James
Dean only made three feature films as a proper credited actor. Dennis Hopper
was in two of them. Hopper also co-starred in Apocalypse Now and directed Easy
Rider, so his place is movie history is already secure. Few Hollywood survivors
could top Hopper’s anecdotes of chaos and excess, but fortunately his longtime
friend and right-hand-man Satya De La Manitou knows almost all of them, because
he witnessed them first-hand. De La Manitou pays homage to the industry rebel
in Nick Ebeling’s Along for the Ride (trailer here), which opens today
in New York.
De
La Manitou joined Team Hopper shortly before the production of The Last Movie, which would become
something like his Apocalypse Now,
but with far worse career repercussions. Nevertheless, it made a tremendous
impression on De La Manitou and takes more screen time in Ride than any other Hopper project. It was a passion project that
followed Easy Rider, still considered
the most successful independently produced film of all time. Unfortunately, Universal
did not get it. As a result, he was essentially black-balled from studio
projects.
Of
course, Hopper would have second, third, fourth, and fifth acts. Aside from The Last Movie, there is a fair amount
of discussion focused on Out of the Blue,
Apocalypse Now, Mad Dog Morgan, American Friend, and Blue Velvet, with a bit of Colors
shoehorned in, as well. Some fans will inevitably be disappointed memorable
later projects like Hoosiers (which
earned him an Oscar nomination), Red Rock
West, O.C. and Stiggs, Speed, The Hot Spot, and season one of 24 are
essentially ignored, but that is the downside to having such a diverse and
distinctive body of work.
On
the other hand, there are plenty of stories involving booze, drugs, and telling
off studio executives, because this is Dennis Hopper. Ebeling and De La Manitou
appreciate his “bad boy” mystique and persona, shrewdly using it as the thin
edge of the wedge to build appreciate for Hopper as an artist. In addition to
De La Manitou, Ebeling secured entertaining interviews with contemporaries like
Russ Tamblyn and Dean Stockwell, artists including Julian Schnabel and Ed
Ruscha, former co-stars, such as Michael Madsen and Dwight Yoakam, and Hopper’s
brother David. As you would expect, everyone has a Dennis Hopper story.
Despite
consisting largely of breezy reminiscences, Ebeling executes Ride with a fair degree of style. Hopper
was one of the best talk show guests perhaps ever, just because he was always
willing to discuss his own life with humor and candor. Ebeling and De La
Manitou give us the Hopper we’ve been missing, while making their case for The Last Movie. Recommended for fans of
Hopper and 1970s & 1980s cinema, Along
for the Ride opens today (11/3) in New York, at the Metrograph.
