Original subtitles

[solemn instrumental music playing]

All right. It looks like we're good to go in here. You ready?

[Satya] Very few relationships in Hollywood last 47 years,

the amount of time that Dennis and I spent together.

That is professional relationships, artistic relationships,

marital relationships.

You name it.

Hollywood is the destroyer of relationships.

I was loyal to him just like--

He would object to it, but Cheech & Chong,

or Abbott and Costello.

And he was always loyal to me,

even even when I put my foot in my mouth.

And I appreciate the legacy that Dennis left me.

and left all of us.

He did everything well,

like most geniuses do.

I'm Satya De La Manitou.

For decades I was Dennis Hopper's right hand man,

aka, el hombre indivisible.

[guitar music playing]

[phone line ringing]

It's Satya.

I can't wait to see you.

I'm coming to New Mexico the first week

of September and we're making a film.

Love you to participate.

It won't be the same if you don't.

You know, now that I'm trying to remember,

how did we meet?

Oh, yeah.

I think it was New Year's Eve, 1970.

-The Star Seed. -[Satya] Right.

[David] We had an acid party every New Year's Eve,

-and we were all there. -[Satya] There you go.

Stars fell and all that.

[David] There's this guy out there, little--

Not a little guy, but real skinny guy,

eyes spinning, with a fifth of tequila.

-Right. Right. -Dancing.

I said, "Who is that?" "That's Satya."

Next thing I knew you were part of the family.

You went over... How many countries did you go to with him?

A lot of countries we went to.

I remember you guys coming back dead tired and telling horror stories.

Horror stories of every place was like fucked up somehow.

[laughing]

Dennis, like most celebrities,

never answered his own phone,

never picked up his own mail,

never took care of his own correspondence.

That was left for me to do.

That's why I have so many of these boxes

that say "Dennis Hopper" in my possession.

Like, let's see what this is.

This is...

Winkleman Film Production.

"Dear Dennis..."

This is a German company in Dortmund.

What's this?

Uh...

True Romance.

This is the original,

sent to Dennis by True Romance Productions Tony Scott.

This hasn't been opened in many a moon.

[chuckles]

A blast from the past.

This is the soundtrack album from a documentary

called The American Dreamer.

This album is from the Cocaine Cowboy days.

Back in Taos.

If you'll notice, he's got an automatic weapon,

which was really necessary at the time,

because the natives were very combative.

This is the Dennis Hopper that I knew,

that I first came to become friends with.

Before we go any further,

I'd like it known that I'm only a minor character

in my own life story.

I was in school, adrift.

I took a course called "Classical Antiquity."

Dr. Markoff, my professor, handed out the syllabus,

and I said, "Dr. Markoff,

I'm not getting anything out of this course.

He said, "Have you read Tolstoy?"

I said...

"I tried,

but I could barely get through the first 50 pages of War and Peace.

It was too voluminous for me, Professor."

He said, "That's not the book I was gonna recommend to you."

I said, "Please, what is it?"

He said, "There's another book, What Is Art?"

A light bulb went off in my head.

He touched on the critical word,

"art."

That's what I was interested in.

I immediately went to the Guggenheim Library.

After reading the book,

I can distill its essence into one sentence.

"Art is the effect of transmission of experience."

I found my way to New Buffalo,

New Mexico's oldest commune.

There was a radiant image in front of me.

A woman so beautiful I had to obtain her.

I had to cherish her.

Well, the house went up, and so did my life.

That was the path the yellow brick road led to.

[country song playing]

One day, this monster truck approached.

Who's in it? A bunch of Hollywood types, led by...

the artist that was to become my lifelong friend, Dennis Hopper.

Dennis jumped out and said,

"Boy, we'd love to shoot here."

And I said, "What do you got there?"

And he said, "I got a psychedelic here."

I said, "Let me see that."

And he handed me the jar,

and I disappeared with the acid.

Later, he confronted me and said,

"What happened to the acid?"

I said, "I gave it out to all the other communers."

And he said, "Well, that was the right thing to do."

And...

And it was.

It takes courage to be original.

And for their originality,

these films have been nominated

for Best Story and Screenplay.

Easy Rider.

[man] Story and screenplay by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper,

and Terry Southern.

[Satya] Dennis Hopper directed, starred,

and wrote the highest grossing

independent feature of all time.

Dennis affected world culture.

The star, the writer, the director...

Everything he could be, he was and he is.

[speaks indistinctly]

Dennis Hopper.

[audience applauding]

[Dennis] I wouldn't take direction.

But anyway, I was blacklisted,

and I had to sit in a chair and make a decision

whether I was gonna keep getting drunk at parties,

and telling people how I was gonna make the great film for 15 years,

or whether I was gonna really sit in the chair

and really get it together and try to figure it out.

If I ever got out of the chair,

you know, could I make a movie?

[Satya] Let me put this into context for you.

He could walk into any studio executive's office

in a rarefied position,

where every green lighter was anxious

to be in his favor and work with him,

and his passion project was The Last Movie.

[Danny] Dennis was very well versed

in World Cinema.

So, you know, when I'd mention Godard, or Rene,

or Luis Bunuel in particular,

you know, Jean Renoir, I mean, he knew all these filmmakers.

[host] How were you difficult in the old days?

Did you do marvelous difficult things?

Which area do you want to get into?

[host] The funniest.

[all laughing]

[Mike] Everybody else was following him,

you know, and the studios were following him.

I mean, he was, you know,

the first one to really break through.

I mean, before Spielberg,

before, you know, George Lucas.

You know, pretty much at the same time as Francis,

But Francis didn't break through until Godfather.

Dennis made an impression on me.

I thought Dennis Hopper is not some hippie.

He's somebody who's...

This is another level.

This is another level of artistry.

He and I would always see each other through different friends.

And he said, "I want you to be my agent."

So I represented him and Peter.

And I started to get the smell of

packaging movies and producing them.

We went to dinner, or lunch actually,

to Dr. Jules Stein's house.

And there was a group of people there,

and Dr. Stein said, "You see these two boys?

They made $30 million for Columbia,

why aren't they at Universal?"

Let's put it this way.

We did a picture at Universal next.

[David] The Big Black Tower everybody refers to,

was in fact rather terrifying in the 1960s.

What was that Vice President in charge of that program?

Oh, the--

-Big jock. -At Universal?

-[David] Yeah. -[Satya] Uh...

[David] Ned Tanen.

[Danny] Ned Tanen had a way of hunching over behind his desk.

He was on the 14th floor, by the way, of the Black Tower,

in the office adjoining Lew Wasserman,

which gives you an indication of how powerful he was.

Apparently Dr. Stein spoke to Ned Tanen and said,

"One of the first people you should bring in is Dennis Hopper,

'cause he has a new project."

So Ned took a meeting with Dennis Hopper,

and he said, "I have a great script by Stewart Stern."

We know Stewart Stern, he was the author of Rebel Without a Cause.

It was a really interesting, fresh movie.

It was really good.

I had other studios that wanted to make The Last Movie.

And I made the deal there.

And not only did I get a final cut,

but I also got him the New York and LA opening.

We had done so well with Easy Rider,

that everybody was wanting to do anything for us.

So I said, "Where are you gonna shoot?" He said, "Peru."

I said, "Well, that's great.

You know, we have a budget of a million dollars."

He said, "Oh, we can make this for three quarters of a million."

[Paul] We got down there.

And across the street is this shop with all these pictures on it

of tourist places to go.

We walk in there and Dennis is with his usual thing, and he goes,

"I wanna see this place."

That happened to be Chinchero.

And Dennis fell in love with the place.

[David] Nothing was there, really.

You know, there'd never been a major motion picture down there,

so it was shipping...

We were 75 people.

All this equipment to Lima,

and over the mountains into Cusco, and arranging for this.

[Russ] It was kind of funny.

I remember that on the...

on the plane going there, we were all,

you know, rebel actors.

Michelle Phillips, and Peter Fonda and myself.

And somebody lit up a joint

and started passing it around on the plane.

And it was a regular commercial plane.

And then, finally a stewardess came racing down the aisle,

and said, "Put that out, you know."

"Are you sure you don't want some?"

[Paul] We were just amazed that it was so perfect for what we wanted to do.

All we had to do was put some false fronts on a few places

and make it work.

I loved the script.

I'm sorry in many ways sometimes we didn't shoot the script in a sense.

We shot what the script indicated,

but not necessarily the script.

He was a star from Easy Rider.

You know, he was getting the magazines.

He had it all. He had it all.

[Michael] I was Rolling Stone's first film critic.

It became clear to me

as I watched the filming going on,

that this was a work of art being assembled,

and that almost everybody involved was aware of that.

It wasn't just like,

touristical filmmaker comes in to shoot a movie

where it'll be scenic.

It was far deeper than that.

[Stella] Dennis was the director to work with.

You know, he was directing, writing, editing.

And he took this film to heart.

It was his baby.

And that tells you a lot.

I remember the movie with a lot of love.

Hey, he gave me my first big chance.

[music playing]

♪ In just six days ♪

♪ The Lord made the world ♪

♪ And while He rested ♪

♪ The Devil made Hell ♪

♪ Once I walked ♪

♪ Out in the sun ♪

We were a little stoned at times, I must say.

Everybody was dropping. I mean, it was...

Peru was like a candy store.

Kris Kristofferson wrote Me and Bobby McGee on that movie.

[David] And also, we were inside the line of the Revolution.

Where we made the film was the revolutionary Indian village.

[Satya] Exactly.

So, you know, the CIA was on our crew.

[laughing]

It was unbelievable.

But, what a beautiful place.

What an incredible fun time it was.

That place is easy to turn on,

but Dennis turned the places on, man.

And you'll find the inner and the outer, the bottom to the top there.

[Satya laughing]

Hey, hold it. Cut! Cut!

What the goddamn hell's the matter with you?

Where the hell have you been?

I'm sorry, I didn't--

[indistinct clamoring]

Who hired him?

[Sam] And I want it legitimate and different,

and better than it's ever been done.

When I squeeze off a couple of shots at you,

you take it, hit it, and hit it hard.

I want balls when you die.

All right. Roll 'em.

-[beeping] -All right.

Action.

[Samantha] And there's Sam and Dennis going over a scene.

And even though my father didn't talk much about his experience,

he did write about it.

In Sam's words,

"I accepted acting gigs whenever I could fit 'em into my schedule.

And Dennis wanted me to play the part of a macho film director.

A tongue-in-cheek parody of myself.

The last movie was about a film production in Peru's back country.

They're shooting a Western, while the natives observe

the movie making process and wonder.

The script was a sort of Pirandello approach

to the clash between two cultures.

Dennis wanted to show how our sophisticated culture could backfire."

How would you describe your working relationship with him as an actor?

I enjoyed working with him as an actor.

I thought he was very good.

Dennis was a true maverick.

And it was a wonderful feeling that you had Dennis with you.

It was not easy because of the altitude primarily.

It was easy to work with Dennis.

He was so focused on The Last Movie.

We all thought, you know, this is gonna take off.

[Russ] At the end of the movie,

we went down to Lima.

And everybody was snorting cocaine.

And we got a call from Dennis.

He calls and he says, "Listen. I hear, you guys, don't take any drugs with you,

'cause I hear you're gonna be stopped and searched

when you get to LA, when you go through Customs."

So everybody was getting rid of their cocaine.

They finally ended up pouring a lot of it down the toilet.

There was this white, looked like snow, going down the toilet.

We finally got rid of everything, of all the cocaine.

And we got to LA and they passed everybody right through,

and you could hear, "Oh, shit!"

He came back to LA--

It sounds like a gas, though.

Came back to LA, and Dennis...

Almost the whole cast was wanted in LA anyway.

We had... Dennis said, you know, we were moving.

And we moved to Towers to edit the film,

because he couldn't do anything in LA.

[music playing]

[Satya] Dennis Hopper exposed me to personalities,

artists and situations

that heretofore were inaccessible.

Upon Dennis' return from Peru

to New Mexico,

he set up an editing room

in Mabel Dodge Luhan House,

which he had acquired earlier.

The Mabel Dodge House was

the center of an alternative culture.

The place was a beehive of activity.

Dennis and I were running buddies by then.

And we did a lot of partying.

And the focus of all the activity was Dennis.

Everybody wanted to have a beer with Dennis.

Everyone wanted to share a drink with Dennis.

Everyone wanted to get loaded with Dennis.

[woman laughing]

This is really the scene that I... I...

God... man... deserve.

That combined with all the drinking

and carousing...

I think really impeded his ability to successfully edit the film.

Lawrence, you did The American Dreamer in New Mexico,

obviously 'cause Dennis was in Taos cutting the last movie.

You always have to follow

in essence where the greatness is.

And, you know, Dennis was at his peak at that moment,

coming off of Easy Rider.

[Dennis] You know what I mean?

I mean, I don't need to have people make movies about me,

or, like, you know, any of that.

I mean, it's all gonna be up there eventually on the screen

and they can see that movie.

So this is really, you know...

It's a nice idea, you know?

Whether it's damaging, or whether it isn't,

it doesn't really matter to me.

A lot of people were feeding off him.

They were going down to, uh...

to New Mexico, and...

the money was coming in.

[man] What's the most difficult thing about cutting, Dennis?

Sitting here.

[Satya] He used the barn for the editing suite.

And Dennis tried to edit 48 hours of footage

into a coherent film.

[Ted] There was no typical work day.

It was totally up to the energy of the scene,

the energy of the people working.

It was a family.

There was no difference. Everybody had equal say.

It was so loose it was refreshing.

[Satya] Back then we had a thing where we were taking LSD,

DMT, DET...

You name it, the whole alphabet.

Acronyms were popular.

I had knowledge of LSD, because of...

Cary Grant had been a family friend that had tried to

persuade me to try LSD.

But I said to Cary, "I don't think that's for me."

You know how the scuttlebutt gets going,

and gossip and all that.

And people talking even out here in LA,

about how Dennis is out of control.

I didn't see Dennis being out of control.

I think he was maybe nervous at the time.

But we had a good time, went to the shooting range,

and he was happy to do that.

He was into guns at that time.

I vaguely was.

I remember going, like, maybe a year before,

going to a party at George Hermes'

out in Topenga,

and Dennis was there saying something like,

"God, they gave me a million dollars to make this movie."

It's a great movie, actually.

It gave a lot of detail about who Dennis was, what he was...

At this time of course, he's a changed person.

That time period in America things were wild.

Vietnam War, the peak, and...

The country collapsing,

and he got this obsession with guns.

These are real guns, they're not props.

And this is '71.

This is a different Dennis, different character.

Well, it seems like he kept the character of Kansas going

for years, with his denims, his boots...

The same denim jacket from the last movie.

Yeah. And with him, it wasn't a joke.

It wasn't a set.

He got passionately involved with guns at that time,

'cause Taos...

[Satya] Everything was at your disposal here,

because there was so few constraints here.

[Todd] It was lawless.

Lawless indeed.

And here was this kind of freedom

that it's like a place in time for God.

So you know more about this than I do, right?

This is Michelle Phillips,

his wife, of the Mamas and the Papas.

[Tony] I didn't know... I never met her.

You were around with him every day, weren't you?

-[Satya] Right. -So what was nice here,

'cause she was very beautiful.

[Satya] Gorgeous woman.

[Tony] So knowing Dennis, as crazy as he was,

especially then with all the guns and shit going on,

that was a very short marriage,

only two or three days or something.

-[Satya] World record. It's in the Guinness Book. -It is.

What really gets me into is like thinking that I'm at a cocktail party

and now it's time to talk about art.

-[laughter] -Yeah, really.

You know, he had his ways of looking at the world,

and it was very broad.

And I always wondered how he could be

in the movie business

and be so ingrained into the world of art.

His relationship to art was real.

Most actors, most movie people,

they might have a collection...

But it's more than a collection,

it's engaged with the artist.

They admire him,

because of where he was coming from.

The fact that he was one of the first people to buy

Andy Warhol painting was remarkable.

One of them was The Kiss,

which is one of the greatest things Andy did.

To appreciate something is one thing.

To be the first one to buy it,

to have it, to hang it,

recognize it over and over again, is something else.

And to know and to follow it passionately...

Did you talk to Danny Selznick? David...

"I love you, man."

That's what Dennis used to say to me all the time.

"I love you, man."

I'm sure this could be the basis for a comedy sometime.

Danny Selznick going from Universal City to Taos, New Mexico,

and Dennis greeted me warmly and he said

we're gonna go down to the local movie theater.

He showed me a very, very rough cut of The Last Movie.

And it had absolutely extraordinary footage.

It more than fulfilled

the potential of Stewart Stern's screenplay.

I think it was at the New York Film Festival

that I discovered El Topo.

And I said there's this is an amazing movie called El Topo.

He said, "My God, it sounds surrealist."

He immediately arranged to meet Alejandro Jodorowsky,

and the rest is now history.

[Satya] Alejandro had a cut of it for him.

And everybody seemed to have their version

of what it was.

But you know as well as I do,

in the final analysis,

Dennis is releasing the cut that he wants,

no matter who intercedes in his behalf.

One day, Dennis said to me,

"Let's go down to the theater.

I wanna show you my unexpurgated version of The Last Movie."

After about 15 hours,

he said to me, "You wanna wrap it up now?"

I said, "Are you kidding?

This stuff is dynamite, Dennis.

I didn't know you had it in you.

And that stuff of the outer planet. Show me more.

Lazlo and you have created a brilliant film here.

And it's a feast for the eyes."

The most noteworthy, to me, in the film,

was the tracking shot

that Laszlo Kovacs did,

and Dennis has no dialog in.

In that, he acts with his eyes,

like most great actors do.

Anybody that appreciates fine artistry

can understand

the brilliance of his acting.

He suffers.

Then I realized...

this guy that made Easy Rider,

a film that I enjoyed

and I thought was groundbreaking,

but not a work of genius.

But this film,

this film was sensational.

I decided to make a firm commitment to help the man.

[man] What's gonna happen if The Last Movie

is not accepted as Easy Rider was?

[Dennis] What's gonna happen to me?

Nothing's gonna happen to me.

Because like you know, I...

I was sleeping on a mattress when I edited Easy Rider,

and I can sleep on a mattress again. I have friends.

Just photographs upon photographs, man.

That's all that's gonna be left.

I'm only gonna be ashes.

If I'm that.

If I'm lucky enough to be ashes.

[Tony] One of the best things about Dennis Hopper

was not his movies, it was the pictures he took.

His photos were incredible.

Photography was the thing that he had the biggest impact.

What I learned from him, time and time and time again,

that James Dean is where he got it from.

James Dean was a great photographer.

James Dean was the only person allowed

on any set that he went to,

to actually take pictures.

He affected me as much as Lee Strasberg.

Finally after Jimmy died, I went to New York and studied with Strasberg,

who's a teacher that he studied with, that...

From watching him work and the two pictures,

where we spent...

We spent eight months together.

You know? And then he died.

So this is 55 from Giant.

And Jimmy's looking at this while Dennis admiringly...

He's got a bull whip around his neck.

So Dennis wrote this to me with a 96, yeah.

"To Tony, my best friend."

I just wish I was here next to them.

I guess I am, in spirit.

[Satya] James Dean, immortal actor,

made three films.

Dennis Hopper was fortunate enough to be in two of them.

If James Dean put his key in the door of rebellion,

Dennis Hopper kicked it in.

My original thing was to take it to Cannes.

To forget about the rest of this and just go to Cannes.

And then I got talked into an April opening.

You know, an Easter opening.

[Satya] This was the editing room.

This is where his film was assembled,

disassembled, re-assembled.

This is where he put together his greatest work.

The editing became laborious and very difficult.

He got a lot of pressure from Universal Pictures.

Nick Ray came in to try to give him advice about editing.

It was much longer than Universal Pictures

-could handle. -Right.

[laughing]

-That's an understatement. -Yeah.

He was over... over...

what should one say...

intellectualizing every single scene.

[Gruskoff] He just didn't have a beginning, middle and end.

You know, I said, "But I think it could be better."

I always went back to Stewart Stern's script.

I said, "This is something we fell in love with,

this story. And this is not that story really anymore.

My next trip to Taos, he said, "Let's just go directly to the cutting room."

And all the shelves were empty.

And I said, "Dennis, where's the film?"

He said, "Well, I'm keeping the film where I'm keeping the film.

Universal's not gonna interfere with this.

I said, "Universal's not gonna interfere with it,

because we gave you final cut, Dennis."

[Dennis] I do believe that a man who doesn't protect himself

is really a fool.

[Mike] You know, it's like an old man trying to

understand what the teenager is doing.

Because, one, he's not gonna tell you what he's thinking.

And if he does, you won't understand it.

[audience applauding]

Glad to have you with us.

I'm so glad to be here.

June and I were out...

We drove up to Taos, one day, New Mexico,

looked for you, never did see you.

Well, he'd come to my studio

and this painting was up on the wall

and he would break into this,

recitation of Rudyard Kipling's poem.

And it's called If.

"If" is a middle word--

We have a special spot for you.

Dennis Hopper, ladies and gentlemen.

[applause]

I think he learned early on to put gusto in just about

everything he did, no matter what.

One of the most intense individuals I've ever met.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,

and you just treat these two impostors just the same..."

[Lawrence] It was very antagonistic.

They had a release date scheduled, you know.

They have stockholders, you know.

-They're responsible. -Yeah.

And they needed to start to prepare for that release.

So we were very worried.

And Dennis took the film to the Venice Film Festival.

This film became Dennis' jewel.

It not only won CIDALC at the Venice Film Festival,

but Dennis became only the second American since Buster Keaton

to win the grand prize at the Venice Film festival.

[Stella] Cameras were shooting all the time,

and he loved the attention.

The film was very well accepted.

It was overwhelming.

[Danny] And Dennis came back smiling to Universal studios

and said, "Well, I have a prize from Venice."

We had a screening.

In walked about 15 people in gray suits.

Not a word.

Sat down in unison, not a word.

At the end of the picture, got up in unison, not a word.

That was it.

[Danny] I said, "Dennis, it's quite extraordinary, but,

you must delete that last shot."

I said, "You're playing Pirandello games now,

and it destroys the whole purity of the picture."

He said, "Danny, remember I have final cut."

[Stella] After the screening,

the first person he went up to was my husband, Don,

and he asked him, "What do you think, Don?

What d you think about the film?

And Don said, "I hope they understand it."

Him dying, getting up, dying, getting up.

He got tired of dying apparently.

He wouldn't die in The Last Movie.

And they really wanted him to die, man.

What's up with that?

[Gruskoff] Next thing we got from Lew Wasserman

is we gotta change, gotta redo the picture.

We gotta recut and do all of this...

which we said no.

He defied Lew Wasserman.

You know, but...

You know, it's a privilege to have final cut.

And you have to know how you're gonna use it.

I mean, I remember him pounding a table saying,

"He must die!"

And there was a lot of screaming in the halls.

And holy shit, you know, this is like...

[Danny] You see the hilarious footage

in which I'm walking on the Universal lot with Dennis.

We wanted to make a few changes if I could persuade him.

And I want you to be able to--

I still, like, you know... I still wanna keep the...

keep the economy of...

They said if you can't persuade him, forget it.

So I was trying to persuade him, we're walking on the lawn,

trying to use my friendship with him.

And he was continuously sayin',

"Yeah, man. I love you, man, but no."

The problem was he didn't wanna do it their way.

They're giving job security.

Yeah, but I can't stand their ego trips.

Well, I cut it and I directed Bob Wise,

and I selected it and I... I... I...

[Danny] Then finally he said, "We'll open it in one movie theater in New York, Danny,

because we'll see what the critics say.

And if it doesn't work in New York,

we'll trash it."

New York was significant because Nick Ray was there.

And he was a great influence.

We were in this one booth,

and I look over, "Are we ready?"

and Nick is shooting up his girlfriend.

And I look over to Dennis,

and Dennis just took a hit of something

and he goes back in his seat and he's...

And at that point it was just so theatrical.

[Gruskoff] You know, he's very talented,

but he had a disease at that time.

And the disease was self destruction.

This tells the story of making a movie

and how the Hollywood, the old classical world of movie making,

myth making world entering a private

village world of culture rips it apart.

And after it leaves, it goes through veins,

goes to the, sort of, a destructive force.

Ruins the village, ruins their lives.

And this myth stays behind.

And so he's showing, really,

the skeleton of the movie, not the movie itself.

And so, it was too shocking for the world to see.

But it's basically an underground movie.

[Satya] The film never really was a success.

And then he wasn't allowed to direct anymore.

This really hurt him.

I think he went into a downward spiral at that point.

And his drinking

became even more heavy.

He suffered.

He suffered greatly for this.

It was a crushing blow to Dennis.

And this room became a ghost room.

In that he had completely abandoned the place, intact,

and a cloud of dust descended on the slingbacks and the movie overs,

and the whole room became a macabre

remnant of Dennis' artistic battle

with the suits in Hollywood.

[thunder rumbling]

[David] It was rough working for those guys.

And then they shelved the movie.

Well, he made a habit of getting blackballed.

Well, he was blackballed for 24 years in this country

out of his career.

After The Last Movie, he was 50.

It's sort of like Muhammad Ali wasn't allowed to prize fight--

Isn't it a drag?

[Satya] And that's one of the reasons he suffered so much

when he got ostracized and blackballed

after The Last Movie.

Because he internalized all that.

But also, you know, when Dennis hit the canvas,

he only went down on one knee.

One of the reasons,

and the most important reason

Julie, that I worked for Dennis all these years,

especially during the dark parts

was that The Last Movie, to me, was the most

shattering cinematic experience I ever had.

You couldn't keep him down.

All that drinking and drug abuse,

it wouldn't let him work.

He sat there and he was trying to get a job all the time.

It was The Last Movie.

We were all dropped out in the mountains.

Dennis has the curse of being a really great actor.

"Fading into desert highway."

I think we've seen that before.

Here's a photo of Jerry Jeff Walker.

We played poker all the time.

And Dennis raised him three ounces.

[Carpio] Well, you know, when I met Dennis...

The first time I met Dennis I was a really young man.

That's right.

And it was so funny, 'cause

they were filming Easy Rider here

in Taos Pueblo.

And I was just a young kid, sitting over there,

watching the filming, and...

And you know, my father was the tribal interpreter for our village,

and fought for 48,000 acres of land.

And Dennis went over there to

put a little support towards our Pueblo

and the battle for Blue Lake.

And I got to know Dennis as a brother.

Actually, I don't know if you were there at the time,

but we were at Bill Gerson's house.

And there was Dean Stockwell

and Rusty Hamlin.

I actually talked them into cutting themselves

and being blood brothers.

I remember meeting him many years ago.

But I don't remember the first time I met him.

Do you remember?

Was it in the cutting room of The Last Movie?

It might have been... My memory now is getting old.

It wasn't so hot to start with.

[laughing]

But yeah, this is the place we all lived together.

And we had such good times here.

We'd hole in with all the beautiful ladies of Taos.

Yeah, well, it's a wonderful place that we, you know...

Wow, the place looks a lot different, doesn't it?

[greeting in foreign language]

What do you remember about Dennis?

Well, Dennis, I met him when I was young.

Yes. You were what, 15?

Yeah. 15 or 16. Around there, 17.

I met him here.

When he was moving here, I met him.

He was a good man. Quite a good man.

You know, Satya, John here and the family live here.

And this is their home.

And it's something that's really beautiful what Dennis did

is just to leave the place, you know, and move on.

And there's this whole property.

He would sit up there in the mornings and,

like I said, he would look at the sacred mountain and let the sun come up.

But it's really a wonderful place.

And you know, it's been...

God, over 40 years since I've sat up there.

And I'm gonna take a look up there, okay?

-[Satya] Yeah. -Why don't you talk to John.

-[Satya] John. -[John] Yeah.

What do you think about going inside, John?

So this is where Dennis was, Satya, you know.

[Satya] That's right.

It's really a beautiful place.

And he would stand here and go...

[imitating machine gun firing]

And this was the place, man, the Tony House.

He had a big, huge television right there.

His bed was right here.

Bed was right there.

And the remote was where I hid it.

It's probably still there, man.

[all laugh]

[Carpio] You know, the smoke was better in the '70s.

It was. Everything was better back then.

Here we are, my friend.

You know, you're supposed to roll it.

And it's all too thin. What's this New York joint?

Jesus Christ.

Too thin for you.

Don't take two hits.

[Satya] Years ago, we were in trash truck with Dennis.

That was Dennis' vehicle.

-Yeah? -Right.

-He referred to it as that. -He did.

And everybody else did, too.

We went to a club.

It looked like trash.

Club north of town called Las Compadres.

Dennis, Dean Stockwell and myself were returning

to Dennis' lovely Tony House

in the Taos Reservation.

And just as we passed this establishment,

known back then as Los Compadres,

Dennis said, "I need a drink.

Let's stop."

I said, "Dennis, this is not a good idea.

It's a locals only joint."

We entered right there from that door.

That door that's blocked by all this beautiful mission furniture.

The bar was populated by a bunch of hard nosed locals

who weren't happy to see us.

There was booths around here,

some pretty young Latinas sitting in 'em.

The place was huge.

The band was playing over there.

We were ignored by the bartender for eight or nine minutes.

While we were waiting,

Dennis and Dean were sizing up the place,

and they both spotted a beautiful young dark haired Latina.

Dean said, "I think I'll dance with her."

If you recall, you and he

ad trouble finding dance partners.

Right. So we danced together.

Right. Right.

Both of us holding a pistol.

Right. And that's when they called the man.

However, how I remember it,

the bartender's eyes popped out of his head

when he noticed Dennis' .357 Magnum.

He went to the telephone, which was right behind the bar,

and called the State Police.

So Dennis said, "I can't give you my gun.

That's a .357 Magnum."

And the cop got pissed.

And Dean and I urged him to give him the gun.

He handed him the gun,

the trooper emptied the magazine

and gave him back the gun, but kept the bullets.

Dennis said, "Those are custom made dumdum bullets."

They're made to expand upon impact.

Oh, man. The cops were boiling.

So finally, I said,

"Dennis, quit while you're ahead.

They gave you the gun back,

I'll buy you some bullets.

Don't worry, let's get out of here."

After the cop allowed us to leave,

Dennis jumps in the truck puts it in gear,

proceeds to rip the whole side of the police car.

And I said, "Oh, my God!

Look what you did, Dennis!"

And he said, "All we have to do is get the Indian land."

And he kept telling us to point out the window at something.

Point out the window, right.

Divert their attention.

That's what it was.

It wasn't until Monday morning

that the police came

to the house to get Dennis.

Dennis was upstairs in the cupboard...

with his AK47.

The Police Chief knocked on the door.

He said, "I have a warrant for Dennis Hopper's arrest. Is he here?"

I said, "You're welcome to come in and look for yourself.

Come right in, Officer.

Yeah, the police wouldn't come in.

They were afraid of Dennis.

They knew they were outgunned.

[telephone ringing]

During the various sparse periods in Dennis' employment history,

he was made an offer

by some obscure

people at the end of the world

south Atlantic Melbourne, Australia.

There was not even a film industry in that country at the time.

And besides, Dennis didn't have any other offers.

Dennis was on our list.

We'd seen Easy Rider.

We didn't know he'd been blacklisted basically.

We had no idea.

But we rang up his agent and we said,

"Is Dennis Hopper available?"

Well, is he available?

The guy's face just came through the telephone.

"He's available, he's available!"

Anyway, so we went to LA, and we flew to

Taos and we met you.

I remember that and I remember beautiful women wafting in and out...

the house.

[Satya] Those were the days.

[Philippe] We didn't realize the seriousness of the whole situation.

Dennis said that he had told Lew Wasserman,

who was God in Hollywood at the time, to get fucked.

Which was the brief version. We flew back to Hollywood,

where Martin Sheen wanted to do it, they all wanted to do it.

And I called Martin Sheen's agent

and said, "We're going with Dennis Hopper."

And he said, "Well, you'll never work in this town again."

And I said, "Well, I've never worked in this town.

It doesn't make any difference."

[Satya laughs]

"We're going with Dennis."

[man] Wham, bam, right on the money.

[Dennis] I remember Satya, my assistant and I, arriving,

because I wanted to come a couple of weeks early

so nobody could fool me about Australia.

I'd have a head start on everybody.

[Satya] My role as Dennis' right hand man evolved organically.

He liked having a pal

that was a like minded individual.

Wait a minute.

He's fired, man.

Hey, off the set.

[Satya] It was one of those things that endeared me to Dennis,

because he got to trust me more and more and more and more.

And give me more and more latitude

and longitude to exercise his will.

It was dawn in the Australian bush,

which is beautiful anyway.

The sun was coming up and Dennis and I were walking down

to the location.

And Dennis suddenly grabbed me. He said,

"Hey, man. Isn't this fantastic?

We're making a movie!"

I've come for opium.

[Satya] Dennis was Mad Dog Morgan personified.

The method actor in him demanded

that he go to the extremes that Mad Dog Morgan did.

Clapboard, take six. Bang, clang, powder puff. Action.

Some of which were to drink a quarter of rum every day.

Other was to... go on adventures.

[Philippe] And I was concerned

about Dennis' drinking.

No one can do this and live.

Dennis is a method actor.

A real method actor.

That means that he totally immerses himself,

subjugates his whole personality

to the part that he's playing.

Good beer down here in Australia.

And so I said to Jeremy,

"Listen, this guy might just drop dead next week.

We gotta do something about it."

And he's, "What are we gonna do?"

"I got an idea.

We're gonna cast his face in plastic."

Oh, I remember.

"So when he drops dead tomorrow, we'll have the mask."

This is the paranoia. Talking about the paranoia.

"So we'll have his mask and I can do long shots

of the stuntman riding,

and in the death scene in the end we can use the mask."

And Jeremy says, "Yeah, he's gonna drop dead.

Our careers are gonna be over.

God, yeah, get the mask done."

So then Dennis comes up to me.

He says, "Hey, man. What's this mask thing for my face?" to me.

I said, "Look, I had this idea, Dennis.

You're riding along on your horse,

you look up, you see you own face against the sky,

and it blows up."

And Dennis goes, "Far out, man.

That's far out, man.

Really far out. Great."

And he walks off set.

At the end of the shoot we're finished,

you know, and, "Dennis, you've been fantastic."

Which he was. "Just incredible performance."

Which it was.

"Thank you so much."

He says, "Wait a minute.

We haven't shot the scene where I'm on the horse,

I see my face and it blows up."

So we shoot that.

And Dennis again... "Thank you, Dennis."

He says, "Wait a minute.

There's no death scene at the end."

And this is where I think Dennis is a great actor.

I say to him, "We've got the mask.

We've put that on a...

That's a... That's a dead... you're dead.

You're dead. We've got the mask. You're dead."

"Wait a minute, man.

No one plays me dead.

I play me dead."

That's the great actor speaking.

Oh, I'll never forget that.

You're absolutely right about that.

"No one plays me dead."

You know, you and I both worked as right hand men

assisted in AD camps.

You were known as the left-hand man of Francis Coppola.

[Dingman] Later when I'd be in

a social situation, Dennis would say,

"Tony got me through Apocalypse."

-Exactly. -Which I kind of helped.

-Right. -It's like that.

But what I knew was that

you had gotten him through all the New Mexico wars.

You... All that.

[Dingman] It was the big Kurt's compound scene,

which as you know, he was a vital part, the photographer.

We were told Dennis is gonna be arriving.

He sent his bags up to the room.

We repaired to the bar, and he met all the guys.

All the stuntmen, all the special effects men,

all the other actors.

And it was solid from there on end.

[Francis] It's nice, because this is the moment when Chief dies,

and he looks up and he sees this harlequin figure

waving all the people away.

He's like... essentially Dennis Hopper.

[indistinct]

[siren blaring]

I'm in America!

Dennis Hopper being a method actor

really revered Marlon Brando.

There's only love and hate. You either love somebody, or you hate 'em.

[Satya] Marlon refused to be in the same room with him.

He only allowed him to be off camera at the back of the room.

Didn't you read... Francis read some of his stuff back?

-[Dingman] His lines? -[Satya] Yeah.

[Dingman] I think it was somebody. Somebody read his lines.

[Satya] One of the ADs, or something like that.

Like, there was an AD, uh, Larry Frankle.

He thought Dennis was out of it.

-Didn't he? -They all did.

[Satya] Did he every tell you anything about the figary?

[Dingman] They were an indigenous natives of the Philippines.

They understood our pecking order.

They could read who Dennis was.

They knew he had strong mojo.

And they made him a medicine man.

For them, he was a witch doctor.

So even they understood what was going on.

[Satya] It was pretty good. Yeah.

And Dennis was very proud of that.

[Dingman] There was one famous incident.

There was this weird guy that came from Hong Kong,

with a Russian accent.

And he claimed he was a banker.

Turned out he was a banker.

Owned a bank. But we didn't believe it.

And Dennis became convinced that he was an assassin.

And so, we were up in the room, drinking and what not,

and we had a big spear from the indigenous Indians

and Dennis picked up the spear,

and he looked like he was gonna throw it at the guy,

and he turned around and he threw it in the opposite direction.

The spear went down the hallway,

made a turn, made a turn, and came right back and

went right over the guy's head and stuck in the wall.

-He turned around-- -Wow.

He said, "This is for you," and then he threw it that way and it came around...

The guy was scared. He left.

Boomerang.

It's that little mojo of Dennis. Yeah.

You see, Dennis was regarded

as a problem.

As a notorious disrupter, here in America.

But in Europe, he was regarded as a creative genius.

Dennis couldn't roam the Champs-Elysees

without a tsunami of paparazzi

overcoming him.

I recall one time,

when we were trying to get a cab,

thirty photographers came out of nowhere,

and no cab would stop for us.

I'd never seen anything like that.

The character of Tom Ripley

was offered to John Cassavetes,

but he suggested that Dennis Hopper would make a much better Tom Ripley.

And Dennis got the role.

How do you say that in German? I'd love to hear it.

[speaking Russian]

[repeats Russian]

Yeah.

Well, Sam taught me a lot.

And a scene that I had with them,

I was saying,

as Dennis Hopper walked on the west side highway

in the...

You better watch your step, cowboy.

-What was your impression of him at that time? -Of Dennis?

A very, uh...

artistic and very suffering...

Like I could feel he was a very sensitive.

He had a Van Gogh quality.

He did.

-Uh, he did. I felt it. -There's no doubt.

[Dennis] Every director's different.

I think Wenders is probably

the best director maybe I've ever worked with,

as far as just being sympathetic to the actor.

We had already shot for about a week,

and then Dennis arrived,

barely got sober,

and Bruno, that was his first movie.

He was as well prepared as a man can be.

And then came this man called Dennis Hopper,

who did not read the script,

who did not know his lines.

But when we were shooting,

was right on, and damn good, and Bruno saw that.

And on the second day of shooting,

Dennis again improvised the heck out of the scene

and Bruno got lost with his lines,

and with his character.

And he stared at Dennis,

and then, in the middle of the shot,

put his fist into Dennis' face.

And Dennis,

like a lightning,

hit him with an upper cut, and hit him on the chin.

I mean, immediately.

And Bruno was on the floor,

and Dennis was over him.

And they were rolling around and there was blood.

And the costumes were done.

And it was the end of the day, because...

they were in no more shape to shoot.

And in the morning, they came together to the location,

drunk as hell,

in no condition to shoot.

But they came arm in arm.

And from then on, they were the best of friends.

And I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't fought it out.

I don't know.

[Satya] Everybody had a great feeling about it,

because Win was so sensitive, and the acting was really good.

Dennis, in particular, I think wanted to show

Wim, 'cause he believed in him,

that he was one of the best actors alive.

At one point in the film,

Dennis was called to improvise,

and he took the SX-70 Polaroid camera,

and kept shooting selfies.

Selfies while he was on the pool table,

with the green felt background.

And he kept snapping them

in this sequence.

It became riveting, the way he

used this prop.

[camera shutter snaps]

One of the props that Win Wenders introduced into The American Friend

was the pornographer's vehicle.

It was the coolest car you've ever seen.

A Mercedes ambulance.

"Dennis, help me out. Give me the money so I can buy this car."

He said, "No way."

I said, "You don't know a bargain when you see it."

Because that car was the best vehicle I ever had.

The German standards for emergency vehicles were very strict.

And I could make a K-turn

in the same radius as a Volkswagen.

Came in handy, especially when--

How long did you keep that car for?

For a million miles.

[laughs]

The celebrities and millionaires that I hung out with

always got free clothes.

And I thought to myself, "How can I...

compete with these guys

without spending thousands of dollars?"

The only way I figured out was

accessories.

And we went to a disco,

and we were hanging out and...

digging the crowd.

A beautiful young woman came over to me and said,

"I'm nuts about that embroidered vest you have on.

Where can I get one?"

And I said, "Come with me, young lady,

and you'll have all the vests you'll ever need."

One of the few times he was jealous of me.

He wasn't a jealous type.

In the '70s, we were jamming, partying...

Probably our work suffered.

But when I could see Dennis going over the edge,

I'd just lean over and say,

"Maintain, man."

In the early 80s, Dennis was afforded the opportunity to direct a film

called Out of the Blue.

[Linda] Actually, I met him in the elevator.

Or by the elevator at the hotel.

-[Satya] In Vancouver? -[Linda] Uh-huh.

And he told me he was taking over being a director.

'cause I think we already shot four weeks

into the movie with Leonard.

And then Dennis came into the picture, and...

we started working together.

I mentioned when we started,

that Out of the Blue seemed to me to be

a film of its time.

The punk generation.

In between Easy Rider and Out of the Blue,

had you kind of assimilated what was going on,

in the various changes in fashion and style and music?

I mean, how did you come to feel about punk at that time?

I just saw it written on the walls,

and I was listening to it on the radio.

You hadn't decided on the title at that time, but you were--

I heard that on the radio, too.

Neil's an old friend of mine. I went...

Wow, that's the picture, man.

I can't use Dead But Not Forgotten.

This is the story about Johnny Rotten. Thank you, Neil.

You worked with very prominent directors,

like Terrence Malick, David Fincher,

Philip Kaufman...

Terrific directors.

How would you compare Dennis' directing with their styles?

[Linda] He was more on the wild side. [laughs]

Was he willing to take chances?

Yes.

And I got to really admire Linda.

So I found out that Linda played drums,

and played a little guitar.

And I said, "Put drums and guitar in the room."

I never really knew who Sid Vicious was.

Or Johnny Rotten for that matter.

But Elvis, I knew Elvis.

Everybody left me.

My father left me.

Johnny Rotten left me.

Sid Vicious left me.

And now you, the King, has to leave me.

And here's Don Gordon with Dennis Hopper.

Wow. One of his best buddies.

And this is Raymond Burr.

He played my shrink.

He told me he owned an island in Fiji.

Mmm-hmm.

And I could go down there any time I want.

But I never did. [laughs]

Well, it can't be as remote as this part.

[Linda laughs]

You look very elegant here.

[Linda] That's Cannes Film Festival.

You know, the movie showed in France,

and was hugely successful there.

Had over a million admissions.

Dennis hadn't directed anything since The Last Movie.

Here was the guy who had had the greatest success

of the '60s, with Easy Rider.

And yet, here it was, getting no distribution in the US.

I decided that we had to distribute Out of the Blue.

And by "we", I mean me.

...say I don't write. It's true.

But I didn't really want you to see me in here like this, you know.

This is where I've been for the last five years, you know.

[John] I was just enthralled by it.

I thought of all the movies that I've seen

in the tone of distribution,

this is the best.

People have to see this movie.

I remember a quote from one of the European reviewers,

that it's a shocked complacency.

The Village Voice did a full article.

New York Times did a great article.

And the LA Weekly said it was the finest American movie

in a very, very, very long time.

[Jack] ♪ Hey, my, my ♪

This is Little Jacky Nicholson.

I wanna recommend a movie that I'm not in.

Dennis Hopper's movie Out of the Blue.

First of all, I've never endorsed anything.

Even of my own.

But this would do

in the '80s exactly what Easy Rider did

to kind of make the transition from the '60s to the '70s.

It may piss them off,

but if a masterpiece comes along,

people should see it.

Okay, man! Okay, all right, all right.

[woman] Oh, God. What a...

You see this?

I'm a motherfucking asshole. You know that?

I did five fucking years, you know, in prison.

And there were a lot of other kids in there besides yourself.

Now, am I gonna have to meet every fucking asshole like you man?

Look. I'm an asshole. You see this?

You see this?

But I'm not a motherfucking dumb asshole!

There's enough here for two drinks.

Dennis Hopper, like most big stars,

had a great ego.

But I never saw him exhibit so much humility

as when he was offered

the opportunity to direct.

And he became humble.

[Linda] Mmm-hmm.

[Satya] And I saw him reach a new plateau in his life

where he realized he may not get many more chances like this.

And he assumed a...

very humble position.

And, you know, it's really helped me

understand him better and respect him more.

-That movie was so powerful. -So dramatic.

That was the best white trash drama I've ever seen.

And you know, he did that just before he went to the nut house, you know.

Yeah. Yeah.

He was right at the peak of his ability to transform himself.

Dennis had told me,

"I'm gonna pull a stunt to promote

Out of the Blue."

We had the TCP take care of business.

[man] The guy's a little bit wasted, but he knows what he's doing.

I'm confident.

[woman] What's gonna happen?

He's a real technological genius,

Dennis Hopper.

[man] He's really gonna do it?

You'll find out when he blows himself up.

When he backs up and this stuff's live.

And a two way radio will set off that dynamite right now,

so let's just be cool for a minute here.

I said, "Dennis, you are not Houdini."

I told him, "I'm washing my hands off it.

I'm not having anything to do with it."

[loud explosion]

[announcer] Dennis Hopper, ladies and gentlemen.

[people cheering]

Hey, man. Whoo!

Whoo!

I wanna tell you one thing.

That ain't no joke, boys.

What did I tell you when he got back? He...

He was triumphant.

Not triumphant in my eyes.

I thought he was going more and more

off the rails.

That's when I knew I couldn't

really intercede on his behalf anymore.

I used to be somebody else.

I used to be somebody

more interesting than I am now.

[Satya] I realized that he needed

professional custodial help.

His drinking and alcoholism had

gotten to the point where

I couldn't help him anymore.

Nor could any of those surrounding him,

his family or friends.

No mail yet.

Cocaine problems are the topic of the program.

I brought to Dennis' attention a piece by Dr. Sidney Cohen

from the Drug Abuse and Alcoholism Newsletter, 1982.

I got him in the ambulance.

We were driving down Olympic Boulevard.

And I tell him, "Dennis, I'm doing you a favor."

He said to me, "What are you doing?"

I said, "I'm taking you to rehab."

He goes, "Oh, no. You're not."

I said, "Yes, you are."

And he said, "I told you,

I'm not going to rehab."

I said, "Dennis, you'll either die or be in prison soon."

He laughed at me.

And he said, "I'm getting out of the ambulance."

I said, "Go ahead."

And I shifted it to second, went about 75.

He didn't jump out of the car.

I said, "You won't jump out.

You don't wanna mess up that pretty boy face of yours, do you?

And sure enough, he didn't.

We got to, uh,

New Beginnings.

And the guys with the white suits were ready for him.

He went in.

Reluctantly, but he did go in.

Several hours later, I was home in bed,

I got a phone call in the middle of the night.

When the shifts had changed at the hospital,

and they said...

"Are you the person that was in charge of the intake

of Dennis Hopper, one of our residents here?

I said, "Yes."

They said, "Well, you better get down here,

'cause he is losing it.

He is speaking in tongues."

So I jumped in my ambulance,

drove down there.

Dennis was on triple lock.

That is, to get into the facility

that he was being attended to,

you had to go through three glass doors.

The security was very tight.

I could see through the glass door, Dennis was against the wall,

moving his hands against the wall,

almost trying to feel something.

And he was yelling some stuff,

which was barely intelligible

beyond those doors.

When I finally got in there, I realized what it was.

He was saying, "Satya, Satya!"

But the new shift, they didn't realize who Satya was.

That being me.

And they thought he was talking gibberish.

Well, he thought that the guys in the white suits

had plastered me into the wall.

That is...

the dimension of his...

problem.

The DTs had taken over.

Dennis was really in big trouble.

I gently put my hand on his shoulder,

and said, "Dennis, it's okay. I'm here.

I'm here, Dennis."

And he turned and saw me...

Smiled...

And then...

His attendants came in, gave him some Valium,

put him to sleep.

I just gotta relax for a second.

[solemn music playing]

When Dennis made his return from his darkest times,

that was about--

[Russ] That's when he came over here a lot.

[Satya] Yeah, that's what I was gonna--

[Russ] And he was walking on the beach.

That was a pretty...

That was a pretty dark time,

and he was very quiet then.

[Satya] He was very fragile then.

[Russ] Very fragile.

That's when he moved.

When he found that place in Venice

that he moved into.

I must have been in this alley a few thousand times.

This is the alley where Dennis

bought the first Frank Gehry house here in Venice.

Well, the house was very important in his...

rejuvenation.

because that was right when he got into rehab.

And I brought his entire collection from Taos, New Mexico.

I didn't really know he was paying attention to me,

until one day,

he gave me a catalog of his,

which said something like,

"You're the greatest ever," or something.

Something so bloody flattering

that I looked at it and I thought,

"He'd been looking at what I'd been doing, I guess."

And it was really over the top.

I think it was the first time I ever got a compliment like that.

[Fred] Let me tell you a story.

I was working for Dino DeLorenzo,

so I was executive in charge of production at the studio.

Dino came to me and said,

"I wanna make this movie with David Lynch."

I called David in, we sat down, we talked.

He said, "I want Dennis to star in the movie."

I said, "Okay. You think he can do it?"

And he says, "I want Dean Stockwell as best buddy."

His character, Frank Booth was out there, you know.

You got the oxygen thing he's taking on.

Just totally set up for Dennis to go crazy with.

It's funny when we were rehearsing

on the live set there,

and Dennis disappeared for a while.

I think he went to the john.

And he comes out with this light bulb thing.

The screen thing you use for a microphone.

He comes out with that and hands it to me, and I used it.

[Dennis] You know, when I'm hired as an actor,

I come to work as an actor.

And contrary to what anybody might

have thought about how I would behave.

My personal life I was difficult.

But, uh...

But it never interfered with my work.

It interfered with people giving me jobs,

because my mood swings were like tremendous.

Like, I'd go from one thing to another,

but you know, what's so funny is none of the people here

have ever worked with me before.

Dennis and David Lynch working together.

How would you characterize the way

they worked together?

How did Dennis and Jack Nicholson work together

on Easy Rider?

Famously.

That's the word. Famously.

[Lynch] You know, life is strange.

There's a thing called fate.

And this was all about fate.

There's a lot of things you can do,

you know, with an actor.

You can talk till the cows come home.

But if they don't have it inside,

it doesn't ever really resonate 100% honest.

Dennis was Frank.

He knew all about Frank.

He was absolutely perfect.

[laughter]

[gunshots ringing]

[Lynch] Action. Tampa 133, take three. Mark.

[woman] Frank does not like himself.

And wasn't he the greatest?

[Lynch] Action.

Speak to me, fucker.

[speaking indistinctly]

[indistinct dialog]

It's a bullet straight from my gun, fucker.

[Lynch] When Dennis was watching

Dorothy on the stage singing Blue Velvet,

he... he started crying.

And that was really beautiful.

Yeah.

[Fred] As far as I'm concerned,

he was not dead in Hollywood.

He was just sleeping.

And we had to wake him up.

The little bit that I was able to help,

David Lynch was able to help,

He woke up.

He woke up and he flew higher and faster and wider

than ever before and anybody since then.

When you start counting actors on your

ten fingers,

Dennis is in one of ten.

Dennis was no longer a pariah in Hollywood.

[operatic music]

Okay, let's see what we got here.

Oh, this is, uh...

a daily racing form.

Can't be without that.

Most people don't realize that

a lot of the alternative musicians and artists

were really big fans of Dennis Hopper.

Including Morrissey, the lead singer from The Smiths.

They chose one of Dennis' photographs

of the biker couple

for the cover to their album Best of The Smiths.

He reached a new plateau in his career

with the portrayal of Frank Booth.

The buzz in Hollywood was that

Dennis Hopper was back better than ever.

And this made him bankable once again.

So Dennis Hopper got offered to direct Colors.

Nobody knew more about gangs than Dennis,

'cause they were right in his backyard.

In his own alley.

[Paul] Sean and Bob Duvall loved him.

Loved the work that he did.

Loved the way he worked.

It was an amazing film for its period

and its time in the examination of what it did.

You know, that was his re-entry so to speak.

Well, I have a big hit.

I think it was a big financial success

called Colors.

It was number one in the nation, so...

That's successful.

[laughing]

The great thing with Dennis was he sold the absurd...

side of life...

and found it humorous at all points.

He said to me about the script, he said,

"Ha! Yeah, man. Script, man.

Fuck a script. It's just a fucking blueprint, man.

That ain't a movie."

I said, "Yeah, you're right.

Karl Marx.

Jesus Christ.

Peter Fonda.

And the sun in God's mouth is an artist by the name of Lyn Faulks.

These are things out of the '60s.

This is a box, a drawing by a man...

This is Conor who is my favorite filmmaker.

Experimental filmmaker.

He made small, short films.

This is Julian Schnabel.

[Julian] Brilliant. He was just...

It's great to get the ball back in your court.

The fact that I lit up this cigarette

reminded me of Dennis

smoking that Chesterfield

in that scene between Chris and him in True Romance.

I have that Chesterfield now.

[Mark] He was somebody who as an icon.

An American icon already.

And so, he totally was able to

wrap himself around being an artist and being a painter.

It wasn't like Jack Lord

or one of these guys that, you know,

they went off and they did sunsets in the backyard.

Dennis did paintings that had

real gravitas to 'em.

And I think he was a pioneer.

He's rare. He came back from Lew Wasserman.

He came back and started his career over again.

[Ed] He sort of re-invented

this three letter word M-A-N.

And nobody said "man" like Dennis Hopper.

Wow, man. Look at that.

That's dramatic, man.

Look at that.

[Satya] In fact, one time when he was talking to his wife,

he said, "Hey, man., don't do that."

And I said, "That's your wife.

'Man' is masculine.

How could you refer to her as man?

That's because you're habituated in a way in saying that, Dennis."

[Dennis] Easy Rider was really the first independent film.

I thought of the bike as the United States.

I thought of it as a beautiful chrome machine

with all the money in the gas tank.

I also thought of us as a criminal society

that we love our outlaws.

That's when Dennis Hopper knocked my socks off

in that talk.

[Satya] Right. He was waxing poetic that evening.

The world is your sound stage. Go do it.

That's the message I got out of France,

and that's what I did.

And I realized that, you know,

you could take this guy to Harvard and give a lecture, right?

Which I wouldn't have thought of before.

I remember being a little...

unsure what to expect when we were waiting for him to arrive

at the studio.

Because it was Dennis Hopper of course.

[Damon] We had this kind of sort of strange little story,

that we wanted told on Demon Days.

And he seemed really up for it.

We asked him if he'd come and perform with us

at the Apollo in Harlem.

Which was, I still think, one of the best things

I've been involved with.

While we were working on this book...

Eighteen-and-a-half years of work it took.

I had all the photos.

Toni Basil, Teri Garr Bruce Conner in the bathtub.

Famous pictures. Anyway...

So these are all pictures that Dennis Hopper took,

which are among the greatest pictures of the '60s.

[Satya] That's Clazton's wife.

Yeah. I mean, look at the...

It's that Rudi Gernreich outfit, right?

Beautiful style.

The Metropolitan Museum ended up using this shot for example.

[Satya] Dennis was like

a precious gem.

And a gem needs to be polished

to attain its true brilliance.

I wanna make a person to person call.

[telephone ringing]

Hello? Who's this?

Oh, I'm asking who's calling.

Satya?

Tell him I'm busy.

Yeah. Tell him I'm doing an interview about Dennis Hopper.

All right. Thanks.

I had started talking to him about writing.

And he read some of my writing.

And then he ended up writing the foreword for this book for me.

He actually wrote...

The foreward to it is very, very complimentary.

I wrote this poem about him...

[reading poem]

"Waiting for me to come out of the men's room...

I walked past the bar

and I saw Dennis standing outside

leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairs

with his arms folded. He was wearing sunglasses.

I kept walking, because, you know, I just wanted to get to it.

But, you know, for that second, I...

I thought of Dennis and

exactly what I was looking at, all the years,

all the things,

all the people, all the ideas,

all the good, all the bad, all the happiness,

all the movies, all the time, all the found,

all the lost, all the rain,

all the pleasure, all the art,

all the booze, all the blow,

all the love, all the hate,

all the horror, all the kids, all the ass,

all the money, all the pages, all the words,

all the walls, all the everything,

all the sunglasses,

at the bottom of the stairs, right there, right then

was for sure the most beautiful sight I had that day."

Well, he was sure...

He kept it right up, didn't he?

I mean, what I was amazed at

was the film that Dennis did, Elegy.

With Kingsley.

Ben Kingsley, yeah.

Dennis dies in the film.

It's the last thing he did up there in Vancouver.

Is that the last thing that he did?

No, the Palermo project in Sicily was.

Oh.

And he played Death in that.

I'm tired of having to play the bad guy.

I'm gentle and tender.

People see me as cruel.

I'm the opening.

I'm the connecting door, not the dead end.

[sighs heavily]

I'm the only way out.

So nice to see you again, Satya.

It's been a while.

It wasn't since the...

Wenders film that we worked together.

The Palermo project.

Yeah. That was when... When was that? That was...

2008, right?

They all... The numbers just squish together to me.

Yeah.

I don't remember numbers.

When I shaved his head,

I saw him, like, looking into the makeup mirror,

and he got really very quiet.

He got very intense.

[Satya] Well, he was evolving into his character

as he sat in your chair,

in your hands.

You saw the transformation.

[Barbara] Yeah, I could really see that in his eyes.

[Satya] And very dramatic with a character actor like Dennis.

This was his last performance

in a feature film.

I'll always remember Dennis

confiding in me and saying,

"Which one of us is gonna go first?"

[both laughing]

And just like you said earlier,

the guy was so strong,

so powerful,

such a dynamic, creative force,

that I never really thought that he would go.

Right. You kinda didn't believe it.

Right.

He came here,

I would say a month before he died.

And he was obviously in pain.

And he wanted a tour of the office, look at stuff.

Which was... And I knew he was dying.

And...

It was very touching for me that he did that.

And the last time I saw Dennis Hopper,

was on Hollywood Boulevard,

when he was getting a star at the Walk of Fame.

The limousine pulls up,

and I happened to be right where that limousine pulled up.

The door opens, and there's Dennis.

He looked at me and he said, "Fred, where's Satya?"

[Dennis] Everyone here today that...

that I've invited and obviously some that I haven't invited...

[laughter]

Have enriched my life tremendously.

[people clapping]

I'd like to thank my friend

Satya De La Manitou for having this dream for 40 years.

The last time I saw him and the last words I heard from him.

I don't know if you knew that. You didn't know that?

I didn't know that.

Yeah. "Where's Satya?"

[Satya] Thank you, Freddie.

He's the best.

We had good times making movies, huh?

Yeah.

Maybe he didn't take care of himself, I don't know.

I mean, you get multiple stories about it.

But, um...

But he no doubt left his mark

on the entire scene.

[Satya] This is the original script

of Easy Rider.

Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern.

That was prepared in the beginning.

Then you see wonderful photographs. Look at that.

And there are... Well, there are... Let's see.

There are other ones. You remember when they bike

they go to the gas station.

So throughout the film there are a lot of interesting pictures

which correlate, uh,

to the scenes.

Of course we know it was one of the greatest movies of all.

So to see all of that in preparation

is incredible, you know.

I gotta handle this carefully.

Yeah. That's Dennis on the floor on the last shot.

Buddy Billy.

End of the movie. Amazing.

It's something, isn't it?

Well...

I had some trips with Dennis, you know. I mean...

going to New York City is a whole different experience with Dennis.

Going to Mexico City. Whole different--

[Satya] Going to dinner with him is--

Taking a drive through the Altiplano

to Chincheros at 15,000 feet

beneath a 23,000 foot Sacred Mountain is a trip.

[telephone ringing]

Yeah.

[solemn music playing]

[Satya] And I believe that...

a man like Dennis comes around

once every 500 years.

The 20th century

had many great men.

But artistically, Dennis certainly was in the top 10.

See him wasted

in his jacket and his jeans,

wearing yesterday's misfortune

like a crown.

Once he had a future

full of money, love, and dreams.

Which you wasted

like they were going out of style.

[thunder rumbling]

[thunder continues rumbling]

[thunder rumbles]

[thunder continues rumbling]

[Satya] You know, here in Los Angeles,

there's thousands of Satyas.

That is...

people that work below the radar,

doing thankless jobs.

Assisting luminaries,

celebrities, artists,

authors, auteurs...

whatever.

All these right hand men and women,

they just wanna keep the engine moving.

♪♪

♪♪