The Last Movie

Drugstore Cowboy or Artistic Sacrifice? Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie

Written By: Rudy Hatfield
Mondo Film & Video Guide Feature Contributor

If you could think of one period in your life or series of events in your life that changed everything, what would it be? Similarly, what was the most influential decade in recent U.S. history? The one single period in the 20th century that resulted in a major paradigm shift in American life is arguably the 1960’s. While it is true that every decade in American history contained milestone events that influenced the future, few periods in American history can compare to the drastic overarching changes that the 1960’s produced. From civil rights reform, to the war in Vietnam, to changes in American philosophy, values, culture, music, and art the 1960’s provided some of the most grand and rapid changes in American ideology ever witnessed. And of course the impact of the 60’s technological revolution remains with us today.

The influence of that era is often lost on many today, and in retrospect it is not difficult to understand why this is the case. When I equate the fact that the era of the 1960’s today is comparable to what the 1920’s were when I was young, it helps put things in perspective for me. As a teenager in the 1960’s I thought of the culture and events that occurred in the 1920’s as archaic and amusing, but not influential to the events of my life. Certainly people who were born after 1980 view the 1960’s in the same light today. However, when one scrutinizes the current issues in politics, technology, philosophy, culture, and art one can still see the tremendous influence of 1960’s on our lives today. However, please understand that I do not maintain that the 1960’s were qualitatively better than any following decade or that the 1960’s values are better than any subsequent philosophy or value system, I am simply maintaining that the decade of the 1960’s was highly influential, for better or for worse.

If there is any single actor that epitomized the ideals of the 1960’s it was probably Dennis Hopper. Hopper is probably best recognized by today’s younger film fans as villain Howard Payne in the movie Speed (1994), Victor Drazen on the television series 24, or as Ben Cendars in the television series Crash; however, Hopper left an expansive film legacy. Having been in over 150 films and countless television shows Hopper will most likely always be best remembered by film purists for his role and direction in the 1969 classic counterculture film Easy Rider, and with good reason. Easy Rider was a film-statement about America that affected millions. While Hopper co-authored and directed the project, it really was not his project. The film that really was Hopper’s project from start to finish was 1971’s The Last Movie, a film that receives far too little recognition today and like Easy Rider also makes some very pertinent post 1960’s statements about America and film-making in general. However, The Last Movie was not well-received by film critics and fans. As such, Easy Rider remains the Hopper film that most believe best embodies the lost ideals of the 1960s.

Prior to working in films Hopper was schooled in traditional Shakespearean acting methods and had performed on stage and in a few television roles. Despite nearly flunking out of high school he was dubbed “Most likely to succeed” by his senior class. After graduation he earned a scholarship to San Diego’s Old Globe Theater where he was schooled in Shakespearean theater. Later Hopper moved to Los Angeles and worked at the Pasadena Playhouse. He made his television debut on a 1955 episode of Medic on NBC. His realistic portrayal of an epileptic on this series caused Hollywood to take notice of the young Hopper, leading to a number of auditions. But when Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn told Hopper to drop his strict Shakespearean tendencies, Hopper told the studio head to “F**k off.” Cohn responded by throwing Hopper off the lot at Columbia Pictures and banning him from making films there.

Hopper was able to make the most of this and got work at Warner Brothers as a bit player in two James Dean films, Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). Studying James Dean work changed Hopper’s approach to acting and film making forever. “Watching Dean, I mean, I had just never seen anything like that before,” he stated in a 2008 interview with John Foote.  “He tossed the script aside and just went for it. I grabbed him one day after shooting and asked him, what are you doing, man, how can I do what you are doing? He was older than me, by four years, and it was not as though we hung out, but he taught me, he became the mentor to me on set.”

Dean’s tragic death in 1956 affected Hopper deeply, so much so that is reported that he refused to take direction from director Henry Hathaway on the set of the film From Hell to Texas for over 80 takes, thus establishing Hopper as a true Hollywood rebel and outcast. Hopper, even early in his career, obviously was at odds with standard American film-making and film direction believing that it was too restrictive on actors’ artistic expression. Hathaway, a veteran director with considerable influence, reportedly told Hopper he was through in movies and Hopper was banned from Warner Brothers. If one views Hopper’s body of work following his role in From Hell to Texas it is apparent that he only was involved in a few films for several years following his scuffle with Hathaway. Nonetheless, Hopper moved to New York and studied with revered acting coach Lee Strasberg.

