Latest / DISGRACELAND / Dennis Hopper: Dynamite, Cocaine, Cheating Death, Subverting Hollywood, and Life on the Fringe

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Dennis Hopper: Dynamite, Cocaine, Cheating Death, Subverting Hollywood, and Life on the Fringe · DISGRACELAND

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Speaker 1: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
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Speaker 1: Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is
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Speaker 1: a production of Double Elvis. This is the story of
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Speaker 1: one of the most rock and roll characters to ever
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Speaker 1: work in Hollywood. An artistic revolutionary, a drug crazed lunatic,
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Speaker 1: a man who once tried to blow himself up in
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Speaker 1: front of a crowd in Texas. A man who took
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Speaker 1: a three hundred thousand dollars hippie art film and turned
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Speaker 1: it into a forty million dollar box office smash. It's
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Speaker 1: a story about Dennis Hopper, a man whose movies and
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Speaker 1: whose myth inspired great music. Unlike that music I played
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Speaker 1: for you at the top of the show. That was
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Speaker 1: a great music that was a preset loop for my
1:03
Speaker 1: melotron called Frank's Oxygen Mask MK One. I played you
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Speaker 1: that loop because I can't afford the rights to in
1:12
Speaker 1: the year twenty five twenty five by Zager and Evans.
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Speaker 1: And why would I play you that specific slice of
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Speaker 1: futuristic cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the
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Speaker 1: number one song in America on July fourteenth, nineteen sixty nine,
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Speaker 1: and that was the day Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider was released,
1:35
Speaker 1: an event that brought sixties counterculture into the mainstream, kicking
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Speaker 1: and screaming, and set its director Dennis Hopper on a
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Speaker 1: path that would take him to the highest of highs
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Speaker 1: and the lowest of lows. On this episode Artistic Revolution,
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Speaker 1: the Dynamite death Chair act Easy Rider in a three
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Speaker 1: point fifty seven magnum packing Dennis Hopper, I'm Jake Brennan,
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Speaker 1: and this his disgrace lamb. From where he stood atop
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Speaker 1: the roof on the third story of his twenty two
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Speaker 1: room Adobe house, you could see for miles in every direction.
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Speaker 1: The sun was high in the sky, and the edge
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Speaker 1: of the horizon sizzled. The desert wind blew in from
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Speaker 1: the southeast. The submachine gun was heavy in his hands.
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Speaker 1: It rested on his right forearm. His right finger, swollen
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Speaker 1: and sweaty from the New Mexico heat, caressed the trigger.
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Speaker 1: It wasn't the kind of gun that one of his
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Speaker 1: silver screen heroes, Arrow Flynn, used in Dodge City, the
3:00
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine movie named for his hometown in Kansas,
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Speaker 1: And it wasn't the kind of gun that another of
3:05
Speaker 1: his early acting influences Montgomery Cliff carried alongside John Wayne
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Speaker 1: in Red River. It was a James Cagney gun, a
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Speaker 1: Charles Bronson gun. It was the kind of gun held
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Speaker 1: by a man on the fringe of society and on
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Speaker 1: the fringed end of his last nerve. It was the
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Speaker 1: kind of gun that he Dennis Hopper, champion of the counterculture,
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Speaker 1: hero of the Hippies, fountain head of the fringe, deemed
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Speaker 1: necessary to hold in his hands while he stood his
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Speaker 1: ground and beat back the horde of angry locals who
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Speaker 1: didn't want anyone like him polluting the water in Taos,
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Speaker 1: New Mexico. He had that gun because they were coming
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Speaker 1: for him. They were coming to kill him. He could
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Speaker 1: hear the dull roar of the mob riding on the wind.
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Speaker 1: He couldn't make that shit up, a literal, angry mob
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Speaker 1: armed with actual pitchforks. The only other sound he could
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Speaker 1: hear was the beating of his own heart, accelerated by
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Speaker 1: his daily intake of cocaine or maybe was the LSD.
4:00
Speaker 1: Some days you just never knew which drug was responsible
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Speaker 1: for what. Some days he felt clear in your mind,
4:05
Speaker 1: but your soul was mad, And that was a whole
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Speaker 1: other story. How he had got in here was an
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Speaker 1: easy story. It happened the night before the year was
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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. The sun was going down, the cicadas were out.
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Speaker 1: Some local kids in town gave Hopper shit about his
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Speaker 1: buckskin fringed jacket and his long hair, told him they
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Speaker 1: didn't want his kind in TOAs go back to La Hippie.
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Speaker 1: Happer pretended the verbal daggers didn't FaZe him. He pretended
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Speaker 1: he didn't watch them walk away. He reached inside his pickup,
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Speaker 1: opened the glove box, and took out a loaded pistol.
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Speaker 1: He kept one eye on the kids as they receded
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Speaker 1: into the distance. He walked casually, but with a sense
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Speaker 1: of urgency. The sun was gone, the humbus cicadas thickened.
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Speaker 1: He clutched the gun tight against his body and thought
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Speaker 1: of the sea change in Hollywood that he was responsible for.
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Speaker 1: His last film, Easy Rider, captured the zeitgeist of late
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Speaker 1: sixties America. Old Hollywood was moldy Hollywood. Hopper an Easy
5:03
Speaker 1: Rider had ushered in a new style, a new look,
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Speaker 1: a new Hollywood. They wore the outfits of the tuned in,
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Speaker 1: dropped out generation, not the costumes of the old guard.
