Dennis Hopper: Two sides of a Hollywood legend
Dennis Hopper, who has died aged 74, was more than just a
hell-raising actor – he was also a gifted photographer. His biographer,
Robert Sellers, considers an extraordinary career
It was the sheer fact that Dennis Hopper was still walking the
planet, having ingested enough booze and drugs to fell the inhabitants
of an African game reserve, that fuelled his legend. Now that this
legend has expired, perhaps medical experts can at last examine his
immune system just to make sure it’s actually human.
At his nadir, which for Dennis was about every Tuesday, he was
consuming, on a daily basis, half a gallon of rum, 28 beers and three
grams of cocaine.
When that lot didn’t work he took more extreme measures to dance with
the devil in the pale moonlight; pulling a knife on a Chicago mobster,
blowing himself up with dynamite.
That’s right, Dennis hired a speedway track in Huston, Texas,
surrounded himself with 20 sticks of dynamite and – boom. Or setting up
a hippie commune in Taos, Mexico, tough, bandit country and absolutely
the last place you’d want to huddle round a campfire with guitars
singing “Mr Tambourine Man”. Dennis took to carrying a pistol everywhere
and his home resembled the Alamo, with machine-gun nests on the roof.
Dennis was always the first to admit that his story was one of
enormous potential that was largely squandered, undermined by a
rebellious nature and self-destructive hedonism. That rebellion started
young, as a kid growing up on a farm in Kansas, snorting gasoline fumes
from his grandfather’s truck.
Arriving in Hollywood, with an ego the size of Jupiter, Hopper made
his film debut alongside James Dean in 1955s Rebel Without a Cause.
Both lost souls from dysfunctional households, they gravitated to
each other, smoked dope and took joy rides.
- The Independent |
