Dennis Hopper's Legacy
The Philadelphia Inquirer Blog - Flickgrrl
Dennis Hopper's Legacy
Carrie Rickey, Film Critic
Since Dennis Hopper died over Memorial Day weekend at the age of 74, I've been thinking about his legacy. There's no denying that as an independent filmmaker (Easy Rider, The Last Movie), a keen-eyed portrait photographer and an art collector (who supported then-unknowns Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol and was an early advocate of Basquiat, Banksy and Julian Schnabel) he was a game-changer.
But as an actor, rather than draw me into his character he intimidated with those opaque ice-blue eyes and monotonous "hey, man" rants that made me shrink from the screen. There are a couple of exceptional performances, though. He was fascinating as the enigmatic title character in Wim Wenders' The American Friend and compelling as the acid casualty in The River's Edge, unsettled by his encounters with teen alienation. As to his gargoyle performance as the psychotic Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, I was never a fan.
Hoping that the Turner Classic Movies tribute to Hopper on Tuesday June 8 will change my mind about his early, mainstream Hollywood flicks, but as I remember Rebel Without a Cause and The Sons of Katie Elder, Hopper was a serviceable supporting actor, memorable mostly for his eyes, watchful and haunted. Also looking forward to reconsidering Easy Rider -- which I haven't seen for about 10 years -- to see if it's more than a just counterculture travelogue set to good Byrds music. When Easy Rider came out, Ellen Willis astutely observed, "But in fact, what was Easy Rider but another superromantic account of individual rebellion against the straight world, depicted as every northern liberal’s fantasy of the implacable south?" (Here's a link to her review in the New York Review of Books. Hat tip: Movie City News.)
Your thoughts about Hopper? As either an actor or director, did he grab you emotionally?
Not a cinematic tour de force by any stretch, but as the ex cop in speed he did the scary psycho guy really well.— socialgrace- I found him so disturbing that if his talent was genius it was too overshadowed by creepiness.— ellen ginsburg
- Of course he did. I came intellectually to Hopper in Rebel Without A Cause after seeing Easy Rider, which I saw upon release (several times) during a period when it affected my attitude and direction in life profoundly. Good or less good in individual performance situations as an actor or director, Hopper stirred emotions up. His performance in Apocalypse Now is breathtakingly good and, interestingly, modest. I never saw American Dreamer, but Gene Clark's title song (all 1:30 of it) should be inscribed on all of our future public monuments. Terse, poetic, melodic and no insincere moments or hot air. There's more to say, but it can all be left out, except his fine eye in collecting art, which is entirely another story. RIP— ccjroberts
- Is there any way to see The Last Movie these days? Amazon lists the DVD as unavailable and the VHS sells, used, for $900.— Bob Ross
- I thought he was overated.Most of the roles I saw him in were of characters that you couldn't connect with. My favorite role of Hopper's was the drunk father in Hoosiers— streetjustice
- The Ameriprise commercials were his best work.— Steve Jeltz, the home-run king
- He also did a very funny Nike series, but I think we should talk about his movie rather than his commercial work.— carrierickey
- It seems rather too idealistic to see any difference between American cinema and commercials....— Andrew_Repasky_McElhinney
- Of course there are the great Hopper performances..... Night Tide, Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Blue Velvet, Speed, Waterword. . . . But two of my favorite Hoppers are from 1996 in Bruno Barreto's Carried Away and as Bruno Bischofberger in Julian Schnabel's Basquiat.... the first role is perfectly underplayed and the second is very canny and funny....— Andrew_Repasky_McElhinney
- Hoosiers. Hands down. I never really liked Easy Rider, either (I'm a traitor to my generation. So sue me). I would like to see the Sinatra-in-Australia movie (The Night We Called It a Day??) from about five/six years ago but never have. In Giant, I was (and am) always distracted by the wacko Hollywood genetics that produced Carroll Baker and Dennis Hopper as the children of Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson.— allegheny
- Allegheny: Screen genes -- the name for the phenom by which the look-not-alikes Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman and Matthew Broderick can be father, son and grandson in "Family Business" or Liz Taylor can be Dennis Hopper's Mom in "Giant" -- produces many genetic anomalies, does it not?— carrierickey
- Carrie -- Absolutely. :D I always go back to your example (what was it, 10 years ago now?) of Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in Rain Man, the actresses in How to Make an American Quilt, and Hannah and her Sisters (which at least had one of the actresses who looked liked her mother :), but none of the three looked like each other).— allegheny
- I always maintained that Hopper was nominated for HOOSIERS the year BLUE VELVET came out because they couldn't find a suitable Oscar clip. I saw/met Hopper a few years back at Tribeca when they showed his 1961 film NIGHT TIDE. He's mesmerizing in it, and when the reels were shown out of order, he provided a running commentary from the front row.— garyk
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