Long before Robin Green was an Emmy-winning writer and producer for The Sopranos, she was a young post-grad living in Berkeley, California. In 1971, she got a job interview with Jann Wenner, co-founder of an upstart magazine called Rolling Stone. She thought she was interviewing for a clerical position; instead, she walked out with an assignment — to write about Marvel Comics, where she had worked for Stan Lee himself — and soon became the only female writer on the Rolling Stone masthead. The next few years would include some great stories, some bad acid trips,...
- 8/17/2018
- by Robin Green
- Rollingstone.com
Watching the documentary, The American Dreamer, in the year of its completion, 1971, would’ve made for a very different experience than watching it today. In its day, the film depicted only what it captured; an American artist given free reign to manifest and cinematically realize his dream in the most indulgently exploratory fashion possible. Watching footage of Dennis Hopper directing his sophomoric follow up to one of the most important films of the 20th century is like watching an American Fellini, the holy clown who dares to dream big at all costs, sacrificing everything in the name of the vision. Divorced from the context of history, it’s a beautiful thing. To watch The American Dreamer today is to watch a making-of doc coloured by all...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 12/7/2017
- Screen Anarchy
Dennis Hopper may have passed away six years ago, but his fans can still catch him in his last movie, “The Last Film Festival.” IndieWire has an exclusive new clip from the comedy which features Hopper asking a junior agent (Joseph Cross) why he’s in the movie biz, since for him it was because of Sophia Loren.
Directed by Linda Yellen, the film follows Nick Twain (Hopper), a failing Hollywood producer whose latest movie has been rejected by every film festival in the world except for one. When an obscure festival is the last hope for Twain and his disaster of a movie, he does anything to get his picture distributed, including manipulating his dysfunctional cast into attending. Jacqueline Bisset, Chris Kattan, JoBeth Williams and Leelee Sobieski co-star.
Read More: Dennis Hopper’s Swan Song ‘The Last Film Festival’ Acquired by Monterey Media
Monterey Media acquired the distribution rights...
Directed by Linda Yellen, the film follows Nick Twain (Hopper), a failing Hollywood producer whose latest movie has been rejected by every film festival in the world except for one. When an obscure festival is the last hope for Twain and his disaster of a movie, he does anything to get his picture distributed, including manipulating his dysfunctional cast into attending. Jacqueline Bisset, Chris Kattan, JoBeth Williams and Leelee Sobieski co-star.
Read More: Dennis Hopper’s Swan Song ‘The Last Film Festival’ Acquired by Monterey Media
Monterey Media acquired the distribution rights...
- 9/29/2016
- by Liz Calvario
- Indiewire
Despite passing away six years ago, Dennis Hopper will soon be seen on the big screen one more time. Monterey Media has acquired distribution rights to Linda Yellen’s “The Last Film Festival,” which stars Hopper alongside Jacqueline Bisset, CHris Kattan, JoBeth Williams and Leelee Sobieski.
Read More: Want to See Dennis Hopper’s Final Movie? Here’s How (Exclusive Video!)
“The idea for ‘The Last Film Festival’ started with a laugh Dennis and I shared at the Sundance Film Festival,” Yellen says in a statement. “And that spirit of fun and spontaneity that is uniquely Dennis carried through the filming and onto the screen. He would be so pleased that what started as one laugh will now result in so many.” A comedy, the film tells of a failing producer who brings his calamitous movie to an obscure film festival in a last-ditch effort to make it work. The...
Read More: Want to See Dennis Hopper’s Final Movie? Here’s How (Exclusive Video!)
“The idea for ‘The Last Film Festival’ started with a laugh Dennis and I shared at the Sundance Film Festival,” Yellen says in a statement. “And that spirit of fun and spontaneity that is uniquely Dennis carried through the filming and onto the screen. He would be so pleased that what started as one laugh will now result in so many.” A comedy, the film tells of a failing producer who brings his calamitous movie to an obscure film festival in a last-ditch effort to make it work. The...
