Author: DC (Page 813 of 1104)

* (restored)

 

‘Tall, soulful-eyed British actor Murray Melvin had the look of a sensitive “punker” at a time when such youths were called “Teddy Boys.” Melvin received his training and first blush of prominence with the Theatre Workshop. In films since 1960, Melvin’s most conspicuous early assignment was as the sympathetic homosexual in 1962’s A Taste of Honey. Back in those days, a role of this nature was but one step away from flamboyance; Melvin took that one step, and has spent most of his career in extroverted, often outrageous roles.

‘Melvin left his North London secondary school at the age of fourteen unable to master fractions but as Head Prefect, a qualification he says he gained by always having clean fingernails and well combed hair. He started work as an office boy for a firm of Holiday Agents off Oxford Street To help channel the energies of the young after the disturbing times of the war, his parents had helped to found a youth club in Hampstead, financed by the Co-operative Society of which they were long standing members. A drama section formed with Murray its most enthusiastic member.

‘He attended evening classes at the nearby City Literary Institute and studied Drama, Mime and Classical Ballet. During an extended lunch-break from the Ministry, he applied to Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop company at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and auditioned on-stage singing and dancing for Joan Littlewood and Gerry Raffles. On being asked to create a character he knew from life he impersonated a rather rotund director of the Sports Board. Having ascertained that he had to return that afternoon to work for this character Joan Littlewood said to Gerry Raffles: “the poor little bugger, we must get him away from there”. And they did.

‘In October 1957 he became an assistant stage manager, theatre painter and general dogsbody to John Bury, the theatre designer, and he went on stage in his first professional role as the Queen’s Messenger in the then in-rehearsal production of Macbeth. He was cast as Geoffrey in Shelagh Delaney’s play, A Taste of Honey. In February 1959, A Taste of Honey opened at the Wyndham’s Theatre and transferred to the Criterion some six months later. It was the hit of the season. Murray Melvin went on to play his role of Geoffrey in the film of A Taste of Honey, directed by Tony Richardson, for which he won the Prix de Cannes as best actor at the Festival in 1962. He was also nominated for the BAFTA “Most Promising Newcomer” award.

‘The production attracted the interest of filmmakers, including Ken Russell and Lewis Gilbert. Murray Melvin became a member of what has often been called the Ken Russell Repertory Company, appearing in many of Russell’s most celebrated films, including The Devils and The Boy Friend. Lewis Gilbert cast Murray in H.M.S. Defiant (1962), alongside Dirk Bogarde, and in Alfie, where he played Michael Caine’s work friend, stealing petrol and taking photographs to sell to tourists.

‘Among Melvin’s more celebrated later roles, he played Reverend Samuel Runt in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975). He appeared in the Swinging Sixties comedy Smashing Time (1967), which also featured Bruce Lacey and his robots. Ken Russell had made a film about Lacey called The Preservation Man (1962). He co-starred with Russell regular Oliver Reed in Richard Fleischer’s film of The Prince and the Pauper Crossed Swords (1977) and in Alberto Lattuada’s lavish four-part television film Christopher Columbus (1985). Peter Medak cast Murray Melvin in five films: A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1972), starring Alan Bates; Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1973, starring Peter Sellers); The Krays (1990); Let Him Have It (1991); and as Dr. Chilip in David Copperfield (2000).

‘In 2004 he appeared as Monsieur Reyer, the musical director and conductor of the Opera Populaire, in Joel Schumacher’s film adaptation of the musical The Phantom of the Opera. Working increasingly in television, he appeared very memorably as the sinister Bilis Manger in the Doctor Who spinoff, Torchwood. His later film appearances included Star Wars Episode VII and Fifty Shades of Grey.’ — collaged

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Murray Melvin @ IMDb
‘Murray Melvin explains to Neil Cooper the debt he owes to Joan Littlewood’
Audio: ‘One on One: Samira Ahmed with Murray Melvin’
National Portrait Gallery – Person – Murray Melvin
Book: ‘The Art of the Theatre Workshop’
Murray Melvin recalls ‘Oh What a Lovely War’
‘Melvin and Medusa’
‘Murray Melvin on Brendan Behan’
‘Back where it all started’

 

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Extras

Murray Melvin. 57 takes!?

Murray Melvin in conversation with Michael Billington

Murray Melvin. 60s.

 

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Interview

 

Can I start by asking you how you became an actor?

Murray Melvin: I don’t know really, Dominic. How I did I become an actor? Now, Miss Littlewood would of course say, ‘You must never become an ‘Actor’, you must work against that.’. Well now, after the last War my mother and father helped to start a Youth Club. We lived in Hampstead in North London. The reason for starting the club was, I suppose, to get us all off the streets, and in… what in modern parlance would call ‘centred’. The club started a drama section and I became part of that, and we met every week. Now, the woman who ran the drama section was a Jess Harrison, and one week she announced that we would not rehearse the following week, that she was going to take us all to the theatre. She had read that there was a company that she had seen when she lived in Glasgow, they were called the Theatre Workshop, and this company had taken over a theatre at Stratford in East London. Now, she considered them to be the finest theatrical company in the country. So the following week we all met after work and took a long – for those days – long journey to the Theatre Royal in the East End of London.

The play we saw was Richard II, and Richard was played by Harry H. Corbett, who much later in life was to become Steptoe in that very famous series. Now, at the same time Richard II was being presented at the Old Vic with John Neville playing Richard. Now, Stratford was run on a shoestring, so there were no long golden cloaks, no long fanfares, no great long processionals coming on stage – just raw Elizabethan language. And you were on the edge of the seat the whole evening. Elizabethan language spoken on the moment, rather than on the breath. I considered that to be the first time I had seen real theatre. It was gobsmacking.

Now, we were taken back the next year to see Edward II. That was done on a sloping ramp, the width of the stage. Oh, now, I had never seen that before and neither had many other people. Designed – as was Richard – by the Theatre’s then resident designer John Bury, who went on to work at the National Theatre. A sloping ramp with a map of England painted on it, so when Edward was centre stage he was standing in the centre of his England. Oh, it was wonderful!

Now, I am going back to… what? ’55 – ’56, and I’ve yet to see a classical production that comes up to either of those. And that’s what made me determined to try and get myself to that theatre, and about two years later I succeeded. I obtained a grant to study for a year, and I got my place in a drama school – that old chicken and egg, it still happens doesn’t it? You get a grant if you’ve got a place in a drama school, you’ve got a place in a drama school if you’ve got a grant.

Who did you get the grant from?

MM: Guildhall School. But having got both, I then trotted out to Stratford East and said, ‘Well, I’ve got a grant.’ And so for a year… ‘So if you would take me on as a student, you’d get me free for a year.’ Oh, I was in! [Laughs] Poverty stricken – I was in… Gerry Raffles took me in, that’s right. And of course, I went as the dogsbody! I mean, I really was the dogsbody – making the tea, sweeping the stage, all that old stuff. And also I was an extra hand to John Bury in making sets. I mean, I did everything. It was very rough and very basic but… I mean, I could go on for hours about that work, doing drains and painting the foyer and all that stuff, but that’s what I did.

I wondered if you could give us a sense of your perspective of what the 1950’s were like as a decade?

MM: Oh bloody awful! Well, the early fifties. The breakthrough started in middle fifties. I mean, when did the Beatles start? I mean pop groups start? It was…?

Around about ’63.

MM: You see, that was late! It was late! The Twist – it was the Twist that was the breakthrough, and that came over from France, like a lot of other good things. That’s before Bill Haley and Rock Around the Clock, it was the Twist that was the start. Oh wonderful Twist – I never stopped! Before that you had a formalised society, you’d got a class society. We’ve gone back to it now in some ways. But you had ‘class’.

I was thrown out of school at the age of 14 because I refused to learn. What they actually meant was, I was bored with ‘two times two’ and all that. I mean urgh got over that. But I’d had been out on the… we all had, of my generation, we’d been out on the streets for far too long – so no formal education. If I had no education and no money, I had no way of getting into drama school. Can you get into a drama school these days without a certificate? No? Yes? Dodgy, dodgy! No, it’s terrible isn’t it? What have certificates to do with imagination?

So, the fifties. You had a society, very formal, very stiff, very boring. London… there was one coffee house just off Shaftesbury Avenue – it’s where Tommy Steele started! – oh what is it called…? No, it’s too long ago! But that coffee house allowed young musicians to strut their stuff, but that was it! Pubs – the meeting houses of the time – closed at ten thirty! There was a coffee shop at the top of Drury Lane that was open until ten – Cor! That was daring! Now, there was a life after ten thirty of course, but by God you had to have money! Remember, at that time you could only drink after ten thirty if you had food. I mean, it’s a world away really isn’t it – I can’t believe I got through it all!