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Speaker 1: They made love on screen, not war. They talked the
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Speaker 1: way they talked, not the way some screenwriter thought they
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Speaker 1: should talk. They smoke real dope. They are out to
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Speaker 1: change the entire course of American film. It was the
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Speaker 1: hippies turn. Popper told this to any titan of Golden
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Speaker 1: age Hollywood dumb enough to lend an ear. You are
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Speaker 1: the old Hollywood. We're the new, Hopper said to director
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Speaker 1: George Kukor, nearly four decades a senior. And then he
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Speaker 1: leaned in real close and dropped his voice to a
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Speaker 1: menacing whisper. We're going to bury you. If only crusty
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Speaker 1: old George Cocor could see him now. Hopper first fell
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Speaker 1: in love with Taus when he brought a film crew
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Speaker 1: to town in nineteen sixty eight for Easy Rider. It was
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Speaker 1: his directorial debut and was made after a nearly decade
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Speaker 1: long stretch where Popper had been blacklist it in Hollywood.
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Speaker 1: Hopper's reputation in La La Land throughout the nineteen fifties
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Speaker 1: and sixties was that of a bad bad boy who
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Speaker 1: was difficult to work with and whose behavior cost him
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Speaker 1: countless good roles. Easy Rider gave him some temporary Redemption
6:16
Speaker 1: the Road movie followed two bikers, Billy and Wyatt, played
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Speaker 1: by Hopper and Peter Fonda, and was largely responsible for
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Speaker 1: bringing hippie counterculture to the American mainstream. Made for under
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Speaker 1: four hundred thousand dollars, it went on to bank upwards
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Speaker 1: of forty million domestically and another twenty million abroad. It
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Speaker 1: was an honest to god cultural phenomenon, and it made
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Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper. It made him a star. Now just a
6:38
Speaker 1: few years later, Hopper was no longer a fringe icon.
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Speaker 1: He was just an unwanted long hair, a crazy person,
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Speaker 1: a crazy person with a pistol, following a group of
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Speaker 1: shit talking kids back to their house. When the kids
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Speaker 1: reached their house and we're about to walk inside, Hopper
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Speaker 1: made his move. He drew the pistol, cocked it, and
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Speaker 1: told him they were under citizens' arrest. And when the
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Speaker 1: cops arrived, they took Dennis Hopper to jail. Hours later,
7:04
Speaker 1: when Hopper met his eight thousand dollars bail, the police
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Speaker 1: chief offered some on the solicited advice there's a mob outside.
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Speaker 1: He told him best to slip out the side door
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Speaker 1: and keep your head down. Once you get outside, we
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Speaker 1: Can't help You. That was the night Hopper bought as
7:19
Speaker 1: many firearms as he could get his hands on. He
7:22
Speaker 1: brought them back to the mud Palace. He stood guard
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Speaker 1: up on the roof. He stood up for the Fringe.
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Speaker 1: It had taken a few years for the Fringe to
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Speaker 1: make it to the Hollywood mainstream. There were other movies
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Speaker 1: in the late nineteen sixties that began to turn the
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Speaker 1: tide from what Hollywood had been to what it would become.
7:37
Speaker 1: Movies like The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, and Guess Who's
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Speaker 1: Coming to Dinner all represented major shifts in how popular
7:43
Speaker 1: cinema approached sex, violence and civil rights. Prior to Easy Rider,
7:49
Speaker 1: producers Bob Raefelson and Bert Schneider made a first attempt
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Speaker 1: at mainstreaming counterculture with Head, a comedy starring The Monkeys.
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Speaker 1: They were responsible for the Monkeys hit TV show Are
8:00
Speaker 1: Ready for primetime version of the counterculture, but the movie
8:03
Speaker 1: sabotaged their squeaky clean image and failed to make waves.
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Speaker 1: The Monkeys had conceived of the film with screenwriter and
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Speaker 1: B movie actor Jack Nicholson, which means they all sat
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Speaker 1: around a hotel suite surrounded by bags of California grass
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Speaker 1: and riffed while a tape recorder spawned. Later, Nicholson took
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Speaker 1: the tapes, along with some Nicholson gray dusts of LSD,
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Speaker 1: and turned them into a script. Experimentation with illicit substances
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Speaker 1: only increased. On the set of Easy Rider, Nicholson was
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Speaker 1: cast as a lawyer who became the gang's third wheel.
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Speaker 1: Pond and off the set, Fonda, Hopper, and Nicholson continued
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Speaker 1: to smoke weed, continued to do LLC. They were all
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Speaker 1: so eager to alter their minds that Hopper didn't even
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Speaker 1: ask what was inside of an urn that sat on
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Speaker 1: the mantle of one of the production company's offices. He
8:47
Speaker 1: dumped the powdery contents onto a boardroom table and snorted
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Speaker 1: them up with a wrinkled dollar bill. Fonda broke the news.
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Speaker 1: Hobber didn't just snort coke. He snorted the ashes of
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Speaker 1: one of the movie executives. Dead wives on the fringe.
9:01
Speaker 1: Things aren't always what they seemed Back in tows, they
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Speaker 1: rarely were. In nineteen seventy five, Dennis Hopper continued his
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Speaker 1: role as just another long haired hippie haunting the locals.
9:12
Speaker 1: It had been years since he had a proper role
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Speaker 1: in a proper film years since any major studio led
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Speaker 1: him near a director's chair. So Hopper went off the
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Speaker 1: edge of the fringe and went all in on crazy.
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Speaker 1: The locals called it the Dennis Hopper Psycho drama cowboy Act.
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Speaker 1: That act played out one night that July after a
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Speaker 1: poker match at the Hotel Lafonda. Hopper won the pot
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Speaker 1: that night, which happened to be a handful of LSD
9:36
Speaker 1: instead of the customary cash. Hopper then popped a few
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Speaker 1: doses on his tongue and chased them with some swigs
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Speaker 1: of PBR. He put his stetson on top of his head.
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Speaker 1: He stood from the table and felt the room wobble.
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Speaker 1: The three fifty seven magnum stuffed in his boot made
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Speaker 1: a clicking sound when he walked. It sounded like spurs.
