Mulholland Drive, Wild at Heart, Permanent Midnight

Mulholland Drive (2001) is filled with sex, violence, decadence, dark humor and an almost unintelligible plot. David Lynch's films are magnets for perforated misfits who think that his films are celebrating their own decadence and snickering along with them at wholesome, traditional American values. However, Mulholland Drive, like all of Lynch’s movies, is a categorical indictment of the decadence of modern American society by a man who truly believes in traditional American values. David Lynch would love to live in Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet‘s Lumberton. In Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and The Straight Story, he celebrates the independence, resourcefulness, and Eagle-Scout virtues of ordinary, sincere, straight-arrow Americans. But he knows that their world is constantly threatened by evil forces. These evil forces work through the channels of culture and politics, but they are not merely cultural and political. They are spiritual.

The relationship between Sailor and Lula provides respite from the unpleasant life existing outside of it. It is harmonious, pure, and innocent, while the surrounding world is degraded, violent, and perverse. Wild at Heart breaks down the distinction between the merely private fantasy and the external world, allowing us to see how private fantasies work to shape the external world. Wild at Heart depicts a threat to this romance in the form of Bobby Ray Lemon and Marietta (who hired him to kill Sailor). Lynch concludes one of Wild at Heart’s sexual montages with a lyrical flourish that evokes the 1950s culture he adores: "It was a fantastic decade in a lot of ways... there was something in the air that is not there any more at all. It was such a great feeling, and not just because I was a kid. It was a really hopeful time, and things were going up instead of going down. You got the feeling you could do anything. The future was bright. Little did we know we were headed for a disastrous future."

In Mullholland Drive we see a beautiful blonde, blue-eyed woman, starry-eyed and grinning with joy as she arrives in Los Angeles. Her name is Betty, played by Naomi Watts. Betty has come to Hollywood to be an actress. She is a classic Lynch heroine: an earnest, wholesome, small-town girl from Deep River Ontario. She speaks in the G-rated cliches of old Hollywood. Later we discover that she became interested in acting after winning a jitterbug contest. She is next to an elderly, white-haired woman named Irene. They have met and struck up a friendship on the plane. Irene seems to be from the same wholesome mold. She and her elderly male travelling companion bid Betty goodbye and good luck. Then we see Irene and her friend in the back of a limousine, their faces insanely distorted with cynical, sniggering leers. The man has stereotypically Jewish features. (The actor’s name is Dan Birnbaum.) They are apparently enjoying a good laugh at the expense of this naive, corn-fed shiksa. Later they return as demonic apparitions.

David Lynch and Mark Frost’s first screenplay was based on 1950s icon Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn and Elvis were the Queen and King of Lynch’s fantasyland, and he would honor their spirits in his film version of Barry Gifford’s novel Wild at Heart. Lynch is said to own the rippling piece of red velvet on which Monroe posed for her career-launching nude calendar photo, the cloth emanating the ruddy glow that suffused millions of lustful dreams. The connection in the director’s mind between eroticism and velvet may have triggered the archetype of the crimson curtains draped throughout his work. Lynch and Frost wrote a script called Venus Descending (adapted from Anthony Summers’s biography Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe) which detailed the last months of Monroe’s life. Lynch and Frost consciously honored the spirit of this abandoned project in Twin Peaks, for in both works an outsider-investigator enters a community to delve into the mysterious final days of a beautiful dead blonde female icon (the sleuths of both scripts use miniature tape recorders in their quests). And Marilyn’s poignantly sad descent haunted Lynch for years: In 1990 he characterized her as “this movie actress who was falling down,” words that were like a blueprint for his protagonist Diane Selwyn in 2001’s Mulholland Drive.

I find Plato’s tripartite psychology to be helpful in understanding Wild at Heart. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that the human soul has to be distinguished into three distinct and irreducible faculties: desire - such necessities as food, shelter, sex; reason, which seeks truth; and spirit (thumos), which seeks honor. Plato associates reason with the head, desire with the belly, and thumos with the chest, which is where we feel pride and anger. Thumos is wildness of heart. Thumos is often translated as “spirit,” which makes sense if we understand it as “fighting spirit.” Thumos is also associated with self-sacrifice, since fighting over honor risks death. This is how we know that thumos is different from desire. Desire aims at self-preservation. But thumos is willing to risk self-preservation for honor. Socrates suggests that we can differentiate types of men based on which part of the soul wins out when different parts come into conflict. A man ruled by honor follows it, not reason and desire, when they come into conflict. Whenever men fight when fear or calculation would tell them to retreat, they are ruled by thumos. The thumotic man prefers death to dishonor. Thumos may urge one to fight in hopeless odds, but reason can say no. Desire may urge one to excess, but reason can impose measure.

Sailor Ripley has strong appetites for sex, drink, and cigarettes. But he is primarily ruled by thumos, which becomes apparent in the first scene. He and Lula are leaving a dance when Sailor is approached by a black man named Bob Ray Lemon, who begins verbally picking a fight with the intent to stab Sailor. When Sailor realizes what is going on, he’s clearly not worried about his own safety. He’s signaling that Lemon is crossing a line. When Lemon pulls out his switchblade, Sailor goes into full berserker mode, repeatedly slamming Lemon’s head into a rail and then into the floor, finally hurling his corpse against the wall, its brains spilling onto the floor. Sailor’s reaction clearly set aside all considerations of self-preservation or likely consequences. Reason and desire are totally overwhelmed by thumos.

After spending 22 months in jail for manslaughter, Sailor is released and reunited with Lula. Fearing the interference of Lula’s mother, though, the couple decide to break Sailor’s parole and head to California by way of New Orleans. One night as the couple are passing through Texas, they encounter an accident scene. Two young men are dead. Suddenly a badly injured girl staggers out of the darkness. Sailor and Lula both rush to her aid. They have to take her to the hospital. It is simply the right thing to do. But doing so ensures an encounter with the police, who might learn that Sailor has broken parole. Sailor sees this immediately, but he does not hesitate to help the girl. At this point, Sailor and Lula have less than $100. Practically every other character in this movie is a sociopath whose first instinct would be to rob the dead, but it does not occur to Sailor or Lula.

Another characteristic of thumotic individuals is the value they place on personal loyalty. Sailor speaks fondly of his public defender, who stood by him, but of course the most striking loyalty in the film is between Sailor and Lula. Sailor says that Lula “stood by me after I planted Bob Ray Lemon. A man can’t ask for more than that.” And the loyalty is mutual, for it is quite risky to resume his affair with Marietta Fortune’s daughter. Sailor’s trademark is his snakeskin jacket, which he says is for him “a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.” Lula says she has heard this line “about fifty-thousand times.” Sailor repeats the line in the very next scene, where he picks a fight with a guy who starts dancing with Lula and who challenges Sailor: “You look like a clown in that stupid jacket.” 

Neither Sailor nor Lula are particularly rational. Lula’s mind seems to move by association rather than reason. As Sailor puts it “the way your head works is God’s own private mystery.” When Lula refers to the world as “wild at heart and weird on top,” the words “on top” could just mean “in addition.” But they could also be in keeping with the physical association of wildness and the heart: wildness is to weirdness as the heart is to the head—“on top.” Thus Lula could be referring to her own proud and irrational character as well. Sailor himself is not too strong in the reasoning department, either, but he at least recognizes the necessity of making better decisions. At one point he declares, “Lula, I done a few things in my life I ain’t too proud of, but I’ll tell ya from now on I ain’t gonna do nothin’ for no good reason. All I know for sure is there’s more’n a few bad ideas runnin’ around loose out there.” 

