Dennis Hopper Dies At The Age of 74

Actor and director Dennis Hopper has died in Venice, California at 74 after a yearlong fight against cancer.  Hopper was best known as the driving force, with Peter Fonda, of the iconic film “Easy Rider”, which idealized the 60s drug culture. Shot on a budget of just $500,000, the film earned more than $ 19 million. The counterculture classic opened the door for countless edgy independent movies, including Crash and Brokeback Mountain.

Hopper created the cult of youth in Hollywood, where young, hip executives who understood their targeted markets replaced elderly studio heads. That cleared the way for other young “New Hollywood” directors including Stephen Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Peter Bogdanovich and Francis Ford Coppola.

Hopper began his acting career appearing in two movies with James Dean in the 1955 and 1956. He soon developed a reputation for using drugs, and feuding with directors.

One night a friend, Peter Fonda, called Hopper suggesting they make a movie about the psychedelic drug scene and counterculture that would appeal to rebellious, disaffected young people. Fonda suggested that they could save money if Hopper directed and they could costar, so they did. They invited another friend, novelist Terry Southern, to write the screenplay. Hopper, Fonda and Southern shared the Oscar nomination for best screenplay.

The movie was a romanticized story of two cocaine dealers making a big score in Mexico. Their cross-country motorcycle trip to New Orleans enabled Hopper to examine his generation’s alienation, the Vietnam War, dropouts, hippies, greed and racism. The soundtrack throbbed with heavy rock and pulsating visuals mimicked an LSD trip.

Columbia Pictures agreed to distribute the film, a big gamble at a time when major studios were making movies like a musical version of Dr. Doolittle. The risk paid off, and “Easy Rider” is a classic, a film that perfectly crystallized the ethos of the 1960s.

Hopper returned to acting in the past 30 years, playing villains, alcoholics and psychopaths in “Hoosiers”, “Speed” and “Blue Velvet.” The past year has been marred by an acrimonious divorce, and his cancer diagnosis – but the image that remains after all the others have faded is a jeans-clad Hopper, a headband tied around his long brown hair, speeding away on his low-rider motorcycle.