Mixed Reviews: Hopper, Huston and Monsters in the Movies

by Kyle Rupprecht | Published September 27, 2011

Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel by Peter L. Winkler

Uncompromising easy rider Dennis Hopper had about as unpredictable and eclectic a movie career as one can imagine. He started as a promising young supporting actor in Hollywood films like Rebel Without a Cause, Giant (both of which starred Hopper’s friend and mentor, James Dean) and Cool Hand Luke, went on to become the bold co-writer/director/star of 1969’s hugely influential Easy Rider and experienced a low period in the 1970s due to drug addiction before becoming recognized as a raw, risk-taking performer, acting crazed and out-of-control in dark, intense films like Apocalypse Now, River’s Edge and Blue Velvet (which contains Hopper’s most audacious, unforgettable acting work). Hopper also became a go-to villain for big-budget action movies in the mid-90s, appearing in Speed, Waterworld and Super Mario Bros. Few actors experienced as breathtaking highs and dangerous lows as Dennis Hopper.

Effortlessly transitioning from studio films to independent productions and back again, and with over 200 acting credits to his name (as well as directing seven films), Hopper became a true Hollywood legend. Peter L. Winkler’s new book, Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel ($26.95, 432 pages, Barricade Books) traces Hopper’s dizzying story arc—from his lonely childhood in rural Kansas to his death from cancer at age 74 in 2010. The book details nearly all of Hopper’s major film roles, as well as the actor’s hectic and frequently controversial private life.

If there’s a major fault with the book, it’s that the author never spoke with Hopper before his death; all of Hopper’s quotes in the book are from second-hand sources, and few of the people Hopper worked with in his 55-year career are quoted directly (It’s never a good sign when an author has to rely on Amazon.com customers and anonymous IMDb posters to provide source material). Still, The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel is an entertaining read due to the riveting life of its subject. As The Austin Chronicle’s Louis Black noted after Hopper’s death, “Dennis Hopper sped through most of his life with a pedal to the metal intensity that left not just normalcy behind, but just as often acceptable human behavior…In spite of his changing perceptions, he was unchanging. Everything about Hopper’s career is greater than the sum of its parts, but it is hard to imagine he would have wanted it any other way.”

John Huston: Courage and Art by Jeffrey Meyers

A prolific, eclectic moviemaker with nearly 40 features under his belt, John Huston is, like Hopper, a bonafide Hollywood legend. During his 46-year directing career (spanning 1941’s The Maltese Falcon to 1987’s The Dead), Huston nabbed 15 Oscar nominations and directed both his father, Walter (in 1948’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) and daughter, Anjelica (in 1985’s Prizzi’s Honor) to Oscar wins. The Huston family legacy has also expanded to include his son, Danny (The Conspirator, Clash of the Titans) and grandson Jack (“Boardwalk Empire”), both successful actors. Like Hopper, Huston was notorious for his reckless, rebellious nature and difficult working habits. For Huston, the making of a movie was an exciting adventure into the unknown.

Huston’s extraordinary, action-packed life is chronicled in a new biography by Jeffrey Meyers, John Huston: Courage and Art ($30.00, 496 pages, Crown Archetype). This impressive, extensively researched book is an in-depth examination of Huston’s moviemaking career and flamboyant personal life (Huston was a notorious womanizer who married five times; none of the marriages ended well). A lifelong smoker, Huston suffered from emphysema and was deathly ill when he made his elegiac final film, The Dead, adapted from a short story from James Joyce. He died in 1987 at age 81, a few months before The Dead was released.

Huston was a great admirer of literature. Nearly all of his films are book adaptations, and he served as screenwriter on many of his movies (before becoming a director, Huston penned popular movies like Sergeant York and High Sierra). In addition to being the director of such classics as The Maltese Falcon, The Asphalt Jungle and The African Queen, Huston is perhaps even better recognized by younger generations as an in-demand character actor, which he became later in life. Huston played everyone from Grizzly Adams in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (which he also directed) to Gandalf the wizard in the animated TV adaptation of The Hobbit. His finest acting work, however, can be seen in Roman Polanski’s 1974 classic, Chinatown. As the corrupt and evil businessman Noah Cross, Huston, with his looming presence and deep, mellifluous voice, exudes a quiet menace. He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA Award for the role.

