CineVegas

Editor's Note: Dennis Hopper is this year's chairman of the CineVegas Film Festival Advisory Board, and last year's recipient of the CineVegas Marquee Award for lifetime achievement.

LIGHTS UP, HOPPER DOCUMENTARY--OK people, let's lock ourselves in the editing room and put this baby together.

Pre-opening credits, silent scroll down partial bio Dennis wrote himself. ... ROLL IT.

"I was born in Dodge City, Kansas on a farm in 1936. I followed the light changing on the horizon. I watched the hard rain in puddles. I laid in the ditch and watched the combines come along the dirt road. I wondered where the trains went. I shot a BB gun at the black crows. I fought the cows with a wooden sword. I got a telescope and looked at the sun and went blind for five days. I sniffed gasoline and saw clowns and goblins in the clouds. I caught lightning bugs, lightning shows, sunsets and followed animal tracks in the snow. The sun was brighter than I was. God was everywhere, and I was desperate."

Up with opening title card, superimposed over poster from Hopper masterpiece, Easy Rider. ... Segue to movie debut in 1955's Rebel Without a Cause, and other co-starring role with "mentor," James Dean in 1956's Giant. ROLL CLIP OF HOPPER AS GANG MEMBER GOON IN REBEL ... CUE HOPPER INTERVIEW.

"He was a genius, man, and I saw it immediately. I thought I was the best young actor in the world at that time and I saw him act and there's no question that he had absorbed the work, a great actor. His death was a tragedy to me.

"The thing that pisses me off is they dwell on the idea that he was a homosexual. If James Dean was a homosexual, he would have been doing it in the middle of the street. He was madly in love with two women. One was Ursula Andress, and the other was Pier Angeli. He was tragically involved with these two women the whole period of time I knew him. It's totally ridiculous, but he's still the best actor I ever saw."

Narration insert, summary: Secondary roles in cluster of westerns, culminating in 1958's From Hell to Texas, infamous confrontation with director Henry Hathaway, Hopper battles him through over a hundred takes of one scene, triggering loss of his Warner Bros. contract and banishment from major studio productions for eight years. ... ROLL CLIP OF HOPPER AS TOM BOYD IN FROM HELL TO TEXAS ... CUE INTERVIEW.

"We were just from two different times. We butted heads. From Hell to Texas was the first time I worked with him. I was a promising young actor then, and he took eight years out of my career—or I took eight years out of my career for butting heads with him. So I went back and studied with Lee Strasberg.

"I got confidence from him. Strasberg was a great teacher. If you had any preconceived ideas about acting—and I had millions of them—he just broke you down until you had none. And he'd start building you again. At the end of it, nobody was going to fool you about what the work was about."

Narration insert, summary: Hopper works his way back in over 140 TV dramas ... ROLL B&W STILLS OF HOPPER IN TWILIGHT ZONE, WAGON TRAIN, THE DEFENDERS ... launches noted career as a photographer and what will become one of the world's most admired modern-art collections ... ROLL COLOR STILLS FROM COLLECTION ... scores first movie lead, 1961's Night Tide (delayed release until '63) ... ROLL CLIP OF HOPPER AS LONELY SAILOR IN LOVE WITH CIRCUS PERFORMER IN NIGHT TIDE ... indulges emerging counter-culturalism in Andy Warhol's experimental Tarzan and Jane Regained ... Sort Of in 1964. ROLL VERY STRANGE, HARD-TO-DESCRIBE CLIP ...

In '65, returns to mainstream—and Hathaway—in The Sons of Katie Elder with John Wayne, one of two he filmed with Duke, along with '69's True Grit. ... ROLL CLIP OF HOPPER AS WEAK-WILLED SON OF A VILLAIN CONFESSING FATHER'S CRIMES TO WAYNE IN KATIE ELDER ... CUE INTERVIEW.

