HWY: An American Pastoral

1969

Dir. Jim Morrison, Frank Lisciandro, Paul Ferrara, Babe Hill, 35mm Color Sound 00:52:00

Page Contents

Description

HWY: AN AMERICAN PASTORAL is 50-minute film conceived by Jim Morrison, Paul Ferrara, Frank Lisciandro and Babe Hill. It's very loosely based on a short script written by Morrison titled "The Hitchhiker" which tells the story of a fictional killer who finds his victims while hitchhiking through the American desert. Filming is done in a cinéma vérité style, incorporating improvisation and real life scenarios in favor of following a specific plot line. As such, no dialogue or characters from Morrison's original ten-page script are ever used in the film.

Jim Morrison describes HWY in a November 1969 interview with Howard Smith this way:

"Essentially there’s no plot; no story in a traditional sense. A person, played by me, comes down out of the mountains and hitchhikes his way through the desert into a modern city, which happened to be L.A., and that’s where it ends. It’s a very beautiful film."


[Source: The Doors Guide]