The conditions in the mills in Lancashire and Manchester, I mean, it was so appalling. Oh my goodness me! You know, those young girls on those huge machines, coping with those threads, getting their fingers and their hair caught under the machinery. Oh, I mean it must have been ghastly!

 

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19 of Murray Melvin’s 102 roles

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Joseph Losey Concrete Jungle (1960)
‘Joseph Losey’s 1960 picture The Criminal (released in the US two years later under the rather misleading title The Concrete Jungle) is an example of a film noir made in Britain with genuine fidelity to the conventions of the genre, although with some updating—it’s more lurid and more sexually explicit than earlier American examples of the genre—that brings it closer to the spirit of the then-emerging Swinging Sixties. Losey was, of course, actually an American with previous experience directing Hollywood noirs (M, The Prowler, The Big Night), a refugee from the film industry witch hunts of the early fifties. Relocating to Britain and working at first under various pseudonyms, he continued his film directing career as an expatriate until his death in 1984.’ — The Movie Projector

Trailer

 

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Tony Richardson A Taste of Honey (1961)
‘A Taste of Honey (1961), directed by Tony Richardson, is a key example in the cinema of the Angry Young Men, as it was called. Although time may have blunted the impact of its taboo-busting issues, 46 years on, it’s no less flavorful for its powerful performances, most notably Rita Tushingham in her breakout role as Jo, through whose wide, expressive eyes we see a grim world of mean expectations. The film version of Shelagh Delaney’s 1958 play, the film tells the tale of Jo, a plain high school girl in Manchester, who lives with her single mother, Helen, a tarty, rent-skipping pub singer (a brilliant portrayal by Dora Bryan). After Jo spends the night with a black sailor and gets pregnant, her mother decides to marry a man she’s just met who promises a new life in the suburbs – without her difficult and acid-tongued daughter. With nowhere left to go, Jo moves into a shabby flat and soon forms a relationship with a young gay man, Geoffrey (Murray Melvin), who works with her at a shoe store. Rita Tushingham and Murray Melvin both won acting awards for their roles in A Taste of Honey at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.’ — cinemaretro.com

Excerpt

50th anniversary A Taste of Honey Q&A

 

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Lewis Gilbert Damn the Defiant! (1962)
‘Damn the Defiant! is an 18th-century seafaring drama from director Lewis Gilbert. Alec Guinness plays the stern but compassionate captain of a British warship, engaged in the Napoleonic wars. Guinness is popular with his men, which is more than can be said for his new second-in-command Dirk Bogarde. When Guinness tries to modify Bogarde’s sadistic adherence to discipline, Bogarde responds by mistreating Guinness’ cabin-boy son, knowing that the captain cannot intervene under the edicts of British maritime law. During an incipient mutiny, Bogarde is accidently killed, and Guinness knows that the crewmen responsible must hang once they reach shore. But after these same men perform courageously in battle, Guinness suffers a crisis of conscience: How can he condemn these fearlessly patriotic men to death, as he knows he must? Based on the novel Mutiny by Frank Tilsley.’ — Hal Erickson, Rovi

Suite

 

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Lewis Gilbert Alfie (1966)
‘Alfie tells the story of a young womanizer (Michael Caine) who leads a self-centred life, purely for his own enjoyment, until events force him to question his uncaring behaviour and his loneliness. He cheats on numerous women, and despite his charm towards women, he treats them with disrespect and refers to them as “it”, using them for sex and for domestic purposes. Alfie frequently breaks the fourth wall by speaking directly to the camera narrating and justifying his actions. His words often contrast with or totally contradict his actions. This was the first film to receive the “suggested for mature audiences” classification by the Motion Picture Association of America in the United States, which evolved into the modern PG rating.’ — collaged

Trailer

End title

 

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Jack Smight Kaleidoscope (1966)
‘A kaleidoscope? That’s a plaything you look into, as you look into a telescope, and see bits of colored glass or other objects within its range of observation fall into assorted symmetrical patterns as you rotate it. The optical effects are fascinating and amusing for a while—for as long as you care to be diverted by the pretty designs—nothing more. That might also serve as a description of the film called Kaleidoscope. What’s nice about the movie is that (1) Murray Melvin kicks ass, blowing holes in bad guys with sociopathic serenity, and (2) Warren Beatty is shown to be less effective at action movie stuff than the slender, wispy-haired poof. In its way, Kaleidoscope is one of the most progressive films of its time, because it casts a gay actor when it doesn’t need to, allows the audience to read him as gay, makes no comment about this, and has him do things which are markedly counter-stereotype — ultimately saving the hero and heroine from certain death.’ — collaged

Excerpt

 

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Desmond Davies Smashing Time (1967)
‘Brought to our screens by Carlo Ponti, a man who had lent his production muscle to La Strada, Dr Zhivago and Blow Up in preceding years, Smashing Time is an aptly named if somewhat less high-minded motion picture that follows the fortunes of Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave as Brenda and Yvonne, two naïve Bradford lasses who arrive in London in search of fame, fortune and scenes that a-swing like a pendulum do, but who swiftly find themselves lost in a wondrous dreamworld of high camp slapstick carnage, incorporating sleazy nightclubs, pop stardom, lecherous toffs, rampaging robots, ill-judged cat outfits, several marathon food fights and a Salvation Army preacher being run down by an out of control steamroller. Having moved to London under broadly similar circumstances myself a few years back, I can confirm that this is still a more or less accurate picture of life for the newcomer in our nation’s capital.’ — Breakfast in the Ruins

the entire movie

 

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John Frankenheimer The Fixer (1968)
‘In The Fixer, Frankenheimer and Dalton Trumbo, the writer, have missed no opportunity to give us speeches telling us what is happening and what it all means. The victim (played with great sensitivity by Alan Bates) is not only a Christ figure, but even says he is. He makes a little speech to his guard about love and brotherhood. The representatives of the czar likewise make speeches about their own motives. The prisoner’s bravery and heroism are liberally commented on. The significance of anti-Semitism in human affairs is analyzed. And at the end, we are given that terribly inappropriate little speech, just to make sure we didn’t miss the point. It’s a sort of mid-cult “Dragnet” conclusion, telling the audience how the case turned out. But what were needed were fewer self-conscious humanistic speeches, less articulate nobility, and more of the real experience.’ — Roger Ebert

the entire film

 

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Bud Yorkin Start the Revolution Without Me (1970)
‘It’s impossible to dislike any movie that starts with Orson Welles (at his Paul Masson wine-commercial most faux pretentious) lying his head off about a supposedly newly discovered historical event that could have prevented the French Revolution, only to sourly conclude that “men of integrity — and I may say of considerable resources — have made a film on the subject. It’s a color film, which I am not in.” That sets the tone for Start the Revolution Without Me, a 1970 film that has drifted into the realm of a cult classic (in other words, it lost money on its original release and was later discovered by rabid fans). The film tries — perhaps too hard — to maintain this same tone throughout its length as it sends up the novels of Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and just about every swashbuckler you care to name (the credits are presented partly over scenes of John Barrymore in Don Juan). Presenting Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland as two sets of twins — mismatched at birth by an addled doctor when a peasant woman and a noble woman go into labor simultaneously — Revolution gallops along at breakneck speed in a frenzied attempt to keep the viewer from noticing its shortcomings.’ — Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress

the entire film

 

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Ken Russell The Devils (1971)
‘The Devils is a film that is both narratively and thematically complex. Russell wrote the film’s often quite brilliant screenplay, and he is dealing with weighty themes of faith, politics, sexuality, and the necessity of the separation of church and state. Now if that sounds dry, the director’s approach and style is anything but. The filmmaking is bombastic. Russell on top form could be a brilliant director, but no one has ever accused him of subtlety. Here he utilises a scores of filmmaking tricks, repetitive crash zooms, dream sequences, a shrieking atonal score, all to create a derangement of the senses building to a shocking crescendo of sexual abandonment and torture in the final act.’ — Fright Fest

UK Trailer

Sequence edited out of the original release of ‘The Devils’

 

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Ken Russell The Boy Friend (1971)
‘As a change of pace Russell did a lighter piece, The Boyfriend, in 1971. This was a commercial failure. Rather than film the musical The Boy Friend, Russell made the film about the making of the musical. When the star of a show breaks a leg, the newcomer, Twiggy, has to take her place. A major film director comes to look at the show as a possible new film. The film was badly cut by the studio before release. Russell himself says (The Lion Roars) “but twelve reels are too long to tell such a slim tale, and Sandy Wilson’s music, however tuneful, has diminishing returns, as one pastiche Twenties number follows another”. The imagery however is stunning.’ — Iain Fisher

