“I mean, talk about obsession”: when Dennis Hopper called himself Hollywood’s most productive hellraiser
Easy Rider was the film of an entire generation in 1969, dealing with ientity and freedom out on the open road. It was Dennis Hopper’s masterpiece, as he directed and starred in it, and was the inception of the road movie genre of the New Hollywood era. Films like Dazed and Confused and Death Proof would certainly never have been made without it.
With Hopper taking complete ownership of the iconic film, many cite him as a genius and the film as a hallmark of the American industry, but many involved with the production had their own views on the production. When interviewed for The Guardian, Hopper was asked about Peter Biskin’s equally famous book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls that claimed to go behind the sceenes on the film.
According to Biskind, Hopper was out of his head most of the time on Easy Rider and he certainly didn’t sound like a fun drunk. In response, Hopper said: “I was a productive one! And they were a bunch of pussies. I went out and made a movie and put it together and they posed a lot and afterwards took a lot of credit for doing absolutely nothing.
“I was hellbent to make a movie – I mean, talk about obsession. I didn’t give a fuck if I ran over people in the street: if they got in the way, then they’d better get out of the way – that was my objective and that’s what I did.” Hopper’s determination certainly paid off, but it wasn’t without complaints from fellow actors and crew, including Peter Fonda, who “called me a fascist punk”, and “Buck Henry said there was no director on that movie – the movie directed itself! Oh really! Great!”
Hopper continued: “And at the end of it there were a lot of people standing there wondering what had happened and thinking that I’d ruined this great masterpiece they were going to make. And then when they suddenly realised I’d gone and made the masterpiece, they all started talking about how much they’d done on it.”
The late Hopper never minced his words, but at least he was frank about his own attitude and mistakes at the time. It also turns out that both Fonda and Jack Nicholson got the movie approved, according to Hopper: “He [Fonda] had a name. He had a credit card. And he loved motorcycles [Hopper hates them]. But Jack Nicholson was the one who put the deal together, he went in and told them there was no way they could lose money on a motorbike picture.”
Hopper’s other directorial conquests didn’t seem to earn much notoriety, and the rest of his career came predominantly from his acting. The likes of Speed, Blue Velvet and Apocalypse Now made a hero (or severe villain) of him, making sure we remember him for more than his chaotic filmmaking, but in all honestly, he’ll always be remembered for Easy Rider, for better or worse.
