“I didn’t know who to kill”: when hindsight plunged Dennis Hopper into a homicidal rage
Throughout Hollywood history, there have been plenty of hellraisers. From Marlon Brando to Jack Nicholson and from Warren Beatty to Robert Downey Jr, these guys were legendary for their hard-partying, drug-fuelled, womanising ways. However, few men in the history of the movie business have raised as much hell as the late great Dennis Hopper, a man who at times seemed positively certifiable. In fact, he once nearly flew into a homicidal rage when a journalist asked about which actors and writers really contributed most to the creation of his classic 1969 film Easy Rider.
When Hopper welcomed an Observer journalist to his Venice Beach home in 2001, it was described as a fortress. A blank stone wall faced the street, with the only entry being via a steel door complete with an electronic code system. His patio was enclosed by a steel mesh roof, and the compound actually consisted of two studios and a third building linked by imposing steel walkways. It gave the impression that Hopper was paranoid about prying eyes, but it also made the writer paranoid once inside the cavernous structure.
This jittery feeling of nervous anticipation probably wasn’t helped when the writer mentioned Peter Biskind’s seminal book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, and an irate Hopper immediately spat, “Total horseshit!” That tome told the story of the New Hollywood era, from Easy Rider in 1969 to Raging Bull in 1980. This was when a group of young, hungry actors and directors changed the industry by making unique, gritty, innovative films a million miles away from the ones previously churned out by the Hollywood studio system.
In Biskind’s estimation, Easy Rider was ground zero for this era – but that doesn’t mean he went easy on Hopper, the film’s writer, director, and star. He accused Hopper of being high on drugs and alcohol for much of the production and painted a picture of a pretty frightening drunk. The book also contained co-star Peter Fonda dubbing Hopper a “fascist punk” and editor Bill Hayward – Hopper’s brother-in-law – claiming he was the worst editor he’d ever encountered.
Therefore, it’s easy to see why it was like a red flag to a bull when the book’s title was mentioned in Hopper’s presence. He scoffed, “I read one chapter and decided it was a good thing I was homicidal rather than suicidal – except I didn’t know who to kill; there were so many people up for it.”
He grinned and added, “These are really good friends, nice people, people you just want to have over and cuddle. With your gun at their heads.”
Despite all his “crazy guy” talk and non-serious threats of violence, it was obvious that the aftermath of Easy Rider hurt Hopper. To him, the film was his magnum opus. It was his lasting contribution to cinema that will forever live on after he dies. This is why it rankled him so badly when other people involved in the production tried to take more credit than he felt they deserved.
For example, there are three credited writers on the picture – Hopper, Fonda, and Terry Southern. Hopper claimed that the only thing Southern contributed was the title, though. Aside from that, he said: “Terry Southern never wrote one fucking word of Easy Rider…He broke his hip; he couldn’t write. I used his office, and I dictated the whole fucking thing in 10 days.”
Regarding Fonda, Hopper claimed his main contribution was lending his star name, which helped the film get funding. If anything, though, Hopper claimed that co-star Jack Nicholson was even more integral than Fonda in securing the film’s budget because he supposedly convinced the financiers that they’d never lose money on a motorcycle movie.
At the end of the day, Hopper’s opinion on the people he worked with all those years ago was pretty clear. While it wasn’t quite homicidal, it was obvious there was no love lost.
He stated, “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.”
