He did it his way.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.
There is no right way to do the wrong thing.
How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?
Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!
We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.
Consistently wrong since 2002
Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.
But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.
Usually wrong but never in doubt
Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.
Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.
Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.
Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.
“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.
It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.
The choice is between normal and crazy.
After dobbs, women are no longer free.
Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.
Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.
Come on, man.
Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.
If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.
He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.
slag
Would now be the wrong time for me to admit that I found this movie incredibly dull? Other than that, I’m sure this guy will be missed.
cleek
i thought it was pretty dull, too.
Blue Velvet, on the other hand…
and i happen to be sitting in front of the building they used for the police station in that movie
debit
@cleek: Mommy!
ruemara
Kinda sad, but he’d been so ill for a long while. I’m sure for him it was a relief.
me
Who’s going to be the third?
MikeJ
He’s uncredited, but didn’t he also, along with Jack Nicholson, write the movie Head, starring the Monkees? The director of that movie also did Easy Rider.
de stijl
I would have gone with an Apocalypse Now vid. Dude rocked that joint.
PS – imdb has some cool shit. In looking at the entry for Apocalypse Now I just learned that Steve McQueen was initially offered the Willard role and Harvey Keitel was the second choice. George Lucas was set to direct.
I remember seeing Coppola’s wife doc and don’t recall any of that.
Mnemosyne
Given the life he led, I’m surprised he made it to that age. After he was in recovery, he did a great sketch on “SNL” where they did a “This Is Your Life” and he didn’t remember anything about what he did in the 1960s and 1970s, including wives and children. Can’t find it on YouTube, but it was pretty funny.
I also really admired the fact that he was in the movie version of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls given how awful he looked in the book. But he didn’t think the book had been fair to him so he jumped at the opportunity to challenge some of the things he had disagreed with. It made it a much more interesting documentary.
Hate to say it but, of that group, I think Rip Torn is next. He seems to be in pretty bad shape right now.
de stijl
@cleek:
Baby wants to fuck.
Creepiest line evar.
cleek
@de stijl:
and then they figured out that there weren’t any Ewoks in ‘Nam ?
LanceThruster
Photojournalist: What are they gonna say about him? What are they gonna say? That he was a kind man? That he was a wise man? That he had plans, man? That he had wisdom? Bullshit, man!
Willard: Could we, uh… talk to Colonel Kurtz?
Photojournalist: Hey, man, you don’t talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man’s enlarged my mind. He’s a poet warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he’ll… uh… well, you’ll say “hello” to him, right? And he’ll just walk right by you. He won’t even notice you. And suddenly he’ll grab you, and he’ll throw you in a corner, and he’ll say, “Do you know that ‘if’ is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you”… I mean I’m… no, I can’t… I’m a little man, I’m a little man, he’s… he’s a great man! I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas…
Photojournalist: The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.
—
When I start to ramble, I always hold onto the hope that there might actually be some nuggets of wisdom buried in there if the listener can just sift it out.
Nethead Jay
Damnit, too many good people going away lately.
@MikeJ: I think I’ve seen that bit of info mentioned a few times.
licensed to kill time
I was a teenage hippie when Easy Rider came out, and we all went to see it with altered brain chemistry that enhanced the viewing experience, so Not Dull. Maybe you just had to be there at that particularly weird/wild/fun moment in time to appreciate it. Plus, most other movies sucked back then and Easy Rider started a whole new way of making movies.
RIP Dennis, you did it Your Way.
freelancer (itouch)
@me:
I think he is the 3rd. Linkletter, Coleman, now Hopper.
de stijl
@cleek:
Lucas storyboarded this whole sequence where those little furry fuckers were dancing in the background while a cow / Col. Kurtz was slaughtered.
Coppola totally snagged that sequence.
Gooks / Ewoks – whatevs
Mnemosyne
@licensed to kill time:
Roger Ebert has been revisiting influential movies of the 1960s and 1970s for a while, and he has a good one on how Easy Rider looks to him today as compared to what he thought in the 1960s.
