always wondered
where it came from in Jim

because it seemed more
than just rebellion,
more than teenage rebellion.

He had it hardwired
into him somehow
to be just the opposite of that.

[Jeff] Following
a half century of speculation

dating back to Jim's attorney
Max Fink in 1969,

three sources
have publicly corroborated

Jim's alleged claim
of childhood sexual abuse.

Linda Ashcroft in 1997,
author Stephen Davis in 2004,

and journalist Salli Stevenson
in 2015 for this documentary.

Although Ashcroft's
literary agent
told me she had died,

I tried through a network
of private investigators
to prove otherwise.

Their stunning photo evidence
helped make that a reality,
which led to me phoning her.

All right, it is Wednesday,
February 15th, 2017.

I'm about to attempt
to phone Linda Ashcroft
in Liverpool, England.

[line ringing]

[clears throat]

Hi. Ginger?

Hi, is this Linda?

My name is Jeff Finn.
Please don't hang up.

I've been trying
to find you for years.

I'm a documentary filmmaker
in Los Angeles,

and I've been trying
to reach you
for, well, 20 years now

since your book
came out. [laughs]

I hope I'm not calling
at an inconvenient time.

I was actually
banking on your insomnia
that you... [laughs]

Oh, this is not Linda Ashcroft,
nicknamed Ginger,

who wrote the book
about Jim Morrison?

Okay, if you are--
If there's any chance you are,

could you please call me
at your convenience?

I know I'm calling you
out of the blue,

- and I don't mean to disturb you
or inconvenience you at all--
- No.

[laughs softly]

See how well that went.

I tried the Ginger tactic.

Thought I had her there
for a second.

[clears throat]
That was her nickname.

Oh, shit.

[announcer]
This is the final of this event.

Let's go. Lane 1.
Mason Roberts...

He wasn't
your standard kind of guy

trying to impress anybody
or fit in.

He was who he was.

He enjoyed shocking people.

The one thing that I remembered
that I was told--

I never saw it happen
because he wouldn't
have done it around me,

but I was told that he carried
a little thimble in his pocket.

And especially liked
to do this around girls,

but he would take the--
They would--
He would show it to them,

and he'd take the thimble,
and he would spit into it,
and then he would drink it.

And, of course, this is as gross
as you can get, I guess,

you know,
drinking your own spit,

but that was his kind of MO,
was to kind of shock.

And I think that was
what he enjoyed doing.

We started drinking honey
before the swim meets.

And if I remember right,
I think Jim had a--

It looked like
a little half pint of bourbon
or something.

You know,
it had the brown liquid in it,

and we'd sit over
in the sidelines
on the grassy area

and suck this honey down,

and everybody else
would be looking at us
like we were crazy. [laughs]

But it was just honey.

I mean, just an energy drink

because we didn't have
any 5-Hour Energy drinks
back then or anything.

But you know, we just had
that before the meet.

We both were doing
the same things,
believe it or not,

in the seventh
and eighth grades, okay?

In other words,
we were swimmers.
We were always swimmers.

We were good swimmers.

If you can get that film going,
you'll see us swimming,
and, like, he's splashing me.

[laughs] And I don't like that
when I'm 6 years old
or anything.

But I wasn't a good swimmer,
but neither was he,
but we became good swimmers.

And by the sixth grade, yeah,
that's when we have the pictures
of us swimming in the ocean.

We were really swimming.

I mean, all of us
were swimmers, both families.
That was a big deal.

No.
There was a time when I... Wait.

There was a time when I... Wait.

No, I was never
a competitive swimmer. No.

[Jeff] As we continued
to small talk,

Frank voluntarily began riffing
about the Sunset Strip
in the late 1960s.

Where do you wanna go?
I don't know.
I want Sunset Strip.

Yeah. I don't know
if he mentioned that or what.

We'd go to the Sunset Strip,
and there was all these people
walking around there.

