{"id":5514,"date":"2022-06-12T16:30:02","date_gmt":"2022-06-12T15:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shindig-magazine.com\/?p=5514"},"modified":"2022-06-12T16:37:39","modified_gmt":"2022-06-12T15:37:39","slug":"the-last-movie-counter-cultural-musings-from-tsptr-dossier-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=5514","title":{"rendered":"The Last Movie:  Counter-Cultural musings from TSPTR. Dossier #9"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In the ninth of our monthly counter-cultural musings from\u00a0<\/strong><a class=\"customize-unpreviewable\" href=\"https:\/\/tsptr.com\/\"><strong>TSPTR, <\/strong><\/a><strong>Dennis Hopper&#8217;s\u00a0dreaming in America<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The American Dreamer (1971) - Dennis Hopper Documentary\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SHq6FwPn_bg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the tail end of the \u201960s Dennis Hopper had it all.\u00a0Actor, director, artist and provocateur. He\u2019d earned his acting stripes from his earliest appearances alongside the likes of Jimmy Dean, starring as a troubled teen in <em>Rebel Without A Cause<\/em> and had struck up friendships many of the fine art world\u2019s hippest and best including Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol. He&#8217;d go on to write, direct and star in the film that became a totem for the counterculture &#8211; <em>Easy Rider<\/em>. So, when it came to his next directorial outing post <em>Easy Rider<\/em> (a <i>bona fide<\/i> blockbuster, offering an enormous return on a not too hefty investment) the studio handed Hopper a blank cheque and free rein.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This next excursion would be a bizarre one, a 1971 passion project named <em>The Last Movie<\/em> \u2013 an anti-imperialist drama about a stunt coordinator who attempts to stop actors on the set of a Peruvian Western from killing each other for the camera. The film bombed, mainly due to its ridiculously high concept meditation on cinematic storylines. It was critically praised yet financially disastrous, a toxic combination that set back Hopper\u2019s Hollywood career for well over a decade.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During the editing and post production of <em>The Last Movie<\/em>, photojournalist Lawrence Schiller and actor-screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson made a film about Hopper&#8217;s creative process. The directors followed Hopper around Los Angeles and Taos, New Mexico, and ended up with\u00a01971\u2019s <em>The American Dreamer<\/em>, a quasi-documentary and masterclass in meta movie making.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Schiller\u2019s concept was \u201cto do a story about an actor who had submerged himself into his own myth\u201d. He originally wanted to focus on Paul Newman, whom he&#8217;d worked with while producing a photo sequence for\u00a0<em>Butch Cassidy &amp; The Sundance Kid<\/em>. Newman declined so Carson suggested Hopper, stating &#8220;Why don&#8217;t we go out and meet Dennis Hopper because he&#8217;s actually living the life of his character in\u00a0<em>Easy Rider,<\/em>\u00a0he can&#8217;t escape it.&#8221; It was then that Schiller realised he would be \u201cmaking a documentary about an actor playing an actor in a movie\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5517\" src=\"https:\/\/www.shindig-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/untitled-article-1455555331-body-image-1455555555.jpg.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"991\" height=\"668\" srcset=\"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/untitled-article-1455555331-body-image-1455555555.jpg.webp 991w, https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/untitled-article-1455555331-body-image-1455555555.jpg-300x202.webp 300w, https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/untitled-article-1455555331-body-image-1455555555.jpg-768x518.webp 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 991px) 100vw, 991px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>The American Dreamer\u00a0<\/em>presented a startling, candid portrait of a unique personality intersecting with a critical moment in cultural history:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_Hollywood\">New Hollywood.<\/a>\u00a0It is not, however, a documentary \u2013 Schiller recently stated that although the style pays homage to the genre \u2013 especially the 1922 staged silent documentary\u00a0<em>Nanook Of The North<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 Hopper was always performing. \u201cAn actor playing an actor.\u201d According to the director, there isn\u2019t a moment in the film when his subject doesn\u2019t understand he\u2019s being filmed: In fact, Hopper is even credited onscreen as a co-writer.<\/p>\n<p>That said, much of what we get is pure Hopper or possibly Hopper playing Hopper. He\u2019d just come out of his disastrous eight-day marriage to The Mama\u2019s And The Papa\u2019s Michelle Phillips\u00a0and was seemingly looking to sleep with every woman he could. Meanwhile, in reality, his appetite for booze and drugs was tipping into addiction. More than filming him working on <em style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Last Movie<\/em>, Carson and Schiller film Hopper not working on it: he\u2019s firing rifles in the desert; he\u2019s offering philosophical pearls such as, \u201cI don\u2019t believe in reading\u201d; he&#8217;s baring his ass for a harem of 30 naked young women in a group \u201csensitivity encounter\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The main narrative, according to Schiller, \u201cwas Hopper\u2019s transition from first-time director to serious director. And my transition from a magazine still photographer to a movie director.\u201d The period-specific film also unintentionally presaged Hopper\u2019s future as an artist: In the film he conspicuously references Orson Welles\u2019 late-career Hollywood travails, in part predicting his own failure. Alongside Orson Welles, the other phantom on Hopper\u2019s mind is\u00a0Charles Manson, whom he admits having recently visited in jail. At points, filling his compound with stoned chicks and lecturing them, it seems like Hopper, having already grown the beard, is considering picking up where Manson left off.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A few years ago, Schiller, also known for his intimate photo shoots of Marilyn Monroe, donated\u00a0<em>The American Dreamer<\/em>\u00a0to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN and gave the institute unlimited rights to exhibit the film for further film-restoration fundraising. Though\u00a0<em>The American Dreamer<\/em>\u00a0has become a textbook example of how a documentary\u2019s aura can propagate both myth and anti-myth, its viewings had previously been restricted to student audiences only. Hopper originally mandated that the film could only be shown on college campuses.