When Dennis Hopper almost blew himself up with six sticks of dynamite: “This ain’t no joke boys”
If there was one actor named the most likely to blow themselves up with six sticks of dynamite for no other reason than shits and giggles, then Dennis Hopper would be somewhere near the top of the list.
After all, the actor and filmmaker fully deserved his reputation as one of Hollywood’s most notorious hellraisers, spending his wildest years getting involved in a string of unusual incidents that would seem too far-fetched to believe if they weren’t true.
He was arrested and deported from Australia less than 24 hours after wrapping production on a movie with a blood alcohol level that would have left anyone else clinically dead, which was merely the tip of a wayward iceberg that always found the ‘New Hollywood’ icon in the midst of self-orchestrated chaos.
Hopper purportedly snorted the ashes of an industry executive’s wife alongside Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda, went method by taking copious amounts of LSD to film Easy Rider‘s drug trip, turned the shoot of The Last Movie into a literal and figurative orgy of excess, wandered through the jungle naked before being apprehended by the authorities, and got so high he shot a tree after mistaking it for a bear.
Needless to say, Hopper was a difficult personality to rein in, but the dynamite incident unfolded under the most innocuous circumstances. In 1980, he descended upon the media centre of Houston, Texas Rice University, to screen his latest directorial effort, Out of the Blue, for students.
After showing the film to the gathered throng, Hopper, the students, and the rest of the attendees took a couple of buses to the Big H Speedway so that he could perform the ‘Russian Dynamite Death Chair’ after the university’s ruling body wisely told him that there was no chance he’d be allowed to do it on campus.
The entirely self-explanatory stunt requires the person performing it to sit in a chair with a stick of dynamite attached to each leg. Once they’re ignited, the rest is up to physics and fate. This being Hopper, though, he decided to up the ante and use six.
University newspaper The Rice Thresher was there for posterity, after which Hopper confessed that “blowing himself up was one of the craziest things he has ever done and that it was weeks before he could hear again.” After emerging from the clouds of billowing smoke while still remarkably in one piece, the actor generously undersold the experience.
“That ain’t no joke, boys,” he said in the immediate aftermath. “It’s like being hit by Muhammad Ali, man.” Only Dennis Hopper would be bold – or crazy – enough to showcase his new work to a group of students before deciding the best way to end the evening was by blowing himself up with dynamite.