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Speaker 1: He stepped out of the front door of the Lafonda
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Speaker 1: and saw it straight ahead. It was on his hind legs,
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Speaker 1: a whopping eight fucking feet tall, maybe tall or claws,
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Speaker 1: sharp teeth, snarling. It was the biggest bear Hopper had
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Speaker 1: ever seen in his life, and he feared it would
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Speaker 1: rush him at any moment. Hopper stumbled down the front
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Speaker 1: steps to the hotel. He retrieved his three fifty seven
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Speaker 1: from his boot, his stets and fell to the ground.
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Speaker 1: He raised his three fifty seven into the air, shouted
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Speaker 1: some psychodrama cowboy nonsense into the wind, and fired three times.
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Speaker 1: After the final shot rang out, Hopper unclenched his teeth
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Speaker 1: and narrowed his eyes to take stock at the damage.
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Speaker 1: Had he made contact? Was it dead? Was it a
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Speaker 1: black bear, a grizzly. Once the smoke cleared, so did
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Speaker 1: Hopper's mind. He blinked twice and the bear was no
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Speaker 1: longer a bear. It was a tree. Hopper tried to
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Speaker 1: outrun the cops, but there were too many of them.
10:48
Speaker 1: They hauled Hopper back to the county courthouse. As the
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Speaker 1: acid began to slowly wear off, Dennis Hopper realized he
10:54
Speaker 1: was sitting in the same jail cell where he had
10:57
Speaker 1: filmed a scene for Easy Rider seven years ago. Nobody
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Speaker 1: told Dennis Hopper what to do. In Dodge City, Kansas.
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Speaker 1: Son his grandparents' egg farm, he roamed the wide open landscape.
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Speaker 1: He had the autonomy of a kid three times his age.
11:34
Speaker 1: In La Mesa, California, where his family moved when he
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Speaker 1: was thirteen, he grew to resent his absentee parents. They
11:40
Speaker 1: told him to have to become a lawyer or a doctor,
11:43
Speaker 1: but they couldn't really tell him what to do. They
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Speaker 1: didn't even know him, so he ran away to join
11:48
Speaker 1: a Shakespearean theater troupe. He'd known he was destined for
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Speaker 1: the stage from an early age, all the way back
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Speaker 1: to when Dodge City premiered in his hometown in nineteen
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Speaker 1: thirty nine and Errol Flynn strolled down Main Street to
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Speaker 1: the sound of rapturous applause. He was going to be
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Speaker 1: an actor, and not just any actor, but the greatest
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Speaker 1: actor in the country, perhaps the world. And no one
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Speaker 1: could tell him otherwise, not even Harry Cone, president of
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Speaker 1: Columbia Studios and the maker and breaker of careers in Hollywood.
12:17
Speaker 1: King Cone was one of five studio heads who offered Hopper,
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Speaker 1: then only eighteen years old, a major contract after his
12:24
Speaker 1: breakthrough role as an epileptic on an episode of NBC's
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Speaker 1: weekly TV drama series medic This was nineteen fifty five.
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Speaker 1: The kid's response to the sixty three year old Cone
12:35
Speaker 1: was pure Dennis Hopper gold, go fuck yourself. Those three
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Speaker 1: words ensured Hopper wouldn't step foot on the Columbia lot
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Speaker 1: for another fifteen years. Word traveled fast in Hollywood, and
12:47
Speaker 1: the word on the street was that this kid Hopper
12:49
Speaker 1: had an oversized ego. Define it. He told King Cone
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Speaker 1: to stick his polished, glistening Oscar trophies up as goddamn asshole.
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Speaker 1: He was good, damn good. He had the raw, visceral
13:01
Speaker 1: performance on that episode of medic was obviously no fluke.
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Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper had something. Still, he was too much of
13:09
Speaker 1: a wildcard. Best to cast him in the fringe roles,
13:12
Speaker 1: the supporting roles, at least until his attitude adjusted. That
13:16
Speaker 1: was Nicholas Ray's thinking that same year in nineteen fifty five,
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Speaker 1: when he cast Hopper and Rebel without a Cause, not
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Speaker 1: in the lead role, but as a gang member named Goon.
13:26
Speaker 1: The role of Jim Stark, of course, went to James Dean.
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Speaker 1: To Dennis Hopper, the self proclaimed greatest actor in Hollywood.
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Speaker 1: Witnessing James Dean on set was a punch to the guy.
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Speaker 1: Who the fuck is this guy? Hopper asked himself, how
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Speaker 1: is James Dean better than him? Filming the chicky run
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Speaker 1: scene up on the bluff overlooking the City of Angels,
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Speaker 1: Hopper paced from car to car. Dean's transcendent takes played
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Speaker 1: over and over in his head. He had to know,
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Speaker 1: James Dean had to show him. Hopper lost his temper.
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Speaker 1: He flung open the suicide doors of the forty six
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Speaker 1: Ford coop. Dean was getting ready to race and threw
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Speaker 1: Dean in the back seat, grabbed him by the collar
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Speaker 1: of his cherry red jacket. Hopper's eyes went wide screen.
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Speaker 1: I was the best actor in Hollywood, man, Hopper yelled,
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Speaker 1: his grip tightening on Dean's collar. I was the best
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Speaker 1: damn actor, and then you came along, and somehow you're better. Man.
