Dennis Hopper: Dynamite, Cocaine, Cheating Death, Subverting Hollywood, and Life on the Fringe

Dennis Hopper revolutionized American cinema by bringing the counterculture to the mainstream with his 1969 film Easy Rider. But he also lived his life in tandem with his art, on the fringes of society and sanity. His stubborn attitude and crazy ideas quickly transformed him from a hippie prophet into a longhaired loser. Hopper's journey from success to failure and back again took him through jungles, deserts, and mountains, and involved varying degrees of drugs, guns, hallucinations, and ex-wives - all part of a lifelong search to save his career, and his life. This episode contains content that may me disturbing to some listeners, including domestic violence. Dennis Hopper brought a rock 'n' roll sensibility to filmmaking. Jake wants to know: Which actor or actress from Hollywood history is the most rock 'n' roll? Tell us at 617-906-6638, [email protected], or on socials @disgracelandpod. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod X https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ TikTok https://tiktok.com/disgracelandpod To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:13Speaker 01

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• 0:43Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information.

• 1:21Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 1:36Jake Brennan?

  This is the story of one of the most rock and roll characters to ever work in Hollywood. An artistic revolutionary, a drug-crazed lunatic, a man who once tried to blow himself up in front of a crowd in Texas, a man who took a $300,000 hippie art film and turned it into a $40 million box office smash. It's a story about Dennis Hopper, a man whose movies and whose myth inspired great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Frank's Oxygen Mask, MK1.

• 2:22Jake Brennan?

  I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "In the Year 2525" by Zagger and Evans. And why would I play you that specific slice of futuristic cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on July 14th, 1969. And that was the day Dennis Hopper's "Easy Rider" was released. An event that brought 60s counterculture into the mainstream, kicking and screaming, and set its director, Dennis Hopper, on a path that would take him to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. On this episode, Artistic Revolution: The Dynamite Death Chair Act.

• 3:07Jake Brennan?

  "Easy Rider" in a 357 Magnum packing Dennis Hopper. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 3:44Jake Brennan?

  From where he stood, atop the roof on the third story of his 22-room adobe house, he could see for miles in every direction. The sun was high in the sky, and the edge of the horizon sizzled. The desert wind blew in from the southeast. The submachine gun was heavy in his hands. It rested on his right forearm. His right finger, swollen and sweaty from the New Mexico heat, caressed the trigger. It wasn't the kind of gun that one of his silver screen heroes, Errol Flynn, used in Dodge City, the 1939 movie named for his hometown in Kansas. And it wasn't the kind of gun that another of his early acting influences, Montgomery Cliff, carried alongside John Wayne in Red River. It was a James Cagney gun, a Charles Bronson gun.

• 4:28Jake Brennan?

  It was the kind of gun held by a man on the fringe of society and on the fringed end of his last nerve. It was the kind of gun that he, Dennis Hopper, champion of the counterculture, hero of the hippies, fountainhead of the fringe, deemed necessary to hold in his hands while he stood his ground and beat back the horde of angry locals. Who didn't want anyone like him polluting the water in Taos, New Mexico? He had that gun because they were coming for him. They were coming to kill him. He could hear the dull roar of the mob riding on the wind. You couldn't make that shit up. A literal angry mob armed with actual pitchforks. The only other sound he could hear was the beating of his own heart, accelerated by his daily intake of cocaine, or maybe it was the LSD.

• 5:13Jake Brennan?

  Some days, he just never knew which drug was responsible for what. Some days, he felt clear in your mind, but your soul was mad. That was a whole other story. How he had gotten here was an easy story.

• 5:27Jake Brennan?

