In the introduction to his 1980 book A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman, film critic Robert Kolker notes that the films made by these male auteurs “speak to a continual impotence in the world, an inability to change and to create change. When they do depict action, it is invariably performed by lone heroes in an enormously destructive and antisocial manner.” Of course, the term “hero” is ironic. The male figures that emerge from the films discussed within the book are often lonesome, violent, abusive, egotistical antiheroes. Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) is a traumatized Vietnam veteran who wants to wash all the “scum off the streets” as an act of violent retribution against the real and perceived hardships that have been dealt to him in his life. Bickle drives his cab through the city offering an internal commentary on the pitfalls of society; an internal monologue he begrudgingly interrupts as he collects fares. Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) is married with a young son, but he seals himself away from his family and the responsibilities that go with it to write a book while caretaking the vast Overlook Hotel during the winter season. He eventually succumbs to his inability to write anything of value, taking out his frustration and anger on his wife and child, whom he sees as unwanted distractions from his “work.”
The filmmakers Kolker surveys documented an era of an intense male identity crisis, where the clarity of perceived male norms in the post-war era — a good job, a happy marriage, well-behaved children, a house in the suburbs, an automobile, and financial stability — had been replaced by a break in the social contract that meant some men were left adrift within a society that hadn’t lived up to its promise. The years after World War II saw many men shipped off again, to fight aimless wars in Korea and Vietnam with little incentive to resume life in any meaningful way upon their return home.
Although he and his directorial films are only briefly mentioned in Kolker's book, perhaps no actor or director understood this schism better than Dennis Hopper. His life, times, and place within American culture continually offer audiences a vantage point of male struggle, defeat, and failure in the mid-to-late 20th century. Touted as a young, handsome, up-and-coming actor in 1950s Hollywood, with roles in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Giant (1956), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), and From Hell to Texas (1958), Hopper’s initial shine began to diminish when his commitment to the Method approach to acting (something he picked up from his Rebel and Giant co-star James Dean) rubbed up against the old school intuition of Hollywood’s big-name directors. Hopper was ousted from Hollywood and spent the early part of the 1960s appearing in cheap exploitation films such as Queen of Blood (1966) and The Glory Stompers (1967). While his work in film was sporadic, he spent time photographing the Civil Rights Movement and the lives and times of his famous friends. He returned to Hollywood as a leading figure in the short-lived, though immensely important, New Hollywood era of the late 1960s and early 1970s as director of the era-defining Easy Rider (1969). The film, made for very little money, was a commercial and critical triumph that captured the youth zeitgeist of the late 1960s. Easy Rider, alongside other acclaimed films such as Midnight Cowboy (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Last Picture Show (1971), and Badlands (1973) showed the way for a new, vibrant, and youth-directed coup of Hollywood that gave audiences socially conscious narratives, hip soundtracks, a group of actors they could relate to in looks and circumstances, and a splash of sex and violence.
The dream didn’t last long. Hopper’s second directorial feature, The Last Movie (1971), an avant-garde neo-western about a lonesome Hollywood stunt coordinator who remains behind in a Peruvian village after his production company returns home, tanked critically and commercially. The response to the film, in which one Universal Pictures executive stated “We’ll only make money on this if you're dead” landed Hopper in a second exile from mainstream American films for the remainder of the 1970s and early 1980s. Although he stood by The Last Movie he admitted in an interview with The Talks decades later that he “never really got back to mainstream Hollywood.” He continued to act in small American independent films but mostly sold his wares abroad.
During this time, Hopper partook in a prolonged odyssey of alcohol consumption and substance abuse stating years later in an interview with Cigar Aficionado that “I was drinking a half-gallon of rum with a fifth of rum on the side, in case I ran out, 28 beers a day, and three grams of cocaine just to keep me moving around.” The acting work he did manage to create was spasmodic, wild, and disconcerting, yet still deeply committed to creating a memorable performance. His acting in films such as Tracks (1976), Mad Dog Morgan (1976), The American Friend (1977), and Apocalypse Now (1979), offered glimpses that Hopper’s unique brand of instability could still be thrilling to witness even if it often wasn’t actually witnessed by many at the time due to these films (apart from Apocalypse Now) not being widely distributed in North America.
After one too many drug-related episodes, one of which saw Hopper wandering the Mexican jungle naked and unaware of his surroundings, he, sought help for his addictions and entered rehab in the mid-1980s. He came out clean, sober, humbled, and happy to be offered a selection of acting roles that brought him back into the fold, got him seen on cinema screens again, and made him a reliable if somewhat menacing presence. He was, as he told Chris Hodenfield in Film Comment at the time just “happy to be working” after many years of not working as much as he would have liked. Blue Velvet, River’s Edge, and Hoosiers (all 1986) gave Hopper the critical acclaim he’d been missing since Easy Rider and showed older audiences what they’d been missing and newer audiences what to expect with his new work ethic.