[Jeff] This was
the exact time and place

The Doors
stepped into the spotlight.

Notice how quickly
Frank goes off topic

the moment I ask
about the Sunset Strip
at the time in question.

That was the motel we stayed in.

[Jeff] Oh, so you were
on the Sunset Strip in the '60s?

- Yeah.
- That's fantastic. Did you see
any bands or anything?

No, we didn't stay there long.

[Jeff] Interesting, but perhaps
a mere coincidence?

Then, however, Frank launches
into intimate details

about Rolling Stones guitarist
Brian Jones.

Information related
as if we were sitting in a room
with the Stones themselves.

Not inside info of the type
found by a super fan,

but more like the details
a peer would know.

One whose heart felt sorrow
over the loss of someone great.

Jim apparently felt
so aligned with Brian,

he dedicated
an epic poem to Jones
after his 1969 death at 27,

which, like Jim's alleged death,
also fell on July 3rd.

I like Brian Jones.

I think Brian Jones...

Well, of course,
he got into alcohol
quite heavily,

and he wasn't
showing up for practice.

And so they had to drop him.

And-- But I did
follow him after that,
when he went to Morocco,

listened to the recordings.

I thought they were interesting,
the native recordings.

And I don't know,
I always liked the guy,
you know.

I, of course, have heard
negative things about him
from the other members.

[Jeff] Did Frank
just imply he listened
to Rolling Stones demos

directly from Brian Jones?

And that the Stones
later shared with him

their specific thoughts
on Jones?

How would
a supposed maintenance man
from somewhere in New York

have access
to such insider knowledge?

[Jeff] Now, you and Jim
were both in film,
is that right?

[man] Yes. Oh, yes.

Yeah, we were both
in the film department.
Absolutely.

And remember,
UCLA is a fairly arty place.

It was not a commercial type
of film school.

So you had
Hollywood professionals,
old pros,

and then you had these
sort of more avant-garde
or more, you know, um,

bohemian characters
that would come in.

So you had both.

Ah, Morrison.

Let's see, I think we met
in the 170 workshop, you know

when we worked on
our first student film project.

I did get to know him a bit
when we were all...

He and I would sit around
in the library

and talk about the works
of poetry and Rimbaud,
of course.

[Jeff] The name Arthur Rimbaud
is impossible to avoid

when tracing the trajectory
of Jim Morrison.

By age 20, the French author
had rejected
his career as a poet

and willfully undertook
a new life
exploring East Africa.

There's a whole period
of literature,
particularly English literature,

with, like, The Razor's Edge.

You have people
going off to China.

Richard Burton,
Sir Richard Burton,
the traveler,

going off to the Mid-East
and what have you.

And people going to another land
or another place

to completely forget
who they were

so that they could be
someone else.

Jim said, "Oh, yeah, Hesse."
Get the Journey to the East.

He said, "That's the one."

And in it, the guide,

the one who they hired
to take them across
the mountains or whatever,

disappears.

Turned out he was
the leader all the time,

and he abandoned them
at the time that needed to be...

When that time came,
he needed to do that.

That doesn't
quite explain the book,

but it's interesting that way,
that the disappearance
of the guide...

Well, I think when I knew him

he and Phil were reading,
really, the Tibetan Book
of the Dead,

The Interpretation of Dreams
by Freud,

books on Jung.

And, of course, some poetry.

You know, I know,
you know, that they were
very aware of Rimbaud.

In fact, that was why
my next movie was gonna be
a short take on Rimbaud,

and he was gonna play
Rimbaud for me.

[Jeff] Like a sociologist,
Jim studied people
for curiosity's sake

and as a way
to gauge their reactions.

He took
his keen interest further,

and crafted a persona
out of his observations.

The voyeur, who was,
in Jim's words, a dark comedian.

- I think Jim--
- Jim watched.

- He was a watcher.
- Yes.

And he was an instant--
I mean, he liked to stir
the energy up a little bit too.

Yes, yes.