  It happened the night before. The year was 1970, the sun was going down, the cicadas were out. Some local kids in town gave Hopper shit about his buckskin fringe jacket and his long hair, told him they didn't want his kind in Taos. "Go back to LA, hippie." Hopper pretended the verbal daggers didn't faze him. He pretended he didn't watch them walk away. He reached inside his pickup, opened the glove box and took out a loaded pistol. He kept one eye on the kids as they receded into the distance. He walked casually, but with a sense of urgency. The sun was gone, the hum of cicadas thickened. He clutched the gun tight against his body and thought of the sea change in Hollywood that he was responsible for. His last film, Easy Rider,

• 6:10Jake Brennan?

  captured the zeitgeist of late 60s America. Old Hollywood was moldy Hollywood. Hopper and Easy Rider had ushered in a new style, a new look, a new Hollywood. They wore the outfits of the tuned-in, dropped-out generation, not the costumes of the old guard. They made love on screen, not war. They talked the way they talked, not the way some screenwriter thought they should talk. They smoked real dope. They were out to change the entire course of American film. It was the hippies' turn. Hopper told this to any titan of Golden Age Hollywood dumb enough to lend an ear. "You are the old Hollywood, and we're the new," Hopper said to director George Kekor, nearly four decades his senior. And then he leaned in real close and dropped his voice to a menacing whisper. "We're going to bury you."

• 6:57Jake Brennan?

  If only crusty old George Cucor could see him now. Hopper first fell in love with Taos when he brought a film crew to town in 1968 for Easy Rider. It was his directorial debut and was made after a nearly decade-long stretch where Hopper had been blacklisted in Hollywood. Hopper's reputation in La La Land throughout the 1950s and 60s was that of a bad, bad boy who was difficult to work with and whose behavior cost him countless good roles. Easy Rider gave him some temporary redemption. The road movie followed two bikers, Billy and Wyatt, played by Hopper and Peter Fonda, and was largely responsible for bringing hippie counterculture to the American mainstream.

• 7:39Jake Brennan?

  Made for under $400,000, it went on to bank upwards of $40 million domestically and another $20 million abroad. It was an honest-to-God cultural phenomenon, and it made Dennis Hopper, it made him a star. Now, just a few years later, Hopper was no longer a fringe icon. He was just an unwanted long hair, a crazy person. A crazy person with a pistol following a group of shit-talking kids back to their house. When the kids reached their house and were about to walk inside, Hopper made his move. He drew the pistol, cocked it, and told them they were under citizen's arrest. And when the cops arrived, they took Dennis Hopper to jail. Hours later, when Hopper met his $8,000 bail, the police chief offered some unsolicited advice.

• 8:23Jake Brennan?

  "There's a mob outside," he told him. "Best to slip out the side door and keep your head down. Once you get outside, we can't help you." That was the night Hopper bought as many firearms as he could get his hands on. He brought them back to the Mud Palace. He stood guard up on the roof, he stood up for the fringe. It had taken a few years for the fringe to make it to the Hollywood mainstream. There were other movies in the late 1960s that began to turn the tide from what Hollywood had been to what it would become. Movies like The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, all represented major shifts in how popular cinema approached sex, violence, and civil rights.

• 9:01Jake Brennan?

  Prior to Easy Rider, producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider made a first attempt at mainstreaming counterculture with Head, a comedy starring The Monkees. They were responsible for The Monkees' hit TV show, a ready-for-prime-time version of the counterculture, but the movie sabotaged their squeaky-clean image and failed to make waves. The Monkees had conceived of the film with screenwriter and B-movie actor Jack Nicholson, which means they all sat around a hotel suite surrounded by bags of Californian grass and riffed while a tape recorder spun. Later, Nicholson took the tapes, along with some Nicholson-grade doses of LSD, and turned them into a script. Experimentation with illicit substances only increased on the set of Easy Rider.

• 9:44Jake Brennan?

  Nicholson was cast as a lawyer, who became the gang's third wheel. On and off the set, Fonda, Hopper, and Nicholson continued to smoke weed, continued to do LSD. They were all so eager to alter their minds that Hopper didn't even ask what was inside of an urn that sat on the mantel of one of the production company's offices. He dumped the powdery contents onto a boardroom table and snorted them up with a wrinkled dollar bill. Fonda broke the news. Hopper didn't just snort coke, he snorted the ashes of one of the movie executive's dead wives. On the fringe, things aren't always what they seemed. Back in Taos, they rarely were. In 1975, Dennis Hopper continued his role as just another long-haired hippie haunting the locals.

• 10:26Jake Brennan?