In “The Misleading Man: Dennis Hopper,” the first chapter in Stars in Our Eyes: The Star Phenomenon in the Contemporary Era, film critic Adrian Martin describes Hopper’s appearance as “short, no neck, square, and solid, a little beefy, but still quite handsome.”. Hopper gave his characters mannerisms that tended to be jerky and twitchy, with glaring wide eyes, gritted teeth, and a voice that could move from sinister whisper to operatic yell in seconds. Yet alongside that was also vulnerability, sensitivity, and a philosophical bent that gave his characters gravitas. His physical appearance placed him within the realm of ‘character-actor’ in supporting roles, as opposed to a leading actor in leading roles. His “method” acting style meant that the roles he was offered and the roles he would place himself in as a director leaned towards lonesome, isolated male figures who, confused, and troubled by the world and its actions, reacted in a “destructive and antisocial manner.” Although his characters were not always alone — Hopper did portray fathers, husbands, gangsters, and partners after all — an overwhelming understanding that I’ve come to is that alone or with company, Hopper’s characters acted for the benefit of themselves and allowed their own past traumas, complexities, and vices to alienate themselves from those around them that could potentially offer friendship, support, or kinship. His characters appear to be their own worst enemies.
In Tracks, Henry Jaglom’s treatise on the ravages of the Vietnam War on the American psyche, Hopper plays Sgt. Jack Falen, a young soldier returning home while also escorting home his war buddy’s casket. On a day-long cross-country train journey, he moves through the compartments and has various confusing and awkward interactions with his fellow passengers. His social anxiety means that for most of the journey, he sits in silence in the observation car and watches the other passengers’ interactions until his paranoia overtakes him and he hallucinates all kinds of horrid events happening right in front of him. When he befriends a male passenger of a similar age by the name of Mark (Dean Stockwell), and goes on a double date with a young female passenger named Stephanie (Taryn Power) and her friend Chloe (Topo Swope), the awkwardness is overwhelming. Though Stephanie seems quite taken with Jack’s shyness and inability to function in social situations, they are in fact symptoms of a severely damaged mind. He severs his connection with Mark when he is found to be an anti-war radical on the run. His relationship with Stephanie ends when he forces himself upon her and she flees in distress. When he arrives in his hometown it becomes clear what his intentions really are. He opens his friend’s casket to reveal, not a body, but a cache of weapons that he intends to use to bring the war back home.
A decade later, Hopper’s turn as Feck in Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge offered up another eccentric, lonely male with violent tendencies. Unlike the strait-laced Jack, Feck was a ‘60s party boy and a participant in the counterculture activities of motorcycle riding, drugs, and liberated sex brought on by the sexual revolution of the 60s. Now housebound with a busted leg, an inflatable sex doll girlfriend he names Ellie, and a paranoid, anti-authoritarian disposition, Feck is the town weirdo, selling bags of weed to local teenagers. He is a remnant of the past whom the kids love to tease and taunt. But Feck, who appears harmless on the surface, harbors a dark backstory. He repeatedly states that the police have been after him for decades for killing his girlfriend. Most who hear this diatribe laugh it off, but when John (Daniel Roebuck), one of the stoner teens, kills his own girlfriend, the kids recruit Feck to help keep John out of sight. As John and Feck hideout by the river and discuss their crimes, it becomes clear that Feck’s confession is real and that his purported motivation was to show his love. He tells John matter-of-factly that he put “a gun to the back of her head and blew her brains right out the front. I was in love.” When John becomes upset about his actions and the impact on his future, Feck attempts to talk him down. But John begins to think that handing himself over to the cops would be a better option, but this would also implicate Feck and his past crimes would be investigated by the police. To end his suffering, Feck shoots John. At the end of the film, we see Feck alone confessing to someone unseen about his actions and why he chose to kill John, However, we never see the person and it might be assumed that he is talking to himself.
Hopper’s characters’ twisted devotion and deranged ways of expressing love are staples throughout his career. Frank Booth in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet is a despicable creature.A rapist, a torturer, a crook, and a user of amyl nitrite which causes a brief state of euphoria for most, but in Frank makes him momentarily lose his cognitive function and go “dark”. Nothing about his personality seems in any way redeemable. Yet, according to Hopper’s own interpretation of Booth, as quoted in Charles Drazin’s book Blue Velvet: A Bloomsbury Movie Guide, he is “one of the great romantic leads of all time.” He loves his hokey love ballads, and his horrendous actions are carried out in the name of some twisted version of romance. Frank harbors an obsessive crush on Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), going so far as to kidnap her husband and child to secure her affection. When a rival comes between him and Dorothy in the shape of the young and handsome Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), he sets about warning him off with threats and a beating. In the world of Hopper’s numerous violent and lonely men, the response to female rejection is to kidnap and torture their husbands and beat up any prospective rival.
