Gary James' Interview With The Director Of Beyond The Doors
Larry Buchanan



Is it just a coincidence that three of the biggest names in Rock, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin, should all die within a year? Director / writer Larry Buchanan doesn't think so. He believes Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin were murdered and Jim Morrison faked his own death. Mr. Buchanan wrote and directed the film Beyond The Doors which explores the mysterious deaths of the three superstars. And, when it comes to movie-making, Larry Buchanan is no slouch. He's been in the business for thirty years now. Most of his work was done for American International Pictures. He gave Morgan Fairchild her first job in a picture with Fabian. He also gave Steve McQueen his first job in a film, on a short subject called The Cowboy. Mr. Buchanan also knew Marilyn Monroe. In the history of Rock 'n Roll only three names, Morrison, Hendrix, and Joplin stand alongside of Elvis and The Beatles. Did the music of Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin get them killed? If so, why? And how did it happen? Let filmmaker Larry Buchanan take you on an exploration of the seamier side of Rock 'n Roll, a world Beyond The Doors.

Q - How did you first become interested in the lives of Jim, Jimi, and Janis?

A - Too many things started to line up like ducks in a row on the three Rock stars. The only one I knew was Janis. We were making these films in Dallas. One of her last concerts was in Lewisville, which is just north of Dallas, near Lake Dallas. We shot movies all around there. And so, my unit went out to do this on their own. They were just being paid to shoot the concert. So, I went out. I started talking to her and some things just started to match up with what I'd heard about Morrison and Hendrix. That is, that all three of them were under surveillance and being tapped. At that time, Nixon was desperately afraid of not being re-elected. There was legislation ready for passage, which it did pass, where 18-year-olds were to get to vote. Well, these were the King and Queen of Rock and the Heir Apparent to Rock, Hendrix, Morrison, and Janis could actually make a difference on an 18-year-old vote, with Nixon being out of the White House. It was that simple. So, they were to be followed and discredited. They started gathering stuff on them. Their excesses with sex, their excesses with drugs, their income tax problems. Everything you could think of. They started building up folders on these people. It got so desperate that the word came down - Exterminate with Extreme Prejudice. In other words, these people are to be, the word they used, is neutralized. Neutralized means get rid of them. And the word quote is this: "They must go in the way they are expected to go." For example, Janis must take vodka with orange juice loaded with poison. She took one of those in the motel and went on the floor. Hendrix choked on his own vomit in an ambulance on the way to a hospital. Now remember, these people are not idiots. They had dealt with drugs all their lives. The idea of Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix overdosing, they did not overdose on anything, they were fixed. They were worked through this thing. In other words, it looks so simple. All we get is a cable from London. Jimi Hendrix, overdosed on drugs, dead. Janis Joplin, overdosed on drugs, dead. That's all you hear. You start peeking into it, and you find it just doesn't add up. They didn't get Morrison. He escaped. He got through the tunnel. It had to be the work of the Thirty-Nine Steps. These are ex-F.B.I., ex-NSA, and ex-C.I.A. They are funded for the rest of this century. They were originally funded by Jack Kennedy's father. A very wealthy man, and a very sinister person, to make sure his boys made it. Nothing could stand in the way. These are power mad people, like Lyndon Johnson, who was successor to the throne of the Kennedys in power. So, these people had to be eliminated, and that's what happened.

Q - And Morrison?

A - My wife and I went to Paris to visit the Pere La Chaise cemetery. Now this is where Balzac is buried, Oscar Wilde, Chopin, and Jim Morrison. The man who let us in did not want to talk to us, but because we had a friend with us, he confirmed a story about Ray Manzarek (Doors keyboard player). Manzarek has been recorded in several books as having stood on that grave and said, "Jim is not here." Now that is an actual quote. I didn't hear him. I'm only telling you I've seen it in print. This man told me that's true.

Q - Alright, so what does that mean?

A - I'll tell you what it means. It tells us exactly who Jim Morrison is and was. That was Jim Morrison. The idea of the greatest put over and put down he could do. To be able to tell Pamela (Morrison's common-law-wife) - "I'm getting out of here." You know, nobody here gets out alive. They had the coffin, but it was closed. No death certificate. No doctor comes forward and says he was dead. Pamela bought very discreetly. He splits. Now, I get a little romantic with it. I take him to the monastery in the south of Spain.

Q - Why a monastery?

A - Every time Jim would come to Paris or Europe, he would be met by this film editor. This editor, a red-head, a good-looking woman was in on a lot of stuff that people don't know. She said she was surprised in his interest in Gregorian chant. He whispered to her several times, "Wouldn't it be a high to go and be in one of the monasteries where nobody knows who you are?" See, he had everything wrong with him.

Q - Like what?