At another point he promises Lula that he is not going to let things get any worse. Then he promptly lets himself get talked into an armed robbery, which costs him six years in prison and nearly got him killed. He is duly decked. But in the end, it is not reason that saves him but a vision of Glinda the Good from The Wizard of Oz, who tells him, “Lula loves you . . . If you are truly wild at heart, you’ll fight for your dreams . . . Don’t turn away from love, Sailor . . . Don’t turn away from love . . .” If the Sailor Ripleys of the world only had reason to guide them, they’d be pretty much doomed. They need their personal Guardian Angel.

One villain like Marietta is really enough for a film, but in Wild at Heart there is another villian. Half way through the film, Sailor and Lula bump into Willem Dafoe’s Bobby Peru in Big Tuna, Texas. Peru has been dispatched by Santos and Reindeer to kill Sailor. Bobby Peru is one of the most repellent characters ever brought to the screen. Beginning with the title sequence—an extreme closeup of a match flaring up, followed by a vast, swirling vortex of flames, to the sumptuous opening strains of Richard Strauss’ “Im Abendrot”—Wild at Heart is one of Lynch’s most sensuously beautiful movies: a screen as wide as America filled with strikingly composed images filmed in a way that imbues seedy bars, cheap hotels, and bleak land-and cityscapes with a voluptuous shell pink or sunset or neon luster.

Viewers draw the line in different spots, but many people who watches this movie thinks “This is too much”—too much weirdness, too much violence, too much blood—well before the final frames. Lynch described Wild at Heart as “a picture about finding love in hell,” but for most people there’s too much hell there to be redeemed by love. My answer, though, is that these are problems with our world, not with Wild at Heart's world. And because the movie dives so deep into darkness, the ending is all the more satisfying. I have watched Wild at Heart more than 20 times, but in my last viewing I realized that I had never before watched it without looking away in certain spots. So it took me decades to finally look at every frame of my favorite David Lynch film. I think of all Lynch’s works, Wild at Heart is still the closest to the paradigm of Lynchian perfection, and that should count for something.

Does Wild at Heart have a political message—or at least a political lesson it can teach us? Yes, and it is a conservative one. First, it is a very bleak portrayal of the desire-dominated world created by liberal individualist snakeskin salesmen: a world swarming with criminals and freaks and awash in substance abuse, sexual libertinism, and obnoxious music. It is a veritable Garden of Earthly Delights. We sympathize with Sailor and Lula because we see that they have decent sentiments, but they were so poorly nurtured and educated that they might have been better off raised by wolves. Sailor didn’t have parental guidance because both his parents died while he was a child of cigarette or alcohol related illness, and Lula was raised in the midst of a gang of criminals, one of whom raped her at the age of 13.

Furthermore, neither Sailor nor Lula is particularly good at reasoning, so their desires and their thumos keep getting them into trouble, and in the modern liberal wasteland trouble abounds. Lynch clearly believes that there is a moral order to the world. Sailor and Lula are just too thick to know it by reason. But the moral order can capture their imaginations, shape their sentiments, and set them off in the right direction in the guise of a narrative, namely The Wizard of Oz. In the wasteland, the only myths we have are movies. When the moral order clothes itself in myths, we have religion. Only magic can redeem these characters, and only Christian or sentimentalists would want to. Wild at Heart is grotesque and obscene. But religious art has long employed the grotesque and obscene. Just look at Bosch. Thus Wild at Heart’s ultimate message is: Liberalism is the road to hell, not paradise—and only a Good Witch can save us now. Source: www.unz.com

A new meta-analysis study conducted by Syracuse University Professor Stephanie Ortigue reveals falling in love can elicit not only the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, but also affects intellectual areas of the brain. Researchers also found falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second. Results from Ortigue's team revealed when a person falls in love, 12 areas of the brain work in tandem to release euphoria-inducing chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, and adrenaline. The love feeling also affects sophisticated cognitive functions, such as mental representation, metaphors and body image. Ortigue is an assistant professor of psychology and an adjunct assistant professor of neurology, both in The College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University. Other researchers also found blood levels of nerve growth factor, or NGF, also increased when falling in love. Those levels were significantly higher in couples who had just fallen in love. This molecule involved plays an important role in the social chemistry of humans, or the phenomenon 'love at first sight.' "These results confirm love has a scientific basis," says Ortigue. Ortigue and her team worked with a team from West Virginia University and a university hospital in Switzerland. The results of the study are published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Source: www.sciencedaily.com

David Lynch thought of hiring screenwriter Jerry Stahl for the second season of Twin Peaks, and Stahl wrote the episode 4 (2nd season) where Donna is doing detective work along with Agent Cooper, and the secret diary from Laura Palmer she comes across reveals many dark details about Laura's other life. Jerry Stahl also appears in a cameo in Inland Empire (2006) playing Devon Berk's Agent. "I did drugs because there was another world, and I wanted to live in it. Because I preferred this Other World to the one I happened to inhabit. Because I could exist in imaginary circumstances with greater ease that I could in real ones", Jerry Stahl writes in his memoir Permanent Midnight (1995). Later, another reflection, "I have done everything, from slashing my wrists to shooting heroin, to stay the good little boy. Because, I see now, on some cringing level, that's all being a junkie was. Forget being cool, forget being underground. It was a way of staying ashamed." His book works as a Ebbinghaus cycle of learning & forgetting memory curve study. Living inside Hollywood's Falstaffian underbelly, the possibility of making a decent life evaporated for Stahl overnight. In Permanent Midnight (1998) directed by David Veloz (one of the screenwriters of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers), Ben Stiller plays the emotionally exhausted Stahl, costarring Maria Bello as an ex-addict who becomes his lover and confidante.

In the novel, Stahl meets Kitty in a rehab centre in Arizona (Progress Valley), where he's bound to pass the 90 days clean program, although he's busy writing unreadable stories at the library stacks and he's expelled of the center when he stops following the rules after two months. In the movie, Jerry and Kitty meet in a more cinematic style while he's working at McDonalds and she asks him for some matches. In the motel, he'll recount his rise and fail story to Kitty as response to her incredulity. In the book, Kitty appears more like a saviour figure, and their relationship is more romantic and tormentous ("I was so in love that it made my heart hurt", "I didn't realize how much I wanted to die until the first time I made love to Kitty. Nor how much I wanted to live". Stahl describes his heroine Kitty as wearing a long white dress and a straw hat with pink ribbons, a renewed femme fatale type.