  It had been years since he had a proper role in a proper film, years since any major studio let him near a director's chair. So Hopper went off the edge of the fringe and went all-in on crazy. The locals called it "the Dennis Hopper psychodrama cowboy act." That act played out one night that July after a poker match at the Hotel La Fonda. Hopper won the pot that night, which happened to be a handful of LSD instead of the customary cash. Hopper then popped a few doses on his tongue and chased them with some swigs of PBR. He put his stets in on top of his head, he stood from the table and felt the room wobble. The .357 Magnum stuffed in his boot made a clicking sound when he walked. It sounded like spurs. He stepped out of the front door of the La Fonda and saw it straight ahead.

• 11:10Jake Brennan?

  It was on his hind legs, a whopping eight fucking feet tall, maybe taller, claws sharp, teeth snarling. It was the biggest bear Hopper had ever seen in his life, and he feared it would rush him at any moment. Hopper stumbled down the front steps to the hotel. He retrieved his .357 from his boot. His Stetson fell to the ground. He raised his .357 into the air, shouted some psychodrama cowboy nonsense into the wind, and fired three times. After the final shot rang out, Hopper unclenched his teeth and narrowed his eyes to take stock of the damage. Had he made contact? Was he dead? Was it a black bear? A grizzly? Once the smoke cleared, so did Hopper's mind.

• 11:53Jake Brennan?

  He blinked twice and the bear was no longer a bear. It was a tree. Hopper tried to outrun the cops, but there were too many of them. They hauled Hopper back to the county courthouse. As the acid began to slowly wear off, Dennis Hopper realized he was sitting in the same jail cell where he had filmed a scene for Easy Rider seven years ago.

• 12:37Speaker 04

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• 13:07Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle. Nobody told Dennis Hopper what to do. In Dodge City, Kansas, on his grandparents' egg farm, he roamed the wide-open landscape. He had the autonomy of a kid three times his age. In La Mesa, California, where his family moved when he was 13,

• 13:52Jake Brennan?

  he grew to resent his absentee parents. They told him he'd have to become a lawyer or a doctor, but they couldn't really tell him what to do. They didn't even know him. So he ran away to join a Shakespearean theater troupe. He'd known he was destined for the stage from an early age, all the way back to when Dodge City premiered in his hometown in 1939, and Errol Flynn strolled down Main Street to the sound of rapturous applause. He was going to be an actor, and not just any actor, but the greatest actor in the country, perhaps the world. And no one could tell him otherwise, not even Harry Cohn, president of Columbia Studios and the maker and breaker of careers in Hollywood. King Cohn was one of five studio heads who offered Hopper, then only 18 years old,

• 14:37Jake Brennan?

  a major contract after his breakthrough role as an epileptic on an episode of NBC's weekly TV drama series, Medic. This was 1955. The kid's response to the 63-year-old Cohn was pure Dennis Hopper gold. "Go fuck yourself." Those three words ensured Hopper wouldn't step foot on the Columbia lot for another 15 years. Word traveled fast in Hollywood, and the word on the street was that this kid, Hopper, had an oversized ego. "Define it." He told King Cohn to stick his polished, glistening Oscar trophies up his goddamn asshole. He was good, damn good. He auditioned well. The raw, visceral performance on that episode of Medic was obviously no fluke. Dennis Hopper had something.

• 15:22Jake Brennan?

  Still, he was too much of a wild card. Best to cast him in the fringe roles, the supporting roles, at least until his attitude adjusted. That was Nicholas Reyes thinking that same year, 1955, when he cast Hopper in Rebel Without a Cause, not in the lead role, but as a gang member named Goon. The role of Jim Stark, of course, went to James Dean. To Dennis Hopper, the self-proclaimed greatest actor in Hollywood, witnessing James Dean on set was a punch to the gut. "Who the fuck is this guy?" Hopper asked himself. "How is James Dean better than him?"

• 15:59Jake Brennan?

  Filming the chickie run scene up on the bluff overlooking the City of Angels, Hopper paced from car to car. Dean's transcendent takes played over and over in his head. He had to know, and James Dean had to show him. Hopper lost his temper. He flung open the suicide doors of the 46 Ford Coupe Dean was getting ready to race, and threw Dean in the backseat, grabbing by the collar of his cherry red jacket. Hopper's eyes went wide screen. "I was the best actor in Hollywood, man," Hopper yelled, his grip tightening on Dean's collar. "I was the best damn actor, and then you came along, and somehow, you're better, man." Dean laughed, and his eyes did that thing where they squinted shut when he found something humorous. But Hopper was serious. He wasn't laughing.

