Left, Right, and Centered

Dennis Hopper II May 31, 2010

Times of London:

Dennis Hopper: the rebel without a cause
He had more integrity in his little finger than today’s bland, bloodless stars can muster in their entire surgically enhanced bodies
Wendy Ide
He was the cowboy outlaw who blew smoke in the faces of the studio stuffed-shirts with his counter-cultural crossover hit, Easy Rider. He was the 18-year-old actor who idolised his co-star, James Dean, and counted him as his mentor. He was the hot property who cared so little about Hollywood that he managed to get himself banned from the MGM lot for taking on the might of Louis B. Mayer in an argument about Shakespeare.
He was the rabble-rousing wild man with such a legendary consumption of narcotics and alcohol that, by his own admission, he should have been “dead ten times over”. Dennis Hopper was the original rebel without a cause.
Hopper’s death at the age of 74 from prostate cancer on Saturday is tragic not just for his family and legions of fans. He represented one of the last links to a time when Hollywood was more of a lawless, gun-slinging frontier town than the stage-managed production line for sanitised sparkle and pre-approved quotes that it is today.
It’s impossible to imagine a studio publicist attempting to muzzle the man who allegedly won his comeback role in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet by screaming the words “I am Frank Booth!” down the phone to the director. The result of that unconventional audition was arguably one of the most genuinely terrifying characters in movie history.
Hopper was famously outspoken in interviews, although as a defamation lawsuit from the actor Rip Torn demonstrated, he didn’t always let the truth get in the way of a good story. Hopper claimed in an interview that Torn was fired from Easy Rider after he brandished a knife at Hopper. Torn successfully sued, claiming that it was Hopper, in fact, who was the knife-wielder. Given the extent of Hopper’s hell-raising at the time of filming, it’s not hard to imagine him spending most of the time on the set of his directorial debut clutching either a weapon, a bong or a quart of whiskey; nor is it surprising that his recall of the period was somewhat elastic.
But for all the self-destruction, unfortunate marriages (five of them, including one to Michelle Phillips that lasted just eight days) and career- immolating craziness, Hopper maintained more integrity in his little finger than many of the bland, bloodless stars of today can muster in their entire surgically enhanced bodies.
Even his failures — and his chaotic second directorial outing, The Last Movie, must count as one despite its subsequent cult status — were achieved on his own terms. And his career highs, in Blue Velvet, River’s Edge, Easy Rider, True Romance and in the acclaimed first series of 24 — are the stuff of legend. It’s Hollywood that’s dead. Dennis Hopper will live on.