In David Veloz's film this romantic encounter is instead more of a post-modern love story in development, in which Maria Bello plays Kitty as Stahl's witty counterpart ("You're too darn sad-looking to just be another retard in a pink visor... I get it. You're the angsty, arty, Hemingway type who sold out to Hollywood, hit the needle and ended up in rehab”) to an emotionally distant yet highly ironic Stahl: "Trust me, on smack I was a real stud". Eventually, Jerry Stahl accepts a dark truth about his life: "What is heroin, really, but every junkie's teddy bear? Shooting dope is all about getting warm and fuzzy. Heroin may kill you, but it'll never break your heart, although you're just generating more pain, more penance for the one sin you couldn't help commit. The sin of being born". Source: blogcritics.org

Emotion and Gender, Jim Morrison

Emotion and Gender Typicality Cue Sexual Orientation Differently in Women and Men: Heterosexual individuals tend to look and act more typical for their gender compared to gay and lesbian individuals, and people use this information to infer sexual orientation. Consistent with stereotypes associating happy expressions with femininity, previous work found that gay men displayed more happiness than straight men—a difference that perceivers used, independent of gender typicality, to judge sexual orientation. Here, we extended this to judgments of women’s sexual orientation. Like the gender-inversion stereotypes applied to men, participants perceived women’s faces manipulated to look angry as more likely to be lesbians; however, emotional expressions largely did not distinguish the faces of actual lesbian and straight women. Compared to men’s faces, women’s faces varied less in their emotional expression (appearing invariably positive) but varied more in gender typicality. These differences align with gender role expectations requiring the expression of positive emotion by women and prohibiting the expression of femininity by men. More important, greater variance within gender typicality and emotion facilitates their respective utility for distinguishing sexual orientation from facial appearance. These findings thus provide the first evidence for contrasting cues to women’s and men’s sexual orientation and suggest that gender norms may uniquely shape how men and women reveal their sexual orientation. Men are not meant to express as much emotion as women (who are stereotyped as hyperemotional), but are expected to express more dominant emotions, such as anger, to a greater extent than women. Gender inversion theory proposes that gay men and lesbian women have the minds of the opposite sex, thereby explaining their same-sex attraction (Katz, 2007). Specifically, gay men are expected to be like straight women, and lesbian women like straight men, in a plurality of their thoughts and behaviors that includes their emotional expressions (Geiger, Harwood, & Hummert, 2006; Tskhay & Rule, 2015). Although gender inversion is an exaggerated stereotype, particularly as the association between sexual orientation and gender typicality is not always straightforward, it does bear a kernel of truth. Future research could expand to examine how gender typicality and emotion cue men’s and women’s sexual orientation across cultures. Such efforts might also consider target ethnicity, given featural overlaps with emotional expressions (Zebrowitz, 2010) and as sexual dimorphism also varies across ethnic groups (Hopder, Finklea, Winkielman, & Huber, 2014). Source: link.springer.com

Janet Erwin: Jim Morrison was a wonder of man, the best and most considerate lover I have ever had. He was straight and in my opinion, if he insinuated anything different it was indeed to get a reaction from others, to push people's buttons. He was a prankster. Jim had 20 paternity suits filed against him throughout his career. He told me he was being sued by women he'd never even heard of, let alone had sex with, and when I asked him how he felt about gays--after witnessing his intense discomfort at being hit on by a gay man at a bar--he said he didn't mind "as long as they don't try to compromise me." He also said he couldn't imagine "how men could do that to each other." Stephen Davis dared to paint an imaginary scenario featuring the owner of a local coffe shop in Florida, Tom Reese, whose denial of an affair didn't stop Davis' twisted fantasies. The problem is, Tom Reese mentioned Jim Morrison frequently in the talks he gave to his coffeeshop audiences--adding in every instance that there had never been anything of a sexual nature between them--and how he detested those rumors. 

Patricia Butler: My interview with Jeff Moorehouse led me to the conclusion Jim Morrison was straight, nor bisexual. I talked with the Morrisons and their attorneys, Brian Manion and Louis Reisman. Despite the offensive nature of some of the material with which I approached them, the Morrisons were unfailingly gracious and timely in their responses. I had more problems with the Coursons, who didn't want my book about Pamela published. I interviewed Pamela Courson's psychiatrist who treated her during 1967-1974 (Dr. Paul H. Ackerman). Also I talked at length with Eve Babitz, Mirandi Babitz, Pamela Des Barres, Paul Ferrara, Brian Gates, Bob Greene, Babe Hill, Jac Holzman, Jerry Hopkins, Randall Johnson, January Jensen, Christopher Jones, Robby Krieger, Rich Linnell, Frank Lisciandro, Kathy Lisciandro, Ray and Dorothy Manzarek, Anne Moore, Jeff Morehouse, Herve Mueller, Julia Negron, Barbara Stewart Noble, Randy Ralston, Thomas Reese, Paul Rothchild, Raeanne Rubenstein, Ellen Sander, Bill Siddons, Cheri Siddons, Danny Sugerman, Cathy Weldy, Officer Darryl Williams, and Gilles Yepremian, among other insiders from The Doors' circuit. Dr. Michael W. Kaufman, the pathologist who analyzed Pamela's autopsy report, wrote: "Her weight, state of nutrition, and state of hydration would indicate that she was living a normal existence. Of significance was that examination of the endometrium and that the ovaries demonstrated evidence of recent ovulation. This evidence of ongoing reproductive functioning is frequently absent in drug abusers. The liver, likewise, did not show changes suggestive of alcohol abuse on either a chronic or acute basis. The lungs did not demonstrate changes which would be expected in chronic intravenous drug abusers." John Mandell’s statement to the police that Pamela had been using heroin for “approximately one year” seems to corroborate January Jensen’s and Ellen Sander’s observations that Pamela was not using heroin during the year she lived in Sausalito, whis is also confirmed by Dr. Kaufman’s report. “Yes, I can substantiate that,” Pamela's psychiatrist Dr. Ackerman says in response to this assessment of Kaufman’s report. “She did use heroin, but it was not a heavy habit. She didn’t start frequent use of heroin until after Jim Morrison died. And it wasn’t very heavy use, just enough to be worrisome.” 

Virginia Flagg: Jim Morrison was an outlaw in a lawless place. He had the guts to be what everyone won't face they are.... and he took it to the limit, looked at it with brazen and fearless wonder and it all broke his heart. He chose Pamela because she inspired his best instincts and she was someone who remembered him who he really was. Their relationship was wild, strange and romantic, a very tragic romance.

Babe Hill says, “Jim had not only one-night stands, but other girl friends, certain women he was fond of if Pam wasn’t around or if they were fighting. Whatever was convenient, a place to crash, a soft shoulder.” Babe Hill had asked Jim in Miami if he had handfasted Patricia Kennealy, and Jim conceded it was possible, saying, “I don’t know what I did! I was drunk. Maybe I did, but there was no emotional involvement with her.” Jim told Babe he was going to have to confront Kennealy. Babe Hill, “Jim’s attitude was, 'I was indiscreet in my past, and now I have to go pay for it,' because he was such a gentleman. He would never just tell any woman just to fuck off. So, whatever it was, he had to see her and confront it.”

Patricia Butler: Danny Sugerman's whole focus was always to further the Doors' myth as concocted by him and Ray Manzarek. I told Danny once, when I was having trouble juggling everyone's conflicting interests in my book, that it was hard to make everyone happy. He said that when he was preparing NOHGOA, he just had to choose who to be loyal to. And Danny chose Ray Manzarek. It is something to think about. However, I decided to be loyal to Jim and Pam, and it made all the difference. In fact, Danny pointed some of the things out to me that were not true in NOHGOA before I could bring them up, and he asked me to leave some things out of my book because he didn't want these stories to continue. Source: groups.alt.music

