HOLLYWOOD—If you happened to have seen footage of Dennis Hopper at the unveiling of his Hollywood Walk of Fame star last Friday, you likely would have been taken aback by the condition of the honoree.
Shockingly emaciated, the frail 73-year-old has been battling the terminal prostate cancer that was publicly disclosed last October.
But that knowledge still didn’t prepare you for the cruel swiftness with which the disease has ravaged his scant 100-pound, five-foot, nine-inch frame.
It was just last June when I had last seen him looking his usual dapper self making the rounds at the CineVegas Film Festival, where he served as the hip-and-happening annual event’s chair of its creative advisory board.
Each year, several months prior to the Festival, he’d host a preliminary kick-off cocktail party at his longtime studio/gallery/home in still-funky Venice, CA.
The decidedly bohemian neighbourhood’s lingering hippie vibe made perfect sense for the man, who, more than four decades ago, directed, co-wrote and co-starred in that counter-culture classic, Easy Rider.
But, seeing the expansive collection of art and photography filling his office-residence, you were struck by just how richly diverse Hopper’s 50-year-plus career has been.
A frequently exhibited painter and photographer in his own right, Hopper has also been an avid collector of many of the last century’s modern masters.
And although he’d often joke that his collection had been decimated by his numerous divorces, seeing the display of works by the likes of Julian Schnabel, Frank Gehry, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol (whose subject is Hopper circa Giant), underscored his eye for the fresh and unconventional.
It was a talent he certainly demonstrated on screen, especially after he finally exorcised all those drug and alcohol demons in the 1980s, and enjoyed a period of satisfying artistic and commercial success.
The year 1986 was a particularly rewarding one for Hopper thanks to a pair of performances that neatly encapsulated his range and taste for the unpredictable.
First up was Hoosiers, a bona fide crowd rouser in which Hopper played Shooter, an alcoholic dad who cleans up his act and becomes assistant coach of his son’s basketball team, spurring them on to victory. The performance earned Hopper an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.
It was followed by David Lynch’s certifiably bizarro, totally unforgettable Blue Velvet, in which Hopper stole the show as the deranged, sadistic, nitrous oxide-inhaling Frank Booth.
In an interview I had done with Hopper some years later, he marveled at how he’d still walk down a street and hear somebody shouting “Yo, Coach!” then turn a corner and hear somebody else in the shadows snarling, “f--- you, you f---ing f---!” (one of Frank’s pet expressions).
Those two remarkably accomplished, remarkably unique performances were very much on my mind last Friday, as Walk of Fame Star No. 2,403 was officially presented to its ailing but appreciative recipient.
Michael Rechtshaffen, a Canadian entertainment reporter based in Los Angeles, writes Wednesdays and Sundays.
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