"Feast of Friends" is a 39-minute documentary that was released back in 1970, so briefly before lead singer Jim Morrison's death. It was made by Paul Ferrara and I think it is a pretty convincing outcome. Behind the scenes footage is combined with concert performances and for me personally it was an especially nice watch because of "The End", a song i quite like and that will be forever linked to Apocalypse Now for me. Such an amazing tune. Anyway, perhaps this is not a documentary that will turn you into a really great fan of the band, but it's still a damn fine piece of music I would say. I did not know the other songs apart from the one I mentioned, but I still enjoyed listening to them I guess and it is also an interesting watch from a historical perspective. Somehow, the whole atmosphere and spirit as depicted in here is missing to some extent when it comes to (rock) music these days. Not wanna sound like it was all better back then, but somehow I feel we are in need of more bands like The Doors nowadays. Luckily for us, though we have footage like this film from soon almost half a century ago. I recommend checking it out.
3 Reviews
Anyway will give it a higher rating than it deserves cause it is Jim and The Doors ...
anxiousgayhorseonketamine6 April 2021
A dude called Ferrara who was a friend of The Doors is the author of this piece of "cinema" which quite rightly others here have deemed to be of average GCSE class level ...
well it is very poor indeed; the man had no sense of framing /rhythm/distance ; not a cinematographer of any description; he must have been a really good friend to let him do that :]
But and that is not all that is wrong here
None of the footage is new "you've seen this entertainment through and through" :] if you have a copy of the 30 years commemorative edition from 2001 which contains Live @ The Hollywood Bowl/Dance on Fire and The Soft Parade you have definitely seen this entertainement b4
Bruce Botnick "remastered" the original ANALOG sound to some paperthin metallic silk digital soup I respect my ears far too much to pour this into; remastering is 99% of the time code for forking up something that was perfectly fine. I have the 30 year box in VHS so the sound is always better on VHS not the picture
so we come to the picture. Well the kbps on the copy I watched was upwards of 16000 which is overkill for my needs but might be great on one of those newfangled huge screens folks use and might justify the price of getting a new copy
But seriously what is new here? I saw nothing i had not seen before. The hidef segment of The End which basically takes over a third if not more of the film is really hidef and beautiful really
Thing is there is NO new Doors and should we be surprised here
Record companies will re-issue everything always on newest formats and "remaster" until the cows come home blue in the face and hung over like Jim but really why bother?
well it is very poor indeed; the man had no sense of framing /rhythm/distance ; not a cinematographer of any description; he must have been a really good friend to let him do that :]
But and that is not all that is wrong here
None of the footage is new "you've seen this entertainment through and through" :] if you have a copy of the 30 years commemorative edition from 2001 which contains Live @ The Hollywood Bowl/Dance on Fire and The Soft Parade you have definitely seen this entertainement b4
Bruce Botnick "remastered" the original ANALOG sound to some paperthin metallic silk digital soup I respect my ears far too much to pour this into; remastering is 99% of the time code for forking up something that was perfectly fine. I have the 30 year box in VHS so the sound is always better on VHS not the picture
so we come to the picture. Well the kbps on the copy I watched was upwards of 16000 which is overkill for my needs but might be great on one of those newfangled huge screens folks use and might justify the price of getting a new copy
But seriously what is new here? I saw nothing i had not seen before. The hidef segment of The End which basically takes over a third if not more of the film is really hidef and beautiful really
Thing is there is NO new Doors and should we be surprised here
Record companies will re-issue everything always on newest formats and "remaster" until the cows come home blue in the face and hung over like Jim but really why bother?
only for Doors fans unfortunately
geo-3159521 April 2020
As a lifelong Doors fan this film provokes contradictory feelings as a film it is really badly made and does not seem to be finished . It is disjoined and lacks any sense of narrative cohesion. It tells you very little about the Doors as Individuals. If you think I'm being harsh , the Jim Morrison, biography , No One here gets out, biography reports this film getting catcalls when it premiered .And the reviewers at the time were equally harsh. No wonder it was never properly released. The reasons it is so bad is because rather hire an experienced big name director and cinematography they chose Jim's old film school buddies, and drinking pals, Paul Ferrara, and Frank Liscandro .Even as a student film this is really bad. I'm puzzled that Jim and Ray who were film school graduates did not seem to realize how bad this film is. Now as a historical document this film is valuable, brief and disjointed as it is it does convey some sense of what the Doors peak years were like.
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