Dissociative Identity Disorder, Jim Morrison

As many as 75,000 Americans could die because of drug or alcohol misuse and suicide as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to an analysis conducted by the national public health group Well Being Trust. The group is sounding the alarm that the growing unemployment crisis, economic downturns and stress caused by isolation and lack of a definitive end date for the pandemic could significantly increase so-called "deaths of despair" unless local, state and federal authorities take action. "Unless we get comprehensive federal, state, and local resources behind improving access to high quality mental health treatments and community supports, I worry we're likely to see things get far worse when it comes to substance misuse and suicide," Well Being Trust's chief strategy officer Dr. Benjamin F. Miller told CNN. Miller emphasized the data is just a projection, and that actions taken could change the number of deaths. "We can change the numbers -- the deaths have not happened yet. However, it is on us to take action now," Miller says. "Unemployment during the Great Recession was associated with an increase in suicide deaths and drug overdose deaths," according to the Well Being Trust. For instance, deaths from both suicide and drug overdoses rose along with unemployment during the 2008 recession. Unemployment went from 4.6% in 2007 to a peak of 10% in October 2009 and declined steadily reaching 3.5% in early 2010, according to the group. Changes also must be made to medical and mental health care to ensure that those who need care can get it, the group says. That includes relaxing some privacy standards surrounding technology to improvise care options. "This screams for an opportunity to examine what wasn't working about mental health delivery prior to COVID and examine new strategies to create a new and more integrated approach to mental health post-COVID," Miller says. Earlier this week Vermont, which has been plagued by overdoses, reported that opioid deaths decreased for the first time since 2014. "The state saw a 58% decline in deaths attributed to opioid misuse between 2018 and 2019," Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine said. There were also fewer deaths involving fentanyl, but the percentage of opioid-related fatalities involving cocaine continues to increase, Levine said. "We've responded to the opioid crisis in this country as if it was only about opioids when, in reality, it's driven by deeper issues associated with mental health, addiction, pain and suffering," Miller says. "Virtual community may not be enough to hold off the impact of isolation and loneliness. And finally, uncertainty. The stress of uncertainty has a serious impact on the emergence and worsening of mental illness," the group said. Source: edition.cnn.com

Patricia Butler: At some point Patricia Kennealy wrote a serie of exaggerations about Pam Courson and her heroin addiction, citing Alain Ronay as her source. I called Alain and asked him if he had actually told her these things and he started crying and denying his allegations. Ronay also said that the article that was published in Paris-Match magazine was very inaccurate and that everything he'd said had been skewed. In the interviews Agnes Varda and Alain Ronay gave to Paris-Match magazine in 1991, both say that when they arrived, they went up to the second floor apartment where Jim and Pam lived. There is a contradiction in the Ronay and Varda stories at this point. Varda remembers clearly that when they arrived, Jim was still in the tub, surrounded by members of the fire brigade. On the other hand, Ronay says that Jim was already on the bed and that he never saw the body. Varda's accurate description of the death scene in the bathroom gives credence to her story over Ronay's. When Albert Goldman started his first draft, he simply wrote down the same old clichés about Morrison. 

The Doors Companion (1997) by John Rocco, included Albert Goldman's article "The End" which launched the most sleazy speculations about Jim Morrison's last hours in Paris. Albert Goldman, who appointed himself as my mentor, was not exactly known for his accuracy in reporting. In fact, the reason some people wouldn't talk to him (including Alain Ronay) about Morrison was because he had such an incredible reputation for yellow journalism. Goldman made no bones about the fact that he wasn't interested in what was true, just what seemed most provocative. Actually, I thanked Albert Goldman on my book credits along with my other sources, but not on a professional basis. My exact words were, "'To Uncle Albert Goldman, who told me I was too stupid to live to be 30." Albert Goldman was a dear man to me personally, but professionally he was a shark.

I thought Goldman was a nice guy to me personally, but I didn't trust him professionally and wouldn't want to collaborate with him. It would be good for people to consider the possible agenda of an author. My book is told almost entirely through the words of the people who were actually there, and all sides I knew are presented. Since I wasn't there and I don't have a personal stake in the story, I had no reason to lie or mislead the reader. If you interview enough people you start to get a sense of when people are being straight with you and when they are lying. It's not that difficult to tell when folks have their own agenda to pursue (i.e., those who have nothing to gain from lying are more believable than those who do). Also, unless all these people know each other and get together to coordinate their stories, pretty soon you can see if one or two stories seem oddly out of line with the rest and that's a red flag. Babe Hill did initially get angry with me when I told him I'd be writing about Jim's child abuse allegations but he later apologized for his reaction and encouraged me to write honestly about what I'd found in the manuscript of Max Fink, and just be sure I presented all sides and opinions (including the Morrisons), which I feel I did. Also I discovered Danny Sugerman was never romantically or sexually involved with Pamela. The problem with Sugerman wasn't in the details, but rather with the fact that entire passages were made up out of whole cloth. Many insiders had quite a lot to gain from lying ($$$), and Sugerman most of all. It is, after all, the nonsense that Danny added to NOHGOA that made it a bestseller. Jerry Hopkins tried for years to sell his book. Then he teamed up with Danny, who did a lot of editing on it, adding a lot of very dramatic and also very false information, and it's then when the book got sold. 

I talked to Mirandi Babitz quite a length about the rumors of Pamela working as a call girl on Melrose Avenue. When we traced her basis for saying such defamatory things, she realized that she never knew any of this firsthand, and she got it all from shady gossip from wannabes and rivals around the rock scene--the same gossip that had once painted Morrison turning tricks in Florida when the most probable situation was Morrison earning some extra dollars by dealing acid tabs to college students--. Ms. Babitz was repeating essentially third-hand speculation without basis in fact. My theory is Mirandi was jealous by proxy (her sister Eve Babitz had unrequited designs on Jim Morrison). Pamela actually called Eve Babitz "just a groupie" to her face and that apparently struck a nerve. Pamela was erratic, mentally unstable, flirtatious, but she was never a "semi-pro". That's patently nonsense since Morrison was very generous with Pam financially. By late 1970, Patricia Kennealy was stalking Jim Morrison; that's precisely how he saw it. Jim tried to pacify Kennealy to protect Pamela. Kennealy was maniacally jealous of Pamela and didn't understand her relationship with Jim. Her disturbing obsession with Pamela could even be confounded with lesbian attraction.

Jerry Hopkins: "Patricia Butler has worked six years on her book, and because she's turned up so much new material, my ego insists that the extra time she spent on research is why. I spent two years researching and writing No One Here Gets Out Alive; it was finding a publisher that took forever. Patricia, on the other hand, continued plugging away on this project nights and weekends. She slowly developed relationships on the phone and got her sources to tell stories they never told me, and then, adding insult to injury, uncovered some secrets Danny Sugerman and I never knew. Patricia Butler's exploration of Jim Morrison and Pam Courson's love story--and her surprising retelling of the Jim Morrison history-- should be the final word on the matter."

-Frank Lisciandro: Do you think Pamela was material-minded?

-Babe Hill: She wasn’t material-minded; that’s what Jim loved about her. She realized the beauty of his soul and what he was trying to do. She didn’t care about the material aspect of any of the stuff. That was her whole thing about being against the other Doors, and the office, and everything else. It didn’t have to do with that they weren’t making any money; it was just that they were wasting his creativity. I figure she had a very supportive influence on his poetry and never missed a chance to rag on him when he went off the track.