Hopper also worked steadily in television in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s and starred in some indie films, most notably Night Tide (1963) and some films by fellow artist Andy Warhol (Hopper had taken up photography and was a first class photographer). In the middle and later part of the 1960’s Hopper again began to regularly appear in minor roles in mainstream films such as Cool Hand Luke (1967) and two John Wayne films, The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and True Grit (1969). One may think that the formal and conservative Wayne would certainly not take to the rebellious Hopper, but in fact the two got along well and Hopper respected Wayne tremendously and always spoke very fondly of him.

It was on the set of The Sons of Katie Elder, shot in Durango, Mexico, that the always cerebral Hopper had an astounding revelation. “I thought, my God, what’s going to happen when the movie leaves and the natives are left living in these Western sets?” Having suddenly realized the intrusiveness of American cinema and American ideals on other cultures Hopper conjured up the idea for a film of his own. With Rebel Without a Cause writer Stewart Stern Hopper developed a script from his vision and tried to get financing for his first directorial effort, The Last Movie. But there were several problems with the film. First, in the mid-1960’s Hopper was a supporting actor with a reputation as a rebel so he did not have any influence in Hollywood. Secondly, the challenging subject matter of the film did not endure it with potential investors. The film was just too abstract and artsy for mainstream American film producers. It is reported that music producer Phil Spector was interested in financing the film, but after he withdrew his financial support the project remained in limbo for several years. But that was to change.

Peter Fonda had completed a biker film with Roger Corman in 1966 called The Wild Angels and Hopper had shot a low-budget biker film The Glory Stompers (1968). Neither had wanted to do another biker film, but Fonda became irked by the Jack Valenti’s assertion that the film industry should make more family films and place less emphasis on the counterculture films of the 1960’s. (Jack Valenti was the first head of the Motion Picture Association and was appointed to that position by an unpopular U.S. president, Lyndon B. Johnson. Thus, he represented censorship and oppression to the new generation of film stars in the 1960’s). Fonda became inspired when viewing a still of himself and Bruce Dern from The Wild Angels and suddenly had a vision of a “cowboy” film where two bikers travel across the country and are murdered by hicks at the end of the film. Fonda called buddy Hopper to help write, star in, and to direct the film.

The classic counterculture film Easy Rider was shot on a budget of $360,000 and completed in four and a half weeks. The acting in Easy Rider was also heavily ad-libbed, probably due to a combination of Hopper’s approach to acting and directing and Fonda’s desire to let the storyline develop as the movie was shot. The film, which may be the first American independent movie picked up by a major motion picture distribution company, went on to win numerous awards and made over $50 million dollars at the box office. Hopper received an Oscar nomination for best director as a result. Suddenly he had the recognition and financial pull that he needed to direct his dream project.

Universal gave Hopper a budget of $850,000 and complete freedom to shoot The Last Picture as long as he came in at or under budget. Hopper wanted to shoot the film in Mexico, but fearful of being censured by studio executives he instead shot the film in Chincheros, Peru. He spent a good deal of 1970 filming and then brought back a reported 40 hours of footage to edit in his Taos, New Mexico home. He was drinking heavily and using a lot of drugs during this period. Hopper later stated in 2004 that the two biggest mistakes he ever made were shooting The Last Movie and moving to Taos. In pondering over his statement, this writer believes that the then more conservative and mature Hopper was reflecting on the personal cost to him of his younger rebellious days. Hopper was more apt to defend his film later in life and before his death had planned to redistribute it. A documentary film about Hopper’s philosophy and lifestyle, American Dreamer (1971), was shot during his editing of The Last Movie. One wishing to better understand Hopper’s vision and state of mind at this time might do better by watching both films back to back. I would suggest watching American Dreamer first and then watching The Last Movie.