While he was handsome as a young actor and maintained a certain distinction into middle age, Hopper was never really cast as an object of female desire. In his fifth directorial film Catchfire (1990), Hopper cast himself as the stoic hitman who gets the girl in the end. However, this only comes to pass after he is assigned to kill her and instead falls in love and wins her over by saving her life from the mobsters who hired him. Carried Away (1996) Hopper manages, in his 60s, to attract the sexual desires of two females. He plays Joseph, a high school teacher who lives with his ailing mother on his family farm in a small rural town. He is in a passionless relationship with a fellow school teacher, and widow, named Rosealee (Amy Irving). One day, he is seduced by Catherine (Amy Locane), a 17-year-old student in his class. They continue their affair, which gives Joseph a new lease of life and a newfound passion for Rosealee. Carried Away features two things that are rare to Hopper’s characters: nudity (on Hopper’s part) and (once again on Hopper’s part) a consensual and loving sexual encounter. Hopper, for once, is offered an opportunity to appear relatively relaxed and content in his character's life. Joseph is a subdued character, which makes his late-in-life foray into sexual encounters an interesting journey. By casting Hopper, the character of Joseph could have been interpreted as a Booth-like pervert, but instead, he offers a sympathetic arc to the character. Although Joseph gets neither partner at the end of the film, he does achieve something he has never had, a life of his own.
Hopper’s roles as fathers usually fell into the characterization of the neglectful, scoundrel dad. As his age allowed, Hopper began playing fathers in the early 1980s. His first foray into fatherhood is in Out of the Blue (1980), his third directorial film. Don, dad to the headstrong punk rebel Cebe (Linda Manz), is a verbally and physically abusive man who is often intoxicated. He has little interest in being a good parent. Don is a pedophile who sexually assaulted Cebe when she was a kid. He is imprisoned for causing a car accident while drinking behind the wheel. While Don is in prison, Cebe buries the impact of her abuse and instead becomes infatuated with punk rock icons such as Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten. Cebe begins to place Don on the same pedestal and longs for his return, thinking it will reunite the family. When Don is released, he, his wife Kathy (Sharon Farrell), and Cebe resume life in relative normality. But the past is never buried for long and Don's drinking persists as well as his abusive ways and in one of the many deeply uncomfortable moments within the film, Don, Kathy, and their friend Charlie (Don Gordan) plot to sexually abuse the teenage Cebe.
In Rumble Fish, Hopper plays the deadbeat dad to teen delinquents The Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke) and Rusty James (Matt Dillon). Mostly absent from their lives, he spends his time alone as a barstool philosopher in the neighborhood bars. He does at least pretend to listen to his sons as they try to make a connection with him and offers some sage advice here and there, all delivered through the raspy and weary voice from a lifetime of drinking. But mostly his sons view him as a once intelligent fool who blew it. When Rusty James gets into a dispute with his dad about how his life is turning out he signs off with “At least I'm not a lawyer on welfare.” While this might be a throwaway line it points towards some deep-seated animosity from Rusty James that his dad was once a smart guy who lost his way and failed in his relationship with his sons and their mother. The delinquency of the two boys (both are involved with violent gangs) concludes that they have been left to fend for themselves, and their dad is disinterested in their lives.
Hopper’s ‘Dad of the Year’ award goes to Clifford Worley, father of Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) in True Romance. An absent and alcoholic father for most of his son’s life, he is now sober and working a security job when Clarence and his new bride Alabama (Patricia Arquette) swing by to borrow some money and ask if any of his connections in the police force have gotten wind of the murder of Alabama’s pimp. When Sicilian mobsters show up later looking for Clarence and Alabama’s whereabouts, Clifford directs the gangsters’ wrath towards himself with a monologue about the origins of the Sicilian people, giving his son a little breathing space, but also taking a bullet to the head for his troubles. For the deadbeat behaviors of his past, Clifford redeems himself with a final act of sacrifice.
What is clear from these characters is that they have severed ties in some way with their children and also the wives and girlfriends, the mothers of the respective kids. They often show some sort of remorse for their past actions, and a desire to make amends, but ultimately, they never fully return to the family fold and remain isolated as the other members of the family reunite in some way. When an attempt is made to resume a normative family life, the demons that lurk in the subconscious of these characters boil up to the surface.
