Hopper (21 page)

Bing!

The doors opened to a palatial chamber lovingly filled with big band mementos. Dr. Stein had brought on Dennis Hopper in the first place. Unshaven and dirty, Hopper had showed up at his house one day during a luncheon. He was a friend of Dr. Stein's daughter, Jean. Ordering an extra place to be set for him, Dr. Stein turned to the publisher of
Time
, or some major publication, and commented how this boy had just made $40 million for Columbia Pictures. Universal had
lost
$40 million in 1968.

A former ophthalmologist, Dr. Stein had dedicated his life to seeing clearly, and with Dennis Hopper the writing on the wall seemed hard to miss. The old ways of Hollywood weren't working anymore, saddling Universal with
Thoroughly Modern Millie
—about as modern as Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, the swing band Dr. Stein had signed half a century earlier.

“Give the kid what he wants,” ordered Dr. Stein.

Now Dr. Stein sat down on a spindly chair in his French drawing/screening room. Joining him were his execs and Hopper's weird-looking gang from Taos, including his editors Todd and Rol.

Stepping into the projection room to help thread the film, Rol was
amazed
. Spotless. Meticulous. He could have eaten off the floor, walls, in this perfectly clean projection room. It was nothing like most projection rooms, typically holes from hell. Rol peered out at everybody sitting on the beautiful furniture. The gigantic oil painting they all were facing suddenly went away, revealing a pristine screen. More paintings came off the projector portals.

The film began with Hopper as Tex riding through the lush Peruvian grassland. (Where was the simple plot line like in
Easy Rider
of two guys riding bikes across America?) It was dead silence for an hour and a half until Tex lay dead at the hands of the villagers. But in the interim the camera kept rolling. And rolling. Tanen got antsy. End the goddamn picture! All of a sudden, Tex got up from his supine position, brushed himself off, and turned into Hopper, saying, “Well, you know, here I am,” or some such nonsense remark, and that was the end of
The Last Movie
!

The lights came on. The beautiful painting returned to position. Tanen swore he heard the projectionist say, “They sure named this movie right, because this is gonna be the last movie this guy ever makes.”

Maybe it was Tanen's fear talking, because other witnesses simply remembered dead silence with everybody watching Dr. Stein get up from his chair. He just shook his head.

“Well, I just don't
understand
this younger generation.”

Baffled as he had been with that strange $40 million–making acid trip in
Easy Rider
that the kids seemed to like so much, he doddered off to his office, which was comforting with all of his mementos. He didn't say he
hated
it, though anybody could see how the old man might be a little confused by the breast-milk scene, and the one where Hopper gets on his knees before a socialite so she can smack him around. They didn't have strange Peruvian rituals with bamboo movie cameras back in Guy Lombardo's day.

“I wish we were dealing with him,” said Hopper, wistfully watching Dr. Stein go, but they weren't dealing with him.

They were now dealing with Lew Wasserman, and the King of Hollywood didn't get this
Easy Rider
phenomenon. Why didn't the kids like
Thoroughly Modern Millie
? It had Julie Andrews for chrissakes! Didn't the kids like Mary Poppins anymore? Who was this filthy, unwashed, long-haired cowboy freak who'd been running around telling Hollywood he'd
bury
them, put them in chains?

Well, nobody was gonna stick anything up Lew's giggie, whatever the fuck that meant. He'd shove quality entertainment down the kids' goddamn throats until they
choked
on it. What the hell was Tanen doing next door anyway? What the hell kind of show was he running independent of Lew Wasserman? Wasn't
The Last Movie
a Universal picture and didn't Lew run the show? What the fuck was Lew gonna do with this weirdo film? Lew had heard Selznick on the eleventh floor actually
liked
it—if only Hopper would've frozen the frame on the dead stuntman. Fade out. Maybe Selznick was right. The kid better
die
at the end.

L
ew Wasserman's office was decorated with a cane, the cane George Washington carried during that winter of suffering at Valley Forge, Lew told Hopper. Getting the screws put in him, Hopper ran out of the office, literally screaming in pain down the halls of Universal. Lew was killing him.

