DENNIS HOPPER: *SPECIAL EPISODE* HOPPED UP

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ONE IN THE HOPPER - DENNIS HOPPER'S MADMAN ERA   

Between 1969 and 1980 Dennis Hopper directed three movies he also starred in. The first, EASY RIDER (1969), is one of the great Hollywood success stories. Made for peanuts by a studio who didn't know what kids wanted, it tapped into the zeitgeist and remains one of the all-time great road movies and soundtracks with indelible characters tripping toward an iconic ending.

Hopper was given complete control over his next film, THE LAST MOVIE (1971), which was a long-simmering idea Hopper had hatched in the sixties and was very nearly made before Rider. The film shoot in Peru was fraught with drug-use, improvisation and stunning Laslo Kovacs' cinematography at 12k feet. Then Hopper retreated to edit and it kept getting delayed and... delayed. During this time LM Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller made a documentary about Hopper editing  The Last Movie in New Mexico called THE AMERICAN DREAMER (1971) and, folks, some of it may be performative but it is a gonzo portrait of epic indulgence. So much that the final result of The Last Movie makes more sense.

The failure of The Last Movie sent Hopper into movie jail for the next decade, periodically popping up as a bit character or appearing in low budget or European films to bring an unnerving sense of real danger (Mad Dog Morgan, Tracks, The American Friend, Apocalypse Now, etc.) until he was cast in a sedate Canadian family film called CeBe. Hopper took over a troubled early production, reimagined the entire film as a nihilistic spiritual sequel to Easy Rider over a weekend - literally basing the new narrative on the titular Neil Young song - and swooped in as director and made one of the greatest, darkest films of the still-nascent 1980s, OUT OF THE BLUE. 

If you have not seen Out of the Blue, we highly recommend you do so before listening to this portion of this episode.

Hopper went into rehab in '83. He would direct four more movies but they were yeoman, journeyman works of a pro, not his legendarily transgressive earlier work. For his family, friends and loved ones, his relative health and financial stability the next three decades brought was a blessing, of course, we would never say otherwise. For cinema fans, however, the unhinged genius that made Rider, Movie and Blue... was never seen again. 

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