• 16:43Jake Brennan?

  "You better show me everything you know about acting, or else," he said. He threw in that "or else" perk to drive home how serious he was. James Dean knew he was serious. He told Hops to play it cool, lay back, dig it. Dean told Hops, "When the camera rolls, drink the coffee. Don't act like you're drinking the coffee." Dean told Hops, "When the camera rolls, smoke the cigarette. Don't act like you're smoking the cigarette." But most importantly, Dean said, "Play it cool, lay back, dig it. Can you dig?" It was what Marlon Brando did. Dean idolized Brando. But Dean was also a serious student, and had honed his chops at the Actors Studio in New York City. The Actors Studio's founding artistic director, Lee Strasberg, developed an edgy technique called the method, where actors would use their own real-life experiences to inform

• 17:28Jake Brennan?

  their choices onstage and on screen. The results were real, raw performances, unlike anything movie-going audience had ever seen. Secondhand method acting advice wasn't the only thing James Dean and Dennis Hopper bonded over. Inside Dean's Warner Brothers dressing room, the duo would smoke marijuana in secret. They'd put paper bags over their heads when they exhaled, so that the suits at Warner Brothers would never suspect anything. No smoke, no smell, no foul, no harm. Play it cool. Dean and Hopper's experimentation and improvisation didn't end there. One afternoon, James Dean had Hopper meet him in the kitchen of a guesthouse in the Hollywood Hills that he was renting. His mission, if he chose to accept it, get extra high.

• 18:12Jake Brennan?

  Dean told him to come on an empty stomach. The hungrier you were, the higher you'd get. James Dean pulled a chunk of peyote cactus from the pocket of his cherry-red jacket. It was dull green, looked like a fat caterpillar in the fetal position. "The best way to eat this," Dean told Hops, "is raw, but this shit tastes so nasty and so bitter that most people puke their guts out when they eat it." Dean's solution was to boil the green fat cactus on the stove top for about an hour, or until they were tired of watching it boil. Then Dean took a pair of pliers and yanked out the spines like he was deboning a salmon filet. Hops cut the cactus into slices with a steak knife, then he and Hops took turns taking hits from a thin marijuana cigarette while the peyote bounced around a soup pan full of water on a rolling boil.

• 18:57Jake Brennan?

  When the hour was up, Dean strained the sludgy green peyote tea through one of his old white t-shirts into two porcelain mugs. Bottoms up. Hops felt like Dean stepped into a dream. The walls fluttered like they were alive, the floor sparkled like a starry night sky. He looked over at Dean and it was like he was looking in a mirror. No maybes, no fractions, no supposes, Hops was there, man. He was there, whether it was grass, peyote, or half a bottle of whiskey that got him there. When he took his girlfriend and Rebel Caspade Natalie Wood up Mulholland Drive one night. It was pitch black. The only light came from the headlights of Hopper's brand-new Austin Healey convertible. It was raining.

• 19:39Jake Brennan?

  Natalie had just told Dennis Hopper that she was also having an affair with Rebel's director Nicholas Ray. When she laid that trip on him, Hopper's foot sank into the gas pedal. Natalie was only sixteen, Hopper was two years older, but Ray, Nicholas Ray, was forty-three, old enough to be Natalie's father, and he was sleeping with the film's underage ingenue. Hopper saw red. They were making their way downhill, the convertible swerving and curving on the road like a snake trying to eat its own tail. Hopper hugged the curve and then pushed his foot as far as he could into the gas pedal. The rain on the windshield was abstract art, and the car floated into the opposite lane as it rounded another corner. Hopper didn't even see the oncoming car as it hit them head-on.

• 20:25Jake Brennan?

  Natalie was thrown through the windshield and wound up on the pavement.

• 20:30Jake Brennan?