Here is a brief summary of The Last Movie: A graphic and violent American western film about Billy the Kid is being shot in Peru. The film’s director, Samuel Fuller (playing himself), is rather course and unconcerned about his actors and extras. While there are no natives in the film, they help with the production and watch the film. The actor playing Billy the Kid (Dean Stockwell) is killed during the shooting of the film. When the film is finished the crew leaves, but an American stuntman Kansas (Hopper) remains behind. He takes a Peruvian woman, an ex-prostitute (Stella Garcia), as a companion, and is hoping that the film industry will return to shoot more movies. He also becomes involved in a search for gold with another American (Don Gordon) and Kansas is eventually is eventually drafted into an imaginary movie being made by the Indian villagers. The natives mimic what they have seen the American filmmakers do; however, their cameras and film equipment are made of bamboo sticks, but the violence in their film is real.

The Indians have no conception that the violence in the American films was faked and never have seen a film so they do not understand what the film equipment was actually doing. To them it is all ritual. When they decide that one of the characters in the film must die (“el muerte” or “the dead one”) Kansas is chosen. Also in the film are Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Roy Engel, and Julie Adams.

The story goes that Hopper had a relatively straight-forward linear version of the film completed, but legend has it that the original version was panned by avant garde director Alejandro Jodorowsky, so Hopper destroyed that version and reworked a nonlinear film that was completed in the spring of 1971. However, I wonder if that story is totally accurate. For instance, Jodorowsky has claimed he never saw the final version of the film, which in the context of this story seems a bit odd. Hopper was a nonconformist before Easy Rider who was always fighting for his right to self-expression from the start and this writer thinks that during the editing process, which Hopper admitted he hated, he came to another revelation. In order to understand the film it is important to understand Hopper himself.

Hopper, while he was stoned for a good portion during this period in his life, considered himself part of the “New Hollywood” film makers in the 60’s that would replace the conservatism of the previous filmmakers and the studio system. Hopper viewed himself as a revolutionary and as such Hopper felt the need to make his viewers think and challenge them and yet at the same time distance himself from the system he believed was obsolete. His use of impressionism, cubism, rough edits, and jump cuts are all designed to make the viewer look deeper into the film itself. So I wonder if perhaps Hopper had a different incentive to make the film turn out the way that it did.

Then again, perhaps the problem with the film for many critics and viewers is that it is too complex; it presents too many themes and asks too many questions at the same time. There are literally enough themes in this film for a dozen conventional Hollywood movies. Many believed that the film was disjointed. Had Hopper have told the story without all of the impressionism and presented the plot in a linear fashion conceivably everyone would have shaken their heads in agreement and gone off to see The French Connection or some other film. Maybe Hopper wanted to make a statement. The question is- what was the statement that he wanted to make?

An overt theme of the film is movie violence and the implications of violence on the screen. For the Indians witnessing the filming of the movie within the movie (another theme) the only thing real for them is the violence they see. The movie making is faked; the violence is real. When a priest (Tomas Milian) confronts Hopper to approach the Indians making their version of the movie he hopefully utters “I hope after this game is over, morality can be born again.” Hopper tries to instruct the director of the Indian film on how to stage a fight scene the director shouts “That’s not real!” We are exposed to how audiences view film and the deceit of film-making at the same time. Thus, the movie is riddled with themes concerning reality, fantasy, and voyeurism.

However, we can also see Hopper’s criticism of American imperialism intermingled with a satire of Western cultural values as they relate to both greed and film making. For example, when Hopper’s friend Neville (Don Gordon) finds gold in his goldmine he is faced with a catch-22 situation. The catch is that the cost of transporting the gold from the mine is greater than the profit he would get from mining the gold. Yet he refuses to sell his claim to a large conglomerate that eventually would be able to turn the mine into a profit, as he wants to keep the gold for himself. While many film critics may have viewed this scenario as a dead end in the film, perhaps the drugged and rebellious Hopper was referring to the struggle between filmmakers (like himself), their artistic expression, and the battle with studio executives who often take possession of the goldmine of artistic creation from the artist in order to make the film more conventional and profitable.

Perhaps Hopper was making a statement that he was going to keep his gold (the film) and not turn it over to studio executives at the expense of never harvesting a profit from it. Like Neville’s seemingly illogical decision to keep the goldmine himself, Hopper may have been hinting that an artist must sometimes make the decision to maintain artistic identity at the expense of appearing irrational.