Trailer

 

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Peter Medak A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1972)
‘Adapted by Peter Nichols from his own play, A DAY IN THE DEATH OF JOE EGG is a British tragi-comedy that was directed by Peter Medak and originally released in May 1972, although it had been shot two years earlier. It stars Alan Bates, Janet Suzman, Peter Bowles, Sheila Gish, Joan Hickson and Elizabeth Robillard. It tells the story of Brian and Sheila, an ordinary middle-class couple who happen to have a daughter with cerebral palsy, a condition which has rendered her a vegetable. As you might expect, given its stage origins, it is a very theatrical film by which I mean wordy, non-naturalistic, and largely confined to one or two sets. It’s also warm, funny, humane and ultimately very moving. I should also mention everyone’s favourite oddball Murray Melvin, a favourite of the late great Ken Russell, who has a role as a doctor.’ — Cinema Delirium

Excerpt

 

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Stanley Kubrick Barry Lyndon (1975)
‘The most persistent criticism of Stanley Kubrick was that he was a chilly filmmaker, one with little interest in, or feeling for, human beings. But Barry Lyndon challenges that view. For many, this is the only one of Kubrick’s mature films with any kind of emotional charge and it’s certainly the most sensual that this most clinical of filmmakers ever made. And yet, it is also the most detached film Kubrick made; the action is often simply posed, with relevant information relayed to us by an omniscient narrator, usually with scant regard for any dramatic niceties. How is it that so many people can find such a film so moving? The first thing to note is how ironic it is. Although Kubrick never stresses the humour, he’s certainly aware of of the absurdities; the strutting figure of John Quinn, the English officer (Leonard Rossiter, quite the contrast to Ryan O’Neal) who steals Barry’s first love or the bizarre Reverent Runt, chaplin to Lady Lyndon (played by that wonderful actor Murray Melvin), secretly in love with his mistress.’ — Film Club #8

Collage: Murray Melvin in Barry Lyndon

The wedding scene

 

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Ken Russell Lisztomania (1975)
‘Can’t think what went wrong with this one. Nineteenth-century composer plus a spaceship, comedy zombie Hitler, Pope Ringo, and a giant penis: it must have sounded so good on paper.’ — The Guardian

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Peter Hunt Shout at the Devil (1976)
‘Critic Richard Eder did not like the film much. He wrote, “The movie has too much plot. All that action, conducted by characters without character—except for Fleischer, whose childlike joy in hurting people is almost appealing—produces lethargy…the movie is a passable midget in absurdly long pants.” PopMatters journalist J.C. Maçek III wrote “Shout at the Devil can be every bit as farcical as any of Roger Moore’s James Bond films, and Lee Marvin’s characterization of O’Flynn is every bit as absurdly fun as anything he did in Cat Ballou or Paint Your Wagon, but at the flip of an invisible switch both Shout at the Devil and its stars take a turn for the incredibly dark.” Film critic Roger Ebert thought that “Shout at the Devil is a big, dumb, silly movie that’s impossible to dislike. It’s so cheerfully corny, so willing to involve its heroes in every possible predicament, that after a while we relax: This is the kind of movie they used to make, back when audiences were supposed to have the mentality of a 12-year-old. It’s great to be 12 again.”‘ — collaged

Trailer

 

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Christine Edzard Little Dorrit (1988)
‘Little Dorrit is a six-hour epic in two parts, with 242 speaking roles, and yet it was crafted almost by hand. The director, Christine Edzard, and the co-producer, her husband, Richard Goodwin, live and work in a converted warehouse in London’s dockland. When they are not making films, they manufacture dollhouses. They built the sets for this film inside their warehouse, they sewed all of the costumes on premises, they used their dollhouse skills to build miniature models that are combined with special effects to create a backdrop of Victorian London. And to their studio by the side of the Thames, they lured such actors as Alec Guinness, Derek Jacobi, Cyril Cusack, Murray Melvin, and Joan Greenwood to appear in a film that was made mostly out of the love of Charles Dickens.’ — Roger Ebert

Trailer

 

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Peter Medak The Krays (1990)
‘There’s an echo of Leopold and Loeb in the saga of the Kray brothers — symbiotic criminals who, in their twinship, found a horrific strength and power. Yet The Krays is far from a knockout gangster movie. Opting for an ”impressionistic” approach, veteran director Peter Medak (The Ruling Class) mixes horror and garish comedy without really evoking the drama of the Krays’ story. His absurdist touch works well in the scenes with the brothers and their blustery mum (Billie Whitelaw), to whom they’re devoted; the two men are like latter-day versions of James Cagney’s mother-fixated Cody Jarrett in White Heat. But we never get any sense of how the brothers build their empire, or of how the various supporting characters fit into their lives. Telling this story in a more straightforward fashion would have been far more satisfying. Still, the Kemps are something to see.’ — Entertainment Weekly

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Nick Willing Alice in Wonderland (1999)
‘Alice in Wonderland is a television film first broadcast in 1999 on NBC and then shown on British television on Channel 4. It is based upon Lewis Carroll’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Tina Majorino played the lead role of Alice, and a number of well-known performers portrayed the eccentric characters whom Alice meets during the course of the story, including Ben Kingsley, Ken Dodd, Martin Short, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Ustinov, Murray Melvin, Christopher Lloyd, Gene Wilder, and Miranda Richardson. The film won four Emmy Awards in the categories of costume design, makeup, music composition, and visual effects.’ — collaged

Excerpt

 

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Joel Schumacher The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
‘Not vulgar enough. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s horror operetta looks expensive, but it’s been filmed without decadent atmosphere or visual flow. Emmy Rossum has an unforced sweetness, but Gerard Butler, as the Phantom, sings like a Meat Loaf stuffed with too much garlic. The film takes everything that’s wrong with Broadway and puts it on the big screen in a gaudy splat. The plot is impressively free of anything that does not smell of unpasteurized melodrama. Joel Schumacher’s film adaptation of Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera combines fingernails-on-blackboard audio agony with bamboo-under-fingernails physical torture. Most audiences will either fall asleep or hit the cinema doors running.’ — collaged

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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James Gray The Lost City of Z (2016)
‘“I’ve been through certain versions of hell,” responds James Gray when I ask him about the difficulties he and a bunch of dedicated and wildly ambitious actors faced when they charged into the jungle to make The Lost City of Z. He admits that it was both a physical and psychological hell to shoot his adaptation of David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller in the depths of the Amazon, in conditions not unlike those that early-20th-century explorer Percy Fawcett faced when he traveled to the South American jungle in search of a fabled civilization. But it was worth the sacrifice, because the American auteur feels he succeeded at conveying Fawcett’s drive toward transcendence—what Slant’s Ed Gonzalez described as his “mind being freed from the shackles of obsession.”’ — Slant Magazine

Trailer

 

 

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p.s. Hey. I’m in Oslo today to co-host a screening of ‘Permanent Green Light’ tonight. If you’re there, it’s at VEGA SCENE, 8 pm. Otherwise, please enjoy today’s restoration post featuring the onscreen stylings of the curious character actor Murray Melvin. Thanks.

 

‘Dennis Hopper was one of Hollywood’s great modern outlaws. His persona, on and off the screen, signified the lost idealism of the 1960s. There were stages in Hopper’s career when he was deemed unemployable because of his reputation as a hell-raiser and his substance abuse. However, he made spectacular comebacks and managed to kick his dependence on alcohol and cocaine.

‘Born in Dodge City, Kansas, Hopper, whose father was a post-office manager and mother a lifeguard instructor, expressed an interest in painting and acting at a young age. While still in his teens, he appeared in repertory at Pasadena Playhouse, California, and studied acting with Dorothy McGuire and John Swope at the Old Globe theatre, San Diego.

‘The year of his 19th birthday, 1955, was extraordinary. Not only did Hopper have substantial parts in three television dramas, but he was cast in supporting roles in James Dean’s last two films: Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant (released in 1956). The two actors became friends over the few months before Dean, whom Hopper idolised, was killed in a car accident aged 24.

‘In Rebel Without a Cause, Hopper is the youngest and slightest member of the juvenile delinquent gang that provokes Dean. In Giant, he gave a sensitive performance as the son of Texan oil millionaire Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor; he marries a Mexican girl and wants to “go north” to become a doctor – decisions against his father’s wishes. Although Hopper appeared only briefly with Dean in both movies, the latter had a huge influence on him.