Downing Scotch at the Chateau Marmont, Hopper couldn't understand the insatiable bloodlust of the despot desperate to kill him off in the finale, too calcified by his evil Black Tower to even want to try to understand his vision. Why were the herds trying to stomp on him?

A reporter sat before him at the Chateau. “They wanted me to kill the guy at the end. They didn't care how I killed him, just kill him at the end.”

The executive producer, Michael Gruskoff, tried bringing his director back to reality. He always tried to be straight with Hopper, ever since becoming his agent after
Easy Rider
. He adored Hopper. He'd never forget the night he went with Hopper and Fonda to see the Rolling Stones play at the Forum in LA. They had all dropped acid and stood on their chairs for the entire show. It was the best rock show Gruskoff had ever seen. At the end, Ike and Tina got onstage, invited up because the Stones really dug
River Deep—Mountain High
. Genius. Genius. After the show ended in the early morning, everyone went over to Fonda's. Mick.
Everyone
. They hung out till the sun came up. When Gruskoff got home, his kids stared at him like, where the hell were you?

Where the hell was he now?

Hopper got his revolution, all right. After
Easy Rider
, a lot of studios started independent, low-budget divisions. It radically altered the Hollywood landscape. An entire younger generation of filmmakers now had an open field, old Hollywood practically served to them on a silver platter.

Gruskoff had worked the angle. He got his client an extraordinary once-in-a-lifetime deal and final cut on
The Last Movie
. So long as Hopper kept within budget.

Getting his client this deal was one thing, but Gruskoff always knew it was a dangerous proposition having Hopper do a movie. What you see is what you get, and you didn't know
what
you were gonna get. But Gruskoff took the gamble and decided to become Hopper's
producer
, too. Why did he have to get Hopper at the worst time?

It was all those drugs. When you do all those drugs, you get very paranoid. And Hopper was paranoid to begin with. So paranoid that Gruskoff visited Taos every few weeks to hang out, see the editing, try to talk to him. Only Hopper was living such a chaotic life—walkin' around with two holsters. Still, there was also just something so
sweet
about Dennis that even if he fucked with you, you had to love him. He knew how to get to you, no matter what. They'd have a little problem, then Hopper would just hug him and say, “Oh,
Michael
.”

Why did he get Hopper final cut? That extraordinary deal came back to plague him.

Hopper was fearless and didn't give a shit about Lew Wasserman. But this was the King of Hollywood they were dealing with. Lew Wasserman could wreck a career in ways Hathaway couldn't imagine—an honest-to-God blackball.

“Let's find a middle ground somewhere. Let's keep the film that
you
want and you'll have it. We'll print your film, but let's see what film they want, and see what it's like. They can't distribute it because you have final cut.”

That's the angle Gruskoff worked, but again, what he saw is what he got with Hopper.

Rol worked into the early hours in the editing room they were using in LA, getting the print ready, laying in the tracks, syncing the sound. It was like setting up a complicated toy train—albeit one made of celluloid. He started feeling a glow about the film. Had Dennis Hopper been the Howard Hughes of his time? Rol could just imagine if
Hopper
were handed a billion dollars—the teams he would put together and the projects he would engage.

Rol was very pleased. He thought they had created such a meaningful movie, one that finally fulfilled Hopper's outrageous ambition of what a movie could be.

All of a sudden, Hopper burst in. Rol could see from the look in his eyes, Dennis was charged with purpose.

“I have a
vision
.”

Oh no, not another one. Not now. When they were finally putting the baby to bed. Rocking it in its cradle.

“Nothing led up to it,” Rol remembered years later, looking back to the strange night they finished editing. “Other than his frustration with Hollywood, and his fear that the movie would be taken away from him, and the way people related to his art and this film.”

His friend Todd Colombo added, “It was a mind-bogglin' cut to me. Somebody must've said something. We may never know who that was or what was said. Dennis respected people who had done something. He listened. He sought advice and counsel from people who had really done something in their lives. So perhaps some artistic person he respected said something. Anybody with a real creative heart can succumb to the pressures of the corporate world of the movies, but Dennis wanted to walk that fine line. He was sort of fearless.”