  And at the hospital, Ray burst through the door. He wanted Hopper, found him pacing the lobby and waiting for word from the doctor. Ray grabbed Hopper by the collar of his shirt, just like Hops had grabbed Dean that night on the bluff, and threw him up against the wall. Cool it, Ray spat through his gritted teeth, his eyes watering with fear and anger. Hopper sat in the darkness of his Doheny Drive apartment that night, wishing he'd had a chunk of peyote cactus to boil in water. He had a stray thought that he would end the love triangle once and for all. He'd get a pistol and walk himself right over to Nicholas Ray's house, knock on the door, fire one shot into Ray's chest when he opened up. Cool it, he'd show him cool, man. Nobody told Dennis Hopper what to do. Nah, Hops thought he better not.

• 21:12Jake Brennan?

  He could face a lot at eighteen, but going to the can for premeditated murder was too much. Instead, for his revenge, he'd fuck with Ray on the set of Rebel. While they were filming the field trip scene at the Griffith Observatory, Hopper took off to go score a hot dog and caused a major production delay. When Hopper finally returned, Ray told him he was fired. But Ray couldn't fire Hopper, because the kid was under contract, untouchable. So Ray did the next best thing and took away all of Hopper's lines. And no one would hear a word come out of Goon, Hopper's character's mouth, for the entire movie.

• 21:49Jake Brennan?

  Henry Hathaway was the next director who tried to tell Dennis Hopper what to do. In 1958, on the set of From Hell to Texas, Hopper did it his way, for seventy-nine takes, multiple days of shooting. Finally, on the eightieth take, Hopper, broken down and once again on the fringe of his last nerve, did the scene Hathaway's way. As Hops left the set in search of his next job, Hathaway told him to not bother looking. He was gonna personally see to it that Dennis Hopper would never work another goddamn day in Hollywood again.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  We'll be right back after this.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 23:01Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 23:35Jake Brennan?

  Brooke Hayward recoiled in fear when the first foot came down on the windshield. She fumbled the car keys in her hands. Another foot stomped on the windshield, and the glass cracked. Hopper was wearing those big shit kicker boots, steel-toed, heavy treads. He jumped up and down on the yellow hood and rattled the entire car. She reached for the floor and got the keys back in her hands, just in time for Hopper's boot to go right through the windshield. Brooke screamed as the glass shattered and fell into the car's interior. Hopper was on the hood, panting. And why? All because Brooke felt like going home alone after being subjected to watching her husband, Dennis Hopper, playing Billy the Kid in Michael McClure's obscene play The Beard, rip the

• 24:18Jake Brennan?

  panties off his co-star and go down on her. If Brooke was looking for a sign, this was it. It wasn't the first time Hopper had gone violent. It was a Jekyll and Hyde thing with him. Peter Fonda, brother of her best friend Jane Fonda, called her once back in 1968 to warn her that something was up with Hops. He was acting strange. He may have gone off the rails. And their kids were still at home when Hopper walked through the door. His wily, long hair held at bay by a thin, paisley headband and said to Brooke, "Get me food, or I will kill you."

• 24:52Jake Brennan?

  It wasn't long after that that the LAPD pulled Hopper over. They told him he threw a roach from the window. He begged to differ and proved it by showing him that he still held a roach in his hand. And while they booked him downtown, Brooks seized the opportunity to get a restraining order and start the divorce process. Michelle Phillips could relate. The former singer for The Mamas and the Papas became Hopper's second wife on Halloween night, 1970, in a candlelit ceremony in the courtyard of the Mud Palace in Taos. Eight days later, Hopper drove his truck onto the tarmac of the Santa Fe Airport to physically block her from leaving on a jet plane. Their one week of marriage was far from blissful. Hopper was paranoid. He was Mr. Hyde.

• 25:36Jake Brennan?

  He shot his guns off in the house. He was convinced that Michelle was a witch. He handcuffed her so that she couldn't escape. As soon as she got Hopper to take the cuffs off, Michelle was out the door. At the Santa Fe Airport, security soon had Hopper surrounded. They moved him off the runway, and then the plane was gone, Michelle along with it. He called her that night. "I love you," he pleaded. "I need you." "Have you ever thought about suicide?" she responded. Hopper went back to the Mud Palace and back to working on what was quickly becoming his own version of career suicide. He was piecing together the up-teens edit of his new film, The Last Movie, which was his quixotic attempt at making the film to end all films.