‘Hopper brought some moody Method mannerisms to bear on his following roles, mostly as callow, trigger-happy villains in westerns, such as Billy Clanton in Gunfight at the OK Corral (1956) – “I don’t know why I get into gunfights. I guess sometimes I just get lonely” – and From Hell to Texas (1958), on which he got into a confrontation with director Henry Hathaway, refusing to take direction for several days. He was also a grumpy, childish Napoleon in the infamous, star-studded The Story of Mankind (1957) and the leader of a street gang, dubbed “Cowboy”, in Key Witness (1960).

‘In the 1960s, Hopper, who alienated several veteran directors and producers, was pronounced difficult, argumentative and violently temperamental. However, he continued to get work, mostly in minor baddie roles, in major films including Cool Hand Luke (1963), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and True Grit (1969). He also turned up in the weird space vampire film Queen of Blood (1966), in which he played a clean-cut astronaut who has the blood sucked out of him. The executive producer on the film was Roger Corman, who had just begun his cycle of dope and biker movies, and cast Hopper with Peter Fonda in the seminal acid flick The Trip (1967). The duo together conceived, wrote, with Terry Southern, raised the finance for, and starred in the alienated- youth road movie Easy Rider (1969), with Hopper directing.

‘Made for $400,000, the film’s combination of drugs, rock music, violence, a counter-culture stance and motorcycles as ultimate freedom machines caught the imagination of the young, made pop icons of Hopper and Fonda on their bikes and took over $16m at the box office. This rose to more than $60m worldwide in the next three years. It also brought Hopper, Fonda and Southern a best screenplay Oscar nomination. Easy Rider, which led to a stream of tacky, imitative pictures with equally loud rock soundtracks, retains legendary status in Hollywood lore, although these self-pitying “flower children” of the 60s now seem as dated as the “bright young things” of the 1920s.

‘Hopper, meanwhile, was out of control. His eight-year marriage to Brooke Hayward, the daughter of actor Margaret Sullavan, had ended in divorce. In 1970, he married Michelle Phillips, of the Mamas & the Papas, but it lasted eight days. (“The first seven days were pretty good,” Hopper once commented.) In the same year, a raving, naked, drug-fuelled Hopper was arrested while running around Los Alamos, New Mexico.

‘In 1971, following the success of Easy Rider, Hopper was bankrolled by Universal with $850,000 and given total creative control to make whatever kind of movie he wished. He decamped to Peru with a cast and crew for a self-penned, directed and edited meta-monstrosity, The Last Movie (1971). Starring Hopper as a stuntman with a Christ complex on the set of a western being directed by Samuel Fuller, the film, made for the stoned by the stoned, was stoned by the critics.

‘Before the film’s limited release, Hopper wrote and appeared in an autobiographical documentary, The American Dreamer (1971), which showed him editing The Last Movie at his home in Taos, New Mexico, spouting hippy philosophy, taking baths with women and shooting guns. This sealed his reputation as the most flipped-out man in the movies, and he spent the next 15 years in foreign films, personal projects, and low-budget arthouse or exploitation movies.

‘The quality of these veered wildly, but Hopper turned in one of his most memorable performances as Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley character, who has the enigmatic, homicidal title role in Wim Wenders’s The American Friend (1977). High on drugs, he improvised much of his part of the photojournalist buzzing around Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979).

‘In 1980, Hopper directed his third feature, Out of the Blue, an effective piece of post-hippy American gothic, about a family well outside the mainstream. It focuses on a 15-year-old punk girl (Linda Manz) trying to survive in a world of drunks (Hopper plays an alcoholic father), drug addicts and rapists. Made in Canada, the picture was well received when it was released three years later, assisting Hopper’s reintegration into Hollywood.

‘In 1983, Hopper entered a drug rehabilitation programme. By then, according to Peter Biskind’s book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, his cocaine intake had reached three grams a day, complemented by 30 beers, marijuana and Cuba Libres. After emerging relatively clean from the programme, he played another alcoholic father – this time to Matt Dillon – in Coppola’s Rumble Fish (1983), now a commanding elder statesman amid the brat-pack cast.

‘Hopper’s comeback was consecrated in 1986, with his astonishing portrayal of a psychopathic kidnapper in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. His performance, in which he inhales an unspecified gas and screams “Mommy” at Isabella Rossellini during bizarre sex scenes, became as much a conversation piece as the film itself. This role as a crazed, drug-dealing sadist was followed with an antithetically subdued and touching performance as an ashamed dad seeking redemption in Hoosiers in the same year. Hopper, who seemed to draw on his down-and-out years, was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar.

‘Hopper appeared in three further films in 1986 – ranging from a leftwing media terrorist in Riders of the Storm to a mad ex-biker with his own strangely moral code in River’s Edge, and the former Texas Ranger who wants revenge for the chainsaw death of his brother in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. He continued to be extremely busy in the following year, playing a Texan tycoon bumped off by his wife in Black Widow and Molly Ringwald’s father in The Pick-up Artist.

‘In 1988, Hopper directed Robert Duvall and Sean Penn in a violently realistic cops-versus-street gangs drama, Colors, released to a debate as to whether the film reflected or exacerbated gang conflicts in Los Angeles. A worse fate met his next directorial effort, Catchfire (1989), in which he starred with Jodie Foster as, respectively, kidnapper and responsive victim. Released in an edited version of which he did not approve, the film, at Hopper’s insistence, was attributed to Alan Smithee (the pseudonym for directors preferring to remain anonymous).

‘In Flashback (1990), as an erstwhile 60s radical activist gone underground, Hopper seems to be playing his own legend, drawing inspiration from his earlier characters. At one stage, he remarks, “It takes more than going down to your local video store and renting Easy Rider to become a rebel.”

‘This led to similarly offbeat performances, many of them variations on the smiling, charming, cold-blooded killer with a screw loose. He stood out in supporting roles in True Romance (1993) and the box-office smash Speed (1994), and his blackly humorous edge almost redeemed some of the mediocre thrillers he appeared in throughout the 90s, though little saved Chasers (1994), a leaden naval comedy, the seventh and last of the features he directed. In 2008, Hopper appeared in the TV series Crash, the spin-off from the Paul Haggis 2004 film, as a verbose, eccentric, down-on-his-luck music producer. Hopper proudly stated that it was the craziest character he had ever played.

‘Despite his radical persona, Hopper was a paid-up Republican, though he voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 election. In that year, he appeared in An American Carol, a flabby, liberal-bashing comedy starring rightwing actors such as Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer and James Woods.

‘Hopper, who played an art dealer in the 1996 film Basquiat, was also an accomplished painter and sculptor, and a well-connected player on the American art scene. He was a skilled photographer whose subjects included Martin Luther King; fellow artists Ed Ruscha, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg; and co-stars including Paul Newman and John Wayne. In 2007, he presented the Turner prize at Tate Liverpool.’ — Ronald Bergan

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Dennis Hopper Official Website
Dennis Hopper @ IMDb
Video: Blow up – C’était quoi Dennis Hopper ?
Dennis Hopper’s Mad Vision
The Last Movie: Dennis Hopper’s Curiously Frustrating Experiment
In 1969, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda’s ‘Easy Rider’ Pushed Hollywood Into the ’70s
Dennis Hopper, the Director
Easy Rider at 50: how Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda’s film helped change Hollywood forever
Ma (presque) rencontre avec Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper’s Dying Wish: His Own Strain of Marijuana
In Memoriam Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper: The Missing Years
WHY WE SHOULD ALL BE MORE LIKE MR DENNIS HOPPER
The Untold Story of Brooke Hayward and Dennis Hopper’s Hollywood Home
How did Hollywood hellraiser Dennis Hopper make it to the ripe age of 74?
Vulture Interviews Dennis Hopper, Photographer
Easy Riders Feud as Dennis Hopper Cheers Peter Fonda’s Non-Oscar
Random Roles: Dennis Hopper
When Jean-Michel Basquiat and Dennis Hopper walked for Comme des Garçons
Vector of Evil
I Blame Dennis Hopper

 

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Extras

Dennis Hopper: Create (or Die)

DENNIS HOPPER INTERVIEW on JAMES DEAN, GEORGE STEVENS

Dennis Hopper: Rebelle D’hollywood

Dennis Hopper Interview- Easy Rider/The Last Movie (1971)

 

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Interview

 

TONY SHAFRAZI: Dean’s death froze everyone. How did it affect you?

DENNIS HOPPER: Before Jimmy had gone up to race his car, I think he had gone into this silent-order monastery down in Malibu and spent three days up there. When he came back, he came to the studio. And it was one of the few times I ever saw him dressed in a suit and tie. It was as if he was saying goodbye to people. He was going to race. But he was going to come back. George Stevens wouldn’t let him race when we were making Giant, which was obviously intelligent, but Dean only had two weeks to go, so Stevens said okay. Dean spent all of his money on this Porsche Spyder. He was actually going up to where they shot East of Eden to have a race. It was not his fault. I mean, this guy came and didn’t see him. Dean had gotten a ticket for speeding that afternoon, so he wasn’t speeding when it happened. Rolf [Wüetherich], the guy who was with him, lived.

