A constellation of A-list stars worked for scale on writer/director Paul Haggis' film Crash, just so they could be a part of the socially-charged indie project. It paid off for them as everyone involved with Crash got some acclaim and indie cred. The film plowed on to win three Academy Awards.
The new small-screen version of Crash, which premieres on Starz on October 17, has an impressive legacy to live up to, but only one big name; Screen legend Dennis Hopper plays a record producer in one of many interweaving ensemble stories. All of the characters are original to the series, and yes, Hopper's goes crazy.
"I don't think that I can only play crazy people but maybe that's all I can play," says Hopper, who redefined the Hollywood psycho archetype when he played sociopath Frank Booth in the 1986 David Lynch noir flick Blue Velvet. "I love acting and as long as I can act, I will be doing it. I'm rather a mild mannered, quiet kind of guy, an introvert, so these characters that I play have very little to do with my reality. That's interesting for me, and it's a drag for me also."
Still, when Hopper appears in a movie, you can usually expect him to go nuts on someone. In person, the once wild-living, motorcycle-loving renaissance man is calm and cool, more like one of the mellow characters from Easy Rider, the 1969 classic American counterculture road movie which Hopper co-wrote, directed and starred in.
After a press conference with the producers of Crash, Hopper hung around to chat about his character and its connection to fellow Easy Rider, Phil Spector.
Question: Were you looking for a TV show to do?
Dennis Hopper: No, this all happened on a Sunday. I'd just gotten back from the Cannes Film Festival...I got back on Friday and Sunday they hit me with this and said I had to make a decision by Monday because they wanted me to start shooting on Wed.
Q: You'd done TV before though, so has it been a good experience for you?
DH: I did 24 and then I did E-Ring for a while. This has been an incredible experience for me. This is a wonderful part. We've been doing long hours but it doesn't bother me at all because the material is really good. It's really wonderfully written.
Q: Did you have to consider how it would take you out of the film game for a while?
DH: Yeah, I had to consider it because I wanted to direct a movie. There were a lot of things going into consideration, also going from Los Angeles to Albuquerque. I have to be in Albuquerque three days a week so that was a big decision too. But we're working through it. We just finished the third one so going into the fourth.
Q: Did you take a second home?
DH: No, I've taken a hotel room. I used to live in Taos, NM, so my brother and my cousins all live up in Taos. I have a choice of coming back to L.A., where my family is, or going up to Taos where my family is, so it's beginning to work out haven't quite figured it out yet. I've only been doing it for three or four weeks.
Q: What journey do you see this character on?
DH: Wow, man, I don't know. He could go anywhere. He's an open ended guy. Every week I get my new script and I'm surprised. He's out there. I don't put any limits on it at all. He's totally out of control.
Q: Are there any music industry execs you base your character on?
DH: Phil Spector and I shared offices for about 10 years. He's a music mogul who wants to get one last big hit going and he's totally off the wall. He changes directions about 20 times in a minute. It's a great part. It's beautifully written and we have no language barriers or sexual...It's just free. It's as free as television will ever be.
Q: So it's a tribute to Phil?
DH: No, I'm doing a tribute to me. I based this on my life.
Q: Which of the other ensemble characters are you working with?
DH: Well, I really only deal with two characters right now. I deal with a doctor who has lived with me for a while, who takes care of my medical problems and my chemical imbalance. He gives me drugs in other words. And my young driver who I'm now mentoring.
I'm waiting for women to come into my life -- except for the young lady who is driving me at the beginning when I'm having a conversation with my penis. When she looks back and I've exposed myself and am talking to my penis, she pulls the car over and jumps out and asks for people to come and get her because she's with a pervert. I try to convince her to come back and so on, but she doesn't.
Besides that, I haven't really seen any other characters. Well, that's not true. There is the uncle of the young man that I've hired and I go down and buy some drugs from him. That's some very funny stuff.
Q: When you talk to your penis, does it talk back?
DH: No, but she does.
Q: Is it actually a nude scene or just implied?
DH: No, I'm just sitting with my dick out in the back of a limo.
Q: But do we see it?
DH: No, no, no, but you see me jamming it back in. It's the first scene I have in the series and I'm being driven by a beautiful young woman in a big limo. She thinks I'm talking to her but I'm really not talking to her and you can't really see what's going on.
I'm having a conversation which sounds a little like poetry, a little like Shakespeare, a little like a lot of things, but in point I'm talking to my cock about its not functioning anymore. It's a rather private conversation that she thinks is directed to her about the veins standing out and she's starting to look in the mirror to see.
Then she finally stops at a stoplight and looks back and sees me actually addressing my penis. However, she gets alarmed, jumps out of the car and I try to convince her that this was a private conversation and it really wasn't something that was addressed to her and that she should probably reconsider and come back and drive for me. She decides that she wants money, and at that point my characters goes into a little bit of... Well, you should see it. It's very funny.
