Tag Archives: Dennis Hopper
COLORS 30
In the 1950s and 1960s Dennis Hopper was a young actor appearing in classic films like Rebel Without a Cause, Giant and The Sons of Katie Elder. But by the late 1960s Hopper was tired of directors telling him what to do. He felt like he knew better and he’d prove it if he could [...]
May Daze
May is a big month for Dennis Hopper fans: the actor/director/writer/painter/photographer/art collector was born on May 17, 1936, and Hopper left this plane nearly seven years ago on May 29, 2010. One thing that can be said about Hopper is that his years of drug abuse nearly cost him his creative gifts, and maybe even [...]
Back to Hell
I recently found Straight to Hell with Spanish subtitles on YouTube. Like Blue Velvet and River’s Edge, Straight to Hell was released in 1986. Three decades haven’t dulled this whacked-out western which married MTV to the wild west with a cast of rockers including the Pogues, Joe Strummer, Courtney Love, Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones, Elvis [...]
River’s Return
In 1981, in a small California town, a teenager raped and killed his girlfriend. Afterwards he took his friends to see the body. About a dozen young people had seen the body and known about the murder before the murder was reported two days after the slaying. River’s Edge is based on those events. The [...]
Frank’s Wild Years
My last post celebrating Blue Velvet at 30 created a lot of fun comments and discussions on social media, and that made me glad that I’d bookmarked this great interview with Dennis Hopper. This chat covers Hopper’s work with David Lynch on the film, and looks back at the star’s storied, sordid, remarkable career. Stay [...]
Love Letter
This year we celebrate the 30th anniversary of David Lynch’s surreal skewering of suburbia, Blue Velvet. A 2002 documentary illuminated that story’s darkest shadows. Here’s IndieWire with the word… The 70-minute-long, 2002 documentary The Mysteries Of Love dives deep into the 1986 film, with interviews with key members of the creative team, including Lynch himself, [...]
Dennis Hopper’s Chainsaw
This year we celebrate the release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. You read that right. The first film is the best horror movie of all time for some, but if it seems odd to be celebrating the sequel, you obviously haven’t seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Did I mention it stars Dennis Hopper [...]
Last Words
After being mortally shot in a restaurant urinal, German-Jewish American gangster Dutch Schultz slipped into fever and hallucination before dying. Schultz’s surrealistic screed of last words has since become a thing of literary legend. Here’s the Wiki… Schultz’s last words were a strange stream-of-consciousness babble, spoken in his hospital bed to police officers who attempted [...]
Seeing Colors
Spike Lee’s controversial new film, Chi-Raq shines a spotlight on the out of control gang violence in Chicago. In 1988, Dennis Hopper similarly pointed a camera at the gang violence in his own Los Angeles backyard. Hopper’s film Colors was a gritty-for-the-time cop drama starring Robert Duvall and Sean Penn, but its most important contribution [...]
After Hopper
Seems there’s always a significant anniversary to recount this year. Here’s another remembrance: this one marks five years since the death of Dennis Hopper. Hopper was an actor, director, writer, photographer and art collector. He was good at each of them and occasionally great at every one. Here’s a compilation of Hopper interviews presented by [...]
