Hopper (26 page)

Then one time Jack Nicholson, back in the Corman hell days, wrote the part for Harry Dean of one-eyed Blind Dick Reilly in a low-budget Western.

“Harry, I got this part for you, but I don't want you to do
anything
. Let the wardrobe do the character.”

That's when Harry Dean realized that all he had to do was be Harry Dean, plus an eye patch. From then on he played himself, with each new role becoming more personal and linked to his own experience, his childhood, his parents, even his grandparents and the rugged settlers before them. But he didn't right now feel like digging into the violent side of himself. He just wasn't Frank Booth.

The phone rang. David Lynch picked up and pressed the receiver to his ear.

“I have to play Frank Booth,” said Hopper, “because I
am
Frank Booth.”

It was a terrifying confession. Frank Booth was a masochistic killer who shows up in the movie to beat the object of his warped desire, the sultry lounge singer Dorothy Vallens cloaked in blue velvet, heating up the little white-picket-fenced town of Lumberton to a boiling point. Hopper was only two months out of rehab, and Lynch first wanted it confirmed from Hopper's manager that Dennis was now clean and sober. Just in case, he called Dean Stockwell, whom he'd cast for the part of Ben, Frank Booth's creepy pimp drug-dealer friend. Lynch wanted to make sure playing Frank wouldn't send Hopper back to the bottle or the booby hatch.

“Can Hopper do this?”

“Are you kidding? Of course he can do it! He's a professional. Get him. Fast as you can,” said Dean, who knew how far Dennis would take this role.

So Frank Booth prepared for his entrance. Before smacking Dorothy around, Frank Booth was to pull a vinyl mask out of his pocket and inhale, sucking in the gas, all part of a well-choreographed, twisted sex ritual. While writing the screenplay, Lynch had imagined the gas would be helium and give Frank Booth a high-pitched, squeaky voice like an evil carny. But Dennis had a better idea.

“David, you know? I thought of this as nitric oxide or amyl nitrate.”

“What's that?”

Here in Dorothy Vallens's cheap boardinghouse room, Hopper stormed in wearing a slick, black, ass-kicking leather jacket, a getup Jimmy might've chosen for himself had he lived to see forty-nine, like Hopper.

“Hello, bay-bee,” said Dorothy sweetly and a bit vapidly, welcoming him to her maroon cocoon.

“Shut up. It's Daddy, you shithead. Where's my bourbon?”

Taking a mean sip of his highball, Frank Booth sat before Isabella Rossellini, luxuriously matronly in her thick blue velvet robe.

“Spread your legs,” said Hopper. “Show it to me.”

She spread her legs and exposed herself. (“Whew, that was a shock,” said Hopper. “Because she really did and nobody could see it but me.”)

Frank pulled a vinyl mask out of his pocket, mashed it against his nose, and took a deep connoisseur's whiff.

snifffff

Her legs spread before him, her robe enveloping him in glinting pool blue, Mommy coaxed her little boy to wriggle back in and take the plunge, face-first. Diving into the blue, Hopper submerged himself into his emotional depths. He threw himself on Isabella Rossellini like a fiend from the fiery depths of hell.

Mommmmmmeeeeeeeeeeee????

Baby

Wantsta

Fucccckkkkk

“When people ask what I was inhaling in the mask,” said Hopper, “I say it was Lee Strasberg.”

David Lynch watched the character he'd dreamed up become terrifyingly real.

“Cut!”

Hopper didn't scream at him like James Dean, but snap—he reverted back to Hopper.

“The word ‘professional'? You could stamp that right on him,” said Lynch. “When the camera started rolling, he was Frank Booth—but one hundred percent. It was surprising how Dennis understood every single thing and brought it to life so perfectly. He
is
Frank Booth and the only one who could've played him. That is good news and bad news at the same time. The bad news being that he's Frank Booth.”

Frank Booth rolled along to another scene with his suave alter ego, Ben, his face painted in thick whiteface and eyeliner like a freaky mime. Realizing how twisted Frank was and how Frank held Ben in such high esteem, Dean knew Ben had to be farther out than Booth.

