“She did something that wasn’t very pleasant”: the betrayal Dennis Hopper could never forgive
Anybody who consumes their own body weight in drugs and alcohol is likely to occasionally be a little ‘challenging’ to work with, and that was certainly the case where Dennis Hopper was concerned. Over his tumultuous career, the guy had on-set tantrums, fell out with Peter Fonda, reportedly pulled a knife on a co-star and argued constantly with Marlon Brando on Apocalypse Now.
But then we are talking about an actor who would consume half a gallon of rum and three grams of cocaine on a daily basis, which is the kind of diet that lends itself perfectly to 1) not being able to do your job properly, as evidenced by Hopper having an apparent three hour meltdown on the set of 1993’s Super Mario Bros of all things, and 2) completely ruining any kind of relationship you might have with anyone close to you.
In 1990, which was long after he had reportedly got clean of all the substances, Hopper fell out with someone else, that someone being Jodie Foster, who by all accounts is supposed to be really quite pleasant, if a little reserved. But that didn’t make any difference to the making of the film Catchfire from 1990, which Hopper was directing and starring in opposite the pre-Silence of the Lambs fame Foster.
Co-starring the likes of Charlie Sheen, Joe Pesci and, bizarrely, Bob Dylan, the movie was an action thriller that even the screenwriter described the filming of under Hopper as ‘insane’ and which eventually would bring in less than half of what it cost to make at the box office. Foster, for her part, said: “I worked with an actor-director who was a major pain. It was very difficult for me. Very difficult.”
Things definitely weren’t helped by a naked shower scene for Foster, which she felt was completely needless, so much so that she decided to call ‘cut’ mid-scene, much to Hopper’s fury. She also believed the scene would be removed from the final edit of the movie; it was not.
Hopper was not one to forgive and forget, and some six years later, he told the disgraced American chat show host Charlie Rose: “I have a problem with Jodie… She did something that wasn’t very pleasant to me. I had a picture I wanted to use Meryl Streep in, and I wanted to direct her in a movie, and Jodie went out of her way to call her and tell her she shouldn’t work with me, and I can’t really come to grips with that one.”
As for the much-maligned Catchfire, Hopper actually disowned it after its release, removing his name from the final cut and complaining bitterly about the edit, saying it was not a Dennis Hopper movie but in fact was directed by ‘idiots’. It didn’t stop him returning to the project at a later date, however, releasing a ‘director’s cut’ of the film, which had been retitled to the quite fitting Backtrack.
He and Foster never did work again. She found global superstardom the very next year, thanks to her Hannibal Lecter smash, while Hopper had his own resurgence with the Keanu Reeves action thriller Speed in 1994 – that is, once he’d got over being so upset at having to play dungaree-wearing Italian videogame plumbers Mario and Luigi with Bob Hoskins the previous year.