• 26:20Jake Brennan?

  The success of Easy Rider offered him carte blanche with his next directorial effort. He decided to realize a pet project of his, a meta-movie about a stuntman who goes into self-imposed exile in Peru. In his head, he was better than Altman, Casavetes, Sam Peckinpah, all put together. He was the American Fellini. "I'm a genius and I can do anything," Hopper shouted at the mountains. He was emboldened by whatever combination of peyote, LSD, grass, and cocaine were tooling around the inside of his body. Cocaine in particular was everywhere in Peru, which is where Hopper chose to shoot The Last Movie. Cokeheads in L.A. clamored for a chance to get a job on the crew, simply for the chance to peep some of the purest shit known to man, which they could then smuggle back home

• 27:04Jake Brennan?

  to the States in film canisters to make a mint. But the reality of a Dennis Hopper film shoot in Peru was an entirely different reality, an alternate reality. The crew had to haul 15,000 pounds of camera and lighting equipment three hours up the side of a mountain, in treacherous conditions. Actors suffering from altitude sickness puked all over the beautiful countryside. One of the production members forced a stewardess to smoke a joint on the flight into Cusco, when the Peruvian cops thought for a hot minute about locking up the entire crew and throwing away the key. Another production member attempted to take his own life. Hopper knew that if the guy had been successful, the movie and Hopper would be held responsible by the government.

• 27:46Jake Brennan?

  The insanity of an unstable, oxygen-deprived, cocaine-saturated shoot in a foreign country drove Dennis Hopper to further paranoia. He was convinced that the Peruvian government had the whole set under surveillance, that they were in communication with the United States government, and that he'd be arrested the minute they stepped off the plane in Los Angeles. When production wrapped and they touched down in the States, there were no feds waiting for him. There was just Hopper's rampant paranoia. Back in Taus, Hopper spent the better part of a year editing the last movie. He screened cut after cut in the Taus movie theater for anyone who cared. One cut was eight hours long. Eight hours long!

• 28:28Jake Brennan?

  When it was finally released in the fall of 1971, it was a lean 90 minutes long. It won the Critics Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and then it promptly bombed at the box office. It was too arty. For the studio, it was delivered too late. Was all but forgotten months later. Dennis Hopper wouldn't direct another movie for a decade. Instead, he struggled. While his old friend, Jack Nicholson, made Chinatown and won an Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hopper grasped for scraps and was occasionally rewarded with small films in countries like Germany and Australia.

• 29:03Jake Brennan?

  He was so desperate for something new, something that would rekindle that feeling of leading the march on the fringe frontier, that he even answered Charles Manson's call. Manson was on trial for the Tate La Bianca murders, some of the most savage and nightmarish crimes Los Angeles had ever seen. The aftermath rumbled through the city like a late-night aftershock, and many musicians and artists had gotten mixed up with Manson's self-proclaimed creative endeavors. But that was before the killings. Before Manson sent a group of blood-hungry cronies up Cielo Drive with explicit instructions to "kill them all." It's worth repeating, Dennis Hopper was different from Dennis Wilson, or Terry Melcher, or Jim Morrison, in that he was the only one crazy enough to get involved with Manson after the murders.

• 29:48Jake Brennan?

  Manson wanted to make a biopic of his life's story. Hopper would direct. He could even star in it if he wanted. Hopper thought of Terrence Malick's Badlands, he thought of Don Segal's Dirty Harry, Leonard Castle's The Honeymoon Killers. A film on Manson could be the defining work in an emerging genre in American cinema that looked to get into the heads of cold-blooded killers. Hopper took the bait. He took the meaning. From across the table, Hopper looked into Manson's eyes as he spoke. His eyes were everywhere. They bounced around like two pinballs. Hopper looked beyond the bouncing eyeballs to go deeper. Manson rambled on about how he was a movie star. He'd always been a movie star, only the cameras had never been rolling. He needed Hopper to turn the cameras on and start rolling.

• 30:33Jake Brennan?

