When You're Strange
When You're Strange is a 2009 documentary about The Doors. It is written and directed by Tom DiCillo and for the first time makes material from Jim Morrison's 1969 film fragment HWY: An American Pastoral publicly available.
Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek has stated that "This will be the true story of the Doors," and that the film will be "the anti-Oliver Stone," referring to the 1991 film about the group that Stone directed, and which drew criticism from many Doors fans and several people who knew Morrison.
Production
The documentary was first screened at the Sundance Film Festival on January 17, 2009. It received somewhat favorable reviews from that showing, but the narration (by director DiCillo) was singled out by most viewers as very seriously flawed for its monotonic delivery. Due to the rash of complaints about the narration, Johnny Depp was hired to redub it. A few months later, DiCillo pronounced the film "just about locked" and announced that there would be a showing of the new "redux" version. It debuted at the Los Angeles Film Festival on Sunday, June 21, 2009.