Jim Morrison

Besides getting himself arrested for indecent exposure in Miami in 1969, Jim Morrison, it turns out, was also at work putting together a now-obscure art film titled “HWY: An American Pastoral“. Directed by and Starring Jimbo himself, “HWY” is a long, rambling, non sequitur of a movie, but a fascinating little window into the mind of LA’s greatest rock star at the turn of the countercultural century, nonetheless. A contemporary of “Easy Rider” and predecessor to “Two Lane Blacktop“, “HWY” follows Morrison on a wandering road trip through the desert southwest on his way to Los Angeles. Along the way, Jimbo manages to swim in a desert lake with his leather pants on, hitchhike, witness the death of a coyote, race his 1969 Mustang GT, and walk on foot through some fantastic natural scenery, all to a strange soundtrack of instrumental non-Doors music (by Fred Myrow) and organic ambient noise. With no real semblance of where this film was going or what it was about, “HWY” is best viewed as what it is: experimental ’60s cinema without regard to such outmoded notions as plot or continuity. Besides, with Jim’s early UCLA film school movies permanently MIA, “HWY” is all we’ve got as an archeological record of his film career…


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Part 9