[Ron] We had started shooting
and had done a few scenes.

And Morrison basically came up
and was tugging at my elbow,

saying, "Oh, man."
He says, "I know what you want.
I know what you want.

Let me shoot it."

Because another guy was
shooting the film at that point.

"I know what you want.
Let me shoot the film.
I can get it. I'm right there."

So I thought, well, okay,

because I wasn't really happy
with what the other guy
was doing,

who didn't seem
to understand the nature of it.

And Morrison said, "You want it
to be a real voyeur
kind of thing, don't you?"

And I said, well, yeah.
He says, "Yeah."

He says, "I see that.
It's like a real voyeur thing."

So I hand him the camera,
and Morrison just dived into it.

He was moving around the room
with the camera,

and he really did
seem to get it.

And I was quite pleased.

And we shot the rest of the day.

And then at the end of the day,
he comes up to me and he says,

"Mm. Hey, man, you know,

I think-- I think maybe
I had the wrong
kind of wrong viewfinder,

you know, for the lens."

Well, he had shot all afternoon
looking, seeing one frame,

and the camera
was seeing something
quite different.

And...

That's a great story.

- Seriously?
- Yeah, seriously.

And so then
we showed the rushes
to the faculty advisor.

He looked at it and he said,
"This is the worst pile of shit
I have ever seen.

You're not gonna be able
to do anything with this."

I went ahead
and cut the film and all that.

And then
when we had the screenings,

Morrison was among the first.

He immediately,
after about two minutes,

sort of shouted out,
"Oh, yeah!" [chuckles]

And then the audience
got into it and got into it,

and it turned out to be
one of the big hits of that,
you know, bunch of films.

I remember that.

When Dave Thompson
went to see The Rolling Stones
down at Long Beach,

and he came back, and we were
all in someone's apartment,

and he was telling us
about how the crowd reacted,

and the huge response
of hysteria,

and the cops,
and stuff around the stage,
and pulling girls off the stage.

Anyway, all this stuff.

I remember
that Jim Morrison asked,

and in great detail, he wanted
to know how Jagger stood,

what he wore,
how he presented himself.

And I remember
that we were saying,
"What do you care?

You're a film--
You're gonna make movies, right?
I mean, what is this?

Why do you care about that?"
To that extent, to that detail.

So obviously he had something
in the back of his mind,
or like that.

[Jeff] How would you describe
Jim Morrison as a filmmaker?

I think he's a great performer,
but I don't think
he was a very great filmmaker.

And I don't think
he really cared about it.

He was like an actor.

He had the same quality
that a good actor has.

Yeah, Jim was clever.
Jim was out here in L.A.
on his own, basically.

He had to make his way,
and, you know, he had plans,

but I remember
driving down the hill,
driving down Roscomare with Jim.

He didn't have a car.
It was in my car.

We got out of the car,
we were walking over to school,

and I asked him
what he was gonna do
when he graduated.

And he said
he wanted to be a director.

Said that he's
never gonna be able to do it

because there's so much nepotism
in that business.

I said, yeah, whatever.

And he goes--
I go, "What do you want to do?"

He goes, "I think I might start
a music group with some of
the guys from the film school."

And I started laughing.

I said, "What?"
I go, "What are you gonna do?"

He goes,
"I'm gonna be the singer."
And I cracked up.

Because I never heard him
sing a note.

I mean, I'm living
in the same house with him.

I never heard him sing.

So I didn't know
where this was coming from,
you know what I mean?

But if you ask me
if Jim could plan things out,

yeah, I think he probably
schemed out the whole deal,
maybe, you know, to do this.

[Jeff] Oh, how fitting,
a lizard.

[indistinct chatter]

This is too easy
for the Lizard King joke.

Hey, little guy.

[Cohen] Yeah, there goes
Morrison up the steps.

[chuckling]

The Lizard King.

[woman] You know,
he used to call me Lizard.
You remember that?