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Speaker 1: Dean laughed, and his eyes did that thing where they
14:23
Speaker 1: squinted and shut when he found something humorous. But Hopper
14:26
Speaker 1: was serious. He wasn't laughing. He better showed me everything
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Speaker 1: you know about acting or else, he said. He threw
14:32
Speaker 1: in that or else park to drive home how serious
14:34
Speaker 1: he was. James Dean knew he was serious. He told
14:38
Speaker 1: Hobbs to play a cool, lay back dig it. Dean
14:41
Speaker 1: told Hobbs. When the camera rolls, drink the coffee. Don't
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Speaker 1: act like you're drinking the coffee. Dean told Hopps from
14:47
Speaker 1: the camera rolls smoked the cigarette, don't act like you're
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Speaker 1: smoking the cigarette. But most importantly, Deane said, play it cool,
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Speaker 1: lay back, dig it? Can he dig it? Was what
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Speaker 1: Marlon Brando did. Dean idolized Brando, but Dean was also
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Speaker 1: so a serious student and had honed his chops. At
15:02
Speaker 1: the Actors Studio in New York City, the Actor's Studios
15:05
Speaker 1: founding artistic director Lee Strausberg developed an energy technique called
15:09
Speaker 1: the Method, where actors would use their own real life
15:12
Speaker 1: experiences to inform their choices on stage and on screen.
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Speaker 1: The results were real, raw performances unlike anything movie going
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Speaker 1: audience had ever seen. Secondhand Method acting advice wasn't the
15:24
Speaker 1: only thing James Dean and Dennis Hopper bonded over. Inside
15:28
Speaker 1: Dean's Warner Brothers dressing room, the duo would smoke marijuana
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Speaker 1: in secret. They'd put paper bags over their heads when
15:34
Speaker 1: they exhaled, so that the suits at Warner Brothers would
15:37
Speaker 1: never suspect anything. No smoke, no smell, no foul, no harm,
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Speaker 1: Play it cool. Dean and Hopper's experimentation and improvisation didn't
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Speaker 1: end there. One afternoon, James Dean had Hopper meet him
15:50
Speaker 1: in the kitchen of a guesthouse in the Hollywood Hills
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Speaker 1: that he was renting his mission. If he chose to
15:54
Speaker 1: accept it, get extra high. Dean told him to come
15:58
Speaker 1: on an empty stomach. The hunger you were, the higher
16:01
Speaker 1: you get. James Dean pulled a chunk of payote cactus
16:04
Speaker 1: from the pocket of his cherry red jacket. Was dull, green,
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Speaker 1: looked like a fat caterpillar in the fetal position. The
16:11
Speaker 1: best way to eat this, Dean told Hopps, is raw.
16:14
Speaker 1: But this shit tastes so nasty and so bitter that
16:16
Speaker 1: most people puked their guts out when they eat it.
16:19
Speaker 1: Dean solution was to boil the green, fat cactus on
16:22
Speaker 1: the stovetop for about an hour, or until they were
16:25
Speaker 1: tired of watching it boil, and Dean took a pare
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Speaker 1: of plyers and yanked out the spines like he was
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Speaker 1: deboning a salmon filet. Hops cut the cactus into slices
16:33
Speaker 1: with a steak knife, and then he and Hops took
16:36
Speaker 1: turns taking hits from a thin marijuana cigarette while the
16:38
Speaker 1: payote bounced around a soup pan full of water on
16:41
Speaker 1: a rolling boil. When the hour was up, Dean strained
16:45
Speaker 1: the sludgy green peote tea through one of his old
16:47
Speaker 1: white T shirts into two porcelain mugs. Bottoms up. Hops
16:52
Speaker 1: felt like he'd stepped into a dream. The walls fluttered
16:55
Speaker 1: like they were alive. The floor sparkled like a starry
16:58
Speaker 1: night sky. He looked over Dean and it was like
17:01
Speaker 1: he was looking in a mirror. No, maybe he's no fractions.
17:04
Speaker 1: No supposes Hopps was there, man, He was there. Whether
17:07
Speaker 1: it was grass, paota or half a bottle of whiskey
17:10
Speaker 1: that got him there. When he took his girlfriend and
17:14
Speaker 1: rebel Cassivade Natalie Wood up Maholland Drive one night, it
17:18
Speaker 1: was pitch black. The only light came from the headlights
17:21
Speaker 1: of Hopper's brand new Austin Healey convertible. It was raining.
17:25
Speaker 1: Natalie had just told Dennis Hopper that she was also
17:27
Speaker 1: having an affair with Rebels director Nicholas Ray. When she
17:31
Speaker 1: laid that trip on him, Hopper's foot sank into the
17:33
Speaker 1: gas pedal. Natalie was only sixteen, Hopper was two years older,
17:37
Speaker 1: but Ray, Nicholas Ray was forty three, old enough to
17:41
Speaker 1: be Natalie's father, and he was sleeping with the films
17:43
Speaker 1: under Rage and Chanoux Hopper saw Red and they were
17:47
Speaker 1: making their way downhill, the convertible swerving and curving on
17:50
Speaker 1: the road like a snake trying to eat its own tail.
17:52
Speaker 1: Hopper hugged the curve and then pushed his foot as
17:54
Speaker 1: far as he could into the gas pedal and the
17:57
Speaker 1: rain on the windshield was an abstract art, and the car
17:59
Speaker 1: flowed into the opposite lane as it rounded another corner.
18:03
Speaker 1: Hopper didn't even see the oncoming car as it hit
18:06
Speaker 1: the head off. Natalie was thrown through the windshield and
18:12
Speaker 1: wound up on the pavement. And at the hospital, Ray
18:16
Speaker 1: burst through the door he wanted Hopper found him pacing
18:19
Speaker 1: the lobby and waiting for word from the doctor. Ray
18:22
Speaker 1: grabbed Hopper by the collar of his shirt, just like
18:24
Speaker 1: Hopps had grabbed Dean that night on the bluff, and
18:27
Speaker 1: threw him up against the wall. Cool it. Ray spot
18:30
Speaker 1: through his gritted teeth, his eyes watering with fear and anger.