Q: What other outrageous scenes can we expect?
DH: Oh, there are a lot of them. It's constant. My character is just off the wall. You've got to see it. I can't go into it. He also gives speeches so the writing has been so exceptional.
Q: What are your memories of watching the movie Crash?
DH: I just remember I really liked it. I'd known Bobby Moresco for a while. We did a film called 10th & Wolf together that he directed and wrote, so I was really happy for him when he won the Academy Award for writing it. Then that was the end of my thinking about it very honestly until they offered me this. I had a day and a half to make a decision.
Q: What else was going on for you this summer?
DH: I really don't have much time at all. I'm having a big show at the Cinmathque in Paris that they've been working on for five years. They're showing 50 films and they're taking about half of my art collection and half of my work and exhibiting it in Paris in the Frank Gehry building. So that opens October 13, then the series opens October 17, so I'm pretty busy. .
Q: Are you still painting?
DH: Yeah, painting, I had a big show at the Hermitage museum in St. Petersberg last year, one in Moscow. I'm having a big show at the Cinemateque. October 13th it opens in Paris.
Q: How was the Moscow trip?
DH: It was incredible. We took a motorcycle trip from St. Petersburg to Moscow with the Guggenheim. Jeremy Irons, Laurence Fishburne and myself. It was an incredible thing. It took us five days to get from St. Petersberg to Moscow but it was wonderful. We opened 300 years of American art at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Guggenheim. So it was cool.
Q: Are you a big collector?
DH: I collected through the years, yeah.
Q: Who's your favorite artist?
DH: Well, of what I collected, probably Basquiat right at the moment.
Q: Did you buy them back in the day?
DH: I bought them when he was still alive, yeah. I couldn't afford to buy them now. I have some nice ones.
Q: As a motorcycle enthusiast, did you know Ewan McGregor is doing a motorcycle show?
DH: I saw him before they started it. I had no contact with them while they were in Africa. They had a really rough trip. It was really, really a hard ride. They had really a bad time. When they told me they were going to go through Africa all the way down there, I said, "That sounds really dangerous to me." And it turned out that it was. But he's an incredible young man.
Q: How are you fighting the economic crisis?
DH: It's a big problem, isn't it? I'm trying to downgrade my car so I don't have to spend so much on gas. I'm trying to find something that gets me 35 gallons, 40 gallons. Everything's changing for all of us. We can't go on this way.
The new small-screen version of Crash, which premieres on Starz on October 17, has an impressive legacy to live up to, but only one big name; Screen legend Dennis Hopper plays a record producer in one of many interweaving ensemble stories. All of the characters are original to the series, and yes, Hopper's goes crazy.
"I don't think that I can only play crazy people but maybe that's all I can play," says Hopper, who redefined the Hollywood psycho archetype when he played sociopath Frank Booth in the 1986 David Lynch noir flick Blue Velvet. "I love acting and as long as I can act, I will be doing it. I'm rather a mild mannered, quiet kind of guy, an introvert, so these characters that I play have very little to do with my reality. That's interesting for me, and it's a drag for me also."
Still, when Hopper appears in a movie, you can usually expect him to go nuts on someone. In person, the once wild-living, motorcycle-loving renaissance man is calm and cool, more like one of the mellow characters from Easy Rider, the 1969 classic American counterculture road movie which Hopper co-wrote, directed and starred in.
After a press conference with the producers of Crash, Hopper hung around to chat about his character and its connection to fellow Easy Rider, Phil Spector.
Question: Were you looking for a TV show to do?
Dennis Hopper: No, this all happened on a Sunday. I'd just gotten back from the Cannes Film Festival...I got back on Friday and Sunday they hit me with this and said I had to make a decision by Monday because they wanted me to start shooting on Wed.
Q: You'd done TV before though, so has it been a good experience for you?
DH: I did 24 and then I did E-Ring for a while. This has been an incredible experience for me. This is a wonderful part. We've been doing long hours but it doesn't bother me at all because the material is really good. It's really wonderfully written.
Q: Did you have to consider how it would take you out of the film game for a while?
DH: Yeah, I had to consider it because I wanted to direct a movie. There were a lot of things going into consideration, also going from Los Angeles to Albuquerque. I have to be in Albuquerque three days a week so that was a big decision too. But we're working through it. We just finished the third one so going into the fourth.
Q: Did you take a second home?
DH: No, I've taken a hotel room. I used to live in Taos, NM, so my brother and my cousins all live up in Taos. I have a choice of coming back to L.A., where my family is, or going up to Taos where my family is, so it's beginning to work out haven't quite figured it out yet. I've only been doing it for three or four weeks.
Q: What journey do you see this character on?
DH: Wow, man, I don't know. He could go anywhere. He's an open ended guy. Every week I get my new script and I'm surprised. He's out there. I don't put any limits on it at all. He's totally out of control.
Q: Are there any music industry execs you base your character on?