SHAFRAZI: And Dean had just shot a clip about safe driving, which is remarkable.

PETER M. BRANT: What was your reaction when you found out that he’d died?

HOPPER: Okay, so I’m in the theater in Santa Monica. My agent is there. The play hasn’t started yet when my agent gets up and leaves to take a call. I’m sitting there, and he comes back and he’s ashen. He says, “I have to tell you something, but promise me that you’ll stay here in the theater.” I said, “Is it someone in my family?” He said, “No, but are you going to stay here?” “Yeah,” I say. He says, “James Dean was just killed in a car accident.” And at that moment, the lights went out on the stage, and the spotlight came up on this empty chair, and I flipped out. That was it. In fact, I think I hit my agent. I went crazy. It was a bad time. You know, I really believe in destiny, and that didn’t fit in.

BRANT: So when Dean passes, you’re a young actor, and you’re going through what has to have been, emotionally, a big change in our life: hitting stardom, landing major roles, everybody watching you. What were you going through at that time?

HOPPER: Well, people in Hollywood either loved Jimmy Dean or they hated him—but the people who loved him went into this whole thing where they were having séances, where they were seeing him, where they were talking to him. But I just couldn’t grasp the fact that he was dead. He was going to direct movies. He was the most incredible actor I’d ever seen. And the idea of destiny . . . I was really confused. Warner Bros. had loaned me out to 20th Century Fox to do this film, From Hell to Texas [1958], with [director] Henry Hathaway. But I just didn’t want to do the movie. I didn’t like the part, and I thought, after Giant, I should be doing something else. Hathaway was one of those tough old-school directors. He became a prop man, and worked his way all the way up to becoming a director. He was a real workhorse—and a big filmmaker. He wanted me. He thought that I was the best young actor he’d seen. But he wanted me to imitate Marlon Brando. He gave me gestures, line readings—all these preconceived things. And I refused to do them. I walked off that picture three times on location—and three times, he came to get me. We’d have dinner. He was the most charming man you’d ever meet at dinner. But in the daytime, he was a monster. So at dinner we’d talk about what we were going to do the next day, and he would say, “Great, terrific.” And then we’d get on the set, and he would be like, [raises voice] “That’s fuckin’ dinner talk, kid!” So we finally get back to the 20th Century Fox lot, and it’s my last day on the picture. I come into the studio and Hathaway is there. He points to a stack of film cans and says, “You see what that is over there?” I say, “It looks like some film cans to me, Henry.” He says, “Yeah. We’ve got enough to shoot for three or four months. You see what we got over there?” He points to a bunch of sleeping bags. “We’ve got sleeping bags. We’re going to sleep here on the soundstage until you do the scene my way.” So we start working at around 7 A.M., and we send for lunch at around 11 A.M. when Steve Trilling, who was second in charge to Jack Warner at Warner Bros., calls. He says, “What the hell is going on over there? Do you know that Hathaway owns 40 percent of 20th Century Fox? What are you trying to do, lose our studio? He’s going to sue us! Just do what he says and get your ass back home.” And then lunch arrives, and Jack Warner calls. “Are you out of your fuckin’ mind?” he says. “Hathaway is going to own Warner Bros.! Whatever he wants, do it a hundred times for him.” So, finally, it’s 11 o’clock at night, and I’ve tried every way possible to do the scene, and I finally just break down and start crying. I say, “Okay, just tell me what you want.” And he gives me all of this stuff to do, and I do it, he prints it, we’re done, and I leave the studio. I didn’t really work again in film after that until Hathaway rehired me for The Sons of Katie Elder [1965].

BRANT: How did that happen?

HOPPER: Well, I came to New York to study with Lee Strasberg for five years, which turned out to be really good for me because then I was connected in New York. But I wasn’t thinking that way at the time. I couldn’t work in film after the Hathaway thing, so I was thinking that the thing I could do was work in television.

BRANT: How was it viewed at that time to work in television? You did so many big series. You did episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Rifleman, Bonanza.

HOPPER: Well, Warner Bros. got into television very early, so I did a lot of television there. In the beginning, it was sort of okay to do television. But then it became this thing where movie actors didn’t do television—they certainly didn’t do commercials, because that just meant the end of your career.

Peter [Fonda] said, ‘Let’s promise ourselves that we will not do a motorcycle movie.’ I said, ‘Absolutely, man. We’re going to be like the singing cowboys. I’m going to be the sidekick, and this is going to be ridiculous.’ Dennis Hopper

BRANT: A lot of the shows you did were Westerns.

HOPPER: A lot of them were Westerns—Rifleman, Wagon Train, Cheyenne.

BRANT: After Giant came a period where the Western becomes a really big factor in our culture. You were in one of my favorites, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

HOPPER: Oh, yeah. John Sturges.

BRANT: What was it like working with Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster on that film?

HOPPER: It was great. I mean, the stuntmen on that film also worked on John Wayne’s pictures. They were just a fun group, man. I was the rookie. I got every game played on me. I was actually closer to Douglas because he was a little more fun. One of the tricks they played on me involved a gunfight. We’re out doing the actual gunfight at the corral—we’re shooting and stuff—and there’s a crowd watching, including this young girl who I’d been having a fling with. So they came up to me and said, “The police are here to arrest you because you had an affair with that girl. Just stay with us. They can’t come into the scene because we’re all shooting guns and everything, so stay in the scene.” I went, “Oh, I don’t know. I guess she’s pregnant.” So the guys take me out of the scene like I’ve been hurt, and they get me into my room at the hotel, and this carried on for four days before I was like, “Come on! There’s no police.” [laughs] They’d come in and say things like, “The girl’s trying to get away!” I mean, it was just one thing after another.

BRANT: So what happened after you went to New York?

HOPPER: So then the first job I get after five years is when [director] Stuart Rosenberg calls me in to read for The Twilight Zone.

BRANT: Is that the episode where you play the Nazi?

HOPPER: Yeah. [Twilight Zone creator and producer] Rod Serling was still alive at the time, which was really cool. Rosenberg was the best in television at that time, and I quickly became one of his players. I did two episodes of The Defenders and an episode of Naked City before he took me to England to star with Patricia Neal in an episode of Espionage. Then he made Cool Hand Luke [1967], and he took all of the guys who were on television shows and put them in there. I don’t even have one line in the movie.

BRANT: But your presence is felt.

HOPPER: This is the way Rosenberg explained the character. He said, “You’re not going to have any lines, but you’re going to be around all the time. It’s going to be like everybody takes care of your character because he’s like a child.”

BRANT: So how did Hathaway wind up hiring you again?

HOPPER: Well, I’d married my first wife, [actress] Brooke [Hayward] in 1961, and we’d had our daughter, Marin. . . .

BRANT: Brooke is like Hollywood royalty.

HOPPER: Hollywood royalty. Her father was [theatrical producer and agent] Leland Hayward and her mother was [actress] Margaret Sullavan. So Marin is about 4 or 5 months old when Hathaway calls me. Now, during this period of time when I wasn’t making movies, which I think was about eight years, I thought of every way possible to get back, whether it was killing Hathaway or just studying his films. And I realized by watching his movies that the reason he gives you all of these things to do in a scene, or tries to create some kind of anxious energy, is because he doesn’t like to move his camera. I don’t even know if he knows that, but in my mind, that’s what he’s doing. And because he doesn’t move it, he needs you to move in order to get some energy on the screen. So I come in and see him—I mean, I like the guy. It’s not that I dislike Hathaway.

BRANT: You just didn’t admire his work at that time.

HOPPER: I was trying to work in another way, and I couldn’t. So he calls me in and says, “Now we want you to play this part. Duke and I have decided this since you married a nice Irish girl, and we knew her mother.”

BRANT: Duke is John Wayne.

HOPPER: Yeah. He says, “We think, now that you have a daughter and you’re married, you should go back to work. But you should know, Wayne can’t stand this Method shit, so don’t do any of that.” I said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Hathaway. I’m a much better actor now than I was eight years ago.” So we go down to Durango, Mexico, and I’m doing this 10-line scene. It’s the first scene of the picture. So Wayne is there—he had one lung out already—and [producer] Hal Wallace is there. Hathaway gives me the line reading and every gesture he wants me to do, and I just do it, and he comes up to me. He’s got a cigar in his mouth, and he’s crying. He says, “That was great, kid. Great.” So I say, “You see, Mr. Hathaway? I’m a much better actor now that I was eight years ago.” And he says, “You ain’t a better actor, kid. You’re just smarter.”

