The Director of a Jim Morrison Docuseries Seems To Think Jim Morrison is Still Alive…
When I first read the press copy for Before the End: Searching for Jim Morrison I assumed that this documentary series was just going to be about The Doors frontman in general, functioning as a sort of biography. Strictly speaking it is, but director Jeff Finn makes two things pretty clear in the opening minutes of the first episode. The first is that this isn’t a truly professional documentary, and stylistically looks like something you might have caught on late-night public access in the 90s. Second, Jeff Finn does not believe that Jim Morrison died, and in fact seems convinced that a guy who liked the Facebook page for an earlier version of the documentary several years ago is the real Jim Morrison.
Of course, that earlier documentary could not have carried the premise of this guy being Jim Morrison. If I had to guess, I’d say the original version of this project was probably only about the length of a typical film documentary, with the added material of Morrison in hiding pushing the runtime to over three hours and necessitating dividing the story into episodes. As much as I appreciate media with stopping points, it surprised me to find Before the End: Searching for Jim Morrison so engaging that I watched the whole series in one sitting.
The story of Jim Morrison is weird in a lot of ways that have nothing to do with the suspicious circumstances of his death. Jeff Finn starts out with interviews of people who knew Morrison before he became famous, and one fact that stands out–no one thought that he would be a singer. Morrison as a kid was a smart eccentric who loved poetry, but never did much with music, focusing mainly on lyrics. He founded The Doors with an acquaintance from UCLA film school, of all places, and The Doors itself was originally a house band on Sunset Boulevard.
All of which is to say that Jim Morrison’s career is more a function of random circumstance than it was any particular destiny. Jim Morrison was talented, to be sure, but his talents were specific to that sixties era cultural moment. As Jeff Finn goes over Jim Morrison’s love of poetry, we can also see that the specific poems that Jim Morrison loved the most dealt with themes of transformation and escape.
There are good reasons for this. Jeff Finn discusses, but thankfully does not dwell too long on, the story that Jim Morrison’s father sexually abused him. In the single darkest moment of the documentary, we see a drawing by Jim as a child that, when Jeff Finn showed it to a child therapist without context, the therapist immediately demanded to know where the child was that drew it, because the imagery was an immediate red flag. There’s also a lot of discussions of Jim Morrison’s past relationships. For the most part these relationships come off as subdued, more emotionally intense than physically intense. But one such girlfriend discusses an incident with Jim she describes as rape, yet relates with an odd sense of pity, because of the strange sense of sadness and pain in his eyes as he did it.
The sheer quantity of material Jeff Finn gets out of his interviewees is impressive. My impression was that he would just sit around talking to them about random Jim Morrison adjacent topics for hours at a time, such that when he finally broaches the topic of whether they think Morrison really killed himself, nearly everyone at least agrees that Jim Morrison faking his death is plausible, and would certainly be in character. Jeff Finn also makes the most of Jim Morrison’s personal acquaintances, not the kind of people any professional outfit would likely try to reach out to, who are perfectly happy talking about Jim as a friend, rather than as a rock star.
Before the End: Searching for Jim Morrison has the feel of a fan film like that, and Jeff Finn is well aware of the fact such an outlook can hold distortions. From the very start, Jeff Finn fully acknowledges that the man he suspects is Jim Morrison could just be a Jim Morrison superfan who bears an uncanny resemblance to his idol. What’s strange about this person is that in interviews he…well, for me at least it’s the strange way he talks about past events and people in Morrison’s orbit, that comes off less as parasocial and more deliberate and thoughtful. Yes, a Jim Morrison superfan would know these things, but it’s hard to imagine a Jim Morrison superfan sounding so ambivalent about his past when Jeff Finn, also a Jim Morrison superfan, can barely contain his excitement throughout the documentary narration.
For Jeff Finn, it’s the eyes that are the main standout quality that make his conspiracy theory seem plausible. Not that his arguments are all equally so credible. The forensic science stuff in the third episode is so overdone as to be a little silly. It conveys little convincingly, aside from the fact that fingerprints aren’t as easy to get as the movies make it look, and that people can’t agree on how tall Jim Morrison actually was.
Although, to be fair, even if you don’t believe Jeff Finn’s Facebook friend is Jim Morrison, there’s more than enough evidence here to plausibly suggest that Jim Morrison at least planned to fake his death. This is a man who had lost interest in his musical career, or perhaps more accurately, lost interest in being a celebrity, and loved poetry about reinvention. The exact circumstances of the death are quite bizarre by any reasonable measure. Conflicting stories, no autopsy, for a days late death prognosis from an invisible doctor in a foreign land where no one knew Morrison was even there. The fact that Jim Morrison requested a never-found replacement passport while they sent the original non-active one back to his parents is the biggest tell that something was up.
Still, it’s just a story, albeit a nice one. The idea that Morrison became one of us, a stranger on a bus, trying to make his way home. It’s a much nicer ending to his story than his tragic death, or more significantly, his becoming a broken-down figure crushed under the weight of being Jim Morrison. And we can see that Jeff Finn is happy at the idea of Jim Morrison living out his old age in anonymity, even if he likes him best the other way.
Leave a Reply