"John Wayne was cool. He gave me some great acting tips. He told me that if I would pause in the middle of my sentences, that I would get a lot more screen time. Of course, when I pause in the middle of my sentence, they cut away [laughs]. But it was a good tip for him, like: 'They went ... thataway.'

"He always thought that I was the house commie. He'd yell, 'Where's Hopper, that pinko?' It was a strange relationship but he was a good guy. We just thought differently about things."

Narration insert, summary: Hopper's strange late-'60s split between druggie cinema like Roger Corman's The Trip in 1967 and director Bob Rafelson's Monkees movie Head (script by Jack Nicholson!) in 1968 and westerns Hang 'Em High in '68, and True Grit. ... ROLL CLIP OF HOPPER AS CRAZED PROPHET IN HANG 'EM HIGH ...

Then the watershed: 1969's Easy Rider, directed, co-written and co-starring Hopper, about modern biker-cowboys on the road, searching for freedom in a conformist America. Defines a generation and revolutionizes movies—jump-cuts, abstract sequences—ushering in inventive '70s cinema, demolishing last vestiges of old studio system. Youth culture takes charge ... CUE INTERVIEW.

"The film's about a lot of things. It's about a mythological travel through film in one way; it's about a cowboy western at the same time. It's about people not being able to understand each other. A guy with long hair is different than somebody else. That there are these differences that we can't seem to bridge between our various cultural and ethnic backgrounds. And that should be what America is about, being able to bridge these things and live together."

ROLL RIDER CLIP OF HOPPER AND PETER FONDA AS BILLY THE KID AND CAPTAIN AMERICA CRUSING THE HIGHWAY ... ROLL CLIP OF HOPPER, FONDA AND NICHOLSON SMOKING WEED IN RIDER.

Narration insert, summary: Talk about comedowns. Hopper's The Last Movie in '71 is a free-form flick about a movie crew making a western in Peru, where natives ape them using real bullets. ... ROLL EXCEPTIONALLY STRANGE, IMPOSSIBLE-TO-DESCRIBE CLIP ... Capital-D Disaster. Distribution halted. Movie shelved. Critics and fellow filmmakers distance themselves from Hopper. ... CUE INTERVIEW.

"They played it in Amsterdam to a young audience when I had a retrospective there recently, and they really enjoyed it , they laughed in the right places. First time I ever saw an audience really react to it. Maybe because of MTV and great advances in commercials and computers, people look at things a little differently now. Maybe The Last Movie starts making a little more sense. It's not so much that it's abstract, but not in a linear form. You have to absorb the whole, allow yourself to be in the moment, and then in the end, understand what you've seen.

At the time, I thought it could have done really well, because it was when there were changes happening. But in history, it's a very important film. That's more than enough."

Narration insert summary: Exiled—and stoned—for most of the '70s. Though does make films outside America ... ROLL CLIPS OF COULEUR CHAIR AND L'ORDRE ET LA SECURITE DU MONDE— and returns as wigged-out journalist in '79's Apocalypse Now ... ROLL CLIP OF HOPPER'S RAMBLING, STONER RANT TO MARTIN SHEEN ABOUT BRANDO'S EVEN WIGGIER COL. KURTZ IN APOCALYPSE ... which only reinforces his drug-drenched rep.

Not until 1986's Blue Velvet does Hopper emerge from his chemical haze and roar back to Hollywood. Psychotic Frank Booth character seared into moviegoers' memories. ... ROLL CLIP OF OBSESSED HOPPER BREATHING HEAVILY INTO A MASK IN VELVET. ... CUE INTERVIEW.

"David had written the mask with the gas in it, he'd written that as helium, which makes you sound like Donald Duck. I tried to use it, and it wasn't working for me. So I told David that maybe it would be better if I thought of it as an amyl nitrite or nitric oxide or something that would disorient my mind for a minute or two. And he didn't know what those things were, so I did a sense memory and showed him would this effect would be like, and he said, 'Yeah, do that.'