  Hopper looked deeper. Behind the bouncing eyeballs was blackness. Hopper wanted to find a familiar fringe poet behind those eyes. The sludgy counterculture losing on the edge of sanity. Something that could make good commentary, a good story, a good movie, maybe something Hopper could relate to. But all he found was blackness. So dark and so black that Hopper worried if he looked any longer, he'd get sucked right out of the room and never find his way back. He left the Manson tale on the table. Hopper was left to contemplate a failed career in the mid 70s. A career derailed by his own stubbornness. And maybe he'd never work again. He decided to put it out of his mind. He took more drugs.

• 31:17Jake Brennan?

  And by the end of the 1970s, Dennis Hopper's daily intake, by his own admission, involved a case of rum with a fifth of rum on the side. Twenty-eight beers and three grams of cocaine. He eventually graduated from snorting the coke to shooting it. It was honestly a miracle that he ever made it back to the director's chair alive in the early 80s. Especially considering the other chairs he tried on for size. Including one that had the potential to blow him to kingdom come.

• 32:07Jake Brennan?

  The trick of the Russian dynamite death chair act is to get the four sticks of dynamite to all explode at the same time. That way, the explosion creates a vacuum which saves you from bodily harm. You do that, and you escape death. You don't do that, and you're fucked. Dennis Hopper had seen the trick performed by a stuntman when he was a teenager. For years, he thought about trying it himself. In May 1983, he decided to give it a shot. And why the hell not? The cocktail of drugs in his system gave him courage. The paranoia in his brain gave him purpose. He worried the feds or the Peruvians were still after him. Maybe the mafia too. Again, why the hell not?

• 32:50Jake Brennan?

  These are the things you worry about when you are literally not thinking straight. And obviously, he was far from thinking straight when he sat down in a chair in the middle of the Big H Speedway in North Houston. And the house lights went down, and the spotlight went up on Dennis Hopper. The rednecks and film students in the audience had never heard of the trick before, and they were there simply out of morbid curiosity. The film students were bussed over from Rice University where Hopper had just screened his new film out of the blue. The fuses were lit. The spotlight went dim, and all the audience saw was the sparkling fuses as they snaked their way to the chair's feet.

• 33:30Jake Brennan?

  The explosion sent a boom through the speedway. Smoke enveloped Hopper in the chair. It was like a Houdini act. People in the stands were covering their eyes with their hands. Others were screaming and gasping. As the smoke cleared, Hopper stood up and walked away from the chair. Chest puffed out, adrenaline on 11. Not a scratch. Dennis Hopper left Houston, feeling invincible. He headed for Mexico, in the set of the German film Jungle Warriors. A low-rent exploitation flick. When it came to work, Hops took what he could get. It wasn't long into the shoot before the crew lost sight of him, and Dennis Hopper wandered into the jungle in his pajamas.

• 34:12Jake Brennan?

  Deep in the trees, head full of orange sunshine and the White Lady, he thought back to another jungle of his recent past: the Philippines, where he had the opportunity to work with director Francis Ford Coppola, a titan of new Hollywood. It was on the set of Apocalypse Now that he got to do scenes with Marlon Brando, the hero of his hero, James Dean. But Brando had hated James Dean. He thought he was a wannabe, and so, by proxy, Marlon Brando hated Dennis Hopper. He threw bananas at Hopper in the scenes that they did together, and called him "mutt." Was it method or madness? Maybe a little bit of both. Either way, it's fucking hysterical. The jungle in Mexico, though, was definitely madness. The cops found Hopper walking down a dirt road. He'd been following flashes in the sky.

• 34:57Jake Brennan?

  He was receiving transmissions from the clouds, and they told him World War III was on the brink. Oh, and he had shed his pajamas along the way. And Dennis Hopper was buck-naked. The insanity reached a fever pitch when Hopper escaped from the plane that was bringing him back to the States. Still higher than James Dean on a half-gallon of peyote tea, Hopper thought the plane was on fire, and climbed out onto the wing through an emergency exit. And there, he stood, on the edge of the wing, knees bent slightly to help maintain his balance, waving out the people who were attempting to coax him back inside, and his shirt rippling wildly from the suction of the nearby turbine as the plane powered up for takeoff. And this image of Dennis Hopper, standing on the wing of a plane in Mexico and waiting for World War III to hit, is fucking bonkers, even by Dennis Hopper's standards.

• 35:42Jake Brennan?

  And it was his last, truly gonzo move.