RiderontheStorm69: Severe depression was very obvious and it seems like it was something Jim Morrison struggled with his entire life. I think Jim Morrison might have suffered from DID. Thinking about it always makes me pause about  a few things that Jim wrote: "He felt he had to drink to silence the voices," the seeming separate identities presented in the Hitchhiker screenplay, and in the poem "The Changeling." On the flipside of that though, he could have been drinking as false courage because he was shy; His separate identities in the Hitchhiker screenplay perhaps could be archetypes, because archetypes interested him. I was just reading about DID and the article said that people who suffer from this disorder sometimes experience amnesia. And when a person suffers from the resultant amnesia, they usually try to make up a "story" for it afterwards. Jim's life can be seen as a flight from his past and from himself. The hitchhiker's journey being a metaphor for this. Sometimes, under great duress, people literally forget who they are and just start traveling. In psychiatric parlance this is called a fugue state. Morrison was definitely interested in forgetting; "Learn to forget", "Forget the world, forget the people", "Can we resolve the past?" His story is an internal drama. The family represents past memories Jim must destroy, or repress, at all costs. But as they are his past memories, the family, like the hitchhiker, is an aspect of Jim Morrison. So martydom or self destruction reappears. I tend to wonder if the film HWY was based on this premise, the two lead characters appearing two be adversaries, but actually representing aspects of one person, the life urge and the death urge.

I think the DSM IV has a category for those who consider that their changed consciousness and perception is the result of "shamanistic possession". It's called Dissociative Disorder. The difference between it and Dissociative Identity Disorder is that the person with DID experiences pronounced differences in memory, perception, consciousness, and what we call "personality" with each different part. There are typical "personalites" for DID--the angry protector, who remembers the abuse and acts out abuse on others; the child, who has less access to memories and skills; the member of the opposite gender; the older, wise counselor or nurturing figure; the provoker, or "clown." If Jim was dissociative, his memory of such an event would have been intermittent. If he had Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), he'd only remember it when he was in a particular mood. Specifically, an extremely angry mood. But the incident could still affect him on subconscious levels. Those who have DID tend to have survived abuse from a very early age. Just like in the song "Five to One" Jim alludes, "When the morning wakens/Then may I arise/Pure and fresh and sinless/" This leads me to an aside: The experience of having DID is a broken, shattered state of consciousness. The person experiences "coming to" or "waking up", or "coming up" abruptly, in unfamiliar surroundings, without context, sometimes without recognizing friends or even relatives. The person becomes very adept at covering up memory gaps by joking, making nonsense statements to throw the "strangers" off track, and outright bluffing--interpreted by others as lies--to fill in missing material. Source: groups.alt.music

The Wonderful World of Walt Disney, The Beatles

The Beatles' 12th and final album -- the making of which is the subject of Peter Jackson's forthcoming documentary, titled Get Back -- is as suited for the unsettling moment we found ourselves in now as it was for the transition from 1969 to a new decade. Iger raved that the Get Back film (distributed by Disney) would revisit the creation of Let It Be by giving audiences a "front-row seat to the inner workings of these genius creators at a seminal moment in music history, with spectacularly restored footage that looks like it was shot yesterday." When you ask Beatles fans today to name a favorite song from the group, chances are you're going to hear at least one title from Let It Be. The reason why is the same reason that, when McCartney resumes his touring schedule post-coronavirus, his concert setlist will almost certainly include the same four songs from the Let It Be album that have been staples of his live show for years now. Because Let It Be, for whatever its flaws, tidily wraps up the Beatles' legacy in one 12-song capsule. The Walt Disney Studios will release Peter Jackson's documentary "Get Back" in theaters nationwide on September 4, 2020. Source: www.popmatters.com

ABC is bringing back “The Wonderful World of Disney” so you can watch some of your favorite Disney movies at home this summer. The network announced Thursday it will air “Moana,” “Thor: The Dark World,” “Up” and “Big Hero 6” over four consecutive Wednesdays starting May 20. These titles are currently available to stream on Disney+. Here are the summer movie lineups for ABC and CBS; all show times are Pacific. Kicking off “The Wonderful World of Disney” on Wednesday, May 20 will be Moana, the animated adventure about a spirited teen who sets sail on a daring mission to fulfill her ancestors’ unfinished quest. On June 3, things are looking Up with the Academy Award-winning animated feature about a retired balloon salesman. Then on June 10, Big Hero 6 tells the animated tale of Baymax, a lovable personal companion robot who forms a special bond with robotics prodigy Hiro Hamada. Source: www.latimes.com

Snow White had had a salutary effect on Walt’s immediate family too. His years of obsession with the film, the days and nights and weekends spent at the studio, had taken their toll on his relationship with Lillian, who had never been especially interested in Walt’s work to begin with and who once called herself her husband’s “severest critic” and “I can’t stand the sight of dwarfs.” Lillian certainly seemed to resent her husband’s preoccupation with work and the avalanche of attention he received, but she was no silent, long-suffering helpmate. Lillian would erupt. Diane remembered coming down for breakfast one morning and seeing a large brown stain on the wall. She later learned that her mother had hurled a cup of coffee at Walt. “Mother was a well contained, poised person who never lost her temper with us children,” Diane would say, “but also she would not let herself be put upon.” Things seemed to improve with Lillian after she suffered her third miscarriage and the couple, at Walt’s instigation, decided to adopt. On December 31, 1936, just as Snow White was reaching its most manic stage, Walt and Lillian received their new six-week-old daughter, Sharon Mae, though a bout of pneumonia sent her back to the hospital for a month’s recuperation. Both parents were devoted to her. They made no distinction between her and Diane, and Walt would always bristle at any mention of her being adopted.

Lillian had never been one to accept Walt’s decisions meekly or his status unquestioningly, and she admitted that he was always telling people “how henpecked he is.” “Heavens, Mother had quarrels with him!” Diane recalled. “Good healthy ones. Nothing was ever under the surface in our family. If there were any irritations felt, there was an explosion.” And Lillian was usually the one to explode. She was unimpressed by him. Speaking of a negative magazine profile of himself, Walt told Hedda Hopper that Lillian didn’t care what reporters said about him. “In fact, she usually agrees with anybody who writes things like that,” he continued. “I keep reporters away from her. She’d give them the lowdown.” When Harry Tytle’s wife mentioned to Lillian that Walt was a genius, she cracked, “But how would you like being married to one?” “She was sort of unconscious, oblivious,” Diane said. “She moved in her own circle of beauty parlor appointments, reducing exercises, dressmaker appointments, and occasional shopping sprees…. Always had to redecorate the corner of some room. That was her life.” Walt called her “Madam Queen.” -Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (2006) by Neal Gabler

Labile emotions, Jim Morrison

Psychiatrist Oleguer Plana-Ripoll knew that many individuals have multiple conditions — anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He wanted to know how common it was to have more than one diagnosis, so he got his hands on a database containing the medical details of around 5.9 million Danish citizens. He was taken aback by what he found. Every single mental disorder predisposed the patient to every other mental disorder — no matter how distinct the symptoms. “We knew that comorbidity was important, but we didn’t expect to find associations for all pairs,” says Plana-Ripoll, who is based at Aarhus University in Denmark. The study tackles a fundamental question that has bothered researchers for more than a century. What are the roots of mental illness?Scientists have found evidence that many of the same genes underlie seemingly distinct disorders, such as schizophrenia and autism, and that changes in the brain’s decision-making systems could be involved in many conditions. Researchers are also drastically rethinking theories of how our brains go wrong. Perhaps there are several dimensions of mental illness — so, depending on how a person scores on each dimension, they might be more prone to some disorders than to others. The most immediate challenge is working out how to diagnose people. Since the 1950s, psychiatrists have used an exhaustive volume called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, currently in its fifth edition. It lists all the recognized disorders, from autism and obsessive–compulsive disorder to depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. Each is defined by symptoms. The inherent assumption is that each disorder is distinct, and arises for different reasons. However, even before the DSM-5 was published in 2013, many researchers argued that this approach was flawed. 