[Jeff] Can you repeat that
for the record?
That's incredible.

- He used to call me Lizard.
- [Cohen] He did.

- You remember that, Ron?
- I do remember that, yeah.

We didn't used
to call this Bel Air.

[Jeff] I followed Ron Cohen
and Elizabeth Buckner

to the likely site
of Jim Morrison's
first-ever acid trip.

At the time, circa late 1964,
along with Ron and Elizabeth,

Jim's fellow UCLA classmate
and roommate Max Schwartz

was a third witness
to the event.

He was right about here
when Max was...

When he was pontificating
in his, you know, LSD trip.

And Max was over there,
and Max was sitting
with his arms like that.

You know, when I told you
what he said to Jim, you know.

[Buckner] What did he say?

"I bet if I punch you
in the face, you'll feel it."

And I was sitting over there.

At the time, I was laughing
because it was typical Max,
you know?

And Jim was all into,
you know...

Out there in the universe,
you know?

And then you came in over there,
and you came in the pool,

and you gave Max
a little bit of a bad time

because Max
was giving Jim a bad time.

You know, you got on Max's case.
You gave Max some attitude.

I just thought the whole thing
was kind of funny,

and I never forgot it
because Jim was on acid,
you know?

And I thought maybe
you had taken it too,
but I wasn't sure.

- I don't--
- You don't remember,
so probably you didn't.

Well, maybe I did
because I did it
several times with him.

I don't know if you did or not,

but I remember he for sure was
because he was talking about it,

that he had taken it,
and he was, you know...

And, you know, for Max,
it was like-- It was
such a dichotomy, you know?

Jim's all out in space,
you know, and Max is,
like, Hell's Kitchen, New York,

ready to punch him, you know?

You know? Like, "Oh, you think
you're so out there, you know?"

Let me show you
how out there you are.

- Let me show you
what this feels like.
- Pow, right in the kisser.

Yeah, we'll see
if that brings you
back to reality, you know?

And I remember I was laughing
and sitting there laughing,

and that's--
So this was it, up here.

And they had the wall here
and stuff like that, but...

- Was this here?
- Yeah, the wall was there.

These weren't as high,
you know, as they are now.

[Buckner] It's beautiful.

- [Cohen] You know, at the time,
Mary was Jim's girlfriend.
- [Buckner] Right.

[Buckner] The person
who became famous
was not the person I knew.

We were very good friends.

He was a very special person
in my life for about two years.

So Jim was on the streets,

and that's when he got in
with Ray
and the rest of the guys

and started doing some music,

and wanted my dad
to help finance
maybe making a demo or whatnot.

Dad wrote back saying
he didn't put Jim
through four years of college

to take up a music career
which he has no background in
or history in.

Dad didn't think
he had any talent.

And so there was
a falling out at that point.

Jim went his way,
and there wasn't
any more communication.

They got this gig
at the Whisky, and it was like
they were the Whisky.

They ended up being
one of the premier bands
at the Whisky.

I remember I was with a bunch
of people one night,

and they said,
"Let's all go down
and hear Jim."

[woman] When we found out
that they would be opening,
we went down there.

And we got a table,
and when the set was over,

uh, Ray Manzarek came up to me
and said, "What do you think?"

And I said, "I can't believe
the sound I just heard.
It was incredible."

A performance
that you wouldn't think
would come out of somebody

who was so quiet and pensive.

It was just magic.
That was magic,
and I'll remember it forever.

[woman 2] They had the best luck
I've ever heard of.

They didn't have to tour.

You know,
Jim would crash at my place.

They'd live around,
crash in the girls' houses,

and go around eating my food,
and then, you know, go to work,

go play at, you know,
had a job as a house band.

And boom,
they got a number one record,
and they got a million dollars.

I mean,
when does that ever happen?
When does that happen?

It never happens.
They were so lucky.

Not that they didn't deserve it,
not that they didn't have
all the talent in the world.

