If Dennis Hopper had never directed a film, you’d still know who he was — before he was 20 he’d played a key role opposite James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause.” Later, he also provided color and humor to such famous, important films as “Apocalypse Now,” “Blue Velvet” and “Hoosiers.” And, of course, if you were a drug dealer or hooker on the Westside of L.A. for many of those years, he was, by his own admission, a key customer.
I know a little bit about this—not just anecdotally or as a journalist, but because my then-wife spent several years working for Dennis as his personal assistant and production coordinator on several movies.
Dennis Hopper was a classic child of the Depression. Born in 1936 in the hard-hit Midwest, he was young enough to know the hardship of living without, without being old enough to serve in the WWII military and benefit from the GI Bill.
But like many Depression kids, he developed survival instincts. Interested in acting (hey, what ‘30s urchin didn’t want to be in the movies?), he was smart enough to hook himself to rising stars. He went to New York, where he landed at the up-and-coming Actors’ Studio (founded by Elia Kazan, home of Jane Fonda, Ellen Burstyn, Al Pacino and numerous others). When his acting career devolved into guest spots on TV following “Rebel,” he was smart enough to marry acclaimed agent and “Sound of Music” producer Leland Hayward’s daughter Brooke (always a good move in clannish Tinsel Town.)
But his biggest celebrity “hit” came in 1967, when he starred in micro-budget filmmaker Roger Corman’s trendy “The Trip” —which happened to costar Peter Fonda and was written by an aging actor (by ‘60’s youth standards), Jack Nicholson.
Two years later, he reteamed with them in a movie that he co-wrote and directed, “Easy Rider.” Made for a reported $350,000 and grossing more than $60 million in the U.S. alone, it, as I once wrote in Los Angeles Magazine, “changed everything.”
And it really did — the year before, the biggest movies were all musical losers: “Star!,” starring Julie Andrews and “Paint Your Wagon,” featuring (gasp!) Clint Eastwood singing!!! After “Easy Rider,” the studio owners collectively realized that their executives were old and out-of-touch with the baby boom. A new broom swept most of them out and brought in the era of what was called “the baby moguls” (sort of like watching “Entourage” with the sound off.)
They weren’t always right--for every “M*A*S*H” they also greenlit “Harry and Walter Go to New York.” But it was a severe changing of the guard, with new directors like Billy Friedkin (“The French Connection”), Francis Coppola (“The Godfather”) and Marty Scorcese (“Mean Streets”) getting their first major pictures off the ground.
Unfortunately, Hopper blew it. Always the rebel (without a cause) he fled to South America, home of a native drug culture, and pissed away all his good will smoking dope (if not more) and shooting an overbudget movie that others had to finish called “The Last Movie.”