18:33
Speaker 1: Hopper sat in the darkness of his Doheny Drive apartment
18:36
Speaker 1: that night, wishing he'd had a chunk of peyote cactus
18:39
Speaker 1: to boil in water. He had a stray thought that
18:41
Speaker 1: he would end the love triangle once and for all,
18:44
Speaker 1: he'd get a pistol and walk himself right over to
18:46
Speaker 1: Nicholas Ray's house. Knock on the door, fire one shot
18:49
Speaker 1: into Ray's chest when he opened up, cool it, He'd
18:52
Speaker 1: show him cool man. Nobody told Dennis Hopper what to
18:55
Speaker 1: do now, Hobbs thought he'd better not. He could face
18:58
Speaker 1: a lot at eighteen, but going to the can for
19:00
Speaker 1: premeditated murder was too much. Instead, for his revenge, he'd
19:05
Speaker 1: fuck with Ray. On the set of Rebel, while they
19:08
Speaker 1: were filming the field trip scene at the Griffith Observatory,
19:11
Speaker 1: Hopper took off to go score a hot dog and
19:13
Speaker 1: caused a major production delay, and when Hopper finally returned,
19:17
Speaker 1: Ray told him he was fired. But Ray couldn't fire
19:20
Speaker 1: Hopper because the kid was under contract untouchable. So Ray
19:23
Speaker 1: did the next best thing and took away all of
19:26
Speaker 1: Hopper's lines, and no one would hear a word come
19:29
Speaker 1: out of Goon Hopper's character's mom for the entire movie.
19:35
Speaker 1: Henry Hathaway was the next director who tried to tell
19:37
Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper what to do. In nineteen fifty eight on
19:41
Speaker 1: the set of From Hell to Texas. Hopper did it
19:44
Speaker 1: his way for seventy nine takes, multiple days of shooting. Finally,
19:49
Speaker 1: on the eightieth take, Hopper broken down and, once again
19:52
Speaker 1: on the fringe of his last nerve, did the scene
19:54
Speaker 1: Hathaway's way. As Hopps left the set in search of
19:58
Speaker 1: his next job, Hathaway's holding to not bother looking. He
20:02
Speaker 1: was going to personally see to it that Dennis Hopper
20:05
Speaker 1: would never work another goddamn day in Hollywood again. We'll
20:10
Speaker 1: be right back after this.
20:12
Speaker 2: We're We're where.
20:19
Speaker 1: Brook Hayward recoiled in fear when the first foot came
20:22
Speaker 1: down on the windshield. She fumbled the car keys in
20:25
Speaker 1: her hands. Another foot stomp on the windshield, and the
20:28
Speaker 1: glass cracked. Hopper was wearing those big shit kicker boots,
20:32
Speaker 1: steel toed, heavy treads. He jumped up and down on
20:35
Speaker 1: the yellow hood and rattled the entire car. She reached
20:39
Speaker 1: for the floor and got the keys back in her
20:41
Speaker 1: hands just in time for Hopper's boot to go right
20:44
Speaker 1: through the windshield. Brook screamed as the glass shattered and
20:47
Speaker 1: fell into the car's interior. Hopper was on the hood
20:51
Speaker 1: panting and why all because Brooke felt like going home
20:54
Speaker 1: alone after being subjected to watching her husband Dennis Hopper
20:58
Speaker 1: playing Billy the Kid in My McClure's obscene play The
21:01
Speaker 1: Beard ripped the panties off his coat, star and go
21:04
Speaker 1: down on her. If Brooke was looking for a sign,
21:08
Speaker 1: this was it. It wasn't the first time Hopper had
21:10
Speaker 1: gone violent. It was a Jekyll and Hide thing with him.
21:14
Speaker 1: Peter Fonda, brother of her best friend Jane Fonda, called
21:17
Speaker 1: her once back in nineteen sixty eight to Warner that
21:19
Speaker 1: something was up with Hops. He was acting strange. He
21:23
Speaker 1: may have gone off the rails, and their kids were
21:25
Speaker 1: still at home when Hopper walked through the door, his
21:28
Speaker 1: wily long hair held at bay by a thin Paisley headband,
21:31
Speaker 1: and said to Brook get me food or I will
21:34
Speaker 1: kill you. It wasn't long after that that the lapde
21:38
Speaker 1: pulled Hopper over. They told him he threw a roach
21:41
Speaker 1: from the window. He begged to differ and proved it
21:43
Speaker 1: by showing him that he still held a roach in
21:45
Speaker 1: his hand. And while they booked him downtown, Brooks seized
21:49
Speaker 1: the opportunity to get a restraining order and start the
21:51
Speaker 1: divorce process. Michelle Phillips could relate the former singer for
21:56
Speaker 1: The Mamas and the Papas became Hopper's second wife on
21:58
Speaker 1: Halloween Knight that I feteen seventy in a candlelit ceremony
22:02
Speaker 1: in the courtyard of the Mud Palace in Taos. Eight
22:06
Speaker 1: days later, Hopper drove his truck under the tarmac of
22:09
Speaker 1: the Santa Fe Airport to physically block her from leaving
22:12
Speaker 1: on a jet plane, and their one week of marriage
22:15
Speaker 1: was far from blissful. Hopper was paranoid. He was mister Hyde.
22:20
Speaker 1: He shot his guns off in the house. He was
22:23
Speaker 1: convinced that Michelle was a witch. He handcuffed her so
22:25
Speaker 1: that she couldn't escape. As soon as she got Hopper
22:28
Speaker 1: to take the cuffs off, Michelle was out the door
22:33
Speaker 1: that the Santa Fe Airport security soon had Hopper surrounded.
22:37
Speaker 1: They moved him off the runway, and then the plane
22:39
Speaker 1: was gone, Michelle along with it. He called her that night.