Dean and Hopper got together to work on the scene when Frank was supposed to grab an old studio microphone and sing the Roy Orbison song “In Dreams,” about the candy-colored clown, but Hopper couldn't remember the lines. When they were rehearsing in front of Lynch, it became apparent that Dean, who knew all the lyrics, was going to sing that one, lip-syncing Roy's trippy tune, flouncing about in his louche lounge-lizard outfit.

“These things happen,” said Lynch. “They're meant to be. How you get there sometimes is a strange route. I'd worked before with Dean on
Dune
and there's a film
Sons and Lovers
that I thought Dean Stockwell was incredible in and that's how he got into
Dune
. In a way, it was just one of those things that kind of works out perfect. You just get this feeling of a shared past. It just shows their friendship. They knew a life in Hollywood that I wish they'd write a book about. There's probably ten million stories that would illustrate what was goin' on.”

“All right, I'll give you one,” said Dean, caving after being prodded for a wild tale from the bad old days. “We were in Cannes for
Tracks
and a friend of Dennis, a long-term fan, had a big château. We stayed there. Wonderful time, you know, couple of women, enjoyed the festival. They had a gambling joint, a casino, so we decided to go hit the casino. Only Dennis couldn't go because he'd gone before and they'd kicked him out and they wouldn't let him back in. So he had the I Ching out and was throwin' up I Ching about everything in the world. When it comes down to going to gamble—he goes to the I Ching for him, myself, for one of the girls. There were five numbers. All right, so I'm entrusted with these numbers. These are all on roulette, at thirty-two to one, okay? I get
four
out of
five
of them. The whole joint went nuts. I had to scurry to get out with all this money—I came to Dennis and I threw it in his lap.”

Thinking of another time, Dean's eyes got unusually wide.

“You wanna talk about parallels? We were in the same hospital, on the same floor, and Dennis got the
same
psychiatrist as I did when I went far-out. You wanna find a couple common things between friends? That's gettin' out there. Same psycho ward. What are the odds? I'm sorry. That's
weird
.”

The American Dream

H
aving tapped the twisted roots of his psyche without sniffing any real amyl nitrate or drinking a gallon of Pabst Blue Ribbon to get into character, Hopper soberly expelled the beast. A bona fide actor in mastery of his craft—without having to put a paper bag over his head to smoke dope like he did with Jimmy, or drop acid or snort coke, Dennis Hopper was off to the wholesome heartland, to Indiana. Late for the shoot because his flight had been delayed, Hopper entered a packed gymnasium in Brownsburg. He was playing Shooter, the drunken dad in
Hoosiers
, a basketball movie about Milan High School, the Indiana State champions etched in real Hoosier lore as the little team that could. His first scene was to walk across the waxed court in a hobo's stovepipe hat, which he'd selected himself, stumbling drunk before the crowd.

“Just give me about ten seconds before you're ready to roll.”

The first-time director, David Anspaugh, had a hunch about Hopper working out. He'd originally wanted Harry Dean Stanton for the role of Shooter, as did Angelo, his screenwriter frat brother from days at the University of Indiana. Harry Dean couldn't see himself in the role, though, which left the director in a bind until he caught
King of the Mountain
, playing one night on television as the Movie of the Week. Part of a thrill-seeking gang that races cars up and down Mulholland Drive, Hopper burned up his tires in a blasted-out Stingray, screaming, locked in a death race against a silver Porsche, only to crash in flaming glory. Basically a recap of Hopper's teenage years.

“Angelo, don't laugh at this idea but I'm watchin' this movie with Dennis Hopper,” said Anspaugh, picking up the phone.

“What the hell's he been doing?”

“I dunno. I've always kind of thought he was strange. I don't know if this is a recent MOW, but what happened after
Easy Rider
? Isn't he like
insane
?”

“Okay, Dennis, we're ready,” said Anspaugh, directing. “You want your ten seconds?”

Spinning around and around like a whirling dervish, Hopper stumbled out on the basketball court trying to catch his balance.

