One of Ray's favorite films was the 1958 Orson Welles classic, "Touch of Evil". He loved the long opening tracking shot with Henry Mancini's amazing music and Welles' performance as police captain Hank Quinlan. Here is a photo of the incredible mural in Venice depicting that opening scene. This was taken yesterday

In 2006, Ray Manzarek published his civil war novel "Snake Moon", based on the Japanese film "Ugetsu" by Kenji Mizoguchi. In Ray's own words, "Snake Moon is my next journey into novel writing. It is a Civil War ghost story. A tale of the supernatural, forbidden love, and man's greed and folly set in the South of 1863. The idea came from my interest in things Americana, the world of phantoms, and the possibility of transubstantiation. Could the world of solidity somehow be joined by the world of the shades? And what is it that drives men to risk everything for the feeding of their egos?".


When Ray was a grad student at UCLA, one of his ... Читать дальше »