- 6/21/2016
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit the interwebs. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
The American Dreamer (L.M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller)
It’s easy to map out the Dennis Hopper trajectory: mid-50’s/ -60’s classical Hollywood bit player to ’70s weirdo maverick to ’90s Hollywood-blockbuster villain — or even, in more succinct terms, hippie to Bush-voting Republican. Yet even if a morphing figure, there is a tendency to zero in on the brief iconoclast period: the counter-culture icon who,...
The American Dreamer (L.M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller)
It’s easy to map out the Dennis Hopper trajectory: mid-50’s/ -60’s classical Hollywood bit player to ’70s weirdo maverick to ’90s Hollywood-blockbuster villain — or even, in more succinct terms, hippie to Bush-voting Republican. Yet even if a morphing figure, there is a tendency to zero in on the brief iconoclast period: the counter-culture icon who,...
- 4/1/2016
- by TFS Staff
- The Film Stage
Decades before Shia LeBeouf transformed from blockbuster actor into head-scratching performance-art weirdo and Joaquin Phoenix grew a beard for a mockumentary about his career as a rapper, Dennis Hopper explored his own mythos in a unique documentary that is now getting a new life.
Fresh off the breakout success of his 1969 directorial debut Easy Rider, the filmmaker attempted to repeat the feat with The Last Movie – a picture about a film crew member who stays in a Peruvian village after a shoot and attempts to prevent locals from reenacting the movie's dangerous stunts.
Fresh off the breakout success of his 1969 directorial debut Easy Rider, the filmmaker attempted to repeat the feat with The Last Movie – a picture about a film crew member who stays in a Peruvian village after a shoot and attempts to prevent locals from reenacting the movie's dangerous stunts.
- 3/29/2016
- Rollingstone.com
It’s easy to map out the Dennis Hopper trajectory: mid-50’s/ -60’s classical Hollywood bit player to ’70s weirdo maverick to ’90s Hollywood-blockbuster villain — or even, in more succinct terms, hippie to Bush-voting Republican. Yet even if a morphing figure, there is a tendency to zero in on the brief iconoclast period: the counter-culture icon who, for one shining moment, had it all, only to be able to say — or rather to quote his most famous film — “We blew it.”
To draw another vital name from the long line of American cinema’s Icarus figures, as well as a friend and collaborator of Hopper’s, one can look no further than Nicholas Ray, a recent biography of whom attributed the subtitle “The Glorious Failure of An American Filmmaker.” This could serve as a one-line synopsis for The American Dreamer, a behind-the-scenes look at Hopper’s critical and commercial bellyflop of The Last Movie,...
To draw another vital name from the long line of American cinema’s Icarus figures, as well as a friend and collaborator of Hopper’s, one can look no further than Nicholas Ray, a recent biography of whom attributed the subtitle “The Glorious Failure of An American Filmmaker.” This could serve as a one-line synopsis for The American Dreamer, a behind-the-scenes look at Hopper’s critical and commercial bellyflop of The Last Movie,...
- 3/29/2016
- by Ethan Vestby
- The Film Stage
All this month, Mubi is presenting the exclusive worldwide online debut of L.M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller’s 1971 documentary The American Dreamer, a fascinating and revelatory portrait of Dennis Hopper during the making of his legendary folly The Last Movie.For the film’s theatrical screenings at the Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco and Austin, Mondo creative director Jay Shaw designed a new poster for the film:When we were asked to create a poster for The American Dreamer I was instantly overwhelmed. I’ve seen the film several times and absolutely love it. It’s a candid and endearing portrait of Dennis Hopper’s maniacal creative process. Lawrence Schiller, the film’s [co-] director and acclaimed photojournalist, sent a collection of photographs he’d taken during production back in 1971. When I saw these wonderful photos I realized there was nothing we’d be able to illustrate that would capture the...
