Let’s Get Lost With Dennis Hopper

Posted by joenolan on August 14, 2010

Since the death of Dennis Hopper, I’ve been searching and scratching in the lesser known spots of his career trying to get a better feel for the man. YouTube is currently home to a couple of beautiful treasures that have had me reading and viewing for weeks now.I finally got around to creating a new Sleepless Film Festival to showcase this bizarre double-feature.

The Last Movie is Hopper’s follow-up to Easy Rider. It won him the Golden Lion in Venice and promptly ended his career as a director when he got back to America. The other film is a documentary called The American Dreamer. ‘Dreamer archives the strange days that Hopper lived through as he tried to edit The Last Movie in the midst of an ongoing, hedonistic orgy at his New Mexico ranch.

With this episode, we are looking back on the career of the late, great Dennis Hopper. While we can’t resist re-visiting highlights from the maverick’s oeuvre, we are primarily cranking out these letters in the ether to shine a spotlight on a lesser known period that may represent Hopper’s creative peak as a director. Here’s a hint, I’m not talking about Easy Rider…

Read more and watch The Last Movie and The American Dreamer here.