I just mean to say
that many bands,
even great bands,

the Rolling Stones, and bands,
you know, have gone

and worked, and worked
all these crazy clubs--

The Beatles, everybody,
have gone through a lot more
than The Doors did.

They got to be big stars
just instantly almost.

[Blackburn] I remember
I was driving down Sunset,

and I looked up,
and I saw the billboard
for the first album.

And I saw Jim Morrison's face
countless feet high.

And I went-- I almost,
like, cracked the car up.

[woman 3] Jim was just
astonished at their success.

It was almost like
a surreal experience for him.

My mother was horrified,
you know.

Because she didn't want people
to know that I was related

to this controversial person,
you know?

I mean, she grew up
in a different world.

And I think later
she came to change her view.
I think a lot of the family did.

I looked at the old tapes,
or the tapes of the early stuff,
you know,

and he's got
all this power on stage.

He wasn't like
any other rock star that I knew
because he was so theatrical.

Especially a singer who doesn't
even have an instrument
as a prop,

who is just standing out there
and also performing on the stage

while the band plays
these long bridges,

which they invented,
thank you very much.

And that's what he was
absolutely brilliant at.
He knew it.

He knew how to do it.

And another thing
that always really impressed me.

When I found out
they were The Doors,

I said, oh, that's based
on Aldous Huxley's book
The Doors of Perception.

He said, "No, Blake."

And I just went,
"Wow, he went to the source.
He went to the source."

And I was so impressed.

He did take his artistry
seriously in the poetry.

I came back
to the hotel one afternoon,

and he was so absorbed
in working on the poetry

that he wasn't even aware
of the fact
that I was in the room.

[Schiffman] You know,
Jim was a very smart guy,

and he knew that
he was putting the world on,

and he got a kick out of it
down deep.

[Jeff] So the Lizard King,
the Young Lion, Mr. Mojo Risin',

these were all...?

I think most of it was show.

They were playing
with incredible intensity,

and there were only three people
in the room, plus Pamela.
Only three customers.

And she said to him afterwards,

"Why did you play
with such intensity

when there were
only three people in the room?"

And he said,
"Because you never know

when your performance
is your last."

[Jeff] If Jim was planning
a leap from film to music,

he may have underestimated
the impact
his landing would have.

Sinister and psychedelic,

The Doors arrived
like new creatures
from another dimension.

If Elvis Presley was the groin
and Bob Dylan was the brain,
Jim Morrison was the grain.

But as a sensitive introvert,
he couldn't stand the fame,

and consequently
began acting out.

[woman] He was a mellow person.

God, he just wanted
to write poetry

and drink and have a good time.

But he did do crazy things,

like when we were
in the hotel room together

with another couple
getting ready
to go out for the evening,

and he decides
to jump out the window,
hang off the sill,

and I'm going,
"What the hell are you doing?
Get the hell back in this room."

[Norton] He was
a little dangerous.

There was
a kind of darkness about him,

what he talked about,
and what...

The poetry he wrote,
and the songs he sang.

One time, when we were sitting
at my house in the apartment,

he was sitting on the bed,
and he lit a match,
and threw it onto the blanket,

and started to burn a hole,
which I immediately went over
and put it out.

And he did that
not really to be mean.

He was just kind of teasing,
you know?

He wanted to see
what my reaction was.

He did hold a knife to me
at one point.

And I think it was
because I just had gotten
angry at him a little bit,

and I probably said something
that hurt his feelings, maybe,
or something, or something.

I don't even really remember.
It was so long ago.

I just remember the thing
that he got this knife.

I had this big, big knife.
I could show
you a knife like that.

You know, a big butcher knife
thing, you know?

And he held it near me.

And he just said,
you know, something.

It was just so stupid.

I mean, that really did happen.

And it scared me,
and it made me angry.

And actually, right then,
we got interrupted,

and I don't know
what would have ever happened.
I think nothing.

But I ceased
associating with him
at that time.

