“I’ve never been on a picture that ran smoother”: the cursed 1995 movie that completely passed Dennis Hopper by
What makes it even more unbelievable that Dennis Hopper failed to notice he was in the midst of one of the most cursed productions in Hollywood history was that he was stone-cold sober at the time.
In the 1970s and 1980s, when he was at the height of his addictions, there was every chance that the actor and filmmaker would be oblivious to his surroundings, since he was usually either high out of his mind or pished off his tits, and quite regularly a combination of both.
Even when he got sober in the late ’80s, Hopper was still ‘California sober’, admitting that he continued to indulge in marijuana because, as he claimed, “it keeps the bowels regular.” He might have been stoned, then, but even that doesn’t explain how he was the only person who couldn’t notice what was going on.
Then again, he did get to spend four months in the Hawaiian sunshine, soaking up the sun and enjoying more downtime on the set than usual because Waterworld was a total shitshow in every sense of the word. As the budget continued ballooning and the issues kept mounting up, he didn’t seem to have clue.
“I’ve never been on a picture that ran smoother,” he opined, and it’s an understatement to say that most of his colleagues would disagree. Kevin Costner once again spent millions of his own dollars on the film and fell out with director Kevin Reynolds, who quit over his leading man’s ghost-directing ambitions.
Costner spent 157 days on set and was almost killed when a stunt went wrong, inclement weather often slowed production to a crawl, the open water was a nightmare for the cast and crew to contend with, one of the sets sank, rewrites were an almost daily occurrence, a stuntman was almost lost at sea, the assistant director was fired, and several crew members either walked or were given their marching orders.
Clearly, all of this went over Hopper’s head, since he was about the only one who had a whale of a time. “There were a few weather problems and delays, but they were minor,” he insisted, despite so many other people who were involved in Waterworld telling almost the exact opposite story.
“My stuff is great, the technical stuff I’ve seen looks great,” he continued. “The word of mouth at the studio is great. I hope we kick butt!” Of course, Waterworld did not kick butt, and the word of mouth was anything but great, with the film being labelled as ‘Kevin’s Gate’ and ‘Fishtar’ before it had been released, with everyone expecting the most expensive movie in history to flop.
It wasn’t a total bust, and it even turned a profit eventually when home video sales, syndication, and other revenue streams were factored in, but despite everything that unfolded during shooting, Hopper seemingly didn’t have a clue that any of it was going on.