22:43
Speaker 1: I love you, he pleaded, I need you. Have you
22:46
Speaker 1: ever thought about suicide? She responded. Hopper went back to
22:50
Speaker 1: the Mud Palace and back to working on what was
22:52
Speaker 1: quickly becoming his own version of career suicide. He was
22:56
Speaker 1: piecing together the upteenth edit of his new film, The
22:59
Speaker 1: Last Movie, which was his quixotic attempt making the film
23:02
Speaker 1: to end all films. The success of Easy Rider offered
23:06
Speaker 1: him carte blanche. With his next directorial effort, he decided
23:09
Speaker 1: to realize a pet project of his, a meta movie
23:12
Speaker 1: about a stunt man who goes into self imposed exile
23:15
Speaker 1: in Peru. In his head, he was better than Allman
23:18
Speaker 1: in Cassavetta's hand, peckinpah All put together, he was the
23:22
Speaker 1: American Felini. I'm a genius and I can do anything,
23:25
Speaker 1: Hopper shouted at the mountains. He was emboldened by whatever
23:28
Speaker 1: combination of payo, to lsd grass and cocaine were tooling
23:32
Speaker 1: around the inside of his body. Cocaine, in particular, was
23:35
Speaker 1: everywhere in Peru, which is where Hopper chose to shoot
23:38
Speaker 1: the last movie, Cookeead's in La clamored for a chance
23:42
Speaker 1: to get a job on the crew, simply for the
23:44
Speaker 1: chance to peep some of the purest shit known to man,
23:47
Speaker 1: which they could then smuggle back home to the States
23:49
Speaker 1: and film canisters to make a mint. But the reality
23:53
Speaker 1: of a Dennis Hopper film shoot in Peru was an
23:55
Speaker 1: entirely different reality, an alternate reality. The crew had a
23:59
Speaker 1: hall fifteen thousand pounds of camera and lighting equipment, three
24:03
Speaker 1: hours up the side of a mountain in treacherous conditions.
24:06
Speaker 1: Actors suffering from altitude sickness puked all over the beautiful countryside.
24:11
Speaker 1: One of the production members forced the stewardess to smoke
24:13
Speaker 1: a joint on the flood into Cusco. When the Peruvian
24:16
Speaker 1: cops thought for a hot minute about locking up the
24:19
Speaker 1: entire crew and throwing away the key, another production member
24:23
Speaker 1: attempted to take his own life. Hopper knew that if
24:25
Speaker 1: the guy had been successful, the movie and Hopper would
24:28
Speaker 1: be held responsible by the government. The insanity of an unstable,
24:32
Speaker 1: oxygen deprived, cocaine saturated shoot in a foreign country drove
24:36
Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper to further paranoias. He was convinced that the
24:39
Speaker 1: Peruvian government had the whole set under surveillance, that they
24:43
Speaker 1: were in communication with the United States government, and that
24:46
Speaker 1: he'd be arrested the minute they stepped off the plane
24:48
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. When production wrapped and they touched down
24:52
Speaker 1: in the States, there were no Feds waiting for him.
24:55
Speaker 1: There was just Hopper's rampant paranoia. Back in Tiles, Hopper
25:01
Speaker 1: spent the better part of a year editing the last
25:03
Speaker 1: movie he screened, cut after cut in the town's movie
25:06
Speaker 1: theater for anyone who cared. One cut was eight hours long,
25:10
Speaker 1: eight hours long. When it was finally released in the
25:13
Speaker 1: fall of nineteen seventy one, it was a lean ninety
25:15
Speaker 1: minutes long. It won the Critics Prize at the Venice
25:18
Speaker 1: Film Festival, and then it promptly bombed at the box office.
25:22
Speaker 1: It was too artie for the studio, it was delivered
25:25
Speaker 1: too late, was all but forgotten. Months later. Dennis Hopper
25:29
Speaker 1: wouldn't direct another movie for a decade. Instead, he struggled
25:34
Speaker 1: while his old friend Jack Nicholson made Chinatown and won
25:37
Speaker 1: an oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Hopper
25:40
Speaker 1: grasped for scraps and was occasionally rewarded with small films
25:43
Speaker 1: in countries like Germany and Australia. He was so desperate
25:48
Speaker 1: for something new, is something that would rekindle left feeling
25:50
Speaker 1: of leading the march on the fringe frontier, that he
25:53
Speaker 1: even answered Charles Manson's call. Manson was on trial for
25:57
Speaker 1: the Tate La Bianca murders, some of the most savage
26:00
Speaker 1: and nightmarish crimes Los Angeles had ever seen. The aftermath
26:04
Speaker 1: rumbled through the city like a late night after shock,
26:06
Speaker 1: and many musicians and artists had gotten mixed up with
26:09
Speaker 1: Manson's self proclaimed creative endeavors. But that was before the killings,
26:14
Speaker 1: before Manson sent a group of blood hungry cronies of
26:17
Speaker 1: Cello Drive with explicit instructions to kill them all. It's
26:21
Speaker 1: worth repeating Dennis Hopper was different from Dennis Wilson or
26:24
Speaker 1: Terry Melcher or Jim Morrison, and that he was the
26:26
Speaker 1: only one crazy enough to get involved with Manson. After
26:30
Speaker 1: the murders, Manson wanted to make a biopic of his
26:34
Speaker 1: life story. Hopper would direct. He could even star in
26:37
Speaker 1: it if you wanted. Ppper thought of Terrence Malick's bad Lands.
26:40
Speaker 1: He thought of Don Siegel's Dirty Harry, Leonard Castle's The
26:43
Speaker 1: Honeymoon Killers. A film on Manson could be the defining
26:46
Speaker 1: work in an emerging genre on American cinema that looked
26:49
Speaker 1: to get into the heads of cold blooded killers. Hopper
26:53
Speaker 1: took the bait. He took the meeting from across the table.
