Come On, Baby, Light My Fizzle

THE DOORS Directed by Oliver Stone

Screenplay by J. Randal Johnson and Oliver Stone

At Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, Jim Morrison's grave site pulls in the biggest crowds: pilgrims, rockophiles, ragged hippies who look as if they stepped out of a Woodstock Portosan 20 years too late. Last spring, while Oliver Stone's rockudrama on Morrison's group the Doors was still in production, with Val Kilmer in the lead role, one possessive admirer etched this graffito into the Pere-Lachaise headstone: VAL KILMER N'EST PAS JIM.

The scrawler was right. Morrison was a gorgeous creature -- face by Michelangelo, a mouth made for...