|
- Warren Beatty, Splendor in the Grass, 1961. “It’s the one film I wish I’d got,” said Dennis, “because I’ve never had any great roles.” Ela Kazan had considered Dennis as Natalie Wood’s lover. He had already enjoyed that role in reality. Natalie’s affair with Beatty began long after the filming - not before but after her divorce from Robert Wagner.
- Topol, Flash Gordon, 1980. Change of mad scientist Dr Zarkov as directors switched from Federico Fellini and Nicolas Roeg (who saw Flash as a metaphysical messiah) to Mike Hodges (who didn’t). “I should’ve been dead ten times over,” said Dennis. “It’s an absolute miracle that I’m still around. My last five years of drinking was a nightmare. I was drinking a half-gallon of rum with a fifth of rum on the side, in case I ran out, 28 beers a day, and three grams of cocaine just to keep me moving around. And I thought I was fine because I wasn’t crawling around drunk on the floor.”
- Harry Dean Stanton, Repo Man, 1983. UK auteur Alex Cox first met Hopper when looking for the principal car thief. “Dennis didn’t take the part - instead, for more pay, he made a film about road racers on Mullholland Drive - but our meeting stuck in my mind. I kept writing roles for him, though it would be a few years before I could snag him in my net, with Straight To Hell.” Hopper got his own back in 1986, taking three roles - and an Oscar nominbation - from HDS!
- Marjoe Gortner, Euer Weg führt durch die Hölle (US: Jungle Warriors), 1984. A Mexican location too far... Hallucinating that people were being tortured, even burnt alive in his hotel’s basement, Hoppper ran naked into the streets. Police found him and attempted to cover him. “No, shoot me like this. I wanna die naked.” Sitting between two hefty stuntmen, he was flown home to rehab. To this day, he has no memory of my previous five lines...
- Eli Wallach, The Two Jakes, 1990. Hoppy” was in the ’85 line-up... Jack Nicholson and Chinatown scenarist Robert Towne had talked sequel for 13 years. Two Jakes then became a battle of Two Bobs as Towne found Robert Evans (the original producer) just, well, stank playing Jake Berman. Evans hadn’t acted since 1959. And it showed. Jack stuck by the wrong pal (“Don’t fuck with me Robert, I’m the movie star here”) and everything was shuttered until Nicholson directed... what he wanted to call something else. “You can’t make a movie called Fucking Karma and not be pretentious.”
- Bob Hoskins, Heart Condition, 1990. Too used to playing total pigs, white bigots, Hopper passed (like Hackman) and Hoskins rushed in. “Guys, where do I sign? When do we start?”
- Steve Buscemi, Reservoir Dogs, 1991.
- Robert Loggia, Innocent Blood, 1992. Jack Sholder’s line-up was Dennis, Lara Flynn Boyle and Miguel Ferrer - before the project moved to John Landis - and died on the vein.
- JT Walsh, Red Rock West, 1992. Where’s the meat? Hopper turned down the sheriff, begging to be the hit man known as Lyle from Dallas... after John Dahl’s Lyle guitar.
- Ed Harris, Running Mates, TV, 1992. Running for the White House, that is. Planned as the comeback for - of all people - the screen’s perennial virgin Doris Day. She must have been scared off by the idea of Dennis as her husband, let alone as a presidential candidate! For TV, Diane Keaton ran with Harris.
- James Gandolfini, Perdita Durango, Mexico-USA-Spain, 1996. Quit when Madonna left the lead.
- Eric Roberts, Doctor Who (The Movie), TV, 1996. Hollywood goes Who. Why? For the pilot of a USeries to exhume the BBC science-fiction cult, buried since it ran out of puff after 26 seasons in 1989. As if to prove this was big deal LA in action (!),some 63 actors were listed for Doc8 and a further 71 (well, some were on both lists) for his foe, The Master. Such as James Bond, Dracula, Gandhi, Han Solo, Freddy Krueger, Magnum, Spock, Jean-Luc Picard and - hey, they’re doctors! - Emmett Brown and Frank-N-Furter. Aka… Timothy Dalton, Christopher Lee, Ben Kingsley, Harrison Ford, Robert Englund, Tom Selleck, Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart, Christopher Lloyd, Tim Curry. And Frank Booth!
- Jeremy Irons, Lolita, 1997. Oh, that smacks of sheer desperation by UK director Adrian Lyne.
- Daniel Benzali, The End of Violence, 1997. An odd title for the Dennis cannon. He was too busy and TV’s Murder One baldie took over in Wim Wenders’ quickie for the 50th Cannes festival.
- Benicio Del Toro, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, 1997. After directors Hal Ashby, Ralph Bakshi fell out, Martin Scorsese tried with Nicholson (suggested by Dr Hunter S Thompson, himself) and Dennis (suggested by Jack, of course). UK auteur Alex Cox was Hopper’s #4 Henchman - “the writing henchman, called upon when Dennis needed a quick wash-and-rinse on a script... including a terrible screenplay called Easy Rider 2.” He also studied a draft of Fear and Loathing… it convinced me the book was unfilmable. We had more success with a script called Backtrack. Dennis was a tremendous boss: unlike the financiers and studio executives, he actually read the script and gave us comprehensible notes on it. And he stuck up for the writers when the money people asked for stupid, contradictory, anti-dramatic things.”
- Ed Harris, The Truman Show, 1998. Too sinister for Christoff, creator of “the show” - the director, Australian Peter Weir, had considered playing him, himself.
- Ernest Borgnine, Blueberry, France, 2004. While looking at various Americans, including Val Kilmer for the title role, realisateur Jan Kounen envisaged Dennis as the paraplegic sheriff Rolling Star - eventually the 140th film of Borgnine at 83.
- Mike Patton, Firecracker, 2005. Dennis lost an Easy Rider reunion with Karen Black because, frankly, he was too old at 69. His successor was a rocker aged 37 - promoted from the small (and cut) role of The Green Man to one of two dual role leads in what Chicago critic Roger Ebert hailed as a cross between In Cold Blood and Freaks “with the look of Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre.” Crowded.
- Clive Swift, Doctor Who #188: Voyage of the Damned, TV, 2007. Whoo’s calling again… Dennis as Mr Cooper was a bizarre idea. (Then again, why not?). Next choice for the historian, Bill Treacher, had a bad back. The 2007 Christmas special is famous for the Doctor admitting to being… 903 years old. Dennis was replaced by the very British/tweedy/Tory Swift. But then, the Hollywood rebel had been a (secret) Republican since Reagan was voted US President in 1981. Sad. No matter. Dennis remains one of my favourite LA people - and interviews.
|
Actors (A..Z)