26:57
Speaker 1: Hopper looked into Manson's eyes as he spoke. His eyes
27:01
Speaker 1: were everywhere. It bounced around like two pinballs, Happer looked
27:05
Speaker 1: beyond the bouncing eyeballs to go deeper. Manson rambled on
27:08
Speaker 1: about how he was a movie star. He'd always been
27:11
Speaker 1: a movie star, only the cameras had never been rolling.
27:14
Speaker 1: He needed Hopper to turn the cameras on and start rolling.
27:17
Speaker 1: Happer looked deeper. Behind the bouncing eyeballs was blackness. Happer
27:22
Speaker 1: wanted to find a familiar French poet behind those eyes,
27:25
Speaker 1: the sludgy counterculture oozing on the edge of sanity. Something
27:28
Speaker 1: that could make good commentary, a good story, a good movie,
27:31
Speaker 1: maybe something Hopper could relate to. But all he found
27:35
Speaker 1: was blackness, so dark and so black that Happer worried
27:39
Speaker 1: if he looked any longer, he gets sucked right out
27:41
Speaker 1: of the room and never find his way back. He
27:44
Speaker 1: left the Manson tail on the table. Hopper was left
27:49
Speaker 1: to contemplate a failed career in the mid seventies, a
27:52
Speaker 1: career derailed by his own stubbornness, and maybe he'd never
27:56
Speaker 1: worked again. He decided to put it out of his mind.
27:59
Speaker 1: He took more drops. By the end of the nineteen seventies,
28:03
Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper's daily intake, by his own admission, involved a
28:06
Speaker 1: case of rum with a fifth of rum on the side,
28:09
Speaker 1: twenty eight beers in three grams of coke came. He
28:13
Speaker 1: eventually graduated from snorting the coke to shooting it. It
28:16
Speaker 1: was honestly a miracle that he ever made it back
28:18
Speaker 1: to the director's chair alive in the early eighties, especially
28:22
Speaker 1: considering the other chairs he tried on for size, including
28:25
Speaker 1: one that had the potential to blow them to Kingdom come.
28:51
Speaker 1: The trick of the Russian dynamite death chair act is
28:54
Speaker 1: to get the four sticks of dynamite to all explode
28:57
Speaker 1: at the same time. That way, the explosion creates a
29:00
Speaker 1: vacuum which saves you from bodily harm. You do that,
29:04
Speaker 1: and you escape death. You don't do that, and you're fucked.
29:09
Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper had seen the trick performed by a stuntman
29:12
Speaker 1: when he was a teenager. For years he thought about
29:15
Speaker 1: trying it himself. In May nineteen eighty three, he decided
29:18
Speaker 1: to give it a shot. Why the hell not. The
29:21
Speaker 1: cocktail of drugs in his system gave him courage, The
29:25
Speaker 1: paranoia in his brain gave him purpose. He worried the
29:28
Speaker 1: Feds of the Peruvians were still after him, maybe the
29:30
Speaker 1: mafia too. Again why the hell not. These are the
29:34
Speaker 1: things you worry about when you are literally not thinking straight,
29:37
Speaker 1: And obviously he was far from thinking straight when he
29:40
Speaker 1: sat down in a chair in the middle of the
29:42
Speaker 1: Big Age Speedway in North Houston and the house lights
29:45
Speaker 1: went down and the spotlight went up on Dennis Hopper.
29:49
Speaker 1: The rednecks and film students in the audience had never
29:52
Speaker 1: heard of the trick before, and they were there simply
29:54
Speaker 1: out of morbid curiosity. The film students were busted over
29:57
Speaker 1: from Rice University, where Hopper had just his new film,
30:01
Speaker 1: Out of the Blue. The fuses were lit, the spotlight
30:04
Speaker 1: went dim, and all the audience saw was the sparkling
30:07
Speaker 1: fuses as they snaked their way to the chair's feet.
30:14
Speaker 1: The explosion sent a boom through the speedway. Smoke enveloped
30:17
Speaker 1: Hopper in the chair. It was like a Houdini act.
30:20
Speaker 1: People in the stands were covering their eyes with their hands.
30:23
Speaker 1: Others were screaming and gasping. As the smoke cleared, Hopper
30:28
Speaker 1: stood up and walked away from the chair. The chest
30:30
Speaker 1: puffed out adrenaline on eleven, not a scratch. Dennis Hopper
30:35
Speaker 1: left Houston feeling invincible. He headed for Mexico and the
30:41
Speaker 1: set of the German film Jungle Warriors, a low rent
30:44
Speaker 1: exploitation flick. When it came to work, Hops took what
30:48
Speaker 1: he could get. Wasn't long into the chute before the
30:50
Speaker 1: crew lost sight of him, and Dennis Hopper wandered into
30:53
Speaker 1: the jungle in his pajamas, deep in the trees, head
30:57
Speaker 1: full of orange sunshine and the White Lady. Back to
31:00
Speaker 1: another jungle of his recent past, the Philippines, where he
31:04
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to work with director Francis Ford Coppola,
31:07
Speaker 1: a Titan of New Hollywood. It was on the set
31:10
Speaker 1: of Apocalypse Now that he got to do scenes with
31:12
Speaker 1: Marlon Brando, the hero of his hero, James Dean. But
31:16
Speaker 1: Brando had hated James Dean, he thought he was a wannabe,
31:19
Speaker 1: and so by proxy, Marilyn Brando hated Dennis Hopper. He
31:23
Speaker 1: threw bananas at Hopper in the scenes that they did
31:25
Speaker 1: together and called him Mutt. Was it method or madness?
31:29
Speaker 1: Maybe a little bit of both. Either way, it's fucking hysterical.
