Orson Welles and Jim Morrison had more things in common than at may at first
meet the eye. Both were mercurial young Americans who had a cultural
knowledge way above par for their age and generations. Both were successful
whilst in their twenties. Both had a taste for self indulgence: sex, drugs,
booze, women and junk food.. Morrison had cited Welles as an inspirational
figure, an assertion that has to be taken with a pinch of salt, because
Morrison cited different heroes constantly, and had only a passing,
dilletante interest in any of them. Whilst at UCLA film school in the early
sixties, Morrison had been dazzled by the back catalogue of Welles. He saw
everything, and raved. By 1969 however, as a slightly porky, acid casualty
juicer, on the wrong side of three years of rock&roll madness, he'd
forgotten all about Welles. Their meeting was one of the more bizarre
convergences of talent that occurred at the tail end of that decade.
Morrison told his pal Teach 'Unka dunka' Penny, who in those days prescribed
diet pills in San Fran, about the meeting. "He was amazed to meet him' said
Penny 'but the story's pretty tragic comic.'

After he was attacked by Sinatra in the Troubadour club in 1969. Somebody at
Elektra records, decided to *do* something about Morrison. He was beginning
to have the waist line of a middle aged beer and steak junkie, was becoming
a public relations liability and getting a little punchy after several years
in the rock&roll wind tunnel. It was decided that he should be placed in a
rather strict health farm, dried out and put on a starvation diet. Morrison,
severely smashed on downers and booze at the time, signed a waver and was
bundled upstate  to a private hospital ran by a doctor Rolf Muller, a german
medical hardcase who was the the leading diet doctor of his day. Thousands
of Americans were treated by him, and he made a fortune. (later in the
seventies, he was discovered to be a charlatan, he held no medical
qualifications, and had worked as a porter in a hamburg hospital for 20
years before arriving in America. At his trial for the accidental poisoning
of an elderly woman he shrugged off his fraudulent status: 'It is the
american way. Nothing more'.)

Morrison awoke in a darkened room. He looked around him. There was another
bed, and on it lay a grotesquely fat man.
"Hey! Hey you!"
The man was snoring. Morrison climbed out of bed. He had no idea where he
was, but that didn't bother him since he never knew where he was when he
awoke at any time. He shook the obese man.
"Hey fucko, whose party is this? Is Keith Moon here? I hope to fuck not
man!"
Morrison left him and tried the door. It was locked
"Goddammit."
He pulled the curtains back. The view was of sunny parkland. He looked
around the room. It dawned on him.
He started to cry. He sat on the edge of the bed. The fat man stirred and
opened his eyes. He looked round at Morrison.
"What's the matter with you?" he spoke in an awesome voice. Morrison jumped
out of his skin.
"Holy Jeezus, I'm  insane! Its Orson fucking Welles maaan!"
"Of course its Orson Welles. Your not hallucinating. You are, as am I, for
my sins, under the harsh ministrations of Dr Rolf Muller. From what I can
see of you, you are, as Shakespeare would have said carrying an overipe
paunch, it hangeth down over your cleaving pin and tackle. You are clearly
here as I am, to regain your former svelte self. You are friend, on a diet."
Morrison wiped his tears away.
"A diet. A fucking diet. No way man! I am starving!"
"So am I. What I would like right now is four hard boiled eggs and an
expertly mixed dry martini. Who are you young man? This is an expensive
joint, and you look like a hippy- that is the correct pronunciation, is it
not."
"I'm lead singer in a rock group, and one of America's finest shamanic
poets. Ever heard of the doors? We're named after the huxley book."
Welles drew the remains of a cigar out from underneath the bedclothes and
lit it.
"Huxley? I met him in 1943, he wrote the script for 'Jane Eyre' I played Mr
Rochester, and was in much better shape."
Morrison whirled.
"Really? Jeez. What was he like?"
"Bookish, very short sighted. I took him to Chasens and had to read the menu
to him. Ward Bond and Gabby Hayes turned up to beat the shit out of me, so I
borrowed Huxley's glasses and pretended to be 86 years old. We walked right
past them. Mind you, they were not intellectuals."
"Shit."
"Why do you say that?"
"I'm impressed."
"Oh"
Morrison began to pace the room.
"Your my hero, well one of them. I just seem to have lost sight-"
"Hero? Hehehe. Well, you should never meet your heroes. Especially not in a
drying out clinic."
"What's the food like here?"
"Well, my idea of dieting out in the real world is a regime of white wine
and Dover sole. In here, that is considered a debauch. In here you get small
amounts of earthy tasting vegetables, and an awful lot of water."
"My record company must have got me to sign a waiver when I was drunk...."
"I committed myself in here. I'm beginning to regret it."
"When was the last time you saw 'Citizen Kane'?"
"About nineteen forty eight."
"What do you think of it?"
Welles smiled faintly.
"I think I did pretty well under the circumstances."
Morrison leant his head against the wall.
"I wanted to be a filmmaker, you know?"
"Oh really?"
Welles puffed on his rapidly diminishing monte cristo, and stared at
Morrison's back. Morrison turned and leant against the wall, sliding down
into a seated position.
"Yeah, I went to UCLA-"
"Film school? Now there's a preposterous idea. What did they teach you?"
"The usual. You watched 'Stagecoach' forty times didn't you?"
"Perhaps not forty. What's 'the usual'?"
Morrison scratched his head, his rolling eyes looking into Welles'.
"Eisenstein. Editing.... the language of film. Everyone was talking about
Godard and Antonioni. What do you think of them?"