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The final cut of\u00a0<em>The American Dreamer\u00a0<\/em>represents a highly constructed group effort that pushes the limits of documentary. In one portion of the film, Hopper \u2013 a great contemporaneous speaker \u2013 confronts Schiller about his invasive techniques. The scene was apparently contrived by the filmmakers to achieve narrative tension. The mildly raunchy sex scenes were also deliberately staged.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nonetheless, Schiller says he approached making the film \u201clike a sponge\u201d, soaking up and preserving as much as he could from his on-the-ground, 30-day shoot with Hopper. One lesson he claims to have learned was the importance of collaboration, in this case with Kit Carson: \u201cWe were different sides of the [same] coin,\u201d Schiller recalled. \u201cKit is an intellectua \u2026 He was deep into the meaning of the scenes. I was interested in the body language.\u201d He also singles out Nick Venet, the composer responsible for the impressive soundtrack.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s clear throughout\u00a0<em>American Dreamer<\/em>, however, that Hopper never learned to collaborate. All the way through, the film rides on his appeal as a performative genius who&#8217;s both a control freak and someone who suffers deeply from feeling alone<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tsptr.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-5516 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.shindig-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Screenshot-2022-06-12-at-16.10.20.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1134\" height=\"828\" srcset=\"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Screenshot-2022-06-12-at-16.10.20.png 1134w, https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Screenshot-2022-06-12-at-16.10.20-300x219.png 300w, https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Screenshot-2022-06-12-at-16.10.20-1024x748.png 1024w, https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Screenshot-2022-06-12-at-16.10.20-768x561.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1134px) 100vw, 1134px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<span class=\"synved-social-container synved-social-container-share\"><a class=\"synved-social-button synved-social-button-share synved-social-size-24 synved-social-resolution-single synved-social-provider-facebook nolightbox\" data-provider=\"facebook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Share on Facebook\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fshindig-magazine.com%2Findex.php%3Frest_route%3D%252Fwp%252Fv2%252Fposts%252F5514&#038;t=The%20Last%20Movie%3A%20%20Counter-Cultural%20musings%20from%20TSPTR.%20Dossier%20%239&#038;s=100&#038;p&#091;url&#093;=https%3A%2F%2Fshindig-magazine.com%2Findex.php%3Frest_route%3D%252Fwp%252Fv2%252Fposts%252F5514&#038;p&#091;images&#093;&#091;0&#093;=https%3A%2F%2Fshindig-magazine.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2022%2F06%2Funtitled-article-1455555331-body-image-1455555543.jpg.webp&#038;p&#091;title&#093;=The%20Last%20Movie%3A%20%20Counter-Cultural%20musings%20from%20TSPTR.%20Dossier%20%239\" style=\"font-size: 0px;width:24px;height:24px;margin:0;margin-bottom:5px;margin-right:5px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Facebook\" title=\"Share on Facebook\" class=\"synved-share-image synved-social-image synved-social-image-share\" width=\"24\" height=\"24\" style=\"display: inline;width:24px;height:24px;margin: 0;padding: 0;border: none;box-shadow: none\" src=\"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/social\/regular\/48x48\/facebook.png\" \/><\/a><a class=\"synved-social-button synved-social-button-share synved-social-size-24 synved-social-resolution-single synved-social-provider-twitter nolightbox\" data-provider=\"twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Share on Twitter\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fshindig-magazine.com%2Findex.php%3Frest_route%3D%252Fwp%252Fv2%252Fposts%252F5514&#038;text=New%20post%20on%20our%20site\" style=\"font-size: 0px;width:24px;height:24px;margin:0;margin-bottom:5px;margin-right:5px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"twitter\" title=\"Share on Twitter\" class=\"synved-share-image synved-social-image synved-social-image-share\" width=\"24\" height=\"24\" style=\"display: inline;width:24px;height:24px;margin: 0;padding: 0;border: none;box-shadow: none\" src=\"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/social\/regular\/48x48\/twitter.png\" \/><\/a><a class=\"synved-social-button synved-social-button-share synved-social-size-24 synved-social-resolution-single synved-social-provider-mail nolightbox\" data-provider=\"mail\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Share by email\" href=\"mailto:?subject=The%20Last%20Movie%3A%20%20Counter-Cultural%20musings%20from%20TSPTR.%20Dossier%20%239&#038;body=New%20post%20on%20our%20site:%20https%3A%2F%2Fshindig-magazine.com%2Findex.php%3Frest_route%3D%252Fwp%252Fv2%252Fposts%252F5514\" style=\"font-size: 0px;width:24px;height:24px;margin:0;margin-bottom:5px;margin-right:5px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"mail\" title=\"Share by email\" class=\"synved-share-image synved-social-image synved-social-image-share\" width=\"24\" height=\"24\" style=\"display: inline;width:24px;height:24px;margin: 0;padding: 0;border: none;box-shadow: none\" src=\"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/social\/regular\/48x48\/mail.png\" \/><\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the ninth of our monthly counter-cultural musings from\u00a0TSPTR, Dennis Hopper&#8217;s\u00a0dreaming in America At the tail end of the \u201960s Dennis Hopper had it all.\u00a0Actor, director, artist and provocateur. He\u2019d earned his acting stripes from his earliest appearances alongside the likes of Jimmy Dean, starring as a troubled teen in Rebel Without A Cause and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,7],"tags":[1026,1027],"class_list":["post-5514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-music-videos","tag-dennis-hopper","tag-the-american-dreamer","post_format-post-format-video"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5514"}],"version-history":[{"count":-4,"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}