Warren Terra
I think an appropriate memorial screening would be his double episode of the short-lived surrealist indie actor profile show “Fishing With John”. If only for “Johnny”, the Squid Monks, and The Hat.
Cat Lady
I feel old.
JenJen
Seems like the Summer of Death is starting anew.
RIP, Easy Rider.
Tokyokie
@de stijl:
Milius’ screenplay knocked around Hollywood for a bit before it was finally made. I believe Duvall committed to it early, but because of various delays, only could fit the Kilgore role into his schedule by the time it was made. As I recall, the original casting was McQueen as Willard and Hackman as Kurtz, but McQueen got too sick, and by the time Sheen had taken the Willard role, Hackman wasn’t available. (Although Hackman might have dropped out either after the typhoon wrecked the sets in the Philippines or Sheen had his heart attack.)
John Cole
It ended with a bang.
And who hasn’t had a shot and yelled out “Indians?”
Tokyokie
@MikeJ:
Bob Rafelson, who directed Nicholson in The King of Marvin Gardens, Five Easy Pieces and The Postman Always Rings Twice directed Head, on which Nicholson has a screenwriting credit.
Violet
@freelancer (itouch):
I’d forgotten about Linkletter. I guess that makes one from each generation, then. Sigh. I feel old too.
I’ve never seen “Easy Rider.” Seen clips, caught bits here or there, but never the whole thing.
RIP, Dennis.
JenJen
Just remembered he was in one of the greatest sports films ever made, “Hoosiers.”
“All right boys, we’re gonna run the Picket Fence, and don’t get caught watching the paint dry!”
Sniff.
licensed to kill time
@Mnemosyne:
Thank you for that link. So many movies that were ground-breaking and hysterically funny to me back in the 60’s-70’s seem a bit diminished when I view them now. There are just some things that are so perfectly of the moment that I sometimes prefer to let them remain that way, preserved in the fog of time and memory.
Like back when SNL was hysterically funny all the time, except it wasn’t, really. But I like to remember it that way! Sitting on the basement couch, late at night, clouds of smoke and a circle of friends laughing like loons…good times.
Citizen_X
Well, you’re wrong!
Easy Rider needs to be seen the right way. No, not wasted, but in Cinemascope or wide screen on a good flat screen TV, as opposed to pan-and-scan or bastardized versions that were available on VHS/shown for years at festivals/whatever. In pan-and scan, the picture focuses on Hopper and Fonda, whose characters, drug dealers endlessly stuttering “man, man, man,” are not all that likeable.
Shown properly, however, these two are typically framed on one end of the screen, dwarfed by gorgeous, beautifully filmed, western landscapes. Then, it’s clear that, in addition to Hopper, Fonda, and Nicholson, the real stars of the film include the open road and the American West. Then the movie becomes something larger about about American restlessness and the drive for freedom. We find ourselves sympathizing, no matter what we think about certain individuals.
If you haven’t seen it in decades, you owe it to yourself to see the film presented properly.
licensed to kill time
@John Cole:
People came out of the theater sobbing, I kid you not. It was like the Death of Freedom or Innocence or Hippies or something.
slag
@John Cole:
I generally prefer to go with “Wolverines”, but everybody’s got their thing.
Mark S.
@Mnemosyne:
I liked this line from Ebert:
PS Can we haz open thread?
Cat Lady
@licensed to kill time:
Now that I think of it, that movie probably convinced me as a young kid who liked to party as much as the next guy, and who had never left New England to avoid the South as much as humanly possible. Well, that and To Kill A Mockingbird. So far so good.
Mnemosyne
@Tokyokie:
I remember hearing a story once that a director was working on a film with Emilio Estevez and thought he wasn’t trying hard enough, so he said something like, “You’ve really got to commit to the role! Look at Martin Sheen, he was so committed he had a fucking heart attack!”
Someone had to take the director aside and inform him that Estevez knew all about that story, what with being Martin Sheen’s son and all, and was unlikely to find it motivating.
Xero
He was in my second favorite movie of all-time, 1986’s River’s Edge.
A great, if somber, movie with (young) Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover and Ione Skye.
