One of only three known copies of the unpublished script for "Saint Nicholas," a collaboration between Jim Morrison (here credited as "James Douglas Morrison," the name he used for his privately printed poetry books) and poet Michael McClure, based on McClure's then-unpublished novel The Adept. The 74-page script, prepared by Kwik Script Service of Los Angeles, is Xeroxed on standard 8.5 x 11 paper. It originates from the collection of longtime Doors associate and manager Danny Sugerman, and is accompanied by a letter of provenance signed by his widow, Fawn Hall. In fine condition, with some light creasing and soiling to the cover page.
Additionally accompanied by a detailed letter of authenticity from Recordmecca's Jeff Gold, detailing the script and its history. In small part: "In June 1969, Morrison and legendary Beat poet Michael McClure collaborated on a film script based on McClure’s unpublished novel, 'The Adept.' Using an advance on the script, they rented office space at the 9000 Sunset Building on the Sunset Strip, where they collaborated on the screenplay. Until now, only two copies of this legendary 'lost' script have surfaced: one in the collection of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and one from a film producer's estate…This film script is from the collection of longtime Doors associate and manager Danny Sugerman (1954-2005). Danny Sugerman met and began working for The Doors at the remarkably young age of 13, first handling their fan mail and organizing their clippings and scrapbook, and later writing press releases. He was close to Jim Morrison, and after Morrison's death, became Ray Manzarek's manager, and then manager of The Doors, overseeing their catalog releases and legacy."
In a November 1969 interview with Howard Smith, Morrison commented on writing for film: 'If I do anything in films it will probably be this script called Saint Nicholas that Michael McClure and I wrote based on his novel The Adept which hasn’t been published yet. It’s a contemporary story about a couple of dope dealers that go to the desert to make a score and if I, if I do anything that’ll probably be the first project.'
McClure further recollected the project in a chapter published in Morrison, a Feast of Friends by Frank Lisciandro: 'We worked hard on it in such a fashion that we ended up with a script that was about the size of Moby Dick. I mean it was a couple hundred pages, and more, typed up. Then we realized what we had could not be shown to Belasco as a professional script. In the middle of the night one night Jim cut it down to a ninety page script and he missed, he missed the point. He cut it down to the right length of a script and we had it typed up and gave it to Belasco. But I didn’t like what it ended up being, because what we had originally created was a redwood tree. We created a huge script, instead of following a treatment. In a fit of creativity Jim took the redwood tree and cut it down to a ninety page toothpick. What we cut it to was not worthy of what we’d done. I think we should have begun over again following Jim’s initial insight. But it didn’t happen. It could have been a wonderful film with Jim in it, it would have been beautiful.'
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