I realized,
I thought, you know what?

This is getting
a little too heavy here.

I don't want to be involved
with this guy anymore

because he's getting
a little too dark and weird,
and I get scared of that.

The part of him that was
maybe passive and beautiful

and wanted to be loved,

it's the part of him
that he didn't like about being
a sex object and a star.

He hated it,
but at the same time,
I think he felt guilty

because part of him liked it
and attracted it,
and those parts were warring.

Jim and I were only involved
in that sort of a relationship,

I believe it was
for one weekend.

And he was, you know,
very cuddly and warm,

and he, I think,
was so out of it
that it wasn't a real focus.

Um... you know, I was
totally infatuated with him.

He was sexy,
and gorgeous, and incredible.

And I certainly
would have wanted more.

But he, after that weekend,
we sort of--

And then after I bailed him
out of jail, we sort of...

He asked
if I would be his friend,
and I said, yeah, I would.

So, you know,
that was really how we ended.

He was being really romantic
and everything was nice.

And then...

Okay, it's in the book.
It's harder to say out loud.

He sort of basically raped me--

"Sort of basically."
Listen to me make it all nice.

- in the ass,
which I didn't wanna do.

And I totally said,
"No, I don't want to,"
and all that stuff,

which is the classic,
"Is this rape or not?"

And then he pinned
my arms back and down.

And that's why I think,
still, he was...

Not excusing him,
but I think he just went--
He just went psycho.

It's because it's like his eyes
were, like, this sweet blue,
and he was sort of tender.

And then they just--
He looked like
a possessed monster.

I mean, like,
black dilated eyes, just like...

And it was like--
It was beyond anger.
It was fury. It was rage.

It seems increasingly likely
that something happened

that he felt
very ambivalent about,
and that he had rage about.

[Jeff] While Jim was sabotaging
his personal life,
at the same time,

he rebelled
against his chosen profession.

On December 9th, 1967,
the day after
Jim's 24th birthday,

The Doors were scheduled
to play the New Haven Arena
in Connecticut.

The freight train
of Jim's personal unrest had
been speeding out of control,

but in New Haven,
the wheels fell off.

Jim was maced in the eye
by Arthur Baker,

a New Haven cop
who hadn't recognized him
backstage before the show,

while he and an 18-year-old
Southern Connecticut co-ed
named Sandy were making out.

New Haven marked Jim
not only as the first rock star

arrested on stage
mid-performance,

but it also found him
a victim of police brutality

at the hands
of the New Haven cops,

who arrested him
for breach of peace,
resisting arrest,

and indecent
or immoral exhibition.

In her book Wild Child,

Linda Ashcroft described
purple bruising on Jim's body
following New Haven.

The cops apparently were careful
to avoid hitting Jim's face,

and his mug shot
supports that theory.

Eventually,
all charges were dropped,
but the fuse had been lit.

Jim was well on his way
to becoming not just legendary,
but infamous,

and like something
akin to a serial rock star.

Pissed off and lashing out
after recent frustrations

surrounding the Ed Sullivan Show,

the Hilton ballroom concert,
and New Haven,

Morrison was ticking
like a time bomb,
and the fuse grew shorter still.

In Las Vegas on the night
of January 28th, 1968,

Jim was attacked
and clubbed on the head
at the Pussycat A Go-Go

by a security guard
named Paul Swoger

who thought Jim
was publicly smoking a joint.

Jim and his friend,
the author Robert Gover,
were arrested by Vegas police.

Like déjà vu
from the New Haven bust,

Morrison apparently was
a victim of police brutality.

His view of fame
had been permanently altered.

I think in the last thing,
he threatened if they went
through with it that he'd--

Next TV show or something,
he'd have a Buick on stage,

and beat it to death
with a sledgehammer.

[glass shattering]

[Jeff] The bomb finally went off
on March 1st, 1969,

when the doors performed
at the Dinner Key Auditorium
in Miami Beach, Florida.

