The Jim Morrison Film Festival - National the Doors on Astini News
"Poppin'" magazine hosted the "Jim Morrison Film Festival" which showed Morrison's newly finished film, "Hiway" (which would later be retitled "HWY" and had started life as "Hitchhiker"), the festival was held March 27, 1970, and despite a rash of logistical problems showed all The Doors films including "Feast of Friends", the films The Doors made for the songs "Break on Through", and "Unknown Soldier", as well as, the BBC documentary, "The Doors are Open".
"Poppin'" magazine was a rock magazine out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, that was trying to expand into the U.S. but had run into cash flow problems. One of the owners of the magazine, Hank Zevallos knew Jim Morrison because of an article Zevallos wrote praising Morrison, the artist, instead of as a sex symbol, and Morrison contacted him. Zevallos mentioned his problem to Morrison who suggested having a benefit for the magazine that would include a poetry reading and a showing of "Hiway".
Zevallos quickly hired a theatre in Vancouver and flew down to Los Angeles to work out the details of the benefit. The first problem he encountered was the length of the film itself. When they originally discussed the film it was assumed that "Hiway" was going to be a feature length movie, i.e. at least a 90 minute movie, but when talking with Morrison in L.A., he discovered that the movie would only be an hour in length (the finished film is only about 15 minutes long) so they came up with the "Jim Morrison Film Festival" idea that would include Morrison's and Ray Manzarek's UCLA film's. The UCLA films fell through leaving The Doors films of the songs and documentaries, but those were enough to fill out a program.
As the date of the festival approached it turned out Morrison wouldn't be able to attend because of Doors commitments, but a larger problem presented itself, the print of "Hiway" was a 35mm film but the equipment at the movie theater they rented out was only for 16mm films, so they hit upon the rather unique solution of hiring a nearby theater that had the proper equipment to use after their last show and they would have the audience at the Jim Morrison Film Festival leave the first theater after seeing the other films and then walk the couple of blocks to the second theater to screen "Hiway". The audience was told this was the stipulation of Morrison loaning the festival the film, that the audience had to participate in the film in some way.
"Hiway" was received with silence at the conclusion of the film. The benefit of the "Jim Morrison Film Festival wasn't enough to save "Poppin'" financially, and the magazine later folded.
"HWY" was shown at other film festivals including the Atlanta International Film Festival.
sources: "Recalling The Jim Morrison Film Festival" by Hank Zevallos that was reprinted in the book "You Make Me Real," and the Ben Fong-Torres article "Jim Morrison talks about his own film," at Wolfgang's Vault.
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