Beyond The Doors

"Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" for 2/9/90

cutline: Why would the FBI assassinate Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, as depicted in "Beyond The Doors"? After you see the movie, you'll be asking "Why didn't they do it sooner?"

By Joe Bob Briggs

Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas

Now that we're three weeks into the Joe Bob Briggs World Tour, reporters surge into the airport everywhere I stop, demanding interviews, snapping pictures, trying to pry into my private life. Unfortunately for them, I don't USE the airport. I'm driving around in my car. So mostly they just get pictures of beat-up luggage and guys carrying lap-top computers.

So far, I've been lucky. There have only been a few life-threatening situations. Like the day I went out in public in Petaluma, Calif., and the streets were suddenly snarled and clogged by rubber-necking chicken farmers with bad complexions. I narrowly escaped by vaulting into the bed of a 67 Chevy pickup and mingling with farm animals, including a one-eyed Jersey heifer named Svengali that turned out to be the 4-H project of Becky Heffernan, a 14-year-old third grader.

I don't wanna dwell on the NASTY aspects of being a big-deal international celebrity, though. There will always be a FEW mean-spirited people, like the 900 people who threw actual projectiles at the New York concert. Or the critic in Santa Rosa, Calif., who was so wishy-washy about the show, couldn't make up his mind about exactly what he thought, and so he wrote an article headlined "Joe Bob, Go Back To Writing!" Those wacky critics! No, I prefer to dwell on the people who don't actually get HOSTILE when I'm on stage. Both of them.

There are so many wonderful POSITIVE experiences. Like the morning I was on the radio station in Santa Rosa and Pat Paulsen called up from Guam. Pat was doing comedy at the Guam Hilton, addressing the Guam Legislature, and going around Guam campaigning for Governor of Guam. Except on the night of his first performance, the REAL ex-governor of Guam wrapped himself in the Guam flag and blew his brains out. This put kind of a DAMPER on Pat's act, and so he called up to say, "Joe Bob, you think YOUR material is in bad taste . . ."

Or how about the time I spent hanging out backstage at "The Tonight Show" with Dennis "I Don't Do Drugs Anymore" Hopper? It was as though God was saying, "Joe Bob, you think YOUR brain is messed up . . ."

And then, of course, there was the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, which is right next door to the famous Mitchell Brothers porno palace where Marilyn Chambers got arrested one time, in a neighborhood so perverted that they have triple-reverse transvestite hookers, which is she-males that have had transsexual surgery and then changed their mind and had the surgery reversed but they still dress up like women even though they only do sex with gay cross-dressing bullriders.

In other words, my kind of neighborhood!

And the chicken farmers from Petaluma showed up! They thought my act included something nasty with farm animals.

God, I love showbiz.

Speaking of people who do the same act over and over again, Larry Buchanan is the guy I was talking about last month who does all the conspiracy movies, like "Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn," the movie that proves how Marilyn Monroe was rubbed out by the Mafia, the FBI, the CIA and Castro, and "Naughty Dallas," the story of how the FBI killed Jack Ruby, and so evidently I made the guy so famous that they're releasing, for the first time ever, his 1984 film "Beyond the Doors," the movie that reveals how Richard Nixon manipulated a "very elite, very illegal and well-funded command of special agents" to assassinate Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison. Only they didn't get to Jim Morrison in time. What REALLY happened is that Jim Morrison faked his death in 1971, became a Catholic monk, moved into a monastery in Spain, died in 1974, and was buried in an unmarked grave.

I mean, think about it. We've got a motive, don't we?

The motive for assassinating these people was . . . er . . . uh . . . well, actually, the motive is not too clear from the flick. But it's something about how they were the "pied pipers of rock" and so they were causing the riots in Watts and the anti-war protests and so, obviously, they had to die. There's a whole lot of balding guys in grey suits sitting behind desks making phone calls in this movie, saying stuff to one another like "Could I have the coordinates on Code Name Vanishing Species?"

The most amazing thing about this movie is they really did find three actors who look like Jimi, Janis and Jim, and they can sing and play guitar--sort of. Unfortunately, the guy they got to play J. Edgar Hoover looks like Dennis Hopper after a three-day drunk.

Larry Larry Larry, what are we gonna DO with you?