Citizen_X
@Mnemosyne: lol. It wasn’t Alex Cox, was it? Because he could have just shortened it to, “A repo man’s life is always intense!”
cleek
there’s a bar here in Wilmington that they used as the brothel in Blue Velvet. Frank beats up a guy in there – they left the fight out of the movie (it’s on the DVD outtakes, tho).
on my way to have a drink there. just cause.
Mnemosyne
@licensed to kill time:
It might be worth giving The Graduate a chance, if you haven’t seen it as an adult. Mrs. Robinson becomes a more tragic and sympathetic character with each passing year and Anne Bancroft captures her so perfectly. That scene in the hotel where Ben tries to make her have a conversation with him is so different now, especially the part where she admits that she had to drop out of college to get married because she got pregnant. Bancroft says volumes in that just with her expressions, and of course Ben is too callow to understand how much he’s hurting her. It ends up explaining a lot of her actions later in the film.
LiberalTarian
Funny how some members of pop culture can just pass you by. I only know of him as a member of Conservative Hollywood.
But still, “Dennis Hopper” as American Icon will never pass away.
licensed to kill time
@Cat Lady: Ha! No kidding. The least of what could happen to you down there was getting all your carefully cultivated long hair forcibly shortened by a bunch of goobers who picked you up while you were foolishly hitchhiking in their territory.
gil mann
Could he have one of those Chesterfields now?
licensed to kill time
@Mnemosyne:
Interesting, because naturally at the time I viewed it through the eyes of Ben trying to escape the mold he was being poured into, and Mrs. Robinson was just a cynical old lady who used him for her own pleasure. But she was trying to escape the mold, too, in a way. I’ll have to try and catch it again. I loved it back in the day (there I go again).
Oh, and the soundtrack….so perfect.
The Dangerman
@Mnemosyne:
If you are into dark humor:
Link
Only if you are into dark humor. You have been warned.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@licensed to kill time:
I saw it in an arthouse-y place in ’89, I was 21, small screen, but not on TV. I had no idea how it ended–hard to imagine that now, what with the internets and all– and I was a bit shell-shocked.
I do remember thinking that it hadn’t really aged well, even then, and I agree with Ebert, as much as I remember the movie, that Nicholson was the best thing about it.
Comrade Luke
Actually, the preferred Hopper quote amongst my friends is “Heineken? Fuck that shit. PABST! BLUE! RIBBON!!!!” Also from the same movie, “Let tits see her kid”.
One generation will remember him from Easy Rider and Apocalypse Now, another will remember him from Blue Velvet, and of course he’ll forever be remembered as Shooter from Hoosiers.
Did you know that he was a Republican, but drew the line at voting for McCain because of him choosing Palin? Apparently even he knew when it was too much.
RIP, Shooter. Don’t get caught watching the paint dry.
Comrade Luke
Actually, the preferred Hopper quote amongst my friends is “Heineken? Fuck that shit. PABST! BLUE! RIBBON!!!!” Also from the same movie, “Let tits see her kid”.
One generation will remember him from Easy Rider and Apocalypse Now, another will remember him from Blue Velvet, and of course he’ll forever be remembered as Shooter from Hoosiers.
Did you know that he was a Republican, but drew the line at voting for McCain because of him choosing Palin? Apparently even he knew when it was too much.
RIP, Shooter. Don’t get caught watching the paint dry.
de stijl
@LanceThruster:
Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
J sub D
The older I get the more iconic pop culture figures from my youth* kick the bucket. I’m beginning to think there is some sort of correlation there.
RIP Dennis.
* Gary Coleman wasn’t one of them.
Comrade Luke
No idea why that double posted. I didn’t do it, I swear!
PanAmerican
“Colors” was his other directorial effort that anybody saw. Not a bad film if a bit dated in attitudes.
I agree with Ebert. Easy Rider was hugely important at release and still a pretty good movie. I’ll put up Vanishing Point as a better re-watch for hippie era “the zeitgeist of the open road”.
Anyway, RIP Shooter.