BRANT: So as we get toward the end of the 1960s, you do Easy Rider.

HOPPER: Well, first I wrote The Last Movie with Stewart Stern, who wrote Rebel Without a Cause. Stewart wouldn’t do it unless I paid him. Because the way we worked, I would tell him what I wanted and he would go upstairs and write it. That was the way we did it. But at some point he said, “You’re going to have to pay me. It’s like going to a psychiatrist. If you want to tell me this story, you’re going to have to pay.”

BRANT: So what happened with it?

HOPPER: We wrote it, and I gave the screenplay to Peter Fonda, who read it and said, “I’ll produce this.” So we go all over town trying to get financing but can’t. We come to New York—we can’t get financing there, either. And then we went in to see Huntington Hartford.

BRANT: Whose family started A&P.

HOPPER: Yeah. I guess he’d been doing a lot of acid because he had somebody painting psychedelic stuff all over his apartment. It was totally crazy. So we get in there, and I’m explaining the film to him and asking him for money to make the movie, and he says, “You’re so passionate about this. I’ll tell you what: I’m going to give you the money.” And I’m like, “Wow.” But then he says, “All you have to do is levitate, right now, in front of me.” [all laugh] I said, “Fuck you. I’m out of here. I wouldn’t fuckin’ levitate in front of you if I could.” But anyway, nobody wanted to make The Last Movie. So then Peter and I went to work at American International Pictures, and Peter stars in The Wild Angels [1966].

SHAFRAZI: With Roger Corman.

HOPPER: Corman, right. And he becomes a big star from that. Everyone was at AIP [American International Pictures] back then—Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Brian de Palma. It was the only place you could go if you weren’t in the union, where they’d give you cameras and let you go out and shoot. They wouldn’t pay you, but if you were making a movie for them, you could go out and shoot on weekends. I did one called The Glory Stompers [1968]. But Peter and I were still trying to do a movie. He said, “Let’s promise ourselves that we will not do a motorcycle movie.” I said, “Absolutely, man. We’re going to be like the singing cowboys. I’m going to be the sidekick, and this is going to be ridiculous.” So Peter is out on the road promoting The Trip [1967]. He’s at the Toronto Film Festival, and he calls me up at three o’clock in the morning and says, “I just left Sam Arkoff”—who was one of the owners of AIP—“and James Nicholson,” who was the other owner and no relation to Jack. “I told him this story, and they said they’ll let us make a movie and you can direct.” Peter says, “Don’t get angry with me. Just listen: These two guys go over to Mexico on dirt bikes and smuggle back a bunch of marijuana. . . .” Well, you can’t take a lot of marijuana on a dirt bike, but okay. He continues, “They come back and sell the stuff and get these big, gleaming bikes and go cross-country to Mardi Gras. They’re going to retire in Florida, but they get shot by a couple of duck hunters. What do you think?” So I said, “Did they tell you they’d give you the money?” He said, “Yeah.” “And they’ll let me direct and act in it?” “Yeah.” So I said, “Sounds like a great fuckin’ idea to me.”

 

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27 of Dennis Hopper’s 204 roles

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Nicholas Ray Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
‘“I’m the best damn filmmaker in the world who has never made one entirely good, entirely satisfactory film,” so said Nicholas Ray, according to his friend Dennis Hopper. In a bit for Turner Classic Movies in 1997, Hopper reflected on Ray’s work and their relationship, which began during his debut role as Goon in the filmmaker’s iconic Rebel Without a Cause. At the time, Hopper remembers thinking “that James Dean was directing [the] film, he had so much input in his character and lines, even deciding how a scene would be shot,” later to realize that Ray “gave Dean the freedom he needed…[he] was intelligent enough to let the creative forces work.” Intelligent, maybe, but also trusting and confident. Ray’s emblematic refrain was “It’s never all in the script. If it were, why make the movie?”‘ — Filmmaker Magazine

Trailer

 

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George Stevens Giant (1956)
‘A showcase for stars-to-be Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo, and Carroll Baker – and for Dean, who was killed in a car accident before it was released. Stevens’ tours-de-force include the burial of a former Hispanic ranch hand/now WWII hero, and the final fight as “The Yellow Rose of Texas” blares on the juke box. Ten Oscar nominations, including both Hudson and Dean for Best Actor, with Stevens winning his second for Best Director.’ — LAFF

Excerpt

 

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Curtis Harrington Night Tide (1961)
‘Curtis Harrington’s surreal thriller Night Tide stars Dennis Hopper as a young sailor who answers the treacherous siren call of a mermaid—or at least that of a strange girl who appears as a mermaid in a seaside carnival in Venice Beach. Harrington achieved a cult following in the mid-1940s and 1950s with his avant-garde film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe and the myth of Narcissus, and today he is remembered as one of the pioneers of New Queer Cinema. (Night Tide is invariably compared with the horror films of Val Lewton, yet the openly gay Hollywood filmmaker James Whale seems another guiding spirit.) Belatedly released on the bottom half of a double bill with Roger Corman’s The Raven, Night Tide first caught the attention of critics in Italy and France, who were impressed by Harrington’s dreamlike gothic sensibility.’ — MoMA

the entirety

 

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Andy Warhol Screen Test: Dennis Hopper (1964)

the entirety (muting added sound is recommended)

 

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Curtis Harrington Queen of Blood (1966)
‘Shot on a miniscule $50,000 budget, and including footage from a 1959 Russian film that was later purchased by Roger Corman, this science fiction feature finds a tiny planet slowly dying. With the inhabitants in danger of perishing, some kind-hearted astronauts bring a green-blooded female alien back to Earth. The extraterrestrial shows her gratitude by going wild for human blood in the fashion of a blood-sucking vampire. John Saxon, Basil Rathbone and Dennis Hopper are some of the actors sentenced by their vindictive agents to appear in this 1966 film.’ — rt

the entirety

 

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Roger Corman The Trip (1967)
‘With The Trip, Roger Corman delves deep inside the mind of the artist. TV commercial director Paul Groves (Peter Fonda, The Wild Angels), with both his personal and professional life in crisis due to a crumbling marriage and stagnating career, begins to experiment with LSD to free himself artistically. Paul s trip provides the viewer with psychedelic and hallucinatory moments worthy of Fellini, as an onslaught of strange, beautiful and terrifying images flood Paul s subconscious and leads to a revelatory denouement. Featured in The Trip are Bruce Dern (co-star of the Corman directed The Wild Angels) as John, the self-proclaimed LSD guru who sends Paul on his trip; Susan Strasberg (Psych-Out) as Paul s estranged wife; and Dennis Hopper (Chattahoochee) as a drug-culture everyman.’ — az

Excerpt

 

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Ted Post Hang ‘Em High (1968)
‘This Western however followed on from Clint Eastwood’s success with Sergio Leone and became Eastwood’s first film for his newly formed Malpaso Production Company. He’s made better, a lot better, but this fledgling attempt to use his new found fame to impress American audiences was a huge hit both with the critics and at the box office. We get Pat Hingle as the hanging judge Adam Fenton, Dennis Hopper as a crazy prisoner (what else would he be?), Bruce Dern honing his double-crossing ways as a murderer, and Ben Johnson in a fleeting role as a bad-ass Federal Marshal.’ — Andy Summers

Excerpt

 

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Dennis Hopper Easy Rider (1969)
‘Decades later, “Easy Rider” is not remembered so much as a great movie–although it did break out Jack Nicholson as a movie star– but more as a shocking commercial success that shook Hollywood’s timbers. The studio reaction to “Easy Rider” changed the industry forever.’ — indiewire

Excerpt

 

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Dennis Hopper The Last Movie (1971)
‘This year’s posthumous release of Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind may reignite interest in another misunderstood film of that period that Welles’ work very much resembles, and which may well have inspired it: Dennis Hopper’s fascinating, flawed, experimental The Last Movie from 1971, about the ritualistic voodoo of cinema, now on rerelease – featuring cameos by Samuel Fuller and Kris Kristofferson. After the smash-hit success of Easy Rider in 1969, awestruck Universal studio bosses agreed to give Hopper and his co-writer Stewart Stern (screenwriter of Rebel Without a Cause) a million-dollar budget and an undertaking not to interfere with what they were doing. Hopper took their money, went to Peru and over a year filmed this audacious experimental picture about a movie shoot. Universal didn’t know what to do with it and it was hardly seen.’ — The Guardian

Excerpt

 

