Hopper: A Journey Into the American Dream

A roaring ride through the life of the actor, artist, and iconoclast that was Dennis Hopper. Charting his untamed career and his Zelig-like appearance in every twist and turn of American popular culture from the 1950s to his death, this biography portrays the life of Dennis Hopper as a great American story, populated by some of the most illustrious and visible icons that define our national identity. While filming Rebel Without a Cause , Hopper befriended James Dean, finding in Dean the inspiration for his own rebellion. At thirty- one, Hopper wrote, directed, and starred in his first movie, the revolutionary Easy Rider. He marched with Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery; was arrested countless times for carrying firearms and for disorderly conduct in Taos; and met with Vladimir Putin, the current prime minister of Russia, to discuss modern art. A prolific photographer, painter, and sculptor, he was an early collector of pop art and, after purchasing one of Andy Warhol's first Campbell's soup can canvases for seventy-five dollars, Hopper went on to build one of the most eclectic contemporary art collections in the country. As an early champion of hip-hop, Hopper counted Ice-T as one of his close friends, and produced and directed in the seminal gang film Colors . From film to politics to art to music, Hopper carved out his own rules, moved to his own rhythm, and lived out his strange and strangely idealistic version of the American dream. Full of hundreds of first-person accounts from the wide array of people he knew and worked with, including Easy Rider costar Peter Fonda, Blue Velvet director David Lynch, and Oscar-winning actor Robert Duvall, this is an unconventional biography of a very unconventional life.

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