Few patients fit into each neat set of criteria. Instead, people often have a mix of symptoms from different disorders. Even if someone has a fairly clear diagnosis of depression, they often have symptoms of another disorder such as anxiety. “If you have one disorder, you’re much more likely to have another,” says Ted Satterthwaite, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Psychiatrists have tried to solve this by splitting disorders into ever-finer subtypes. “If you look at the way the DSM has evolved over time, the book gets thicker and thicker,” says Satterthwaite. But the problem persists — the subtypes are still a poor reflection of the clusters of symptoms that many patients have. As a result, the world’s largest funder of mental-health science, the US National Institute of Mental Health, changed the way it funded research. Beginning in 2011, it began demanding more studies of the biological basis of disorders, instead of their symptoms, under a programme called the Research Domain Criteria. In 2019, the World Health Assembly endorsed the latest International Classification of Diseases (called ICD-11), in which some psychopathologies were newly broken down using dimensional symptoms rather than categories. The challenge for the dimensionality hypothesis is obvious: how many dimensions are there, and what are they? Satterthwaite calls this “a very large problem”. Ultimately, a future version of the DSM could have chapters devoted to each dimension. A 2009 study found that thousands of gene variants were risk factors for schizophrenia. Many were also associated with bipolar disorder, suggesting that some genes contribute to both disorders.

One study of six psychopathologies found that the brain’s grey matter shrank in three regions involved in processing emotions: the dorsal anterior cingulate, right insula and left insula. But subsequent studies by Adrienne Romer, a clinical psychologist now at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, identified a totally different trio of regions with roles that include the pons, cerebellum and part of the cortex. One key to making sense of this might be to focus on the brain’s executive function: the ability to regulate behaviour by planning, paying attention and resisting temptation, which relies on many brain regions. Romer and Satterthwaite have independently found disruptions in executive function in a range of psychopathologies — the suspicion being that these disruptions could underlie the p factor. Suicide is one of the most observed symptoms in DID and suicide rates reported as 70 - 72% in DID and presence of a dissociative disorder was the strongest predictor of a suicidal behavior. DID is highly associated with consequent risk of recurrent suicidal behavior. Self harm, labile emotion, and impulsivity suggest the diagnosis of comorbid borderline personality disorder. Evidences show that Borderline personality disorder (BPD) and DD have often been reported to occur comorbidly. BPD diagnosed in 30% to 70% of DID patients. “I think it’s a time for much more empirical research rather than grand theorization,” says Neale. At the genetic level at least, he says, there are many disorders, such as PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder, that remain poorly understood. Source: www.nature.com

Alan R. Graham: I believe Jim Morrison was descending deep into depression and alcoholic schizophrenia. Frustrated by the mediocrity of his fans, Morrison distanced himself from thems. In his last interview before he left for Paris, Jim had told a reporter, “One morning, I woke up and was surrounded by all of these spirits.” 

Jeff Finn: Subtlety, in the form of fine-detail gray-scale shading, is in order if we are to fully empathize with Jim Morrison's wounded core. When You're Strange briefly broaches the reality of its title: feeling like a stranger, or an outcast. It's been noted elsewhere that Jim Morrison knew that pain, which hit at a young age, so it begs the question: why didn't DiCillo wade further into that particular mire, in order to extract the actual motivations that drove a volatile artist to raging alcoholism, depression, and early burnout, all in a pre-rehab world? It's convenient to now view Jim Morrison merely as a popular icon/cultural oddity and forget that, in the end, the psychic pain that came with feeling like an outsider was what ultimately secured his psychedelic place in the rock pantheon. When I met with Alain Ronay, whom Oliver Stone had hired as a consultant for his Doors film, he told me he marched up to Stone, and asked him why he wasn't telling the truth about Jim. According to Ronay, Stone smiled and said, "Because the truth doesn't sell."

Patricia Butler: I had no opinions formed about Jim and Pamela when I started out my research. I didn't have many opinions formed. That's why it was easier for me to dismiss the oft-repeated theories when actual facts proved those theories to be wrong. I talked to Dr. Arnold Derwin, The Doors' occasional physician. At the time Jim left for Paris, Derwin hadn't seen him professionally for over a year. In truth, Jim was in bad health when he left the States. Ray Manzarek remarked on his horrible cough. Jim filled a prescription for asthma medication just before he left the States. There is difference between what people believe and what they say in public. I know from personal experience that Ray Manzarek, for instance, said many things in public which, in private conversation, he'd laugh about. Manzarek actually confirmed that Jim's asthma was giving him real problems before he left the States. Danny Sugerman, too, would write things for public consumption because it was good for the Doors's mystique, not because he believed those things to be true.  Despite later revisionist claims, Sugerman was not even friendly with Jim at the time. So asking what certain people believe is not the same as asking what what they'll say "on the record." When I spoke to Alain Ronay regarding that interview he did for that Italian magazine, his exact words to me -- and I remember them very well, because he actually cried -- "How could you believe I would say such terrible things about Jim and Pam? I loved them both so much." He swore to me that he had been grossly misquoted and his statements completely misrepresented. Now I don't know whether that was true or not. I can easily see Alain saying sensational things in order to sell a big story to a magazine, and then crying over it when he got called on the carpet for it. I also talked with the Morrisons, who confirmed Jim suffered from asthma since he was a child. Until the 1990s, Jim's parents never visited his tomb in Paris and later Pamela's sanctuary. I was really angry with Stephen Davis when he called me. When he did tell me what he was planning for his book, I found it completely disgusting, not to mention entirely irresponsible. But Davis didn't care. What do you think sells more books -- the truth or the scandal? I recommend Frank Lisciandro's book as one of the few reliable books. Frank told me Paul Ferrara had refused to be interviewed for Friends Gathered Together because Ferrara 'didn't have a good recall of Morrison.' More than that, I think, Morrison had not a good recall of Ferrara, given his flirtation with Pamela.

Virginia Flagg: I did not deal with Jim in public but there are witnesses of our friendship, albeit a bit perplexed that I visited his house. He goofed on never explaining my privileges or purpose in his life. Other than that, our relationship was very reclusive. I spent a lot of time at his house in Laurel Canyon, and Pam knew it. Pam came to trust me, and I had lovely times with her as well. Pam was bright, beautiful, charming, and funny. I never went to a Doors concert but sometimes I hung out with Jim in the afternoon during setup, or after a concert. Once I gave him acid tied to a flower before the Hollywood Bowl concert, as I lived up the hill, and he asked me to come by--but there was a form of wisdom that I gained early on, by not getting in the line that would assign me to groupiedom and would have made lose my objectivity. I only slept with Jim once. Believe me, if you had ever slept with him, you would not forget it--it was an infectious state you found yourself. Pamela was Jim's true love, she was his little girl, and the woman he chose. In that era the artistic scene in Los Angeles was a relatively small community, compared with what it birthed later. About the influence of Warhol/Nico on Jim, I don't think the Factory's scene mixed that well, being Jim straight. My grandfather was James Montgomery Flagg who collaborated in the creation of the "I Want You" poster when FDR asked for a more sobering image for Uncle Sam. John Barrymore and my grandfather were bohemian friends. In the 60s I worked serving drinks in the booths of "The Brave New World" (the coolest underground club, even moreso than Bido Lito's). One night, amidst Arthur Lee and Frank Zappa and the Mothers--suddenly sauntered a rebel dressed in nondescript jeans and a tattered shirt, and I was struck by the sheer weight of his authority onstage. My heart was swollen, it was truly stupefying. Jim was way ahead of the times in his consciousness of what was coming. I was an acquaintance of Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison though Jim referred to me as a friend. We exchanged poetry and he liked my poems. I never idolized Jim Morrison. He was a man of considerable inner strength and personal integrity but his faults were many, with a tendency to self-pity and evasiveness, and I dealt with those faults as well as I could. Source: groups.alt.music

"If you watch the footage of Jim speaking with Pastor Fred Stegmeyer you see more of the real Jim. He was very cordial and, at heart, a true southern gentleman." -Robby Krieger. It’s refreshing to see him sober and enjoying a conversation in this segment of The Doors: Feast of Friends (1970) documentary directed by Frank Lisciandro. The mystique of Jim Morrison kind of fogs the true side of what he was like. It was really nice to see this side of Jim. He listened, he was respectful and gave intelligent answers to the pastor.

