ROD
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DENNIS
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and Kiefer Sutherland are starting rehearsals for the first scene of the night. O n the far side of the Roaring Fork River an early coyote begins whining, and the camera crew are talking quietly am ong themselves. Suddenly, H opper explodes: “If you guys are gonna talk like that, then do it on your own time. Not while I ’m rehearsing!” Everyone freezes. H opper has a legendary reputation for a hot tem per and it’s reflected by the crazed, psychopathic introverts he has been playing since Easy Rider. That famous 1969 cult movie not only made H opper a countercultural hero, it also changed Holly wood’s ideas about the way films could be made. Twenty years later, H opper is greying at the temples, and once again playing a character from that notorious time. His outburst at the crew passes quickly, and it isn’t until 3.30 am that he throws another tantrum . As the dawn breaks over the snow covered Rockies and the production winds down for the night, the crew sighs with relief: “It’s been a quiet night. Must be all you reporters.” This is Glenwood Springs, Colorado, the location for Param ount Pictures’ $14 million production of Flashback. W ritten by David Loughery, produced by Marvin W orth and directed by Italian Franco Amurri, Flashback is the saga of a 1960s radical, Huey Walker (Dennis H o pper). Walker, a yippie who once uncoupled Spiro Agnew’s train while Agnew was waving goodbye to his supporters during a whistlestop tour, has been on the run for this offence for the past twenty years. Kiefer Sutherland plays Jo h n Buckner, the young FBI agent who finally arrests the ageing radical. The shoot is now into its eighth week and there are plenty of indications from crew m embers on the periphery of the production that it has not been without problems. Producer W orth is always at the centre of the action. At the end of each take, H opper, Suther land, Loughery and Amurri surround him for intense discussions. It e n n is h o p p e r
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is unclear w hether a single voice is calling the shots. Dermis H opper is, however, the star attraction. His career started in the 1950s when he acted with his close friend James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant. D ean’s prem ature death has affected H opper all his life. In 1958, H opper had a famous run-in with veteran director Henry Hathaway on the set of From Hell to Texas. Dissenting from the director’s wishes, H opper was pushed by Hathaway into an astonish ing 86 takes on one scene before the actor finally relented. This d id n ’t help H opper’s subsequent career. He found work in B-grade Roger Corman bikie and drug pictures like The Glory Stompers (1966) and The Trip (1967) - a genre of films now somewhat strangely labelled “psychotronic”. In 1969, H opper became the hottest property in Hollywood when he co-wrote, directed and acted in Easy Rider. Made for $370,000, it grossed more than $40 million at the box-office, but H opper was to fall from grace only a few years later when his new film, The Fast Movie, was mauled by the critics, died in the cinemas and has hardly been seen since. The experience was traumatic for Hopper: “But I won first prize at the Venice Film Festival. I was up against Bergman, Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray and other big nam e directors, and I beat them all. T hat film has got to be seen, and reconsidered, particularly by the MTV generation who will understand its non-linear structure.” During the 1970s, H opper roam ed the world, but always return ing to his hom e in Taos, New Mexico. He made films in Australia (Philippe M ora’s Mad Dog Morgan); West Germany (Wim W enders’ The American Friend); the U.S. (Henry Jaglom ’s Tracks); Spain, Italy and the U.S. {Reborn); and Canada (H opper’s own Out of the Blue). Returning to Hollywood in the 1980s, H opper acted in Apocalypse Now and Rumblefish (both Francis Ford Coppola), River’s Edge (Tim H unter), Blue Velvet (David Lynch), and was nom inated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Hoosiers.