The Hopper Bum

The late sixties through the mid-seventies, was to me, the second renaissance of Hollywood. Independent filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, and Steven Spielberg were breaking all the rules. They were showing the entire entertainment industry that there is more then one way to make a film. The golden age of formulaic film making was over.

Dennis Hopper was one of the guys from that time that had truly left an indelible mark on Hollywood. He started out as just another actor, and got his big break in “Rebel Without a Cause”. Then he moved on to a whole bunch of TV and film roles, including working with James Dean again in “Giant”. It was only after he wrote and directed Easy Rider that Hopper was truly able to be Hopper.

Peter Fonda said “We rode the highways of America and changed the way movies were made in Hollywood. I was blessed by his passion and friendship."

He became a hellraiser, a wildcat. Hopper probably did every drug in Hollywood, and he either made the people he met the best of friends, or the worst of enemies. The stories range from smoking pot on-camera on the set of Easy Rider along with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson, to pulling a knife on Rip Torn in 1992 at a pre-production meeting of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

One of my favorite Hopper stories was something I read in the book “Easy Riders and Raging Bulls”. (An amazing book, by the way) According to the book when Hopper was on the set of a film he would be on a number of different drugs at any given time of the day. He would smoke a joint and be completely relaxed, and then while the director switched camera angles, or any break was taken, Hopper would do some blow, and be absolutely hyped up. The shots just wouldn’t match up. The producers could not get him to stop no matter what they tried. Eventually they got to a point were they figured, if can’t beat the flow, then we might as ride it. They needed Hopper to be who they needed him to be for the shot. They put indicators on his sides for the day that told him which drug he could be on, for each particular scene. If they needed him to be calm for a scene they told him he could smoke weed for that and well you can figure out the rest. Hopper was uncompromising in his films, and especially in his personal life. He even had a funny side, using Alan Smithee as one of his aliases. (Google it if you don’t know who Alan Smithee is)

There aren’t many Hollywood icons left in the world, and today we lost one of them. So I will leave you with this………………

A quote from Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider:
“No, man, like hey, man. Wow. I was watching this object man, li-like the satellite that we saw the other night, right? And, like, it was going right across the sky, man, and then... I mean it just suddenly, uh, it just changed direction and went whizzin right off, man. It flashed.........”

………….Don‘t stop chasing the flash Dennis, and thanks for the memories.


The best of Dennis Hopper
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Giant (1956)
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Easy Rider (1969)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Hoosiers (1986)
True Romance (1993)
Speed (1994)
24 (2001 – season one)