It was sort of anticlimactic Saturday when Dennis Hopper died of prostate cancer.
Oh, I was sad to hear the news. But I had been expecting it, the same way I had expected the death of Farrah Fawcett last year.
Hopper's death was not out of the blue, like Michael Jackson's a few hours after Farrah's. I was sorry to hear that Hopper had died, but I was prepared for it. It was not a shock.
I will miss him, though.
So many of his performances resonated with me, whether I saw them on the big screen or on TV. He was truly a gifted actor who gave much of himself to the parts that he played. Sometimes he paid a price for that openness, that honesty, that outside–the–box naivete with which he sometimes seemed to approach his projects, but I am glad he lived long enough to see his work recognized with his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
I can't remember the first Hopper performance I ever saw. What I do remember is the many times I was touched by what he did — and I am astonished when I realize that he co–starred with James Dean in two of his three movies. Dean was an actor who was greatly admired by Hopper — and he has been dead more than 50 years.
Jason Ankeny wrote, for the allmovie website, that Hopper's "odyssey" — and that certainly is a good word for it — was "one of Hollywood's longest, strangest trips."
Hopper never won an Oscar, but some people will tell you that he, along with Peter Fonda and Terry Southern, should have received one for their original screenplay for "Easy Rider." (Instead, William Goldman took home the Oscar for his screenplay for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.")
But, as Calvin Wilson wrote in the St. Louis Post–Dispatch, the movie was a "touchstone for a generation" that "captured the national imagination."
As good — and perhaps as deserving — as Goldman's screenplay was, no one ever said anything like that about "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
"Easy Rider" may be Hopper's creative legacy. He wrote it, directed it, co–starred with Fonda and Jack Nicholson in it.
But another part of his legacy is his turn as a photojournalist in 1979's "Apocalypse Now," which is considered truly brilliant by many today, but it didn't do much at the time to reassure people of his stability. And that was something with which he had been struggling.
As always, he did other things between his most memorable or noteworthy achievements, but the next time he showed up on the mainstream movie audience's radar was when he appeared in "Hoosiers" as the reluctant — and alcoholic — assistant coach.
He got an Academy Award nomination for that one, too — for Best Supporting Actor — but, again, he came home empty–handed.
Did Michael Caine deserve that statuette? How about the others who were nominated?
You can judge for yourself tonight on Turner Classic Movies at 7 p.m. (Central). It just so happens that TCM is showing "Hoosiers," followed by "Rocky" and then "The Natural," thanks to guest programmer Rich Eisen of the NFL Network.
The timing of this showing of "Hoosiers" is purely coincidental. It was scheduled long before Hopper died.
But it seems to me there could be no better way to remember the life and career of Dennis Hopper than by watching his Oscar–nominated performance.
