The Columbia Theatre’s stage was transformed into a movie theatre last week as it presented “The Doors: Live at the Bowl ’68,” one of many films the theatre hopes to show in order to attract a fresher audience.
“The problem we have at the Columbia is that many of our patrons look like me,” said Dr. Roy Blackwood, the theatre’s interim director. “We want to broaden our demographic by showing these films at a low price so we can attract a younger audience while at the same time showing people something they’ve never seen before at the Columbia.”
According to Blackwood, this is the first of many films.
“I don’t want to give everything away, but I will say that next year we’ll be showing a Led Zeppelin film,” said Blackwood. “However, we don’t have to show just Rock and Roll films, we can show artistic films too. Obviously, we can’t compete with the AMC theatre because of licensing and things like that, but that’s not what we’re trying to do. We want to show something like an art house cinema”
“The Doors: Live at the Bowl ’68” captures the live performance of The Doors rock band at the Hollywood Bowl on July 5, 1968 in Los Angeles, California and is considered their finest show ever filmed. The showing was held on Thursday, Nov. 29, and Saturday, Dec. 1, at 7:30 p.m. Admission was $11 per ticket.
Led by iconic singer and front man Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and fellow band members John Densmore on drums and Robby Krieger on guitar, The Doors performed a lineup of songs that included the previously lost performances of “Hello, I Love You,” “The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat),” and “Spanish Caravan.”
In addition to the footage of the concert, remastered in high definition, the film also included about 30 minutes of new, never before seen documentary material such as interviews with Manzarek, Densmore and Krieger. The Doors were immensely popular during their heyday (1965-1973). According to the Recording Industry Association of America, the band has, to date, sold about 32.5 million copies in the United States and over 100 million albums worldwide.
The band officially broke up in 1973 after Morrison’s death in 1971. Like many of his contemporaries, such as Blues and Rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix and singer-songwriter Janis Joplin, Morrison died when he was 27 due to a drug overdose.
More information about The Doors and their performance at the Hollywood Bowl can be found at www.thedoors.com. The same DVD that was shown at the Columbia is also for sale on the same webpage.