“Where did you learn
that
?” asked the director, amazed at the “drunk” trick.

Next up for Hopper was the big game at Hinkle Fieldhouse, where the Milan High coach gets everyone in a huddle and tells the guys he loves them. Suddenly Shooter bursts through the door with his coat on over his pj's, having busted out of the hospital where he'd been detoxing, because he wants to be there with the guys, for the team.

“This has
really
been bothering me,” Hopper told his director. “Really, really been bothering me. I should not be in this scene. It's wrong, it's just wrong.”

“It's the complete circle,” argued the screenwriter. “The whole family comes together!”

“If I leave the hospital,” said Dennis, “it suggests that I didn't have the strength to stay sober. If I don't commit to staying in there, and this is coming from experience, it would be wrong for this character.”

“No, you
gotta
do it,” insisted the director.

Hopper made an impassioned case: if Shooter leaves the hospital, it suggests he doesn't have the strength to stay sober. Even if his son is playing the state championship, if he's drying out,
that
's where he has to be. Sure as Jett Rink would never drink from the tables of those rich Texans who used to look down on him, that's how much Dennis knew his character.

“In fact, a lot of people recall that as one of their favorite moments in the movie,” recalled Anspaugh, battling a cold over a Coke at O'Brien's, a Santa Monica pub. “Seeing him jump up and down on that hospital bed. Listening to that Philco when they won. Oooooh, I just got little goose bumps.”

Every day Hopper was on set, he was always making jokes and keeping things light, coaching the movie along. Everybody loved him, the kids on the team particularly. They were too young to realize who they were dealing with, but he would teach them little acting tricks: how to find the camera lens and what their best angles were, and how to get the most screen time. By the end of the shoot these kids had become savvy, mostly due to Dennis.

“Actually, he created little monsters,” said David.

During the filming, Hopper went on a pilgrimage out to Fairmount, Indiana, the hometown of another famous Indiana high school basketball player, the spectacled Jimmy Dean of the Fairmount High Quakers. Hopper had never been to Dean's grave, but had always promised himself he'd go. After Jimmy died, he'd stood one night in Laurel Canyon, looking up at the nighttime sky, and shouted to the heavens, “Jimmy, Jimmy, which star are you?”

The lonely boy stood silently by Jimmy's grave. Some black hole out there was bound to try to suck the light out of his association with Dean, questioning whether he really knew Dean as well as he said he did.

Did it even matter? Who else learned from or suffered more for Jimmy than Hopper? For over thirty years he had followed Jimmy's star, nearly killing himself in the course of his search again and again and again, only to survive another chapter and live on to boldly perform another of his Dean variations, in all thirty-two Campbell's varieties.

W
hat
is
the story of Dennis Hopper's life?” asked Charlie Rose.

Well, Charlie, if you really want to know, it began with the tenacious Hopper stock, a line going all the way back some four hundred years ago to the Hoppers of yore, stuck in the bogs of Britannia. This rugged clan dreamed of that American land beyond the imaginary horizon, publicized as a fantastical dreamscape of soaring eagles, fish that looked like Saint George's dragon, lusty soil bearing three sorts of plums, and other such wonders detailed in the day's best-selling true tales of a swashbuckling Captain John Smith, including the cock-and-bull one about him being saved by the luscious thirteen-year-old Indian princess, Pocahontas.

So the restless, nervy Hoppers set sail for the shores of the New World.

As president of the San Diego Genealogical Society, Marjorie Hopper traced the line back to the head branches of Deep River, where George Washington later owned land and one Blackgrove Hopper abided by the Hopper family crest—
A SUBJECT FAITHFUL TO HIS KING IS THE SAFETY OF THE KINGDOM
—until, hellfire and brimstone, he could take it no more! Pulling himself out of the mire of civilization, Blackgrove headed for the hills of East Tennessee. Drinking deep the untainted waters of Lick Creek Baptist Church, he had a vision of a string of frontier churches glowing through the darkness. Theaters of the soul!