Create or die: essays on the artistry of Dennis Hopper

111 Pages·2016·0.706 MB·English

by  Hopper, Dennis;Naish, Stephen Lee

STEPHEN LEE NAISH
C r e a t e o r D i e
ESSAYS ON
H o p p e r
D e n nTHEi sART ISTRY OF
Create or Die

Create or Die
Essays on the Artistry of Dennis Hopper
Stephen Lee Naish
Amsterdam University Press
Cover illustration: unknown / mptvimages.com
Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam
Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout
Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by
the University of Chicago Press.
isbn 978 90 8964 858 7
e-isbn 978 90 4852 713 7
doi 10.5117/9789089648587
nur 670
© Stephen Lee Naish / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2016
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of
this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
For J&H

Contents
Introduction 9
Scenes from a Revolutionary Life 15
How Dennis Hopper Conquered the American Century
Hip-Hopp 41
Dennis Hopper and Music
The Elephant in the Room 51
Dennis Hopper and American Politics
Love and Hate 59
The Conflict of Emotions in The Blackout and Carried Away
Commercial Breakdown 71
Dennis Hopper in the World of Advertisements
White Light/White Heat 79
Actor and Character Collide in White Star
Double Standards 85
The Art and Photography of Dennis Hopper
Coda 95
The Fourth Wall
Acknowledgements 101
Notes 103
Bibliography 107

Introduction
Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the
creation of art: the artist on the one hand, and on the other the
spectator who later becomes the posterity.1
‒ Marcel Duchamp
The career of Dennis Hopper was haunted by a single, persistent spectre—
that of Frank Booth. Hopper’s career and even certain extremes of his life
could be seen as a lifetime preparation towards playing Frank Booth, the
sadistic menace in director David Lynch’s dark and disturbing Blue Velvet
(1986). As we shall see throughout this text, Hopper’s performances as
damaged, deranged, and alienated characters range as far back as Night
Tide (1961) and continued up until The River’s Edge (1986). The darkness
sometimes lay beneath the surface but was persistently present. In Frank
Booth, Hopper found the channel for all his previous characters’ rage and
alienation. Subsequently, Frank Booth and his exuberant mannerisms
would go on to define Hopper’s career post-Blue Velvet. The frailties and
subtleties of Hopper’s pre-Blue Velvet characters were overwhelmed by the
Booth-like bluster. The performances in films such as Red Rock West (1991),
Super Mario Bros (1993), and Speed (1994) rely heavily on intimidation and
menace to communicate their anger towards the world.
My own fascination with the life and work of Dennis Hopper began many
years ago during a late night television screening of Blue Velvet. Through
a fog of lethargy and a half-drunk bottle of red wine, I was drawn into
the opening sequence of white picket fences, cloudless blue skies, and im-
maculate green lawns. Bobby Vinton’s woozy 1963 hit ‘Blue Velvet’ drifted
in over the opening images, cosy and hypnotic. A firefighter waves to the
camera as he slowly passes by on his red fire truck through the leafy streets
of an American suburb. An old man waters his freshly cut lawn, his little
dog snoops around the bushes. I was made to feel relatively at ease with
the peaceful scene that was unfolding. Suddenly the old man drops to the
ground, grasping at his neck in agony. The hose shoots clear water towards
the blue sky, which in turn attracts the little dog to lap it up. Then the
camera, and also the audience, descends beneath the lawn. Below ground,
the insects crawl and scramble over each other in a grotesque close up. The
sound of the insects heaving was reminiscent of a thunderous machine.
Blue Velvet was a film where nothing was what it seemed. Darkness lay