DH: Phil Spector and I shared offices for about 10 years. He's a music mogul who wants to get one last big hit going and he's totally off the wall. He changes directions about 20 times in a minute. It's a great part. It's beautifully written and we have no language barriers or sexual...It's just free. It's as free as television will ever be.
Q: So it's a tribute to Phil?
DH: No, I'm doing a tribute to me. I based this on my life.
Q: Which of the other ensemble characters are you working with?
DH: Well, I really only deal with two characters right now. I deal with a doctor who has lived with me for a while, who takes care of my medical problems and my chemical imbalance. He gives me drugs in other words. And my young driver who I'm now mentoring.
I'm waiting for women to come into my life -- except for the young lady who is driving me at the beginning when I'm having a conversation with my penis. When she looks back and I've exposed myself and am talking to my penis, she pulls the car over and jumps out and asks for people to come and get her because she's with a pervert. I try to convince her to come back and so on, but she doesn't.
Besides that, I haven't really seen any other characters. Well, that's not true. There is the uncle of the young man that I've hired and I go down and buy some drugs from him. That's some very funny stuff.
Q: When you talk to your penis, does it talk back?
DH: No, but she does.
Q: Is it actually a nude scene or just implied?
DH: No, I'm just sitting with my dick out in the back of a limo.
Q: But do we see it?
DH: No, no, no, but you see me jamming it back in. It's the first scene I have in the series and I'm being driven by a beautiful young woman in a big limo. She thinks I'm talking to her but I'm really not talking to her and you can't really see what's going on.
I'm having a conversation which sounds a little like poetry, a little like Shakespeare, a little like a lot of things, but in point I'm talking to my cock about its not functioning anymore. It's a rather private conversation that she thinks is directed to her about the veins standing out and she's starting to look in the mirror to see.
Then she finally stops at a stoplight and looks back and sees me actually addressing my penis. However, she gets alarmed, jumps out of the car and I try to convince her that this was a private conversation and it really wasn't something that was addressed to her and that she should probably reconsider and come back and drive for me. She decides that she wants money, and at that point my characters goes into a little bit of... Well, you should see it. It's very funny.
Q: What other outrageous scenes can we expect?
DH: Oh, there are a lot of them. It's constant. My character is just off the wall. You've got to see it. I can't go into it. He also gives speeches so the writing has been so exceptional.
Q: What are your memories of watching the movie Crash?
DH: I just remember I really liked it. I'd known Bobby Moresco for a while. We did a film called 10th & Wolf together that he directed and wrote, so I was really happy for him when he won the Academy Award for writing it. Then that was the end of my thinking about it very honestly until they offered me this. I had a day and a half to make a decision.
Q: What else was going on for you this summer?
DH: I really don't have much time at all. I'm having a big show at the Cinmathque in Paris that they've been working on for five years. They're showing 50 films and they're taking about half of my art collection and half of my work and exhibiting it in Paris in the Frank Gehry building. So that opens October 13, then the series opens October 17, so I'm pretty busy. .
Q: Are you still painting?
DH: Yeah, painting, I had a big show at the Hermitage museum in St. Petersberg last year, one in Moscow. I'm having a big show at the Cinemateque. October 13th it opens in Paris.
Q: How was the Moscow trip?
DH: It was incredible. We took a motorcycle trip from St. Petersburg to Moscow with the Guggenheim. Jeremy Irons, Laurence Fishburne and myself. It was an incredible thing. It took us five days to get from St. Petersberg to Moscow but it was wonderful. We opened 300 years of American art at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Guggenheim. So it was cool.
Q: Are you a big collector?
DH: I collected through the years, yeah.
Q: Who's your favorite artist?
DH: Well, of what I collected, probably Basquiat right at the moment.
Q: Did you buy them back in the day?
DH: I bought them when he was still alive, yeah. I couldn't afford to buy them now. I have some nice ones.
Q: As a motorcycle enthusiast, did you know Ewan McGregor is doing a motorcycle show?
DH: I saw him before they started it. I had no contact with them while they were in Africa. They had a really rough trip. It was really, really a hard ride. They had really a bad time. When they told me they were going to go through Africa all the way down there, I said, "That sounds really dangerous to me." And it turned out that it was. But he's an incredible young man.
Q: How are you fighting the economic crisis?
DH: It's a big problem, isn't it? I'm trying to downgrade my car so I don't have to spend so much on gas. I'm trying to find something that gets me 35 gallons, 40 gallons. Everything's changing for all of us. We can't go on this way.
VIEW 7 of 7 COMMENTS
lovegrenade:
Dennis kicked ass in "the trip"........heheh, I love that movie........."psych out" was he in that? THINKING? anyway FRANK BOOTH was always one of my all-time favorite characters,,,,,,,,Dennis is Brilliant and a national Treasure!
cassiel:
IT'S A BULLET FROM A FUCKING GUN, FUCKER!!!