Days after the concert,

Jim was gaslit with charges
for his alleged actions
that night,

including indecent exposure,
even though there was no proof,
photographic or otherwise.

[man] We have taken out
two warrants for Jim Morrison.

One of them
is for indecent exposure.

The other is for the use
of obscene languages

during his performance
at Dinner Key Saturday night.

[Morrison] Well, in the realm
of art and theater,

I do think that there should be
complete freedom
for the artist and performer.

I'm not personally
that convinced...

that nudity is always, you know,
a necessary part
of a, you know, a play or film,

but the artist should feel free
to use it if he feels like it.

They were gonna get him.

There was no question
that that was a...

A frame job,
as far as I was concerned.

They were out to get him,
and they did get him.

[Jeff] On September 20th, 1970,

the Miami jury found Jim guilty
of indecent exposure
and profanity,

both misdemeanors.

He was released
on a $5000 bond,
later upped to 50,000.

During trial, Densmore, Krieger,
and Manzarek denied that Jim
had exposed himself on stage.

You know, and that Miami thing
was the stupidest thing
I ever heard in my life.

I mean, for heaven's sake,
indecent exposure?
What the fuck was that?

[Jeff] They've never proven
if he whipped it out or not.

I know, and, you know,
and I've seen
the film on that too.

And you really can't...
I mean, it's like, what?

[Andy] When you get back to it,
even the Miami thing...

He never really did
anything evil.

He was terrified at the prospect
of going to prison.

He was terrified at the prospect
of being convicted.

He was scared to death
of what was gonna happen to him
once he was in Raiford.

Max said it would be okay.

But Jim didn't entirely believe
Max on that.

He'd been warned several times,
actually, that he would be
dead once he got to Raiford.

That would be it.

He said the inmates said
they could hardly wait for Jim.

That the rednecks
were ready to get him.

[Jeff] The Doors' end came
in New Orleans
on December 11th, 1970,

during Jim's final show
with the band.

He no longer could perform,
so in his frustration,

Jim smashed the mic stand
into the wooden stage
until it splintered,

then tossed the jagged,
broken stand into the crowd.

He rambled incoherently
and finally, exhausted,
sat down on the drum riser.

Jim was, in a word, done.

There was a meeting,
and it was before
that tour started.

And, you know, it had become
a business at that point.

There was no longer
the art of making music.
It was a business.

And Vince came
and told me that,
as it goes right now,

on this tour,
he acts up one time, that's it.
He's thrown out of the band.

He's kicked out of the band.
That's it.

So everything
was going good until...

New Orleans.

[Jeff] You're stating
with absolution that
Jim Morrison was kicked...

Kicked out of the band.

That was--
Vince and I talked about that.

Vince couldn't believe it.

So he was essentially
booted out of his own band.

Yeah.

Jim was never
meant to be [laughs]

in the limelight,
and all the fame.

That was just not something
he ever would've strived toward.

It was very hard on him
to have to live
that type of life.

[Cohen] It's so sad, you know,
that he's this unhappy,

you know, because everybody's
looking at him like he's

you know,
the great Jim Morrison.

And he's really
not happy at all.

You know, he's really sad,
and I was sad for him.

[Babitz] Jim wanted
to be a poet,
and so making this segue

of becoming a singer
and fronting a band, I think
was uncomfortable for him.

And, you know, he took to it
so naturally
once he started doing it,

you know, because he was,
you know, obviously incredible
as a front man.

But I think it was hard.

He was also very shy,
and it didn't come easy to him.

[woman] It struck me so hard
that between summer of '68
and March of '71...

which is the last time
I saw him...

in two years,
he just decomposed.

[Cohen] It ended up
where he wasn't him.

He was the act.

And I think that's
what really destroyed Jim.

Instead of finding himself
with The Doors,
I think he lost himself.

[Jeff] Jim had gotten
to the point of being,
in his own words,

a hollow idol.