Ten breasts. Five dead bodies, including one who chokes on his own vomit. Groupie Fu. Disco strobe light Fu. Female impersonator Fu. Barbiturate Fu. Screwdriver Fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Bryan Wolf, as Jim Morrison, for wearing his shirt open down to his navel, letting the girls in the audience lick his hand, and saying "You don't wanna change the world, do you, honey? You just wanna make love" and "I look for rainbows, and all I see is pig blue"; Gregory Allen Chatman, as Jimi Hendrix, for smashing his guitar, having his private parts preserved forever in sculpture, and saying "I only write what I feel"; Riba Meryl, as Janis Joplin, for porking up for the role, shooting up with heroin, and saying "I go out and make love to 25,000 people, and then I go home alone"; Sandy Kenyon, as the assassin, for saying "Our assignment--neutralize the three pied pipers of rock music"; and, of course, Larry Buchanan, for writing lines like "I know I didn't need that second barrel, but who counts birdshot in a man's chest? Rock and roll is dead. Long live rock and roll."

Three stars. Joe Bob says check it out.

JOE BOB'S ADVICE TO THE HOPELESS

Communist Alert! The West Drive-In on Kipling Street in Lakewood, Colo., burned down a few weeks back, and the police think it was arson. Chris Larsen reports seeing a man in Cuban military camouflage in the area just before the blaze. Remember, without eternal vigilance, it can happen here. To discuss the meaning of life with Joe Bob, or to get free junk and his hysterically funny world-famous newsletter, write Joe Bob Briggs, P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221. Joe Bob's Fax line is always open: 214-368-2310.

Dear Joe Bob,

I am a big fan of yours. My math teacher accused me of cheating, does everything possible to show the whole class that I'm not smart enough to be in her class, and she sent a letter home to my mother. My mother says I should try and work it out with my teacher, but that's not my style. What should I do about it?

Your fan,

Erin Snedaker

Vestal, N.Y.

Dear Erin:

Get a new mother.

If this is not possible, try to get into special ed. The questions are real easy in there, and they let you goof off. I spent three of the happiest years of junior high in special ed.

Dear Joe Bob,

I hate myself for listening to you all the time. After all, I have a mind, I too could think up all those sick, warped things to say about what makes America grate (look, there's one now) and splash 'em all over newspapers for innocent folks to read, but I don't.

I think that what you do is disgusting! I mean insides-of-a-four-days-dead-coyote disgusting. Look at the way you mock our institutions, our sacred government, and feminine hygiene sprays. Is there nothing you won't defile with your warped wit? What's next? Micro processors? Dry beer? Penile implants?? Whatever it is I can't wait to see. Like I said, what you do is disgusting. But as long as one of us has to do it I'm glad it's you.

Sincerely,

Dr. Stephen Bricker

El Paso

Dear Doctor Steve:

I would NEVER defile something as sacred as a penile implant.

Hi--

[Newspaper clipping: "Pre-Inventory Clearance Sale!! Owner Has Brain Damage! Come to the Gun Gallery in Carrollton"]

Isn't it comforting to know that only mature, rational, well-adjusted people are allowed to sell firearms?

Ira Lipson

Dallas

Dear Ira:

He was cleaning his gun. It could happen to anybody.

Dear Joe Bob:

Some people have wrote you here in Columbus and gave you a bad impression. You must think Columbus people are stupid, only their not, they just think real slow and get a lot of wrong answers and give a bad impression is how you made your mistake.

Did anyone tell you you write like Ring Lardner? I dont mean his short stories and them, I mean the note he wrote the milkman that said "don't leave no more cream but leave extra milk and some cheese on account of my wife's visiting relatives and I'll probly live on welsh rabbit all week PS I guess you dont deliver whiskey do you?"

Respectively yours,

Tobor Modnar

Columbus, O.

Dear Tobor:

I feel a lot better now.

Dear Joe Bob:

"I love Bob

"I care for Bob

"Im sorry for what

"I did to hurt Bob.

"I dont want to

"Lose Bob.

"I hope Bob loves me

"I hope Bob cares for me

"I hope Bob will forgive

"Me, for what I did

"I hope Bob doesnt

"Let go of me."

-- found in dumpster 12-24-89 in Santa Cruz, Calif., by Johnny Chesko. Is this note about you, Joe Bob? Does anybody call you just plain BOB? Please advise.

Johnny Johnny Chesko

Santa Cruz, Calif.

Dear Johnny:

I can forgive her for the three Bulgarian bodybuilders, but the lesbian that likes to dress up like Santa Claus is going just a LITTLE bit too far.

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