It was the way he said, “I have a vision” that was spooky.

“I want to put the end at the beginning,” said Hopper.

On the director's orders, Rol proceeded to lop off the last ten minutes of the film and surgically splice them onto the opening. It was very hard for Rol to make that cut. After that, it took people in Europe to appreciate the film.

Premiering at the Venice Film Festival in 1971,
The Last Movie
won best feature, about which Lew Wasserman could give a fuck. If Hopper wouldn't reedit, Wasserman was going to show it for Universal's contractually obligated time in New York and Los Angeles, then shelve it.

“You can't win this battle with Universal on the editing of the movie,” said Gruskoff. He gave it to Hopper straight—if he'd rein his vision back just a little, he could become one of the elite directors in the world. The thing was, Gruskoff realized, Dennis was an artist. Still, it seemed too bad.

Danny Selznick felt terrible. He had great affection for Hopper. They had recently discovered they were born less than twenty-four hours apart. Hopper in Kansas, Danny in Hollywood. Two guys on the Universal lot, worlds apart. Each a bullheaded Taurus. He thought the future was wide open for Dennis. He wanted him to keep making movies.

Selznick Memo to Self:

What about a freeze-frame on

the dead stuntman in the end?

Then again, even if Dennis recut the film, there was something about the public building people up after a great success like
Easy Rider
, then gleefully tearing them down. Critics were itching to attack Hopper, a terrific target given his totally over-the-top persona. Danny hated the thought of Hopper ending up like his father, David O., who by the end of his life was unable to get anyone to finance a picture.

“Are there going to be any changes?” asked Danny when it came to the final decision.

“No,” said Hopper.

Hopper said the same thing when summoned back to the Black Tower to be judged by Lew Wasserman. Hopper eyeballed that prop cane billed as George Washington's. His brother David had suggested he try to steal it. Hopper was just about to leave when—

“By the way, Mr. Wasserman, how do you know that's
really
George Washington's cane? Could you explain that to me before I walk out of here?”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

The Last Movie
was sentenced to a death as primitive as the villagers killing the stuntman, perhaps more savage. Hopper referred to it until the end of his days as “assassination time.” Hopper had to recruit Bert Schneider for Columbia's help with the release since Universal basically bailed. On September 29, 1971, the film set an opening day record at RKO's Fifty-Ninth Street Twin Theatre in Manhattan. Then the critics attacked. “One would have to be playing Judas to the public to advise anyone to go see
The Last Movie
,” wrote Pauline Kael in
The New Yorker
, railing against it just as she railed against
2001: A Space Odyssey
and
The Graduate
. The public forewarned,
The Last Movie
made only $5,000 in its fourth and final week at the Twin, then vanished into obscurity in the Universal vaults. Hopper's suffering only strengthened his belief in his film.

“Well, the movie's in their hands now,” said Hopper. “And their hands are full of blood. Corporate blood.”

Despite his lashings, Hopper lived to tell his story at the restaurant in the Chelsea Hotel, El Quijote, decorated with thousands of Don Quixote statuettes. Hopper wore a dark-brown cowboy hat over a red bandana headband. A small cross hung around his neck. He didn't have enough money to pay his hotel bill. He slipped out in a taxi while his old Digger friend, Emmett Grogan—for whom he'd drop-kicked a man during the Summer of Love—repaid him by blocking the desk clerk waving the bill.

“Mr. Hopper! Oh, Mr. Hopper!”

Hopper was off to play a train robber in
Kid Blue
, a comic Western shot in Durango, Mexico, where Big Duke had planted roots. Who knew? Maybe there'd even be hope for a resurrection of
The Last Movie
. For at the end lay the beginning.

O
ne night at the Mud Palace, Dennis heard something moving upstairs. He had heard these rustlings before, but this time, it was distinctly coming from the second floor bedroom at the end of the hall. Ever since Dennis had moved in, the room was always freezing, cold even in the summer and strangely impossible to heat. It was where Mabel Dodge Luhan, the doyenne of the Southwest, dead some ten years, had once slept.