The Cold Last Swim, James Dean, Jim Morrison

Poet and writer Frank O'Hara was deeply affected by the death of young James Dean in a crash on his way to race his Porsche Spyder in Salinas, California. Just days after the 1955 accident, O'Hara crafted a series of elegies, in one of which a phrase appears that serves as the title of Junior Burke's new novel The Cold Last Swim (2020). The tragedy elevated Dean to icon status for a generation of youth across the country, girls swooning in romantic grief over what-might-have-been (for him and, in their minds, for them), boys imitating the swagger and looks in hope of engendering somewhat more local swooning. This truncated arc, a star just beginning to ascend over 1950s America reverberates to this day. It's reasonable to assume that a work addressing the James Dean phenomenon will also be serious, accretive to the mythology of that moment. 

In the case of The Cold Last Swim, to make that assumption would be a mistake, because here Junior Burke takes an entirely different tack. He imagines an alternate history, one in which James Dean is not killed in that crash because that crash never occurs. We should accept that invitation in the spirit in which Burke offers it. He wants us to enjoy imagining a life not cut short but a life prolonged, breezing past a close-call on a remote stretch of California highway. Burke embeds his story in the Hollywood of the '50s and early '60s, in renown diners, coffee shops, restaurants, and watering holes of that place and time, in period television shows and in California car culture. His cast of characters- mobbed-up record producers, sitcom stars, teenagers who become obsessed with James Dean and leave home, hustlers and head-cases, writers and photographers for movie and music mags, politicians and payola investigators who are not quite FBI agents.

Right off the bat we find James Dean, between filming East of Eden and Rebel without a Cause, being cast in an episode of General Electric Theater (the actual episode aired 12 December 1954) in which, after an altercation during rehearsal, Ronald Reagan is, in an off-script moment in Burke's tale, shot in the chest by James Dean on live TV. What follows is mayhem and coincidence, some characters assuming multiple false names and at times assuming others' identities altogether. The allure of this novel is not so much in the writing, as in the plot, and so it is difficult to address the tale without giving too much away to those who wish to go along for James Dean's ride. Let's just say that in the novel as well as the film Rebel Without a Cause, there's a pivotal scene called the "chickie run" -- Dean and another actor are seen racing stolen cars toward an ocean cliff. Both cars take the plunge, one actor (Burke's Dean rejects stuntmen) failing to bail out in time when his clothing is caught in the car's door handle (as shown in the actual movie). The world comes to believe that the driver killed in the fiery crash on the beach is James Dean. 

Burke's tale is cast in the style of noir, albeit sunny California noir. The writing fits that bill; it's straightforward and plain, almost as bare-bones as if the novel were a screenplay. There are many quick cuts and the myriad characters are moved around like chess pieces. Their trajectories are complex and intersect repeatedly and at times coincidentally, and their scenes don't always engender much in the way of consequence except to move the reader toward scenes that otherwise might not seem reasonable. There's much fun and flashy busyness. Burke's narrative is a whirlwind escape into the speculative Land of What-If. In this regard, the timing of the release of The Last Cold Swim might well be perfect. We can be entertained in Burke's alternate land of the stars and the star-struck just at a time when the real world brakes to a dead stop. Source: www.popmatters.com

Jim Morrison: 'An Alternate History' by Jim Cherry: In Beat poet Michael McClure Jim Morrison found a kindred poetic spirit and a productive relationship, but not at first. McClure and Morrison first met in New York while McClure was rehearsing his play “The Beard.” Both men were drinking and had an immediate dislike for each other. That hurdle seems to have been overcome by the time The Doors went to play their European tour. Morrison ran into McClure and invited him over to read some of his poetry. McClure was soon encouraging Morrison to get his poetry self-published it. By 1969 Morrison was impressed by McClure’s novel “The Adept” which had themes and settings in common with Morrison’s. They rented an office in a Hollywood building and worked on a screenplay of “The Adept” but because of its lack of cohesion was rejected by an agent, and the two went on to other projects. 

One of the most frequently asked questions among Doors fans, is what would Jim Morrison be doing if he hadn't died? July 3, 1971, 4am, Paris, France. Jim Morrison wakes up after falling asleep in the bathtub after a night of drinking. Morrison wraps himself in a warm robe and goes back to bed. As he gets into bed he’s careful not to wake Pam. August 1971. He comes to the conclusion that although he’s feeling better he can’t recreate the creative burst he felt on Venice Beach six years earlier. Morrison adopts the same discipline he had when working with Michael McClure. Morrison, gaining creative confidence and control, decides to accede to Pam Courson’s wishes that she and Jim have a normal life. He buys an old church in the French countryside that will be renovated into their home. In the meantime Morrison wanting to finish ‘old business’ works on his manuscript of Observations While on Trial in Miami. The book is observational as well as philosophical with a surrealist edge to it and provides a look into the American judicial system of the time. It becomes an underground hit and is considered by many to be one of the last great writings of the 1960’s counterculture movement, leading him to become renowned as author and poet. Source: medium.com

Janet Erwin: for those of you unfamiliar with Linda Ashcroft's story "Wild Child", she copied Patricia Kennealy's formula from "Strange Days", and of course she picked up PK's loathesome accusation that Pam let Jim die and ran with it, claiming (in the original, UK version of the book) that Pam told her she let Jim die because the last thing he gasped as he collapsed was Linda's name! She also claims to be the "L.A." of L.A. Woman. I heard Judy Huddleston penned her unreliable book from a mental institution. Judy may have been in a mental institution but Patricia Kennealy certainly belongs in one. Patricia Kennealy is a vicious, truly evil woman, full of rage and hatred towards virtually everyone, even--especially--towards Jim Morrison, the man she claims to love. In fact Patricia Kennealy is incapable of love. She is a sociopath who views other people simply as pawns to be used by her and then discarded when they've served their purpose. She has been exploiting her very brief fling with Jim for years for her own self-glorification, for money, and most of all, I think, for revenge. She has aimed her venomous lies against anyone who made Jim happier and about whom he cared more in his life. Of course Patricia knows Jim didn't want her--that's the real reason she's so angry. If you have read my memoir Ballroom Days then you have seen how she used me and how she used--and continues to use--Jim Morrison. You have also seen that--unlike Patricia--I make no claims whatsoever as to my own importance in Jim's life. You might even have noticed that I don't patronize Jim Morrison, nor is there any rage towards him that is often to be found in Kennealy's "memoir." Jim Morrison was the most considerate and skilled lover I've ever had the very great pleasure to enjoy. He was also the funniest man I've ever known. But then I genuinely loved him, and I still do, and I'm not going to sit by and let Patricia Kennealy slime his memory--and Pamela's--with her venom and her truly colossal ugliness of spirit. 

