What If everything we think we know about Jim Morrison is wrong? That question has haunted Jeff Finn since 1985, when he first researched the infamous vocalist and lyricist of legendary 1960s rock band, The Doors. Finn is the writer, director and narrator of Before the End: Searching for Jim Morrison (BTE), a forthcoming limited film series that rips the hinges off Morrison’s purported official story.
Z-Machine, Finn’s indie production company, has released a new extended preview of his hard-boiled but empathic “documystery.” Like a DNA-era Sherlock Holmes, Finn deconstructs Morrison’s quicksilver existence from his 1943 birth in Melbourne, Florida to his reported death at age 27 in Paris, France in 1971.
Z-Machine has released a new extended preview of this hard-boiled but empathic documystery, which can be seen below:
Featuring exclusive interviews with Randall Jahnson, Anne Moore, Salli Stevenson, Todd Schiffman, Ellen Sander, Mirandi Babitz, and the only on-camera talk with Jim’s brother, Andy, the docuseries reveals 75 lovers, friends, classmates and associates who experienced Morrison as a person, not a persona, including Robyn Wurtele, Morrison’s shadowy assistant during his brief French exile.
“No autopsy. Sealed coffin. Phantom doctor. Jim’s death was never proven, yet everyone takes it as gospel,” Finn states. “Deciphering his life became my calling. BTE is unauthorized because there’s the ‘truth’ and then there’s the real truth.”
Nine years in the making, Before the End is a Day-Glo trip down the Morrison rabbit hole that cuts through 50 years of myth like a power washer blasting away rock god graffiti.
“Jim’s legacy morphed into a marble bust stolen from a beer-stained grave, but he was brilliant – not the wasted narcissist of his clichéd media caricature,” explains Finn. “With BTE, I’m excavating the human Jim Morrison: a seminal poet, artist and revenant. I’ve also unearthed his darkest secrets, which are beyond strange, like real-life Twin Peaks.”
Finn feels aligned with Benjamin Statler, whose unauthorized Soaked in Bleach film resonates as a blistering Kurt Cobain analog to his Jim Morrison documentary.
“Just as Statler’s movie is about Cobain, not Nirvana, my film is about Morrison, not the Doors,” explains Finn. “The band played a large part in Jim’s life, but he lived 21 years prior to forming the Doors. Before the End is a figurative and literal search for James Douglas Morrison’s truest truth.”
Fans can check out the official online home of the project at https://www.facebook.com/BeforeTheEndMovie/.
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