It’s his birthday today.
I’m so glad I used one of my columns at Film Comment -now on hiatus – to sing the praises of Dennis Hopper’s wild and nihilistic Out of the Blue, starring Linda Manz and Hopper.
Of all the essential and now-iconic roles Hopper played in his ravaged and ravaging up-down-up-again legendary-as-it-unfolded career, this is one of the best things he ever did, reciting Rudyard Kipling’s “If” – by heart – on the Johnny Cash Show.
What a riveting moment. This is what it means to be present in the moment. So few people can do it, actors or otherwise. It comes to mind that this is a slightly more formal version of Lee Strasberg’s famous (to actors anyway) “song and dance exercise”, a terrifying confrontation with the void out there in the dark, and being present – intimately present – to those watching you and listening to you. (I wrote about this a little bit in the Film Comment column. I took a Master Class with Hopper, and he talked extensively about “song and dance” and how much he loved it, and then – standing up there – totally unafraid – he demonstrated it. Actors are scared of that exercise (at least that was my experience. It’s raw and naked and you can’t hide – which is the point). But Hopper wasn’t scared of it at all. He was an intellectual, in many ways, an actor trained in the classics. Song and dance was one of the things that released him, exploded him into the actor he eventually became.
He was also a brilliant photographer. Here’s his most famous:
“Double Standard” 1961
And finally: Shortly before Hopper passed, Matt Zoller Seitz wrote a gorgeous piece called “The Middle Word in Life”, accompanied by a gorgeous video compilation of moments through Hopper’s life and his career. The essay ends with the heartfelt (and prophetic words, as it turns out) words: “Contrary to what we’d all come to believe, Dennis Hopper is not immortal. Let’s appreciate him now.”
Yes. Let’s.
A story about Easy Rider:
I asked Ante, our guide in Croatia, what he would do if he came to America. He said, “I would drive route 66 end to end.”
“I’ve done that!”
“You know. Like Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda. I want to do something like that that.” It was the 2nd time he referenced Easy Rider.
I said, “You love Easy Rider.”
He said, “It was banned here for years.”
“Wow, I had no idea. I can guess why though.”
“FREEDOM!!” he said, with a huge gesture as he careened our car along a mountain cliff road.
(I thought, Both hands on the wheel, Ante, I beg you.)
He said, looking at me thru the rear view, “The first time Easy Rider played in Croatia was in 1982. It was big BIG deal. And my father went and saw it and it changed his life. He understood freedom then and what it really was.” (His father was a wine-grower outside of Split.) “And my father told me all about the movie when I was a child and how it was what freedom meant. He told me there were lines down the block outside of theatre in 1982 to see the movie. Everyone wanted to see it. It was a very dangerous movie.”
Easy Rider came up yet again. On our boat ride to Hvar Island, and then again on our ferry ride to Split, we were surrounded by motorcycle gangs from Croatia/Bosnia (it was literally me, Ante, Rachel, and 80 Hell’s-Angels-the-Balkan-chapter on those ferries).
I glanced at Ante and said, “Dennis Hopper?”
He made a dismissive gesture at the bikers and said, “They’re fake. They’re not Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.”
“So what about these guys over here, Ante?”
“Pfff. Fake.”
“I don’t know. They look pretty fucking tough to me.”
“No. Fake.”
“And these dudes, Ante? I find them all deeply attractive. And yet also scary.”
Ante: “They’re just pretending they’re Easy Rider.” Ante was having NONE of it. I, however, was having ALL of it.
“So Easy Rider …” I said, wanting him to finish the sentence, even though I had no idea what he would say. I just wanted to hear whatever it was.
Ante said, “Easy Rider is freedom and everyone wants that.”
The power of movies, people. You never know where they will go or who they will reach.
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“The power of movies, people. You never know where they will go or who they will reach.” This reminds me of something one of my closest friends experienced. Back in the 1990s, his older brother had a teenage Russian exchange student living at his house for a few months. My friend asked the student what music was popular in Russia and the student said the Beatles. People would make generation after generation of copies from some illicit copy of a Beatles album that had been smuggled into the country. Who knows how much that contributed to the fall of Communism under Gorbachev, but I bet it played a part.
// People would make generation after generation of copies from some illicit copy of a Beatles album that had been smuggled into the country. //
These stories just amaze me.