I’ve watched many Dennis Hopper films that contain characters who succumb to loneliness. They are all deeply affecting, but one character and one scene in particular offer the most haunting expression of Hopper’s brand of loneliness. In German director Roland Klick’s film White Star (1983), Hopper plays music manager Kenneth Barlow. Much like Hopper, Barlow is a remnant of the 1960s and was once a tour manager for the Rolling Stones. He along with the Stones indulged in all the hedonism and debauchery that lifestyle brought. In the 1980s, Barlow now resides in West Berlin and manages a young American musician and producer named Moody Mudinsky (Terrance Robay). Hopper confessed to British GQ that “Drugs got me through” the filming of White Star. And the circumstances of Hopper’s addictions bleed into the character’s confrontational nature. Barlow is erratic, egotistical, and off the rails. When we first meet him, he’s preparing Moody for his debut show. He gives him the usual pep talk but then quietly whispers in Moody’s ear “Do it or I’ll kill ya.” He organizes a bunch of punks to riot at the show and when the Berlin police arrive and escort him and Moody out the back door of the venue, he grabs a police megaphone and thanks the rioters for “making me a star.” Barlow’s approach to music management is to ensure that any mention of his protégé is linked to his own chaos and notoriety. When Moody finally sacks him, Barlow is heartbroken and buys a bottle of vodka and goes driving alone through the rain-lashed streets of Berlin. It’s at this point where we find Barlow at his most lonesome and isolated. Driving through the dark, Barlow’s emotions run the gamut from laughing to himself to quietly sobbing. He mutters asking “Where am I going?” and tries, through the darkness, to find a familiar face in the passing cars. After driving around aimlessly for almost ten minutes, he finally pulls up and exits the car, falling to the pavement and sobbing. It is one of Hopper’s best and unfortunately one of his most underseen performances in film. reveals Barlow at his most isolated, being literally cocooned within the confines of his car and completely cut off from the outside world. Yet, I’m drawn to the idea that the line between him and his character is so blurred that the instability being witnessed on screen seems almost too real and is all Hopper’s own. When I hear Barlow ask himself “Where am I going?” I can't help but feel, due to the improvised nature of the performance, that Hopper is also asking himself that very same question.
I view Barlow, and many of the other characters detailed above, from the perspective of Hopper’s circumstances at the time and observe the blurring of the actor and character that often seems to occur. . As White Star was filming, Hopper was ostracized from Hollywood films and had been for well over a decade. His connections to the mainstream American film industry were almost completely severed, and audiences had all but forgotten about him. He wasn't totally absent. He appeared as a car mechanic in King of the Mountain (1981), had a small role as a chef in Neil Young’s little-seen and self-funded film Human Highway (1982), and appeared as a recluse Vietnam veteran in Robert Altman’s underwhelming O.C. and Stiggs (filmed in 1983, but not released until 1987). His screen time amounted to a few minutes. These performances pulled on Hopper’s persona as a wild and erratic presence on screen and in life.
Despite, the bullying, nihilistic, violent, and sometimes murderous actions the various characters take, Hopper, often using a sense of vulnerability in his mannerisms, plants a seed of sympathy in the minds of audiences. For example, even a brute such as Frank Booth displays a soft side. He feels the emotions of the lovey-dovey 1950s ballads of Roy Orbison and Bobby Vinton and mimes along often with a wistful expression whenever he encounters them. As Charles Drazin notes, all the suffering he delivers to others is “his tragedy too” and that he spends his life now “teetering on the edge of irreconcilable desires”. Whatever befell the young Booth, and the majority of Hopper’s characters, it was undoubtedly traumatic. Throughout his film career, Dennis Hopper presented a Rogues' Gallery of paranoid, self-centered, and alienated males. They are often of the pessimistic point of view that the world has acted against them in some way and that they are a victim. They have all become defeated in some way by personal or societal conflicts that have rendered them unable to function and instead placed them on a reactionary footing. When we the audience join their narrative, it becomes clear that any intervention is too late. They are already way too far down the road of antagonism. While one or two might redeem themselves - Cliff in True Romance for example - it usually comes with a high price, often their life is lost. For the rest of Hopper’s characters, it all points back to what Robert Kolker notes as an “impotence in the world,” and a deep-seated “inability to change” their circumstances for the betterment of themselves or those around them.
Dennis Hopper’s impact on cinema, art, and popular culture can be measured in many ways. In his life and in film, he was able, as Peter Brant and Tony Shafrazi commented in Interview Magazine, “to embody a radical individualism, a tough masculinity, a dangerous sensitivity, and a shamanlike ability to move between worlds and fracture cultural codes.” These contradictions are seen in many of his on-screen roles, often fighting for the same amount of space. It’s that war within that makes his characters alluring, frightening, and ultimately compelling. Hopper didn’t need to seek the company of others, not when he had so many multitudes of his own persona to keep him company.
For more on Dennis Hopper from Author Stephen Lee Naish, read his book "Music and Sound in the Films of Dennis Hopper (Filmmakers and Their Soundtracks)" where Naish examines Hopper’s distinctive approach to the use of music through films from 1969 to 1990.