Dennis Hopper
The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
One of America's most intriguing show-business luminaries and true rebels, Dennis Hopper's amazing life was a roller-coaster series of triumphs and failures. Always intent on proving his genius and leaving a legacy, the Emmy and Oscar-nominated Hopper acted in more than 115 movies and four TV series, directed seven films, and passionately pursued an artist's life as a photographer and creator and collector of modern art, embracing the work of artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein before the label “pop art” was even coined. Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel explores Hopper's life from his lonely childhood in Kansas, where he became determined to win the affection of others by becoming a great artist, to his often drug-fueled days and nights in Hollywood and his spiritual home in Taos, New Mexico.
From Hopper's early days in Hollywood, where he had an affair with 16-year-old Natalie Wood and took acting lessons from James Dean while making Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, his '60s head trips and the making of Easy Rider, the crushing failure of The Last Movie and his lost years in Taos, to his recovery and political right turn in the '80s, Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel unsparingly documents his journey from a self-destructive bad boy to a reformed member of the Hollywood establishment and iconic survivor of the counterculture. The book also delves into Hopper's tumultuous personal life, including his dramatic attempt to divorce his last wife while he battled terminal cancer.
This is the first book to cover the entire life and career of the man who hung out with James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Jack Nicholson, costarred in and directed Easy Rider, and came back big in Blue Velvet, overcoming years of alcoholism and drug addiction. Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel is a must-have for Hopper's fans, film buffs, and readers hooked on celebrity scandals.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though the publishers proclaim this to be the first book on the entire life and film career of the flamboyant actor-director-artist, film historian Winkler's occasionally tedious narrative will leave readers hoping for a better one. Relying primarily on an extensive bibliography and too many dull details (a one-act play Hopper wrote in high school was presented "on Friday, March 20, 1953, at 8 p.m."), Winkler presents Hopper's life in nine sweeping chapters, chronicling his early days as a James Dean disciple; his descent into drugs, alcohol, and violence; the making of Easy Rider, the seminal 1969 counterculture film starring and directed by Hopper; his slumps and comebacks, with Apocalypse Now and Blue Velvet; and his death from prostate cancer in 2010. Along the way, Hopper became friends with Elvis Presley, John Wayne, Natalie Wood, and Peter Fonda; married five times; ingested countless pharmaceuticals; and took part in numerous orgies. Winkler writes with term-paper efficiency, saving the majority of his enthusiasm and insight for the chapter on Easy Rider, while trying to make sense of his sources' drug-addled recollections. Photos.