- 2/19/2016
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
Mubi is exclusively presenting the global online premiere of L.M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller's cult documentary The American Dreamer, starring Dennis Hopper. Shot during the drug-and-orgy fueled making of The Last Movie, the legendary follow-up to Hopper's debut movie Easy Rider, Hopper stars as himself: a new kind of Hollywood—and American—icon. The American Dreamer is playing on Mubi through March 12, 2016. For more about the film, read Mike Opal's exploration on the Notebook.
- 2/12/2016
- by Notebook
- MUBI
L.M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller's The American Dreamer (1971) is exclusively playing on Mubi through March 12, 2016.Photo by Lawrence SchillerWith a budget of $1 million, 1971's The Last Movie is the cheapest film ever to be considered a major folly. Tugging on his beard and watching a rough cut, Dennis Hopper prepares for his new project's inevitable critical disemboweling. He knows, after all, that among many delirious and noxious (though often brilliant) self-referential shenanigans it features a gigantic breast ejaculating milk onto Hopper's own receptive face. With self-aggrandizing irony (or is that ironic self-aggrandizement?), Hopper aspires to Orson Welles's career trajectory: "I can become Orson Welles, poor bastard." He declares his debut, 1969's Easy Rider, his Citizen Kane and The Last Movie his The Magnificent Ambersons. Nevertheless, the response to The Last Movie scared him away from directing for nearly a decade, rather than duplicating Welles's indomitable retreat to self-,...
- 2/11/2016
- by Mike Opal
- MUBI
In today's roundup: Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver at 40, a personal history of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, an appreciation of Miguel Gomes's Arabian Nights, another on Moussa Touré's The Pirogue, revisiting Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat, Alex Ross Perry on Dennis Hopper in Lawrence Schiller and L.M. Kit Carson's The American Dreamer, Nicole Brenez on Jocelyne Saab, J. Hoberman on Richard Lester, Jonathan Rosenbaum on Tran Anh Hung's The Scent of Green Papaya, Daniel Kasman on Michael Bay, Stuart Klawans on Amos Gitai’s Rabin, the Last Day and Joseph Dorman and Oren Rudavsky's Colliding Dreams, Soraya Roberts on Winona Ryder, Matt Thrift on Robert De Niro—and much, much more. » - David Hudson...
- 2/9/2016
- Keyframe
In today's roundup: Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver at 40, a personal history of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, an appreciation of Miguel Gomes's Arabian Nights, another on Moussa Touré's The Pirogue, revisiting Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat, Alex Ross Perry on Dennis Hopper in Lawrence Schiller and L.M. Kit Carson's The American Dreamer, Nicole Brenez on Jocelyne Saab, J. Hoberman on Richard Lester, Jonathan Rosenbaum on Tran Anh Hung's The Scent of Green Papaya, Daniel Kasman on Michael Bay, Stuart Klawans on Amos Gitai’s Rabin, the Last Day and Joseph Dorman and Oren Rudavsky's Colliding Dreams, Soraya Roberts on Winona Ryder, Matt Thrift on Robert De Niro—and much, much more. » - David Hudson...
- 2/9/2016
- Fandor: Keyframe
★★★☆☆ Lawrence Schiller and L.M. Kit Carson could hardly have better timed their thirty-day intersection with Dennis Hopper that formed the raw materials of the quasi-documentary The American Dreamer. They caught Hopper fresh from Easy Rider when he was a generational icon, high on his success - and just plain high - and boldly attempting to establish a reputation as a serious filmmaker. The film was shot and edited in early 1971, in the eye of the New Hollywood storm, but never received a release beyond as companion piece to Hopper's Easy Rider follow-up The Last Picture.
- 2/8/2016
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Dennis Hopper is one the most fascinating figures in American cinema, a vital artist who rose so fast and fell so hard that his story has taken on a tragic aura. What would have become of the director Easy Rider if his second film wasn’t a failure? Would he still be in the same conversation as the […]
The post ‘The American Dreamer’ Mondo Poster: A Long Lost Dennis Hopper Documentary Inspires Some One-of-a-Kind Art appeared first on /Film.