With his mounting
legal pressures,

feeling constricted by fame,
and being out of a job,

Jim made the decision to flee
with Pam Courson to Paris

with the intention
to live there indefinitely.

I didn't think,
when I saw Jim leave in 1971
and go to France,

that he'd ever come back
to the band again.

Coming in
to the Village recorders
on his 27th birthday,

overweight, haggard,
coming in to just simply record
all his poetry.

Coming in there alone,
it's always struck me
that this was a guy

who knew
he had limited time left,

and this was his way
of putting down
his last will and testament.

This was gonna be
his legacy, you know?

He didn't want The Doors,
he didn't want
anyone else in there,

he just wanted his words
and his poetry there,
and to be remembered for that.

[Gareth]
The song "Hyacinth House"

is one of the last songs
he did on L.A. Woman.

And as you know,
one of his first songs
was "The End."

I mean, and all through
the song, it says, "I need
a brand new friend, the end."

And it also says in there,

"Why did you throw
the jack of hearts away?

It was the only card
that I had left to play."

Meaning, why did
you throw me out of the band?
That's all I had left.

I think Jim
was very disappointed.

He knew the problem.
He knew the problem
was his alcoholism

and having distractions,
the type of friends
that were hangers-on.

And he wanted to remedy that.

And I think he felt
that going to France
was the remedy.

He just simply said
he was gonna leave this country

and not come back
until that damn case
was finished, over,

and he was declared free,
and was not gonna go to Raiford.

[woman] We're saying goodbye
and everything else,

Jim makes me promise
that I'll call him in a couple
of days to say goodbye

you know, even more formally.

I had been working on a book,
and I'd been working on it
for quite some time.

And this is about a rock band,
and a very,
very successful band,

young performer
and everything else.

And I had actually started it
several years
before I'd even met Jim.

And it gets to the point
where they're literally
pulling themselves apart,

and their management
is pulling them apart,

and they're supposed
to do a rock opera,

and they're supposed
to be doing this and that,

and it's just everything
that the lead singer
does not wanna do.

It's against everything
of his nature.

And so finally,
he just can't take it anymore.

He just, you know--
And instead
of blowing his brains out

or doing something, whatever,

he, literally onstage,
stages an electrocution,
where it's going to be,

"Is he dead or did he survive?"

And you don't really know.

You kind of get the hints
that, no, he staged it,
and he's just gone on,

and he's just had it
with the whole band.

So just as I'm leaving,
he leans over
and whispers in my ear,

"If you don't finish the book,
I just might steal your ending."

[Stevenson]
He liked to test people.
He liked to see their reactions.

He liked to poke around,
you know, in your psyche.

And again, that's why,
you know, is the abuse real?
Is the death real?

Is anything real
about Jim Morrison?

Or is Jim Morrison
really somebody else
that we don't know?

Or do we only know
the person we think he is?

[Jeff] The final chapter
of No One Here Gets Out Alive

mentions a young woman
named Robyn Wurtele,

who was hired by Jim
as his personal assistant

during the last few weeks
of his life in Paris.

She's described as having been,
along with Pam, Siddons,
Ronay, and Agnès Varda,

one of the five
reported mourners

at Père Lachaise
on Wednesday,
July 7th, 1971.

Back in 1996,
I tried to interview Robyn

for a book I was researching
about the real Jim.

But because her full name
had been misspelled
in all Morrison biographies,

I couldn't locate her
in that early Internet age.

At the time, I was
under the impression
that Robyn Wurtele

was a pseudonym
or fictional construct.

Twenty years later,
during the summer of 2016,
I finally found Robyn.

She's one of the last people
to have seen Jim Morrison alive.

And she was one
of Jim's trusted inner circle

who likely helped him vanish
without a trace.

In any case,
I was about to find out.

What Robyn Wurtele told me
was mind-blowing,
to say the least,

and would reignite my quest
for the real truth.

[music]