The only time Steven Seagal worked with Dennis Hopper: “It was doomed from the start”
It says a lot about a production when Dennis Hopper is painted as the picture of calm and common sense, with the legendary hellraiser just one of many hot-headed personalities gathered together to lend support to Steven Seagal in another by-the-numbers action flick.
There’s an element of risk attached to hiring any actor regardless of their reputation, but Albert Pyun nonetheless opted for one of the riskiest gambits possible by rounding up an eclectic, eccentric, and troublesome roster for 2001’s turgid Ticker.
A veteran of the B-tier genre circuit for decades, Pyun had worked with plenty of fallen stars and jobbing character actors, but Seagal was always a special case. Few stars have ever gotten higher on their own supply, with the martial artist and reliably wooden performer believing he was a much better actor and a significantly bigger deal than he actually was.
Barely anyone in Hollywood has a nice thing to say about Seagal, which presumably means a director knows exactly what they’re getting themselves into. Not content with one difficult personality, though, Pyun seemingly made it his mission to unite as many as possible under one unruly roof.
Seagal’s co-stars included Tom Sizemore, who’d been publicly battling substance abuse issues for years and was prone to an on-set feud or two, along with the controversial rapper Nas, convicted felon Kevin Gage, Ice-T, TLC’s Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas and, of course, ‘New Hollywood’ icon Hopper.
Pyun had ten days and a $600,000 budget to keep them on the straight and narrow and get the film over the finish line, a decision he came to regret. “Now, that was an insane decision,” he admitted to La Cosa Cine Fantastico. “One of my worst. I have to say that the actors, including Seagal, did try hard.”
However, Ticker was “doomed from the start” due to disagreements between production companies and distributors, and one of the major reasons Hopper managed to stay out of trouble was that he was only there for one day. Seagal, meanwhile, managed to hang around for six, and he wasn’t very pleased with his lot in life after being plunged into “that transition period from being a theatrical star to falling into the video bins.”
Despite only being present for 10% of principal photography, Hopper was prominently positioned on the posters alongside Seagal and Sizemore, and he apparently spent his day on set sleepwalking through a one-note villainous performance that was basically a ripoff of his much more memorable antagonist from Speed.
Pop quiz, hotshot: does anyone even remember that Seagal and Hopper made a movie together where Ice-T played a terrorist and Nas was cast as a dogged detective named Fuzzy? It’s doubtful unless they’re either completionists or gluttons for punishment.
