Easy Rider (1936-2010)

When we lose someone famous, especially someone who has been around for years, it feels kind of like it was someone we actually knew. Even though we didn’t. But every once in a while, I actually have my own personal with-my-own-eyes, in-the-flesh memory to draw on. And so it is with Dennis Hopper. The man may be gone, but I will always have one night at the end of May in 1987.

That year the Seattle International Film Festival mounted a tribute to Hopper, and the highlight was a live interview onstage in front of the festival audience. That event was preceded by a screening of his legendary/notorious little-seen follow-up to Easy Rider, The Last Movie. After the curtain rose and lowered on that quite interesting experience, those of us attending the live interview dutifully filed out of the Egyptian Theater and queued up to be let in again. To our surprise and delight, there was Hopper himself walking up and down the sidewalk chatting with people who were standing in the line, puffing on a huge cigar and smiling broadly. He seemed to be having the time of his life. Everyone was thrilled to see him and to exchange words with him, and he seemed to be enjoying it as much as anybody. As strange as it seems, all the way back then it seemed a miracle that Hopper was even still alive. The stories of his substance abuse issues were legendary and he just had the feel of someone you expected to hear had met a sad end. Even though in hindsight it is now clear that he never actually stopped working as an actor, it seemed as though he had fallen off the map after the career and commercial disaster of The Last Movie. But at that moment in 1987 Hopper was riding high. He had had three high-profile movies the year before. He had played one of his trademark drugged-out whack jobs (Feck) in Tim Hunter’s darkly haunting River’s Edge, which also featured the very young Keanu Reeves and Crispin Glover. He had made a chilling impression as the psychopath Frank in David Lynch’s compellingly creepy Blue Velvet. And he had gotten his only acting Oscar nomination ever for playing an alcoholic father (Shooter) in David Anspaugh’s based-on-actual-events basketball flick Hoosiers.

It was a pleasure to see how much Hopper enjoyed himself before, during and after his tribute. While reportedly clean after years of drug use, he had lost none of his must-flaunt-authority charm, pointedly smoking onstage in flagrant violation of a city ban. Fielding questions submitted by audience members and asked by Bellevue film critic Brent Northup, he spoke with refreshing candor about drugs, Hollywood in-fighting and how surprised he was to get letters from women who were really turned on by his turn as the psychotic Frank in Blue Velvet. He also amused us by dismissing the odd query by saying, “That’s a really stupid question.” The Q&A was followed by a screening of his most prominent screen role between Easy Rider and his mid-1980s resurgence: the title character in Wim Wenders’s 1977 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel Ripley’s Game, The American Friend. A few days later, Hopper was seen in yet another film, Alex Cox’s quirky and in-jokey caffeine western Straight to Hell.

Even though it seemed as though Hopper burst on the scene and then went away and then came back, a review of his work reveals that he was actually always around. It is stunning to be reminded of just how many major movies he was a part of down the years. It might help to divide his work into arbitrary categories: