RIP Dennis Hopper

Jesus. Dennis Hopper just died of prostate cancer. I'd missed that he was even sick. He figures in a couple of articles on my blog - with John Lurie, who fished with him in Thailand, and, to a much lesser extent, with the Pointed Sticks, about the Out Of The Blue shoot. (I also have Bev Davies on tape somewhere talking about meeting Hopper, but it's not transcribed yet). I remember seeing a really funny photograph of Hopper in Vancouver, standing in front of a Shopper's Drug Mart sign so that he was obscuring the "S" - I wonder who took that? It was brilliant. So was Dennis Hopper. Rest in peace.

ADDENDUM:

You know, I think that there's a big, big hole that's been left in American cinema today, a major severed connection between American film as we know it and American cinema of the 1960's and early '70s. Not that everything he touched in recent years lived up to, say, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 ( - anyone else remember Hopper on Letterman, back when he was getting tired of Letterman asking him substance abuse questions, relating that he suspected that that film "probably wasn't very good...?" How wrong you were, Dennis - how wrong!)... but hell, even fucking Hoosiers, man, is worth seeing for his performance...

Dennis Hopper's passing has lingered all day - so much so that I even want to see The Last Movie again - know what I mean? Anyone got a good DVD of it?

Hell, I may even rewatch Out Of The Blue again. For those Pointed Sticks fans out there who don't realize it, that film - his third directorial effort and a rather, um, "loosely assembled" piece of cinema - is pretty easily available as a letterboxed, public-domain DVD, double-billed with a fairly unwatchable version of the early Robert DeNiro vehicle The Swap. Go look around dollar stores or cheapie DVD markets like the one in Kingsgate Mall (if it's still there) and you'll find it eventually. It is by no means a very good film, but it has many very interesting things about it, not the least of which is the footage of Vancouver circa 1980 and the Pointed Sticks appearance.