Brent
Easy Rider is one of those movies, like Alice’s Resturaunt, that tried to depict hippie commune culture, and when a young dope feind, I found some aspects compelling, but even then, it had so many silly stupid elements, I realized why the whole movement died before Watergate. Hopper revisited that era in Flashback w/ Keifer Sutherland and it too tries to romanticize that foolish naive drug feuled dream. It was sad to see him push back against his own excess by resorting to republican politics. RIP.
Pasquinade
Dennis Hopper vs Christopher Walken in “True Romance”.
Some of their dialogue here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108399/quotes
de stijl
@Pasquinade:
I’m responding even before clicking on your link, but just the thought of that scene makes me smile.
My head is ambivalent about True Romance, but my heart really, really likes it.
She tastes like a peach.
I just realized that Tarantino has a thing for trailers – think about Kill Bill and the Bride / Elle / Budd contretemps.
Violet
@Mnemosyne:
This is so true. I saw The Graduate when I was in college and I so related to Ben and his attempt to escape the life he was being told he should live. Those annoying parents, trying to make Ben be someone he didn’t want to be!
I saw it again recently and it felt like an entirely different film. I ached for Mrs. Robinson and the life she’d been forced to live. I thought Ben was a spoiled brat who couldn’t have made it on his own, and how he didn’t know just how good he had it.
I couldn’t believe it was the same film. It’s still a very good film, just so different from what I remembered.
de stijl
@Pasquinade:
I take it back. I’m now giving you a respectful “fuck you.”
I’d assumed that you’d linked to the actual scene Hopper / Walken scene from True Romance. Now I have to search for it myself (which is weird because I have it on DVD)?
Who do you think I am? Jonah Goldberg or some nonsense?
Curse you, Pasquinade.
John Cole
@PanAmerican: Colors was actually a really good flick.
Pasquinade
@de stijl – take your pick
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Dennis+Hopper+True+Romance&aq=f
de stijl
@Pasquinade:
Thanks!
You’re either taste like a peach or an eggplant. I haven’t decided which yet ; – )
YellowJournalism
Dennis Hopper was probably the most perfect combination of bad-ass and creepy ever to hit the screen, and I mean that sincerely as a compliment.
de stijl
@John Cole:
I haven’t seen Colors since it’s initial release which was, holy crap 22 years ago – good golly I’m old all of a sudden – and frankly do not recall if I realized that Hopper was the director at the time.
The only thing I can recall distinctly from Colors was the title track and that Duvall played a very Duvallian character.
C-C-C-Colors.
Holy crap, Don Cheadle was in it. I don’t remember him at all and he is one of my all timers.
Ruckus
@licensed to kill time:
People came out of the theater sobbing, I kid you not. It was like the Death of Freedom or Innocence or Hippies or something.
All three actually. At least that’s how I remember it. At the library today looking at dvd’s for the long weekend and almost grabbed Easy Rider but just didn’t want to see the ending one more time.
And everyone is right that Nicholson made the film, he gave it some zest and a focal point for the non stoners. Without him it would just have been a stoners travelogue.
And of course the Band is on in the background for a little ambiance.
PanAmerican
@John Cole:
I can’t but help think …walk down and fuck them all… every time there is a “do something now” Obama freakout.
Shame after Colors he went with bill paying dreck that stopped him from getting hired as a director.
de stijl
Easy Rider is the opposite of Fearless – a crappy movie with a great ending.
PS – Fuck you, Peter Weir
arguingwithsignposts
@freelancer (itouch):
I can’t believe nobody remembers Ronnie James Dio, who just died recently.
Svensker
@licensed to kill time:
Yuh. Have you seen Laugh In recently? The whole country (including me) thought it was hilarious when it came out. It is now completely unfunny. Completely. Just a big WTF.
As for Dennis Hopper, always thought he was a terrible actor with an annoying attitude. But doubt that he cared what I thought.
JL
He also flipped his finger to John Wayne in True Grit (several fingers, actually), a truly great scene in a very entertaining western. He was also gunned down by Ben Johnson as Clint Eastwood looked on in Hang ‘Em High. And you’ve got to grin to think that nobody so much as raised an eyebrow when he was busted strolling high and naked down the coast highway carrying a rock.