The post ‘The American Dreamer’ Mondo Poster: A Long Lost Dennis Hopper Documentary Inspires Some One-of-a-Kind Art appeared first on /Film.
- 2/5/2016
- by Jacob Hall
- Slash Film
Dennis Hopper’s fleeting success with Easy Rider in the late sixties famously came undone with his 1971 follow-up, The Last Movie. A critical and commercial failure, the rambling, chaotic nature on screen mirrored that of the behind-the-scenes production. Into the fray came directors Lawrence Schiller and L.M. Kit Carson, who captured an unbalanced and tormented
The post Interview With The American Dreamer Co-director Lawrence Schiller appeared first on HeyUGuys.
The post Interview With The American Dreamer Co-director Lawrence Schiller appeared first on HeyUGuys.
- 2/5/2016
- by Adam Lowes
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
1971’s The Last Movie was Dennis Hopper’s follow-up to the era-defining Easy Rider. It was also famously something of a grand folly for the artist, whose career went into a near-decade tailspin following the film’s critical and commercial failure. Shot during The Last Movie’s protracted post-production period and subsequently screened as a companion piece alongside
The post The American Dreamer Review appeared first on HeyUGuys.
The post The American Dreamer Review appeared first on HeyUGuys.
- 2/4/2016
- by Adam Lowes
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.NEWSThe big news in Hollywood is that "the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has approved a series of major changes, in terms of voting and recruitment, also adding three new seats to the 51-person board — all part of a goal to double the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020. The changes were approved by the board Thursday night in an emergency meeting," Variety reports. A major step, certainly, but we've still to see what the results will be. And certainly Academy membership does little to alter what kinds of movies get produced and by whom.Charles Silver, the head of the Museum of Modern Art's Film Study Center, passed away last week. IndieWire is running an homage by Laurence Kardish, a former MoMA film curator:"Perhaps,...
- 1/27/2016
- by Notebook
- MUBI
There are few Hollywood icons that are both as magnetic and enigmatic as the late, great Dennis Hopper. And while there are plenty of ways for you to dive into the work of the actor, director, and artist, a newly rediscovered documentary has arrived that offers a window into one of the most fascinating periods of Hopper's life. Read More: The 10 Best Dennis Hopper Performances Directed by Lawrence Schiller and L.M. Kit Carson, "The American Friend" drops in on Hopper as he assembles his infamous "The Last Movie," a film which found Hopper battling a troubled production and his own demons in trying to complete it. The documentary is a look at Hopper during one of the most curious periods of life, and largely unseen for years, "The American Dream" is now going to be much more widely available. “Journeying to New Mexico with Kit to make 'The American Dreamer...
- 1/25/2016
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
Shot in the wake of Dennis Hopper’s breakout hit, Easy Rider, and as he was about the embark on his personal – and disastrous – project The Last Movie, Lawrence Schiller and Kit Carson’s 1971 study of the film-maker, The American Dreamer, has been little-seen over the past 45 years. The film captures Hopper, and the country in which he lives, at a key turning point in their histories. Proceeds from the release of the film will benefit the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis
The American Dreamer is released in UK cinemas on 5 February and on Mubi on 12 February and in select Us cinemas the same month Continue reading...
The American Dreamer is released in UK cinemas on 5 February and on Mubi on 12 February and in select Us cinemas the same month Continue reading...
- 1/22/2016
- by Guardian Staff
- The Guardian - Film News
There have been few names to enter the film landscape quite like the late-thespian/enfant terrible Dennis Hopper. Best known for directing and helping write the iconic New Hollywood masterpiece Easy Rider, Hopper began his career starring in various TV series until hitting big screens with pictures like Rebel Without A Cause, Giant and eventually Night Tide, a film that would become a calling card for the actor and a movement of surrealist filmmaking unlike anything the Us had seen cinematically up to that moment. However, while his career would continue growing from Rider, his work on that film would seemingly change him from avant garde character actor to the idol of his generation.
