Born in the one and only Dodge City, Kansas in 1936, Dennis Hopper was one of those actors that was in so many of my favorite movies. By all accounts, Hopper was tough to work with… a fierce temper, exacerbated by drugs and alcohol, left a wide trail of ex-wives and pissed off colleagues… but at the end of the day, an actor is remembered by the world at large for his work on film… and Dennis Hopper finished with one amazing filmography. Plenty of duds…. but those are more than outweighed by the classics; Rebel Without a Cause, Easy Rider, True Grit, Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, Hoosiers, Speed, Basquiat…
My favorite role though, has to be Clifford Worley, the father of protagonist Clarence Worley (played by Christian Slater) in True Romance… the Quentin Tarantino written shoot ‘em up from 1993. Facing imminent death at the hands of gangster Vincenzo Coccotti (played by Christopher Walken), Hopper delivers one of the best kiss-offs in film history before the inevitable coup de grace. If you haven’t yet seen this movie and aren’t turned off by a movie where only a few survive until the end… add this one to your netflix queue, you won’t regret it.
Happy Trails Dennis Hopper… you’ll be missed.
