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141 Showing His True Colors Rod Lurie/1988 From the New York Daily News, April 10, 1988. Reprinted by permission of the author. Among all the stories written about him over the years, Dennis Hopper can still point to the one article that infuriated him most. “I was on the cover of Life magazine in 1970, holding a football, a flower, and wearing a suit and tie and cowboy hat,” he was explaining in a New York hotel room recently. “The first paragraph of the article said, ‘Trouble follows Dennis Hopper like a pet anaconda. His friends in Hollywood say that Hopper has drank, swallowed, and shot every drug known to man.’ “At that time, I had never shot any drugs. That really put me back. . . . I couldn’t believe somebody could just lie like that.” Shot, swallowed, smoked, whatever, it’s all academic. There is little doubt Hopper brought the rumors—many he readily admits were true— upon himself. Not only by perpetuating his bad-boy image in public, but by being the creative mind behind Easy Rider, the 1969 sleeper that did for cocaine what Flashdance did for MTV. “I introduced cocaine on the screen for the first time,” Hopper says. “Cocaine was not a drug dealt on the street at that time. It was the drug of kings. Two year after Easy Rider was released, cocaine was more prevalent on the street than marijuana. That disturbed me when I was trying to get sober. But I can’t worry about these things. Yesterday’s gone. Right now is here, man.” For Hopper, “right now” is sobriety and film making. On Friday, he releases his fourth directorial effort—Colors, a film dealing with Los Angeles gangs. It is a virtual flip side to Easy Rider. Colors, which stars fellow Hollywood bad boys Robert Duvall and Sean Penn, does not glorify young hoods or drugs. Nevertheless, Hopper 142 dennis hopper: inter views sets aside the notion Colors is an apology for his previous attitude toward drugs. “Drugs in the sixties and drugs now are two totally different things,” he says. “There was a naiveté about drugs in the sixties, and there is no naiveté about them now. We didn’t know cocaine was addictive, we didn’t know about addictive personalities.” Hopper insists that, ultimately, Colors is about gang warfare, and he’s armed to prove his point. He lifts a copy of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and reads a headline about how the police are out in force against the gangs. Hopper spouts statistics with a deadpan efficiency: There are 70,000 gang members and 570 gangs in L.A. Last year, there were 387 gang-related deaths. There are only 250 police officers dealing with the issue. “This film pinpoints a problem,” he says. “The problem is political, social, economic, and educational, and nobody is going into it.” In Colors, Duvall and Penn are cops assigned to a ghetto where gangs hang out (actual L.A. gang members were used as extras). Duvall’s character is laid-back and experienced; Penn—surprise—is a hothead. The film is awash with blood and has been criticized by some L.A. authorities for excessive violence. “You couldn’t imagine what our rating (it’s rated R) would be had we shown what it’s really like,” Hopper says. “I spent one night in a squad car and saw more violence than is in our entire film.” He says this is his best movie yet—as an actor or director. Last year, he starred in Blue Velvet, the David Lynch film awarded Best Picture honors by the National Society of Film Critics. “When we were making Blue Velvet, I thought it would be great,” Hopper says. “But when I saw it, I was disappointed. I wasn’t disappointed with my performance, I was disappointed with the final product. . . . There were some not-very-good performances in it. “If I’d been a reviewer, I wouldn’t have given it a good review. I would’ve pointed out Dennis Hopper’s performance. It was great. I would also see tremendous promise in David Lynch. I would also have seen the subconscious and the flow that he was using between the very innocent and the very evil.” When last year’s Oscar nominations were announced, Hopper felt certain he would be honored for Velvet. Instead, he was nominated for Hoosiers. “I knew then Michael Caine would win,” he recalls. “I hadn...

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