The Doors are finally set to release a “poetic” concert tour film from 1968. Feast of Friends, which was only ever shown at a handful of film festivals, will be issued on DVD and Blu-Ray on 11 November.
The Doors produced Feast of Friends and asked their official photographer, Paul Ferrara, to direct the experimental documentary. “I can’t say too much about it, because we’re not really making it, it’s just kind of making itself,” Jim Morrison explained early in the process. As outlined by website the Doors Guide, filming took place across five months and in 20 US cities, capturing the band on stage, at play and aboard a Hawaiian sailboat. A young Harrison Ford was allegedly among the movie’s camera technicians; the film would be completed about five years before Ford’s breakout role in American Graffiti.
Although Ferrara and friends completed a 40-minute cut of Feast of Friends, the documentary was never properly released. The band’s money and inclination ran out following their concert in Miami on 1 March 1969, when Morrison was said to have exposed his penis on stage. Charges relating to the incident dogged the singer until his death on 3 July 1971.
Overseen by Eagle Rock Entertainment, the remastered version of Feast of Friends is being packaged with three other films: The End, taped live in Toronto in 1967; The Doors Are Open, a BBC documentary from 1967; and Feast of Friends: Encore, which features unused scenes from the original movie’s 23 hours of footage. According to Rolling Stone, the band can be seen recording Wild Child, playing poker, and in “an altercation” with photographer Richard Avedon.
The Doors’ founding keyboardist, Ray Manzarek, died in May 2013.
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