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Wim Wenders The American Friend (1977)
‘Wim Wenders pays loving homage to rough-and-tumble Hollywood film noir with The American Friend, a loose adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel Ripley’s Game. Dennis Hopper oozes quirky menace as an amoral American art dealer who entangles a terminally ill German everyman, played by Bruno Ganz, in a seedy criminal underworld as revenge for a personal slight—but when the two become embroiled in an ever-deepening murder plot, they form an unlikely bond. Filmed on location in Hamburg and Paris, with some scenes shot in grimy, late-seventies New York City, Wenders’s international breakout is a stripped-down crime story that mixes West German and American film flavors, and it features cameos by filmmakers Jean Eustache, Samuel Fuller, and Nicholas Ray.’ — Criterion Collection

Trailer

 

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Francis Ford Coppola Apocalypse Now (1979)
‘When Brando arrived, he shocked everybody – he was enormous, maybe 300 pounds. “You couldn’t see around him,” says Frederickson. This gave Coppola palpitations, as he had envisioned Kurtz as a lean and hungry warrior. Also, what the hell was he going to wear? There was no Green Beret uniform on earth big enough! Worse, Brando hadn’t learnt his lines or done any preparation whatsoever for the role. “Francis had to literally start from scratch with him,” says Doug Claybourne. “He had to bring him up to speed on what the thing was about and who the character was.” According to his co-star Dennis Hopper, the production was shut down for a week while Coppola read Brando the script out loud. “Nine-hundred people, the cast and crew, just sat and waited!”‘ — The Independent

Excerpt

Stoned Dennis Hopper on the set of Apocalypse Now

 

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Dennis Hopper Out Of The Blue (1980)
‘Hopper described Blue as a follow-up to Easy Rider, even though it contains none of the same characters or that film’s fascination with motorcycle culture; rather, the connection is spiritual and stylistic. As Reader emeritus Jonathan Rosenbaum once wrote, the movie is defined by “the Hopper flavor: relentlessly raunchy and downbeat, and informed throughout by the kind of generational anguish and sense of doom that characterizes both of his earlier films [Rider and The Last Movie].” It’s unmistakably a downer, beginning and ending with scenes of violent death and featuring numerous depictions of drug abuse and emotional violence along the way. It’s also a haunting portrait of juvenile delinquency that ranks among the most powerful in American cinema.’ — Chicago Reader

Trailer

 

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Neil Young Human Highway (1982)
‘Young, who reveals himself to be a surprisingly solid and charismatic comic actor, stars as Lionel Switch, the incompetent, nerdy and good-hearted mechanic at a roadside garage and diner near a nuclear power plant. Lionel can’t drive and knows nothing about cars, but he has confidence, and dreams of becoming a rock star like his hero Frankie Fontaine. Tamblyn plays Fred, Lionel’s even more incompetent best friend, who’s hired to help him out in the garage. Stockwell is Otto, the unscrupulous new owner, determined to turn around his late father’s failing business, even if it means firing everyone and torching the place for the insurance money. A clearly stoned Hopper is Cracker, the short order cook constantly pestered by radioactive flies. The members of Devo, in matching red jumpsuits and hard hats, are the garbage men at the nuclear plant, who regularly dump radioactive waste into the local water supply. And wandering through it all is Mothersbaugh’s bespectacled and baby-faced Booji Boy, acting as the films Dadaist Greek Chorus.’ — Den of Geeks

Excerpt

 

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Francis Ford Coppola Rumble Fish (1983)
‘Like The Outsiders, Rumble Fish is cinema-literate, composed from disparate reference points: the strange angles and painted shadows of Expressionist silent film; the theatricality and fanciful choreography of old Hollywood musicals; surreal, symbol-laden mise-en-scene recalling the weirder works of arthouse directors like Orson Welles, Federico Fellini, Jean Cocteau, and Ingmar Bergman. The experimental score, written by The Police’s Stewart Copeland, is largely rhythmic, evoking the ticking of a clock. To my mind, Rumble Fish stands as the most realized fulfillment of Coppola’s aesthetic aims during this period of his career, and one of his very best films, period. It calls to mind many other works of art, cinematic and otherwise, yet its style is completely singular. But most remarkable, perhaps, is that through this filmic language, Coppola is able to grasp something that is not esoteric but simple and universal.’ — Jacob Mazer

Excerpt

 

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Robert Altman O.C.and Stiggs (1985)
‘As much a state-of-the-union satire as Nashville, with which it shares omnipresent politico Hal Phillip Walker, here falling on blind eyes as he once did on deaf ears, O.C. and Stiggs (1985) is, going by received wisdom, a career nadir for Robert Altman, the lowest-of-many-lows during American cinema’s fallowest decade.‘ — Keith Uhlich

the entirety

 

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Tobe Hooper The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)
‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 picks up a dozen years after audiences last saw Leatherface, dancing with his chainsaw in the Austin dusk. Fans hadn’t yet experienced sequel fatigue when it hit theaters in 1986, but whatever they were expecting, it surely wasn’t the sideshow freak-out that Tobe Hooper cooked up. Chainsaw 2 has the goofy middle-finger vibe of other punk horror comedies like Return Of The Living Dead or Repo Man, and the soundtrack to match. Like Texas itself, everything is bigger in this sequel, from the explicit gore by Tom Savini to the endless references to the cannibals’ home state to the scenery-chewing performances.’ — Jenni Miller

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Tim Hunter River’s Edge (1986)
‘The 1987 film River’s Edge was a film that shocked audiences and critics alike with its depiction of aimless teenagers in a dead-end town. Roger Ebert called the film “an exercise in despair” and “the best analytical film about a crime since The Onion Field and In Cold Blood.” “Bleak” is the word that sums up Tim Hunter’s groundbreaking film. River’s Edge is a fictionalized account of a 1981 murder case in Milpitas, California, in which 16-year-old Anthony Jacques Broussard strangled 14-year-old Marcy Conrad and dumped her body near the foothills outside of town. For two days, Conrad’s murder went unreported, as Broussard brought classmates from Milpitas High School to view Conrad’s dead body. The story received widespread media attention as parents grappled with tough questions: Were America’s children completely amoral? What did they believe in? Did they believe in anything?’ — Matt Gilligan

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David Lynch Blue Velvet (1986)
‘They had helium on set while filming the rape scene, but the gas didn’t have the eerie effect that was intended. Dennis Hopper later told David Letterman, “I tried it and I sounded a little like Donald Duck.” So, he talked to Lynch and they decided to choose a substance that wouldn’t be voice-altering. The gas isn’t mentioned by name in the film, but Hopper told Lynch that when he read the script, he imagined the substance as amyl nitrate because that is a disorienting drug, unlike helium.’ — mental floss

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Alex Cox Straight to Hell (1987)
‘Written in three days, shot in three weeks and widely loathed on release, the film now reveals what might best be described as a wilful sloppiness. But it’s hard not to be charmed by the freewheeling energy and genuine oddball sensibility (for all the bloodshed, the closest thing to foul language is an invitation to “go boil yer ‘ead”), while Strummer in particular is unexpectedly great. The result is, if nothing else, an interesting halfway house between the sardonic glee of Repo Man and the Central American odysseys of Walker and Highway Patrolman, three films that provide the bulk of their director’s finest moments.’ — The Guardian

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Sean Penn The Indian Runner (1991)
‘The Indian Runner, Sean Penn’s debut film as director (he also wrote the script, based on the Bruce Springsteen song “Highway Patrolman”) is a brooding tale of two brothers — one peaceful and sedate, the other violent and aggressive — whose natures, left unchecked since they were children, are set to the boiling point as they head toward middle-age. David Morse is the quiet brother, Joe Roberts, who is a deputy sheriff in a small town. His older brother Frank (Viggo Mortensen) shows up on Joe’s doorsteps, after a recent run-in with the police. Frank tells Joe that he is coming back home to stay and that he has given up his criminal life. His wife Maria (Valeria Golino) is skeptical, but Joe tells her that he is prepared to help Frank get his life back together. Frank has almost convinced himself that his future holds real promise and he’s ready to start a new life with his pregnant girlfriend Dorothy (Patricia Arquette). But, once again, Frank’s violent temper explodes, and everyone’s plans for Frank’s future crumble into rubble.’ — rt

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Tony Scott True Romance (1993)
‘Tony Scott’s True Romance finds Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken) interrogating Clifford Worley (Dennis Hopper) about the…well, to tell would to be disprove the theory. Worley’s acceptance of his fate at the hands of ice-cool Coccotti leads him to push for one final hoorah. Using Coccotti’s racial prejudice and ignorance against him, the reveal of his ancestral heritage is a “your mum” insult that hits hard for the Sicilian. So skilful is Walken’s performance that for a moment, even if only briefly, there’s a glimmer of hope for Hopper’s character. With a script so sharp you could slice a cop’s ear off a natural, convincing performance from Hopper, this scene more than steals the movie: it shoots up the place, steals its girl and goes on the run with its suitcase full of coke. What more do you need to know?’ — flick feast