By the end of his life, Huston had worked all over the world—from Africa to Ireland—made many movies (most good, some bad) and become the stuff of Hollywood lore. As Meyers notes at the end of the book, “Huston could be noble, generous and kind, as well as selfish, callous and cruel. But he should be remembered for his intellect, his imagination and his charm.”

Monsters in the Movies by John Landis

Do you like monsters? Let’s face it—who doesn’t, right? In the new coffee table book Monsters in the Movies: 100 Years of Cinematic Nightmares ($40.00, 320 pages, DK Publishing), written by writer-director (and self-professed monster addict) John Landis (An American Werewolf in London), you can have nearly all of cinema’s most terrifying and fascinating creatures collected in one astonishingly comprehensive, lovingly crafted volume. The book is composed of beautiful, glossy movie stills featuring more than 1,000 of cinema’s most memorable movie monsters (along with pithy captions by Landis).

Each section is organized by a particular monster type—from vampires to werewolves to zombies to human monsters (e.g., Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates). The book includes nearly every kind of monster imaginable, including mythical creatures (like trolls, gorgons and leprechauns), killer dolls and scary children. Throughout, Landis’ love of the subject shines through. Also included are witty, fascinating interviews with such genre auteurs as Guillermo Del Toro, Sam Raimi, David Cronenberg and John Carpenter, as well as legendary monster makers like Ray Harryhausen and Rick Baker. Whether you’re 25 or 85, this wonderful ode to movie monsters is guaranteed to have you feeling like a kid again—in awe of the fantastical, larger-than-life creations on display.

SHARE THIS STORY

COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT

Comment by Jennifer M. Wood on 9/29/11 at 3:27 pm

FROM PETER L. WINKLER, AUTHOR, DENNIS HOPPER: THE WILD RIDE OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL

Dear Mr. Rupprecht:

In your review of my book, “Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel,” you write, “If there’s a major fault with the book, it’s that the author never spoke with Hopper before his death; . . . ”

There’s a simple reason why I never spoke with Dennis Hopper–he refused my requests for an interview, as did his surviving family members and many of his friends, colleagues, ex-wives and others who I approached. That’s a practical reality and occupational hazard that biographers must confront and a fair critic should acknowledge to his readers. When I wrote the book proposal for my biography in January 2010, Hopper was busy contending with terminal cancer, battling his wife in divorce court, and consulting with museum curators on a retrospective of his art. Hopper was also obligated to complete his memoirs, which he had signed a contract to write with Little, Brown in 2006. It is hardly surprising that he didn’t grant me a deathbed interview.

I was fortunate in securing exclusive interviews with Hopper’s high-school friends, who contributed invaluable insights into his character as well as archival material, with Hopper’s first wife, Brooke Hayward, his widow, Victoria Hopper, and others.

When you write, “It’s never a good sign when an author has to rely on Amazon.com customers and anonymous IMDb posters to provide source material,” you are misleading your readers. There are only two instances in the entire 150,000-word book where I quoted amateur reviewers. They are not representative of the source material for the book, as you suggest. I quoted from two Amazon.com customer reviews for Hopper’s film, “Chasers,” because they were on point and funny, only after quoting reviewers Janet Maslin and Derek Armstrong. I quoted two IMDb user reviews of Hopper’s 2008 film, “Palermo Shooting,” because of the scarcity of professional reviews for the unreleased film. Those IMDb reviews were quoted in addition to reviews from Variety’s Todd McCarthy, and Matt Noller, who saw the film at its premiere at Cannes.

In closing, I will quote from–yes–a reviewer of the book at Amazon.com. Mr. Richard Maslowski wrote, “Making a prolific use of the actual voice of Dennis Hopper himself (via choice excerpts from his myriad interviews throughout the years of his long career), added to a generous amount of critics’ reviews of the most salient of the actor’s films, and hundreds of quotations from Hopper’s friends, enemies, wives and fellow artists, Mr. Winkler paints in prose a compelling and complex portrait of a compelling and complex man. This is such an absorbing and humanely constructed biography that when it came to the final pages, I wept. I wept for the end of Dennis Hopper - and the end of the book.”

Yours,
Peter L. Winkler