GALEN GRIER HOPPER MOVIE

Shunned by the Hollywood studios, he found work in European films that were rarely seen in the United States. At the same time, his drug and alcohol use was increasing to the point where he was said to be consuming as much as a gallon of rum a day. When it was released, 'The Last Movie' was such a crashing failure that it made Hopper unwanted in Hollywood for a decade. When he finally completed filming, he retired to his home in Taos, N.M., to piece together the film, a process that took almost a year, in part because he was using psychedelic drugs for editing inspiration. Trouble on the set developed almost immediately, as Peruvian authorities pestered the company, drug-induced orgies were reported and Hopper seemed out of control.

GALEN GRIER HOPPER MOVIE

Hopper took a large cast and crew to a village in Peru to film the tale of a Peruvian tribe corrupted by a movie company. With Hopper hailed as a brilliant filmmaker, Universal Pictures lavished $850,000 on his next project, 'The Last Movie.' Its success prompted studio heads to schedule a new kind of movie: low cost, with inventive photography and themes about a young, restive baby boom generation. The establishment gave official blessing in 1998 when 'Easy Rider' was included in the United States National Film Registry for being 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.' The film was a hit at Cannes, netted a best-screenplay Oscar nomination for Hopper, Fonda and Terry Southern, and has since been listed on the American Film Institute's ranking of the top 100 American films. The film caught on despite tension between Hopper and Fonda and between Hopper and the original choice for Nicholson's part, Rip Torn, who quit after a bitter argument with the director. It went on to gross $40 million worldwide, a substantial sum for its time. 'A lot of it was about politically what was going on in the country.'įonda produced 'Easy Rider' and Hopper directed it for a meager $380,000. ''Easy Rider' was never a motorcycle movie to me,' Hopper said in 2009. On the way, Hopper and Fonda befriend a drunken young lawyer (Jack Nicholson, whom Hopper had resisted casting, in a breakout role), but arouse the enmity of Southern rednecks and are murdered before they can return home. 'Much of Hollywood,' wrote critic-historian David Thomson, 'found Hopper a pain in the neck.'Īll was forgiven, at least for a moment, when he collaborated with another struggling actor, Peter Fonda, on a script about two pot-smoking, drug-dealing hippies on a motorcycle trip through the Southwest and South to take in the New Orleans Mardi Gras. In January, Hopper filed to end his 14-year marriage to Victoria Hopper, who stated in court filings that the actor was seeking to cut her out of her inheritance, a claim Hopper denied.

He married five times and led a dramatic life right to the end. Guitarist Slash tweeted, 'You take the great ones for granted until they're gone.