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Kevin Reynolds Waterworld (1995)
‘The most expensive film ever made at the time, Waterworld was released to mixed reviews, praising the futuristic setting and premise but criticizing the characterization and acting performances. The film also was unable to recoup its massive budget at the box office; however, the film did later become profitable due to video and other post-cinema sales. The film was also nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Sound at the 68th Academy Awards.’ — Wikipedia

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Julian Schnabel Basquiat (1996)
‘Jim Jarmusch has long been fixture of the New York City art and music scene, so you won’t be surprised to learn that he knew Basquiat. However, he has some very personal reasons why, to this day, he’s never watched Schnabel’s film. “I refuse to see that film. I knew Jean-Michel and he was not friends with Julian. I like Julian very much, he’s a very generous guy, even if he is an egotistical character,” he told THR. “And his films… ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly‘ is one of the masterworks of recent cinema. Once a year, he’ll ask me, ‘So are you ever going to see Basquiat?’ And I’d say, ‘Never.’ I refused to talk to Schnabel about Jean-Michel when he was making the film. But Jean-Michel was not a fan of Schnabel as a person back then. And I would not betray him in that way. I’ve seen a few clips, though, and Jeffrey Wright is f—in’ amazing in it.”’ — indiewire

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Alison Maclean Jesus’ Son (1999)
‘JESUS’ SON is the intense, edgy, often hilarious story of a young man’s circuitous journey from drug dependency and petty crime to a life redeemed by this startling discovery of compassion. The story is set in the drug subculture of the 1970’s, and it’s protagonist — a young man in his twenties — careens through his days getting stoned, stealing, or scamming a quick buck. Through it all, he tries to make sense of the mutually destructive passion he shares with a beautiful woman named Michelle. He is also driven by an overwhelming desire to help those around him, so save them from their often-sorry fates, but he repeatedly fails.’ — rt

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George A. Romero Land of the Dead (2005)
‘It is tempting, and enjoyable, to read this movie as a comment on race and class in America: the zombies are leading a kind of unending, futile spartacist uprising against the Wasp rulers in their shopping malls and thousand-dollar suits. On the other hand, the zombies could be a comment on undead America – the cultureless, valueless service-economy drones in their trailer parks and project housing. Satire is admittedly a little undermined by some semi-intentional hilarities of script and performance. Asia Argento is always on the verge of woodenness and it is a dodgy moment when Hopper has to whack an associate, after farcically distracting him by shouting “Look over there!” – and then sorrowfully realises that he didn’t have to kill the poor fellow after all. Romero’s zombies still have a spring in their shambling step though; there’s life in the old corpse yet.’ — The Guardian

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Isabel Coixet Elegy (2008)
‘Despite the initial identification with Gandhi, the shaven-headed Kingsley has always carried more than a hint of menace, and this has been fully exploited when he’s played gangsters, psychopaths and hitmen. One wonders what this picture would have been like with an actor less coiled and potentially explosive. But Kingsley conveys very well Kepesh’s air of intellectual superiority and slightly smug intelligence, while remaining sufficiently sad and human to retain our sympathy. There’s real tenderness in the erotic scenes with Cruz, and the interludes with Clarkson are beautifully handled. Those with Hopper are perfunctory, though the film’s highlights include Hopper’s deathbed sequence. So this is an enjoyable, often moving and generally well-considered film, though (as with Updike) the novelist’s precise tone inevitably eludes the film-maker.’ — The Guardian

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Orson Welles The Other Side of the Wind (2018)
‘The Other Side of the Wind really looks more like an experimental American movie of that time. It resembles The Last Movie by Dennis Hopper (who has a cameo here) or the early, scrappy pictures of Brian De Palma: Hi Mom! and Greetings. It is a vivid snapshot of a turbulent zeitgeist, the ordeal of making a film independently, the agony of feeling oneself obsolete. Watching The Other Side of the Wind, I found myself thinking of the final scene in David Niven’s Hollywood memoir, The Moon’s A Balloon, in which he remembers turning up to a trendy Hollywood party and being harangued by a aggressive hippy-ish guy for being irrelevant, but then told he could atone for his sins by coming up with some “heavy bread” for this man’s new film company. Niven seraphically accepts that his time is up. But Welles is angry: rage and frustration punch holes in this film.’ — Peter Bradshaw

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p.s. Hey. ** JM, Hi, man. New Zealand has this and this, but I don’t know anything about them. I’ve found most of the experiential, theatre-like haunts that I’ve been to pretty unsatisfying, although their ambitions are quite admirable albeit more interesting in concept. I’m going to hit a couple of them in LA. I’m good, thanks, and you? Look forward to seeing you again whenever that is. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Oh, you’re absolutely right that I met Sailor. I was in a spacing out mini-phase yesterday morning. What a non-stop superstar crowd that was, man, and I’m obviously really happy to hear that you all liked ‘Crowd’. What were the odds of that? Continue the amazingness. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. They never frighten me. I’m more of a scholar. I’ve seen ‘Le Livre des Images’ and think it’s amazing and great. This will be my first time seeing it projected. The big event, which is co-curated by Godard, features all kinds of screenings, an exhibition, installations, videos and things to do with his work. I hear it’s incredible, and I’ll find out in a mere few hours. ** KK, Hi, K. You probably know this, but Austin also has Scream Hollow, Scare for a Cure, Terror on Two Jacks, and Haunted Halloween Trails. Busy week, eh? Very cool about the Ricard book. ‘Rene Ricard 1979 – 1980’ is my favourite of his books, and it was recently republished. Very good poet, and also probably the most evil person I’ve ever known in my life. Tip top weekend to you! ** Quinn R, Hi, Quinn. Very nice to see you. Well, I’ll be in LA for Halloween and the time leading up to it. Halloween itself, no plans. It seems like a bit of a dud when you’re a child-free adult and now that trick-or-treating has become a shadow of its once riotous self, but I’ll be going to haunted houses every night through November 3rd, so there’ll be Halloweening galore. Horror movie? I haven’t seen the recent ones. Giallos are always good, Italian ones especially. Hm. I’ll have to think about specific recommendations. I see, about your writing issues. I think ‘career’ is a total bogeyman of an idea. It’s something that others project onto so-called successful people. ‘Careers’ happen by luck, accident, coincidence, and every writer’s trajectory is unique, and I don’t there’s a right or wrong way to succeed, and I don’t any valuable writer can calculate how and when and by what means their work becomes accepted. No, I never thought about that in relation to other writers or myself. I never compared myself to other writers. I didn’t publish my first novel until I was in my late 30s because I wasn’t ready and good enough until then. My interest was always into trying to understand my own talent and maxing it out and trying to do something unique. If you look through lit. history, the work that matters long term is work that is unique no matter how quirky or offbeat or unusual it is. So I think you basically just have to believe in yourself and find exactly what you love to do and want to do and do everything possible to simultaneously not compromise your work while considering what constitutes reading pleasure, negotiating that area and not juxtaposing what you do with what anyone else does. Otherwise, you get infected by fear, and fear is obviously nothing but an enemy. Something like that, if that makes sense? Good to talk with you. See you soon, I hope! ** Sypha, That is clear: your excellent memory. I have no idea how many films I’ve seen. A ton, I guess? Weird to think about that. ** _Black_Acrylic, Those image challenge makeovers are cool. Ha. The UK has a scatter of haunted house attractions, but they’re mostly in theme parks rather than the do-it-yourself kind. Totally, if some enterprising person, or, I guess, persons, really went for it and made a great independent haunted house, it would be a big hit and a total money maker. It’s a golden goose just waiting for a doer with the imagination and resources. Same here in France. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Right, not new, newest. He is supposedly making a film about the Yellow Vest movement, but I don’t know anything about it. I made a Damon Packard Day. It was pretty easy. It’ll pop up here in early November when I’m back from my Halloween blog vacation. ** FlamingHotKeatos, Ha, not bad, the name drop. Rococo, right. Makes sense, yeah. I guess the French can opulent. Versailles and all that. Or used to be. Yes, do say hi from an admirer from afar. Florida has a fair amount of haunted house attractions, and not bad looking ones either. Tell me what you find if you find. ** Right. I thought the blog should do its ‘Day’ thing about Dennis Hopper. Makes sense, right? Have at it? See you tomorrow.