And then there was The Last Movie. Still nearly impossible to see, Hopper’s Rider follow up would see him heading to New Mexico to make what sounds like a masterpiece of the “films about films” genre,...
And then there was The Last Movie. Still nearly impossible to see, Hopper’s Rider follow up would see him heading to New Mexico to make what sounds like a masterpiece of the “films about films” genre,...
- 10/23/2015
- by Joshua Brunsting
- CriterionCast
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Film Society of Lincoln Center
To commemorate her passing, free screenings of Chantal Akerman‘s Jeanne Dielman (on 35mm) and her self-portrait Chantal Akerman by Chantal Akerman will screen for free on Friday.
Hou Hsiao-hsien‘s The Boys from Fengkuei will play on Friday night, with Hou making an appearance.
Museum of the Moving...
Film Society of Lincoln Center
To commemorate her passing, free screenings of Chantal Akerman‘s Jeanne Dielman (on 35mm) and her self-portrait Chantal Akerman by Chantal Akerman will screen for free on Friday.
Hou Hsiao-hsien‘s The Boys from Fengkuei will play on Friday night, with Hou making an appearance.
Museum of the Moving...
- 10/9/2015
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
The Austin Film Society hosts its annual Texas Film Awards, one of the most high-profile events in the city, on Thursday night, March 12. This year marks the awards' 15th year and to celebrate its "crystal anniversary" of honoring the best in Texas film, honorees include some of the biggest names in the industry from actors to producers to writers. Local filmmaker Mike Judge is this year's emcee.
The event itself is sold out, but a few tickets are still available to The Texas Party, the after-party featuring a DJ set by Wooden Wisdom, aka Elijah Wood and Zach Cowie.
In anticipation of Thursday's event, I thought a spotlight on each of the honorees and some of their finest contributions to the cinematic world was more than in order.
L.M. Kit Carson -- The American Dreamer (1971)
Precious few screenwriters in the history of film have been gifted with a voice as unique and diverse as Carson's.
The event itself is sold out, but a few tickets are still available to The Texas Party, the after-party featuring a DJ set by Wooden Wisdom, aka Elijah Wood and Zach Cowie.
In anticipation of Thursday's event, I thought a spotlight on each of the honorees and some of their finest contributions to the cinematic world was more than in order.
L.M. Kit Carson -- The American Dreamer (1971)
Precious few screenwriters in the history of film have been gifted with a voice as unique and diverse as Carson's.
- 3/9/2015
- by Frank Calvillo
- Slackerwood
An iconoclast in the worlds of independent film and journalism who embodied — and celibrated — Texas individualism, Carson died October 20 in Dallas following a long battle with osteoporosis and other illnesses. He was 73.
A Dallas native whose career took him to Austin, Houston, New York, Los Angeles and many places far afield and in between, Lewis Minor Carson was best known as co-author with Sam Shepard of the Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas (Carson’s official credit was for “adaptation”), which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1984. Known universally as Kit, after his Texas Ranger grandfather, he is credited with helping create the”mockumentary” genre for writing and playing the title role in David Holtzman’s Diary, the Jim McBride film about a navel-gazer who decides to film every moment of his unmomentous life. The 1967 film anticipated such disparate touchstones as the film This Is Spinal Tap and the...
A Dallas native whose career took him to Austin, Houston, New York, Los Angeles and many places far afield and in between, Lewis Minor Carson was best known as co-author with Sam Shepard of the Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas (Carson’s official credit was for “adaptation”), which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1984. Known universally as Kit, after his Texas Ranger grandfather, he is credited with helping create the”mockumentary” genre for writing and playing the title role in David Holtzman’s Diary, the Jim McBride film about a navel-gazer who decides to film every moment of his unmomentous life. The 1967 film anticipated such disparate touchstones as the film This Is Spinal Tap and the...