John Densmore made the comment about Pam using the gravestone money for heroin... and it definitely was a low blow. It seems sadly characteristic of him, however, and if Ray was right about John meeting and falling for Pamela first, it would seem to indicate some very sour grapes on John's part. Densmore and Kennealy should have a lot to talk about. Patricia didn't use my real name because she was afraid I'd sue her for libel if she did. Jim and I had a casual conversation about drugs in February 1971. He mentioned heroin as a drug he'd tried. It was a passing mention of what I assumed was casual use. Patricia Kennealy's letters from Jim were written in July of 1970, when he was apprehensive about the upcoming Miami trial, and before Patricia had harassed him and he'd broken it off with her (which he did when she invited herself down to Miami during the trial). Her claims that he wrote to her in 1971 from Paris--or that there was any communication of any kind between the two of them after February 1971--are lies. Patricia Kennealy left Jazz & Pop in January of 1971, therefore her job with Jazz & Pop would not have prevented her from accompanying Jim to Paris. She simply wasn't asked to go to Paris, nor was she invited to Los Angeles either in December 1970 or in February 1971. She was invited--politely and considerately, for the man was a gentleman--to get out of his life and stay out. She was *invited* to get out of his life several times, and was given every opportunity to do so with her pride intact. Unfortunately, she chose otherwise. Awfully lucky for her the man died when he did; if he'd lived no one would ever have heard of Ms. Patricia Kennealy, except as one of Jim Morrison's many fan stalkers. There are those of us who take exception to her self-serving and ugly lies, as well as the lies and distortions of Jerry Hopkins, Danny Sugerman, Stephen Davis, Mick Wall, Oliver Stone and their ilk. Among the many 'people who were there' and who can still verify that I had a relationship with Jim in late 1970 are the following: Frank Lisciandro, Kathy Lisciandro, Jack Ttanna, Jo Ttanna, Babe Hill (who spent many evenings with Jim and Salli Stevenson) and Sandy Gibson, who was a rock publicist in 1970, and who later produced the 6-hour official Doors radio show in association with Jac Holzman [founder of Elektra Records] called "The Doors from the Inside;" and then, in association with Westwood One, produced the 10-hour radio documentary "The Doors: Setting the Record Straight."

There are also members of the rock press in Los Angeles at the time and who can verify the Morrison-Stevenson friendship. But the only woman who consistently held the royal flush in Jim Morrison's game was Pamela Courson. Pam's police statement, naturally, made no mention of heroin. According to Alain Ronay, Pam said they snorted it the previous night (July 2) and Morrison suffered an overdose. According to Sugerman, Jim discovered Pam snorting heroin and she told him, "It's coke." It depends on who you believe. I choose to defend Pamela Courson from Sugerman's accusations because I don't think he was close to Jim nor Pam. Jim told me he thought Danny was a creepy stalker. I think what happened in Paris was just a tragic accident and Pam was very confused when she recalled her blurry memories from that night. I used to work in the world of N.Y. publishing and it seems Pat Kennealy has been dropped by her publisher due to her bad image and the lack of quality of her last two novels.

Patricia Butler: Pamela Courson had to petition for her widow's stipend to be disbursed to her for a living allowance until the will went through probate, which it finally did in 1974. Pam would say she was Jim's wife while he was still here in the flesh, Jim never denied it- did he? Pamela started using the name Morrison--with Jim's blessing--shortly after they became a couple. This was the name she was known by to everybody in Jim's circle. In fact, Pamela Des Barres also referred to her by the name Pamela Morrison in her book "I'm With the Band." I spoke to Pamela Des Barres about that and she confirmed that that was, in fact, the name everyone used for her. People don't seem to get that, for the most part, people who are misrepresented in sensationalist books don't have any platform to rebut the lies. Take Bryan Gates in No One Here Gets Out Alive. His story about his trip across country with Jim Morrison was completely screwed up in NOHGOA and, because people (very much like Stephen Davis) tend not to take the time to check out this stuff, the misinformation is repeated all over the place for years. When I contacted Bryan Gates for my book, he was still seething mad over NOHGOA and was very anxious to get the correct story out. But if I hadn't contacted him, what recourse did he have?  He can hardly call up everyone who reads NOHGOA and set them straight.  He cannot gather a press conference either. It was the same situation with the guy "in the Florida coffee shop," Tom Reese.  When I talked to him he was still pissed that he'd been misrepresented in NOHGOA. He said Jerry never came any further than his front porch and never seemed very interested in getting the whole story, which is why he changed Reese's name in NOHGOA. Most of the time, the only way these folks have to rebut something that one author got wrong is to try to set the record straight with another author. Jerry Hopkins was a good friend but his book gave birth to more bullshit stories about Jim than any other, because it was the first, and subsequent authors borrowed freely without checking their facts. Manzarek even admitted Sugerman had concocted many tales because the original Hopkins' draft needed more salable points to be published. That's why Stephen Davis's book is so dangerous. When writers simply borrow from suspicious sources without checking out the information themselves, misinformation spreads and takes root. I think it's truly the root of all journalistic evil around Jim Morrison's figure. I knew from my conversation with Davis that his entire goal was to play up the old rumors--the worse the better--with very little interest in doing any new research or checking facts. The whole thing is disgusting. I honestly think Davis should be ashamed of himself. Then again, if he was the kind of person who would be ashamed of himself over this kind of shoddy work, he would be the kind of person not to do that kind of work in the first place. This is why books like Davis's are so very dangerous: many people want to believe the worst, and they'll latch onto anything they can that seems to legitimize their feelings. 

-RiderontheStorm1969: Pam wanted Jim to leave The Doors because she could see what Manzarek and the others couldn't see, or didn't care to see as Jim was their money maker, what being a rock star was doing to him. Pam always urged Jim to walk away from the music industry and focus on the things he truly wanted to do; journalism, film, poetry. Pam got Jim to see a psychiatrist on two occasions and she tended a line of communication between Jim and his family. When "friends" began to disappear after the Miami debacle Pam was one of the few relationships left standing. Paris was a desperate last attempt to possibly stabilize Jim and have him take a break from the band, Jim's drinking buddies, fame and the general insanity that was Jim Morrison's life. Pam may not always come across as a nice person (she had her own issues) but she clearly cared for Jim's welfare. According to friends of Jim and Pam, Jim Morrison's former girlfriends, the other Doors, people who worked for The Doors, former friends of Kennealy and - not that she meant to keep tripping over own lies - according to Kennealy herself: she and Morrison only had a brief fling. Patricia Kennealy is the original stalker. She had been laying siege to Jim Morrison for some time before their "destined" press meeting. After Kennealy stopped hearing from Morrison she went to Los Angeles and tried to stalk, abuse and intimidate him into continuing with her even though he made it clear he was not interested. From what I gather about Kennealy, she probably saw Morrison's fragile state at the Miami trial as some kind of sick advantage while she came up with the twisted mind games she tried to play with him. Kennealy was merely one of many flings for Jim Morrison. Indeed, Morrison's most unfortunate fling, as it turned out. Those who actually knew and cared about Jim Morrison who could offer genuine insights are reluctant to be interviewed by aspiring Morrison "biographers". Kennealy, on the other hand, will take any opportunity in her quest for validation. And that is the the only reason you read so much about her in books. She will blather to anyone who is willing to listen. Most stories about Jim Morrison have been proven to be either false or to be greatly exaggerated. Source: groups.alt.music