• 35:47Jake Brennan?

  Back home, he entered rehab in Century City to kick his cocaine habit. And there would be no more naked runs through the jungle or 357 Magnum cowboy showdowns with trees that looked like bears. No more tantrums in the hoods of cars or strange fruit boiled up on a stovetop. However, there would still be plenty of strange. Dennis Hopper's third act arguably was his best-known and most culturally beloved, even more so than his Easy Rider origins. He was reborn in a kinder, gentler role, still plenty eccentric, like an uncle who had his cage rattled one too many times, but he reserved his flashes of crazy for the roles he'd play. He played the wacko who inhaled nitrous oxide in Blue Velvet. He played the town drunk in Hoosiers.

• 36:32Jake Brennan?

  He played the maniac who rigs a bomb on the bus in Speed. He played the leader of post-apocalyptic pirates in Waterworld. He directed Robert Duvall and Sean Penn in Colors. And later, toward the end of his life, even ended up playing himself in the bro-tastic television show Entourage. But before that, Dennis Hopper settled down in a fringe section of LA's Venice Beach called The Ghetto, where he bought a funky condo designed by architect Frank Gehry. Inside, video monitors played on constant loop footage from the premises. Hopper kept a small gun stuffed in his sock and a loaded shotgun inside, not because he was fending off a horde of pissed-off locals, but because he still had that edge to him.

• 37:16Jake Brennan?

  And he still stood guard for the fringe. He was there, in his futuristic Venice compound, until May 29, 2010, when he died at the age of 74 from prostate cancer. From out there in the future, he went straight back to his simpler past, buried in a plain pine box in Taos. And what did they say when he died? He was a kind man? He was a wise man? He had plans? He had wisdom? Bullshit! They said he was King Freak, a powder keg and a liability, the most cosmic cowboy hippie, and one of the craziest fuckers to ever walk a Hollywood back lot. But also, that he was a visionary and a prophet for a new age.

• 37:57Jake Brennan?

  And one of the very few who wandered off the edge of the fringe and lived to tell the tale. A tale not quite a disgrace, but so wild, it needed to be told. I'm Jake Brennan and this is DisgraceLand.

• 38:28Jake Brennan?

  All right. I hope you dug this episode on Dennis Hopper. Hey, Apple Podcast listeners, you know the drill. Make sure you have automatic downloads turned on so you don't miss any episodes. All right. This week's question of the week is which actor or actress from Hollywood history is the most rock and roll in your estimation? Is it Dennis Hopper? Is it someone else? Is it someone like Johnny Depp or Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe? And that reminds me, we also want to know if you think the Kennedys had anything to do with Marilyn's death. 617-906-6638. With your answers, you can leave me a voicemail or text. You can also hit me at [email protected]. You can let me know via Instagram, Facebook, or X as well, and you will be able to hear your answers on the next after-party bonus episode that's coming up right after this one. Leave a review for DisgraceLand on Apple

• 39:12Jake Brennan?

  Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch. All right, here comes some credits. DisgraceLand was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a DisgraceLand All-Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of DisgraceLand ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand-new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit

• 39:53Jake Brennan?

  disgracelandpod.com/membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelandpod, and on YouTube at youtube.com/atdisgracelandpod. Rockerola.

• 40:12Speaker 05

  He's a bad, bad man.

• 40:15Jake Brennan?

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• 40:45Speaker 01

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• 41:15Jake Brennan?

  Hey guys, time to dust off your detective skills while unwinding in the Caribbean on Virgin Voyages' second true crime voyage. It's back by popular demand. This five-night, adults-only escape sets sail March 20, 2027, to Grand Turk in the Beach Club at Bimini. The difference between this year and last will be that I will be on the cruise this year along with Zeph, and he and I will be taping a live version of DisgraceLand along with podcast hosts from Exactly Right's Buried Bones, Podcast of the Year Award winners Wisecrack, and other fan favorites. Get on this cruise with us, guys, and enjoy live podcast recordings, behind-the-scenes storytelling, exclusive meet-and-greets, and immersive true crime programming throughout this one-of-a-kind voyage.

• 41:59Jake Brennan?

  Head over to www.virginvoyages.com/trucrime to secure your spot.