Welles coughed slightly.
"I wish we were having lunch, so much more conducive to this kind of
conversation. Fellini can be a colossal bore, as a director I mean, but
there's no doubt he's a talent. Antionioni I know nothing about. Pasolini
likes me, asked me recently to be in a film called 'Pigsty'. Wonderfully
appropriate, but I didn't feel like getting dirty. I don't watch movies a great deal."
Morrison sighed.
"Man, I could use a cigarette."
Welles passed him the stub of his cigar. Morrison puffed.
"I suppose you'd prefer marijuana?"
Morrison blew a long plume of smoke.
"Your right. Ever smoked it?"
"Many times. Gets in the way of everything, you stagger under the burden of
dreams, and can do nothing about it. As a film director I mean. Now if I
were a musician like yourself....."
"Its still isn't easy. I have visions, things I want to acheive. Have you
ever taken anything stronger?"
" Just after Ambersons I was in Rio. I got out of my head on some sort of
peyote and oh boy,  I concieved, planned watched a film in my head that made
Kane and Ambersons look like something Harry Cohn cooked up with Abott and
Costello. Unfortunately, the next day I couldn't remember a godamned thing."
Morrison laughed.
"Yeah, I know the feeling. What time they serve lunch around here?"
Welles sat up on the side of the bed.
"I wouldn't start to get an idea fixee on lunch hour around here. You don't
get steak au poivre. Its a glass of water and carrot salad. Wonderful, Dr
Muller tells me, for intellectual clarity. What's your name by the way?"
"Jim."
"What are you going to do when you get out of here?"
"I don't even know how long I'm going to be in here for."
Morrison got up and banged on the door.
"Hey! Hey fuckos! Open the door!"
Welles laughed.
"Why don't you tell me what your going to do when you get out of here?"
Morrison turned.
"I don't know. Make more records I suppose. What about you?"
"Make more films."
Morrison sat down on his bed.
"I think I'm a fake."
Welles looked round at him.
"Fake? Fake what?"
"Fake................."
"My dear boy, all is illusory. But everything is what it is, and not
something else, and that is a great comfort."
Morrison stood up.
"I did a record. A song, a rock song, and the chorus goes 'Break on through,
to the other side! Break on through! What do I mean, what am I really
saying?"
Welles reclined back on the bed.
"Break on through? Presumably, you are, Captain Ahab-like, concerned with
the hidden nature of the universe. He wants to smash through Moby Dick, the
physical representation of all the mysterious powers in the world, and see
what's on the other side."
Morrison drew his hands across his face.
"Perhaps. What do you think is on the other side?"
Welles looked at the ceiling, at a patch of sunlight reflected off a small
pond outside.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Do you believe in God?"
Welles looked at him.
"God is everywhere, in a perfectly mixed dry martini, in a woman's eyes, in
my balls, in that patch of sunlight. That's God. I'm gonna make a western
when I get out of here. Wanna be in it?"
"A western. That isn't exactly you, is it?"
"That's why I'm doing it. Its a reworking of Oedipus Rex, the greek tragedy.
Its set in a town called Slaughter, you'd be Oedipus, the son of the
sherriff, you're lost as a small child on a wagon train and brought up by
indians-"
Morrison's eyes flashed.
" Indians? Doesn't Oedipus kill his father.?"
"He certainly does, I'd like to get Joe Cotten for the sheriff, and Barbara
Stanwyck for the mother, who becomes the lover."
Morrison's eyes stared up at the patch of sunlight?
"Fuck................."
Welles' produced another cigar stubb from under the bedclothes.
"Why are you saying fuck?"
"Because, because... Can I do the music as well? I have a fantastic song for
this film!"
"Really?"
"It's called The End. And its about a guy who wants to kill his Father."
"Extraordinary."
Morrison paced the room.
"  Jesus, this could be it."
"What do you mean?"
"Can you get finance?"
Welles pursed his lips.
"These days its always a case of put money in thy purse. Zanuck'll see me.
But I'll be shooting in Spain."
"Daryl Zanuck?"
"His son Dick. He's just made a fortune out of some ape film with Chuck
Heston in it."
"Why Spain?"
"I like it there, its cheap and we can be appalled by the bullfights...."
Welles passed the cigar to Morrison. He puffed.
"Did you know Hemingway?"
"Yeah, he once said that me saying the word infantry sounded like a
cocksucker swallowing."
Morrison stood up.
"We've got to get out of here now."
"What"
"I mean it. Now. We've got to start work on the script. Get finance. We'll
get out of the window."
Morrison began to pull on the handle.
"Orson- Mr Welles, give me a hand."
Welles was game. He got up and they pulled together on the handle. Finally
it gave.  Morrison jumped up onto the ledge.
"Right. I'll go first."
Welles laughed.
"First and last, I'm not going."
"Your not going?"
"You go.  I'll be out of here in a couple of weeks."
"I'm gonna read Sophocles, prepare for the part. We're gonna do this!"
" The film will be good, lad. Have a dry martini for me- and a steak au
poivre. "
Morrison shinned down the drainpipe. Welles leant out the window and puffed
on his cigar.
"Be careful."
Morrison looked up and smiled.
"Don't worry."
Welles sat down on the bed and smiled faintly, and looked at his cigar.
" ' ..now all the youth of England are on fire, and silken dalliance in the
wardrobe lies; Now thrive the armourers, and honour's thought reigns solely
in the breast of every man. They sell the pasture now to buy the horse.."
He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.