31:33
Speaker 1: The jungle in Mexico, though, was definitely madness. The cops
31:37
Speaker 1: found Hopper walking down a dirt road he had been
31:39
Speaker 1: following flashes in the sky. He was receiving transmissions from
31:42
Speaker 1: the clouds and they told him World War three was
31:45
Speaker 1: on the brink. Oh and he had shed his pajamas
31:48
Speaker 1: along the way, and Dennis Hopper was buck naked. The
31:51
Speaker 1: insanity reached a fever pitch where Hopper escaped from the
31:54
Speaker 1: plane that was bringing him back to the States, still
31:57
Speaker 1: higher than James Dean on a half gallon of peyotee.
32:00
Speaker 1: Hopper thought the plane was on fire and climbed out
32:03
Speaker 1: onto the wing through an emergency exit, and there he
32:06
Speaker 1: stood on the edge of the wing, knees bent slightly
32:08
Speaker 1: to help maintain his balance, waving out the people who
32:11
Speaker 1: were attempting to coax him back inside, and his shirt
32:13
Speaker 1: rippling wildly from the suction of the nearby turbine as
32:16
Speaker 1: the plane powered up for takeoff. And this image of
32:19
Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper standing on the wing of a plane in
32:21
Speaker 1: Mexico and waiting for World War three to hit his
32:23
Speaker 1: fucking bonkers, even by Dennis Hopper's standards, and it was
32:27
Speaker 1: his last truly gonzo move back home, He entered rehab
32:33
Speaker 1: in Century City to kick his cocaine habit, and there
32:35
Speaker 1: would be no more naked runs to the jungle or
32:38
Speaker 1: a three fifty seven magnum cowboy showdowns with trees that
32:41
Speaker 1: looked like bears. No more tantrums on the hoods of
32:44
Speaker 1: cars or strange fruit boiled up on a stovetop. However,
32:49
Speaker 1: there would still be plenty of strange. Dennis Hopper's third
32:52
Speaker 1: act arguably was his best known and most culturally beloved,
32:56
Speaker 1: Even more so than his Easy Rider origins. He was
33:00
Speaker 1: reborn in a kinder, gentler role, still plenty eccentric, like
33:04
Speaker 1: an uncle who had his cage rattled one too many times,
33:07
Speaker 1: but he reserved his flashes of crazy for the roles
33:09
Speaker 1: he played. He played the wacko who inhaled nitrous oxide
33:13
Speaker 1: in Blue Velvet. He played the town drunk in Hoosier's.
33:16
Speaker 1: He played the maniac who rigs a bomb on the
33:18
Speaker 1: bus and Speed. He played the leader of post apocalyptic
33:22
Speaker 1: pirates in water World. He directed Robert Duval and Sean
33:25
Speaker 1: Penn in Colors, and later, toward the end of his life,
33:29
Speaker 1: even ended up playing himself in the protastic television show Entourage.
33:34
Speaker 1: But before that, Dennis Hopper settled down in a fringe
33:38
Speaker 1: section of LA's Venice Beach called the Ghetto, where he
33:41
Speaker 1: bought a funky condo designed by architect Frank Geary. Inside
33:46
Speaker 1: video monitors played on constant loop footage from the premises.
33:50
Speaker 1: Hopper kept a small gun stuffed in his sock and
33:52
Speaker 1: a loaded shotgun inside, not because he was fending off
33:56
Speaker 1: a horde of pissed off locals, but because he still
33:58
Speaker 1: had that edge to him, and he still stood guard
34:01
Speaker 1: for the fringe. He was there in his futuristic Venice
34:05
Speaker 1: compound until May twenty ninth, twenty ten, when he died
34:09
Speaker 1: at the age of seventy four from prostate cancer. From
34:13
Speaker 1: out there in the future, he went straight back to
34:15
Speaker 1: a simpler past, buried in a plain pine box and Taos.
34:20
Speaker 1: And what did they say when he died. He was
34:22
Speaker 1: a kind man, he was a wise man, he had plans,
34:25
Speaker 1: he had wisdom. Bullshit. They said he was king freak,
34:28
Speaker 1: a powder keg, and a liability, the most cosmic cowboy
34:32
Speaker 1: hippie and one of the craziest fuckers to ever walk
34:35
Speaker 1: a Hollywood back lot. But also that he was a
34:38
Speaker 1: visionary and a prophet for a new age, and one
34:42
Speaker 1: of the very few who wandered off the edge of
34:44
Speaker 1: the fringe. And lived to tell the tale. A tale
34:48
Speaker 1: not quite a disgrace, but so wild it needed to
34:52
Speaker 1: be told. I'm Jake Brennan and this this Disgraceland, all right.
35:12
Speaker 1: I hope you doug this episode on Dennis Hopper. Hey,
35:15
Speaker 1: Apple podcast listeners, you know the drill. Make sure you
35:17
Speaker 1: have automatic downloads turned on so you don't miss any episodes.
35:20
Speaker 1: All right. This week's question of the week is which
35:24
Speaker 1: actor or actress from Hollywood history is the most rock
35:27
Speaker 1: and roll in your estimation? Is it Dennis Hopper? Is
35:30
Speaker 1: it someone else? Is someone like Johnny Depp or Marlon Brando,
35:33
Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe? And that reminds me.
35:35
Speaker 2: We also want to know if you think the Kennedy's
35:37
Speaker 2: had anything to do with Maryland's death six one seven
35:40
Speaker 2: nine oh six six six three eight. With your answers,
35:41
Speaker 2: you can leave me a voicemail or text. You can
35:43
Speaker 2: also hit me at disgrace slamdpod at gmail dot com.
35:46
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35:48
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35:50
Speaker 1: answers on the next after party bonus episode that's coming
35:54
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35:56
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35:59
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36:02
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36:06
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36:08
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