The Breman Museum is hosting “Born to Be Wild: A Dennis Hopper Mini Fest” to celebrate the actor’s career at the Tara Theatre Oct. 14-15.
Three films starring the actor will play over the weekend. David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” will play at 8 p.m. on Oct. 14. David Anspaugh’s “Hoosiers” will play at 4:30 on Oct. 15, and Hopper’s own “Easy Rider” will play at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 15.
According to a press release, the mini fest at the Tara presented in conjunction with The Breman’s exhibit “ICONS: Selections from The Portrait Unbound, Photography by Robert Weingarten.” The exhibit showcases 14 of Weingarten’s “visual biographies” of famous Americans such as Hopper, Hank Aaron, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Stephen Sondheim. The exhibit will be on view through October.
Hopper was an actor, screenwriter, and director who rose to prominence during the 1960s and 70s as an icon of American counterculture. “Easy Rider,” which he directed, co-wrote and starred in in 1969, is credited with changing the Hollywood landscape and ushering in a new era of cinema.
Film historian Eddy Von Mueller will introduce all three films. In his view, one of the things that makes Hopper worthy of icon status is the way he so fully embodies the rise and fall of counterculture in the United States.
“You kind of see, in Dennis Hopper, that whole story – the counterculture, its collapse, the crisis that comes when the world that you thought you were changing didn’t change after all,” Von Mueller said. “There is this sort of cynicism, and nostalgia, and bittersweet anxiety, and you see it in Hopper. And that’s what makes him an icon.”
“Easy Rider” was released in 1969, right in the middle of the period of 1966-1975 – a stretch of time which Von Mueller characterized as one of the most innovative in the history of American movies. That innovation was pushed by drastic changes in American culture and politics at large, whether it be rock and roll, the Civil Rights movement, or the anti-Vietnam War movement.
“If you want to look at the dramatic transition in American cinema, but also in American life, that took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hopper acts out that story,” Von Mueller said. “He embodies that period of transition – both the good parts of that period of transition, but also, some of the more problematic parts.”
“Easy Rider” captured the rise of the hippie movement and dealt with drug use and generational tensions in a way that hadn’t really been seen on film before. That movie, along with Hopper’s public battle with drug and substance abuse, played a role in his public persona as a rebel early on in his career. But one thing Von Mueller finds important about Hopper’s career – and one thing that helps elevate him to icon status – is his resurgence in popularity in the 1980s. Despite the difference in the American societal landscape in the 60s and 80s, the Hopper persona and his acting style didn’t evolve much at all, Von Mueller said. We just changed the way we imagined him.
“What’s fascinating is because Hopper, frankly, survives his stardom – and lots of people don’t survive their stardom in the 60s and 70s. It’s got a body count like a slasher film – he survives his stardom and endures into the Reagan era, and becomes a figure that is associated with how the counterculture is seen after the counterculture is dead.”
Tickets for each of the three screenings can be bought online.
“These movies were made to be seen in a theater full of strangers on a big screen,” Von Mueller said. “If you’ve seen these films before, if you’re a fan of one of these films or any of these films, it is so worth the schlep to see a movie in a theater.”