Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 20, 1991 TAG: 9104200464
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES ENDRST THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And considering the disturbing roles the 54-year-old actor-director has been most identified with - the sadomasochistic Frank Booth of "Blue Velvet"; Shooter, the town drunk in "Hoosiers"; and now, a racist, paranoid killer in Showtime's "Paris Trout," - we should be happy for him.
"Paris Trout," based on Pete Dexter's National Book Award-winning novel (and screenplay) is sure to perpetuate Hopper's mad-dog image. The movie makes its debut on the pay-cable network Saturday night, with rebroadcasts scheduled for Friday and in May.
It is a brutal tale, loosely based on a real case, in which Paris Trout (Hopper), a morally bankrupt loan shark in a small Georgia town in the 1950s, who, enraged over a soured car deal, murders a 12-year-old black girl and her mother.
Trout's wife, Hanna (played by Barbara Hershey) is shocked by the crimes and attempts to leave him but is caught up in the wake of his swift and nightmarish decay into insanity. In one of Trout's most godless moments, he rapes Hanna with a soda bottle.
But Hopper, who began his film career in the mid-'50s, supporting James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Giant," and who has had his share of demons to exorcise - from drug and alcohol addiction to a reputation as a foul-tempered actor - said that he had enough experience and distance to keep himself together on and off screen.
"I have a 6-month-old little boy, I have an 18-year-old daughter and a 28-year-old daughter," Hopper said. "If they ask me some day, `Why do you play these parts?' I'll just say because I'm a good enough actor to. Dustin Hoffman wasn't available."
He is not necessarily drawn to characters like Paris Trout, he explained. It is just the way he is perceived in Hollywood.
"That doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to play a lawyer or a doctor or someone that has an external problem that they have to deal with rather than an internal problem," he continued. "But I just don't get offered those roles very often. I don't get offered them at all really."
Paris Trout may be one of Hopper's most chilling and convincing performances. Hopper put on 20 pounds, giving himself a beefy, redneck look, got a haircut as severe as his character's sense of justice, concentrated heavily on Trout's turn-of-the-century Southern accent and put an identifying waddle in his walk to boot.
"I'm very proud of Paris Trout, because I feel that I actually physicalized him," he said. "Because of my training and because I'm a very talented actor, I'm capable of manifesting myself into Paris Trout with a minimal of effort.
"There are moments in it when my face contorts and things happen to me physically that I think is really quite remarkable acting," he added.
A remark like that could be easily dismissed as a narcissist's boast if it wasn't so true.
Hopper is amazing as Paris Trout. As Paris, each breath is a cause for concern, each movement an implied threat, each response, a lit fuse attached to explosive anger.
And Hershey and Ed Harris (who plays Trout's lawyer) provide impressive support.
But it is Hopper's movie, a performance so penetrating you have to protect yourself from emotional harm.
Hopper mentions his pride in his own professionalism and confidence in his own ability, developed first on stage and on television (he appeared in more than 140 shows) and through his feature film career, which has included such popular classics as "Easy Rider," which he wrote, directed and co-starred in, and "Apocalypse Now," to the more recent "Flashback," and his sixth feature as director, "The Hot Spot." He also directed the controversial "Colors."
Yet with the dozens of films and roles he has played over the years, Hopper can think of only one that gave audiences a glimpse of the real Dennis Hopper.
"Maybe when I played in `Giant,"' he said, "the young doctor that married the Mexican girl - Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor's son - maybe that character was more like me at that moment than any of the others because [director] George Stevens wanted that."
If he was to play himself? "I'd have to do the last 10 years of when I bottomed out on alcohol and drugs and my recovery and coming back and that kind of thing," he said.
"It's the only part I could play at this point."
by CNB