Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 26, 1994 TAG: 9409010015
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MALVERN VINCENT LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
As Hollywood's oldest living bad boy, Dennis Hopper is a cult figure among America's youth - especially the college crowd who see him as the last holdout from the Woodstock era, the ``Easy Rider'' biker who never sold out.
Hopper has been counted out more than once. He's been called the rebel without a career. He's often been labeled out of control. But his first wife, Brooke Hayward, has said: ``He will survive anything. I think it's almost supernatural. He should have been dead a long time ago.''
After being drummed out of Hollywood as being too ``difficult'' in 1958, his fall into drug and alcohol addiction left him missing from the screen for years. ``I drank 28 beers a day, a half-gallon of rum, with a fifth of rum on the side, plus 3 grams of cocaine,'' he said.
When he stopped drugs and alcohol entirely, he almost ended up in an insane asylum until a doctor discovered he was being given the wrong drugs to rehabilitate. At one time, he was pronounced brain dead.
His first comeback was as both the director and co-star of ``Easy Rider'' in 1969, a film that changed Hollywood history. It proved that a low-budget film, made on location, could be a big moneymaker. It also proved there was a notable youth market for movies.
In ``Easy Rider,'' Jack Nicholson says to Hopper, ``They're scared of what you represent to them.''
Hopper replies, ``All I represent to them is someone who needs a haircut.''
Nicholson's character answers, ``No. What you represent to them is freedom.''
After ``Easy Rider,'' Hopper again sank into oblivion when the studio refused to release his follow-up ``The Last Movie,'' which they declared ``incoherent,'' even though it won the top honor at the Venice Film Festival.
I first met him at the premiere of ``Apocalypse Now,'' in which Francis Ford Coppola cast him as a drug-riddled Vietnam War photojournalist. Instead of an interview, he offered a manic, nonsensical monologue. Coppola apologized; the consensus was that the actor was somewhere close to a vegetable.
Hopper's next comeback came with the memorable role of the arch villain in ``Blue Velvet.'' The same year, 1986, he was nominated for an Oscar for playing a down-on-his luck drunk who makes a comeback in ``Hoosiers.'' Since then, he has directed ``Colors'' and continues an impressive career as a most in-demand character actor.
He's the mad bomber who gives Keanu Reeves a lot of trouble and a memorable bus ride in this summer's biggest action hit, ``Speed."
Today, Dennis Hopper, age 58, looks like a proper and conservative banker as he enters the room. He's in a navy blue suit with proper tie. He offers a friendly handshake. The smile is more gentle than sinister. The face is worn, but still youngish in almost a baby-face mold. There is little hint of the hells he's endured.
He's just back from New York, where he photographed model Lauren Hutton and other beauties at the United Nations.
``It's one of the perky rewards of the business,'' he said. ``If you're successful, everyone is with you. If you're not, no one is with you. Right now, business is good.''
He is not without bitterness. ``I haven't been able to direct the things I wanted,'' he said. ``I have to take acting jobs in order to build up money to, perhaps, direct. I'd like to make a serious movie about the homeless. I've never made my `Gandhi.' Sure, I'm working, but there are still those guys, those guys with the cigars, who aren't sure that I can deliver. There are always people who try to hold others back.''
He liked ``Speed'' because he thinks it was an easy job. ``Jan De Bont [the director] was the real star. It didn't matter who was in it,'' he said. ``The thing is that it's as hard to be in a bad movie as it is a good movie. It's refreshing that this one is a good one.''
He's surprised that ``Red Rock West,'' in which he plays a hitman out to kill Nicolas Cage, Lara Flynn Boyle and anyone else who gets in his way, has surfaced as a cult hit in theaters. Made two years ago, it went directly and unceremoniously to video stores. After a rare rebirth in theaters, critics raved, with several proclaiming it one of the best of the year.
The dark film is about redneck murder in the modern West. Hopper is hired by J.T. Walsh to murder wife Lara Flynn Boyle, but shiftless bum Nicolas Cage is mistaken for the hitman. When Hopper arrives on the scene, Cage has already taken the money and gone on the lam with the wife.
``As an actor, I think I'm down the list, below John Malkovich and Tommy Lee Jones, in hire-ability,'' he said, ``but I like to think that I opened doors for those guys, the character actors who have star roles. I play a lot of villains, but I try to give them a touch of humor. It's no good unless you like them, just a little.''
Hopper was born in Kansas but has seldom gone back. He grew up in San Diego, getting a job as a spear carrier in Shakespeare productions at the Old Globe Theater while still in high school. At 18, and with just $200, he left home for Hollywood. On the day after he appeared in a ``Medic'' TV show, he had offers from seven Hollywood studios.
He made his movie debut as a member of the juvenile gang in ``Rebel Without a Cause'' in 1956, followed by ``Giant'' in which he played the son of Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. Both films starred his idol, James Dean. ``I thought I was the best young actor in America until I met Jimmy Dean,'' he said. ``He was the most natural. The coolest. The everything. Still, today - no one has touched him. We talked about acting. He said that the drive was everything. If you have the drive, you can be an actor.''
In 1958, on the set of ``From Hell to Texas,'' a legendary Hollywood confrontation occurred. Tyrannical Henry Hathaway, an old-time director who believed in being the boss, informed young Dennis that he was going to read the 10-line scene his way. Dennis wanted to try different readings. Beginning at 7 a.m. and ending at 11 p.m., the crew went through 86 takes of the scene, until Dennis broke down in tears and did it Hathaway's way.
The next day, Warner Bros. dropped Hopper's contract, and the word went out that he was ``difficult.'' Roddy McDowall, on a recent television documentary, said, ``Dennis had to pay a great deal for sticking to his beliefs.''
It was not until 1969 and ``Easy Rider'' that Hopper returned in triumph. The failure of his follow-up film, ``The Last Movie,'' put him out of favor - again.
``Some of my films wrecked the decision-making formulas of the people with cigars,'' he said. ``They'd rather play Monopoly than actually make films. Anything daring today has to be made by independent filmmakers.''
He admits that there is still talk of an ``Easy Rider II,'' even though the two biker heroes died at the end of the first movie. But he doesn't think it will ever be made. ``What do we do? Bring them back from the dead and have them retire in Florida? I'd rather the film be re-released in theaters. Today, it could be seen for what it is, and theaters are the only place to see films. People hovering behind their locked doors, alone, looking at films are losers. Movies are made to be seen together - as a communal experience.
```Easy Rider,' in its day, was always romanticized. It was a grim signal to America. It signaled the lack of family and the beginning of lack of awareness of country. It was about people who were destroying a country, but hopefully replacing it with another country. Today, there is a question about what is the replacement. Today, we find our criminals glamorous.''
He has total recall of the down years. ``I'm a compulsive creator,'' he said. ``All I ever wanted to do was work. Even in my total insanity, I survived because I thought I was being filmed. I always think a camera is there.''
He studied ``the method'' for years but denies that he lives the role. ``When I kill someone in a film, I don't think about killing. I think about something else. It's the contradiction that should show on the face. Killers usually think they are doing someone a favor. Most people who are dangerous think they are right.''
by CNB