PaulW
The Sicilians sequence in True Romance – where Hopper’s character knows he’s a dead man no matter what and decides to insult Christopher Walken’s mafioso – is regarded as one of the Manliest Men moments in screen history.
PaulW
After “Colors” Hopper directed a neo-noir flick “The Hot Spot” which didn’t do so well in the theaters and is pretty much memorable for two scenes: Jennifer Connelly in a black bikini and Jennifer Connelly NOT in a black bikini. The next one was “Chasers” which basically was a remake of “The Last Detail” but with more boobage. I don’t think his film-making track was impressing too many people: thank god for the acting gigs.
shecky
One really interesting character he portrayed was a young mixed up neo-Nazi, way back in the original Twilight Zone series. It’s an episode that seems to have aged pretty damn well.
Mnemosyne:
That scene in The Graduate kills me. The way Ben and Mrs Robinson’s demeanor change as it plays out demonstrates the depth of the tragedy.
fucen tarmal
my movie recommendation is a 1996 movie “carried away”
hopper plays a school teacher in a rural school, simple guy, not formally educated as a teacher who has a lolita style affair with the new girl in town. the twist is, she is the one who can throw down, and his character is exposed as being awfully naive sexually. meanwhile the county board of education is taking over, and because of his lack of formal education and certification, he may be out of a job…
totally different hopper role than his most iconic…if you are thinking of a hopper movie, and looking for one you haven’t seen(sorta hoosiers i guess, but not really).
btw, while “indians” is a fine salut, i prefer “fuck the queen”
Ruckus
@fucen tarmal:
I always heard it as “nick, nick, indians”
And just the thought of “fuck the queen” would make me want to drink more. That is if my brain would still form images.
LanceThruster
@de stijl:
With me it’s pretty much just a case of my stream of consciousness topping the levee. That being the case, I’m still less obnoxious than Robin Williams. The rush, rush of llello (YAY-yo) was too short lived for either euphoria or energy. I’d opt for some trucker’s little helper if I had my druthers.
Regarding a movie of the period that I think holds up exceptionally well, I would have to say “Little Big Man”. It gets bonus points for no BJ Thomas in the soundtrack (but it did have a kick ass version of “Garry Owen” – see: http://www.garryowen.com/ )
jake the snake
Another recent death that saddened me was Frank Frazetta.
I wish I still had all the paperbacks with Frazetta covers that I bought in my adolescence.
Honus
@JL: I’d forgotten about True Grit. He was also in The Sons of Katie Elder with John Wayne. And Giant, Cool Hand Luke and Rebel Without a Cause
Honus
@LanceThruster: That was John Paul Hammond on the Little Big Man soundtrack.
Triassic Sands
@Comrade Luke:
Somehow, I think it was “too much” way before McCain chose Palin. It’s always nice when a conservative has some line even he (or she) won’t cross, but rarely do they deserve to be praised for finally getting what was obvious much earlier.
If eight years of George W. Bush weren’t enough, but McCain choosing Palin was, I’d have to say I don’t think much of Hopper’s judgment.
Mnemosyne
If you’re a horror fan, you can go onto Archive.org and see see Curtis Harrington’s film Night Tide for free, which starred Hopper in one of his early roles. It’s a really crappy print, though.
Tehanu
I knew the Sixties were over, really over, not when Sonny Bono got elected to Congress, or when Bob Dylan uttered the words, “I’d like to thank the Academy….”
No, the Sixties finally died when Dennis Hopper — probably the most drug-addled actor in Hollywood history for most of his career — was named the Grand Marshal of the Hollywood Christmas Parade.
Shell Goddamnit
It was like the Death of Freedom or Innocence or Hippies or something.
Yes indeed. Oddly I lived much of my childhood with a poster of the still shot of Hopper flipping off the rednecks on the living room wall, but didn’t see the movie till I was in college. It does make a difference that it was on the big screen during a cheap-ass film festival instead of on the tube.
There’s some meat in that film, to be sure, but the real point of the thing for me is the soundtrack. Still love it. And that was the ground-breaking aspect at the time, as I recall, using existing popular music as the soundtrack.