- 10/29/2014
- by Jeremy Gerard
- Deadline
L.M. Kit Carson, the eclectic, fiercely independent Texas filmmaker best known for starring in the ahead-of-its-time cinéma vérité satire David Holzman's Diary, shaping the narrative arc of Paris, Texas, and helping launch the career of Wes Anderson, died Monday after a lengthy illness, his son Hunter announced on Facebook. He was 73. Born in Irving, Texas in 1941, Carson had a scattered youth: He spent six months in a Jesuit monastery and flitted in and out of various colleges before settling in New York to pursue a freelance work in magazine writing. In 1967 he teamed up with Jim McBride to star in the experimental,...
- 10/21/2014
- by Lindsey Bahr
- EW - Inside Movies
Actor, producer, screenwriter and director L.M. Kit Carson has passed away at the age of 73. Carson co-wrote and starred in David Holzman's Diary (1967), a landmark critique of cinema vérité. He'd team up with director Jim McBride again on a remake of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless in 1983 that starred Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky. He also helped complete the screenplay for Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas (1984), which starred his son, Hunter Carson, whose mother is the late Karen Black. Carson's 1971 documentary The American Dreamer chronicled the making of Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie. And Carson was instrumental in the making of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket (1996). » - David Hudson...
- 10/21/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Actor, producer, screenwriter and director L.M. Kit Carson has passed away at the age of 73. Carson co-wrote and starred in David Holzman's Diary (1967), a landmark critique of cinema vérité. He'd team up with director Jim McBride again on a remake of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless in 1983 that starred Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky. He also helped complete the screenplay for Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas (1984), which starred his son, Hunter Carson, whose mother is the late Karen Black. Carson's 1971 documentary The American Dreamer chronicled the making of Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie. And Carson was instrumental in the making of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket (1996). » - David Hudson...
- 10/21/2014
- Keyframe
The 2014 Art of the Real series, running from April 11th through the 26th at New York's Film Society Lincoln Center, could not have possibly asked for a more appropriate film with which to kick off its exploratory ruminations on documentary filmmaking. Raya Martin and Mark Peranson’s La última película is, among several things, a meta-commentary on its own layered being, a jocular doomsday journey through the collapsed scaffolding of the medium itself. Largely riffing on Dennis Hopper’s 1971 acid anti-Western The Last Movie (as well as its behind-the-scenes companion piece, The American Dreamer), Martin and Peranson employ varying film formats—everything from Super 8mm to HD digital—to weave a postmodern quilt that’s forever ripping at the seams. It’s a purposely paradoxical work, caustic and vulnerable, playful and grave, a flickering montage of photographs and an upside-down tracking shot—and, in its mingling of artifice and raw materials,...
- 4/10/2014
- by Fernando F. Croce
- MUBI
Co-directed by Mark Peranson and Raya Martin, La última película is several things at once: a documentary pretending to be fiction (and vice versa), a reflexively cinephillic ode to materiality, a deconstruction and/or exploration of disparate forms, a meditation on the (false) apocalypse of the world and cinema, and an (experimental) comedy. Its one-line synopsis is as follows: "a famous American filmmaker travels to the Yucatán to scout locations for his last movie. The Mayan Apocalypse intercedes." Inspired by Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie and its subsequent documentary cousin The American Dreamer (both 1971), La última película taps into a sort of artistic freedom of spirit, an all-too-rare ecstasy of moviemaking-as-adventuring. It is a manifesto by implication for the liberation of film from convention, and as thought and life. Starring American independent filmmaker Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel, Impolex) and Gabino Rodríguez (Greatest Hits, Together) as the filmmaker protagonist's Mexican guide,...
- 12/9/2013
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
Hell-raising actor and director who created memorable roles in films from Easy Rider to Blue Velvet
Dennis Hopper, who has died of cancer aged 74, 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...
Dennis Hopper, who has died of cancer aged 74, 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...
- 5/30/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.