The film makes more obvious comparisons to imperialism. There are no Indians in Fuller’s movie (the movie being shot within the film), but they are everywhere in Chincheros and they are just dying to become westernized. To the Indians the ritual of film-making as they perceive it is an attempt to engulf western values (but at the same time it corrupts their pure morality). This drive for westernization even affects Kansas’ mate. Maria (Stella Garcia) wants all the conveniences of western living in their home such as refrigerator, even though they do not have electricity, and a fur coat, even though they are in the tropics. Fuller’s movie within the movie represents an invasion of western imperialism that corrupts the native population. Or perhaps it represents the invasion of studio executive values on artistic freedom. Or perhaps Hopper is saying that film affects movie audiences just like the film within a film affects the Indians.

Hopper’s Kansas seems oblivious to much of this. Kansas lives in a amusing almost hippie-type fantasy world wandering in and out of folk music interludes and staring at flowers while all of this corruption around him runs its course. At times he is being exploited and at times he is the exploiter. He treats Maria with distain at times, courts the wife of an American industrialist, and finances Neville’s search for gold but then encourages him to sell the mine when he learns that the two cannot possibly run it. When the Indians shooting their own film designate Kansas to die the storyline of Hopper’s movie eventually vanishes. At this point the film seems to become a satire of Hopper’s film crew and of Hopper himself. Hopper’s death is presented as a Christ allegory. Was Hopper stating that he was sacrificing his career in order to make his statement? With Kansas’ death the film implodes. Kansas’ death scene is repeatedly played over, other actors are suddenly out of character, effects go haywire, and chaos reigns. Has Kansas died for the sins of American imperialism and the film industry? What was Hopper’s message?

The film’s flashbacks, flash-forwards, missing frames, and other techniques convinced studio executives and film critics that The Last Movie was nothing more than the ravings of a drug-addicted lunatic. Certainly one watching American Dreamer and seeing Hopper’s antics while editing the film might also make the same conclusion. The film went on to win Critics Prize at the Venice Film Festival, but it was an utter failure financially and critically. Film critics panned the movie as disjointed, confusing, and meaningless. The film ran for two weeks at New York City’s Cinema and received limited play at other theaters, but it was a disaster for Hopper. Hopper would not direct a film again until 1980’s Out of the Blue. Not too long after The Last Movie Hopper would be ostracized from mainstream Hollywood.

By the late 1970s, Hopper’s drug usage, such as taking enormous amounts of cocaine to keep him conscious enough to continue his gallon-a-day alcohol habit, sent him into exile. Hopper finally hit bottom in 1983 when strung out and hallucinating he staggered naked along a Mexican highway complaining of visions of space ships and the coming of World War III. He was picked up by the police, sent back to the United States, and institutionalized for a short period.

Ultimately Hopper would reemerge in the early 1980’s almost reborn as a sober, hard-working, now more conventional, middle-aged character actor. He provided solid performances in Blue Velvet (1986) and Rivers Edge (1987) and his career flourished until his death. He passed away last year at the age of 74 after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer. As a fan of Hopper’s I wanted to see more of a tribute to his work on the recent Academy Awards program, but of course this did not happen.

I will always think of Dennis Hopper as the ultimate film rebel. I am convinced that Hopper intentionally finalized his film The Last Movie in the nonlinear impressionistic mode that it appeared. Hopper makes numerous references to the struggles of Orson Welles in American Dreamer. It is clear that Hopper identified with Welles’ artistic dilemma. I like to believe that Hopper, even as boozed up and drugged up as he was, began to understand the contradiction into which he had placed himself in when making the film. His film was about the implosion of the film industry, the loss of the hopes and values of the 1960’s, censorship and freedom, and the corruption of western imperialism and western values and yet the film was being backed by the very institution that he was protesting against. His final cut was his symbolic protest against the institution that backed him. In the end he sacrificed his film and career, at least in terms of its commercial potential, in order to maintain his creative expression for that one moment.

In his early days Hopper did this quite often as when he was banned from the sets of Warner Brothers and Columbia. In the end, he paid the price for his freedom and while he never fully joined the establishment he was finally able to make peace with the system he once disparaged. When one views the film in that context, one can appreciate Hopper’s message, personal struggle, and final rebirth both in the film industry and in life. He will be missed.