A - Liver. Emphysema. Coughing. All from smoke, drink, and drugs. His body was gone and he knew it. No way would it be an overdose. What he would do is exactly what I put in the movie and Manzarek said it himself, "He is not here." We have no record. You see, Paris is very funny about death. To them it's a very private matter. This could have been pulled off very easily.

Q - And in your movie you have him drying in a monastery in 1974. Do you really believe that's what happened to him?

A - Yes I do. Remember he had everything. He had all the women he wanted. He burnt himself out sexually. He was very suspicious of everybody. A loner. He could not touch people or reach people, and they couldn't reach him.

Q - Is it true that J. Edgar Hoover wrote a memo is 1969, in which he declared Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison to be the nation's major internal enemies because of their youth influence?

A - That's true. If you went now to the Freedom of Information Act in Washington and tried to get that, you would find a lot of blocked out letters. A lot of blocked out words. See, it's a very vicious system. What's the life of a Rock star? Do you know they think of Rock stars as vermin? The worst vermin.

Q - Who would be a target today?

A - There's not one. They're not political. I brought this out in the film, these three people were political animals, dedicated to making a statement. Morrison opened every concert with, "Is Everybody In?" He didn't mean are you in the auditorium. Are you in the know? Are you aware of what the hell is happening out there? And he'd go to talk about Nixon and the slime in Washington. Well, that was too much for these people. They had to shut him up.

Q - How was Janis politically involved?

A - She was not very good at it. Let me say this, privately she was very political, but she was so inarticulate. Many evenings she would go over to Barney's Beanery over there on Santa Monica Blvd. and talk politics till 2 a.m. But, it was her own East Texas idiom. She was not a very well-educated girl. And just very pitifully lonely. And she finally finds herself a guy, and knocks herself off? No way.

Q - What about Marilyn Monroe?

A - When I first went to Hollywood from Texas I was 18, mid 1940s, and she was on the Fox lot at that time. I was a contract player there. Every young guy on the lot there tried to go hock his watch or anything else to get a date with her. But, she was having none of this because we could not help her. If you knew Marilyn personally, you would have ambivalent feelings toward her, very mixed feelings. She could be a true bitch on one hand, and then totally turn you around and do something so disarming that you could never be angry with her. That was her magic. Her real job at the studio was to kind of satisfy the whims and lust of several very major people on the lot, Joe Schenck and people like that. She had her afternoon appointments with them, would pick up her check and go home. She never made any bones to us about her sexual things. I don't think she liked sex. The only time she mentioned it to me, not calling it a bore, but it was just something she had to get through to get what she was really interested in, a career. She had this neurotic need to be a star and it seems like that's what it takes now. It takes a Madonna or Cher who have this neurosis. It's just like Oliver Stone said; if he didn't have this movie business, he would be a junkie. It's his fix. Marilyn didn't get much help at first, but when people saw that she would not give in ... she had that neurosis. And if it required her going to bed with somebody or going into a closet with somebody at an office to pay for her dinner, she would do it. But then as I say, she would come out unsoiled. Now that is so interesting. You could talk to her and say this girl is a virgin. And yet, she'd pull this other stunt. So, I found her very interesting. I had many talks with her in 1946 and didn't see her again until the early '50s when I was in New York. She would come in on junkets to New York in the early '50s to promote films. She would call me, but it wasn't to see me. It was, I use a code name, to see Mesquite. Mesquite was a man from Texas, making Army-training films with me. He was a bodyguard, a bartender. When she would come to town she would ask for him. She'd ask me to call him. He was a bi-sexual. They became very close friends. They had this pledge that if she ever showed signs of madness in the mirror, that is, if she sees her mother in a strait-jacket in a mirror, she's gone over and he would help her through all this. He would find some way to help her die. She couldn't do it herself. She could not commit suicide. These so-called suicide attempts that people say were suicide, not really. She never took that much of anything. She would do it for awhile, then catch herself. She knew she had to have help and that's where Mesquite came in. He moved to the coast in the late '50s. He was her secondary masseuse. He was one of the people she would call at 2 a.m. I test people and say, "How do you think Marilyn Monroe died?" I will tell you this, she didn't commit suicide, it was not an accident, and it was not murder. It was an act of mercy. The autopsy reports were all fixed. They were wrong. One of 'em said she had barbiturates. The other one said she didn't. The truth is she did not. The strychnine was in the bloodstream from a suppository given to her by Mesquite. Actually, it may be two. That dissolved quickly into the bloodstream. If you take Nembutal or "yellow jackets" in the sleaze world, just one will coat your throat or esophagus with yellow dye. They would've had that. There was no such thing. And yet, all that doesn't come out. I don't know why people don't get into that. Noguchi, the coroner's assistant at the time, comes out and now admits there was nothing on the esophagus, nothing in the stomach and it had to be in the bloodstream. So, that's all there, for anyone who wants to see it.

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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