"And working with Isabella [Rossellini] was wonderful. It was like playing a good, hard game of tennis. The first scene we did together was the main scene where I was in the closet. The first time you see Frank Booth, he wants his bourbon and he wants her to spread her legs and proceeds to rape her, and that was the first day we met. It was an intense day, a wonderful day, very creative.

"You know, I would sit in theaters after it came out and see young women and they'd just be freaking out, seeing me at the theater. I did Blue Velvet, Hoosiers and River's Edge all the same year. It was a cool year. Also the first year I was sober."

Narration insert, summary: In landmark sports film Hoosiers, Hopper's role as an alcoholic basketball fanatic snares an Oscar nomination. ... ROLL CLIP OF HOPPER AS SHOOTER, SUDDENLY FORCED TO TAKE OVER AS TEAM COACH FROM GENE HACKMAN IN HOOSIERS ... CUE INTERVIEW.

"I had turned the role down. I said, 'No man, you don't want me, I'm going off to do Blue Velvet. You want Harry Dean Stanton. You've got the wrong guy.' But they kept on me and on me, they were driving me crazy, man. So I did Blue Velvet in North Carolina and went right to Indianapolis. But they were so right. I mean, my thinking was not the clearest when I first got sober."

Narration insert, summary: Career rehab continues as Hopper directs gang-war movie Colors with Robert Duvall and Sean Penn in 1988 and '90 film noir The Hot Spot with Don Johnson. Rebuilt careeer as dependable character actor in big-screen and cable films, playing everything from maniacal madman to touching Everyman. Acclaimed turns in ... ROLL CLIP MONTAGE ... The Indian Runner, Paris Trout, Doublecrossed, Red Rock West, True Romance, Basquiat, EdTV, Waterworld and TV's 24.

But new generation gloms onto him as psycho bus-bomber Howard Payne, who loses his head in '94 thrill-ride Speed. ... ROLL CLIP OF HOPPER ATOP HURTLING SUBWAY CAR, CHOKING KEANU REEVES IN SPEED ... CUE INTERVIEW.

"It's weird, because that guy was just sort of a straightforward guy. When [Keanu Reeves] asks me, why am I doing this, I said, 'Well, very honestly Jack, I'd like to have a better reason, but I'm only doing it for the money.' He wasn't emotionallly involved, he was somewhere else. In that instance, like Jack Nicholson said, 'Just put on the wardrobe.' The part sort of plays itself because of all the stuff that's going on around you. And it was the first big action movie that women really enjoyed. It may have had something to do with going through that tunnel—no, I'm kidding."

Narration insert, summary: Up next for Hopper: starring in current USA cable flick The Last Ride ... ROLL CLIP ... and preparing to direct Robert Duvall in the story of an aging rancher in A Night in Old Mexico. Defying the dictum that there are no second acts in American life, you'd think Hopper would review his career with satisfaction. You'd be wrong ... CUE INTERVIEW.

"Most of my career, I've taken shit and tried to make gold out of it. I love the work and I love to work, but I've been very limited in access to really wonderful parts. I've not been on the A-list for many, many years. I go from job to job. Some of the quality of the films is not so good.

"But out of those come some gems, like River's Edge and Blue Velvet. Out of 150 movies that I've done, I would say that there are maybe 50 films that are really, really interesting."

Narrative insert, summary: Dennis Hopper understates his cinematic impact, but it's damn near impossible to overstate his creative value. His is the legend of an Easy Rider, a movie revolutionary, an utter original. ...

ROLL CLOSING CREDITS OVER ICONIC RIDER CLIP OF HOPPER AS BIKER BILLY, MUSTACHED AND LONG-HAIRED, BUSH HAT, BUCKSKIN JACKET AND NECKLACE OF ANIMAL TEETH, TO STEPPENWOLF CLASSIC:

"Like a true nature's child / We were born, born to be wild / We can climb so high / I never wanna die / Born to be wild / Born to be wild ..."