The bizarre reason Dennis Hopper wore a tie to direct prison scenes: “Dude! Relax!”
You might just think of Dennis Hopper as a drug-addled Hollywood wild child, which, granted, is something that allowed him to appear in some pretty appropriate roles, as reflected by movies like Easy Rider and Blue Velvet, but he was way more disciplined than people give him credit for.
Sure, he did do some insane things in his time, and substance abuse was just the tip of the iceberg for the hell-raising icon, but he was also a fantastic filmmaker. It didn’t help that he struggled against Universal Pictures’ Lew Wasserman when he made his second feature, The Last Movie, which, paired with his addiction issues, resulted in his career as a director essentially coming to an end for the time being.
Hopper had demonstrated great talent with his debut feature, Easy Rider, though, which became a cornerstone of the New Hollywood era. It was pretty groundbreaking. With The Last Movie, he received positive reviews upon its debut at the Venice International Film Festival, but with Wasserman insistent that the movie was re-edited, the whole thing turned into a bit of a shambles. “I became a total failure,” Hopper told The Talks.
“Universal Pictures wouldn’t distribute my movie, and that whole fight was the reason that I didn’t direct another movie for twelve years. That is unfortunate, and I never really got back to mainstream Hollywood,” he added. His next film, then, would be Out of the Blue, an incredible, albeit hard to watch, story of child abuse, with Hopper stepping in at the last minute as director, while also playing the father character.
Despite the beauty of the film, it would be another eight years until he’d make a movie, Colors, but then came Catchfire, a movie so bad that he disowned it before it was even released, resulting in Hopper’s name being credited as Alan Smithee instead. With the failure of Catchfire, you might’ve wondered whether Hopper had lost it – was he, after all, still that drug-crazed Hollywood maniac who’d gained so much notoriety in previous years?
But Hopper never lost it, even when he was having to go off to rehab or was getting by on 30 beers (plus other substances) a day. Much of the failure came down to studio interference, once again. That same year, however, Hopper found significantly more success with The Hot Spot, a production that proved that Hopper was serious about his craft – even if his previous film had been a flaming hot disaster.
His professionalism while filming The Hot Spot was proven by something small, but something that marked out his dedication. He always wore a suit, especially when they were shooting in a prison. Barry Corbin, who starred as the Sheriff, explained to AV Club, “Oh, [Hopper] was wonderful. He was a little nervous in the jail, though. We had to shoot some in a jail, and he’d always wear a tie when we went into the jail so they’d know he wasn’t supposed to be there.”
Don Johnson backed up Corbin’s claims in another interview with AV Club, stating just how ridiculous Hopper’s dedication to the suit really was. “Dude, Dennis Hopper wore a suit every fucking day to the set! We shot that in August in Austin, Texas, but he still wore a suit every day to the set,” he exclaimed.
Concluding, “And I thought, ‘What in the hell?’ Because, like, we’re all melting. I’m going, ‘Dude! Relax! You’re the director! You can get away with not dressing up!’ I don’t know what the hell he was thinking.” That sounds like Hopper.
