The film opens during the recording of Jim's ''An American Prayer'' and quickly moves to a childhood memory of his family driving along a desert highway in 1949, where a young Jim sees an elderly Native American dying by the roadside. In 1965, Jim arrives in California and is assimilated into the Venice, Los Angeles, California culture. During his tenure studying at University of California, Los Angeles, he meets his future girlfriend Pamela Courson, and meets Ray Manzarek for the first time, as well as Robby Krieger and John Densmore; who would found The Doors.