![]() On July 11, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art unveils Dennis Hopper Double Standard, the first comprehensive retrospective in the U.S. Now, recognition of the extraordinary body of work that Hopper has left behind is pouring in from every corner. Corral (1957), Apocalypse Now (1979), and Blue Velvet (1986), who directed Easy Rider (1969), who had been working in and around Hollywood for nearly six decades, just received a star on the Walk of Fame this past March-a much-belated tribute for a man whose work in film has been nothing short of defining. Remarkably, the actor who appeared in movies such as Giant (1956), Gunfight at the O.K. Still, Hopper worked with both an older generation of classic Hollywood filmmakers (Henry Hathaway, George Stevens, John Sturges), and the next wave of insurgent, decidedly un-Hollywood ones (Francis Ford Coppola, David Lynch, Andy Warhol). He made his first serious mark alongside James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), but the truth is that Hopper himself was such an indelible character that the film industry-which has, does, and always will like its actors to fit into a box- often had difficulty knowing how to utilize him (or even, at times, what to make of him). Hopper was born and raised in Dust Bowl–era Kansas and came to Hollywood from San Diego, where he had been working in a theater and doing Shakespeare, when he was just 18 years old. Which is why his death on May 29 at age 74, after a decade-long battle with prostate cancer, has resonated with so many so profoundly both within the spheres of film and art in which he moved for more than a half-century, and beyond them. Along with a handful of his co-stars throughout his career-James Dean, Marlon Brando, Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, and Sean Penn among them-Hopper came to embody a radical individualism, a tough masculinity, a dangerous sensitivity, and a shamanlike ability to move between worlds and fracture cultural codes. He might have been one of the most authentic representations of combustible cool that Hollywood ever managed to capture on film. Like the notorious frontiersman, Hopper ascended into the mythic golden landscape of American culture. It makes perfect sense that Dennis Hopper was related to Daniel Boone. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |