The American Friend

"If you close up the doors they'll start coming in the windows."

"The Riplaid" is one of my favorite series in the crime genre (and if you haven’t read them, now would be an excellent time Random House has put out a new printing with covers and design that captures the tone of Highsmith’s work so perfectly I was frankly pissed that I'm not quite a big enough chump to buy the books again).











He’s a fascinating character. And one who filmmakers seem to find damn near impossible to capture on film. The thing that makes Ripley fascinating and frightening is that he simply has no motivations beyond convenience. He doesn't kill out of anger. He doesn’t hate the people he kills, normally he likes them, it’s just that well gosh its awful convenient for them to die. Ripley lives a life of comfort, gardening in his villa, painting in his spare time, occasionally traveling and fucking his French wife. And by God if he has to kill someone every couple of years to sustain that life, well then he’ll lose no sleep over it. And yet you still like Ripley you root for him. Why he’d probably like you too, right before he beat you to death with a fire poker. This is why Anthony Minghella’s version of The Talented Mister Ripley can best be described as a misinterpretation of epic proportions. Turning Ripley into persecuted victim. Turning Dickey Greenleaf into a sneering sociopath and Freddy Lounds into a tormentor. Making his first murder one of self defense. Giving him reasons. I can’t watch that movie without my brain screaming “WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG.”

You can’t even cloak Ripley’s motives in philosophy (like Malchovich did in his fun but ultimately misguided performance in Ripley’s Game). He’s not a Nietzchien, or a Randian, or any kind of strong man. His greatest desire is to live in bourgeois, material contentment and occasionally get a chance to demonstrate his cleverness.

Dennis Hopper’s performance comes the closet to getting Ripley right. Its not quite there. While the vulnerability that Hopper and Wender’s decide to focus on, is decidedly canonical (unlike again Minghella's) they sacrifice one element of Ripley for another, capturing his vulnerability but not his supreme lack of a guilty conscienceness.



Still even if it doesn’t quite capture the stunning amorality of Highsmith’s world, The American Friend comes tantalizing close.

Combining threads from "Ripley Under Ground" and "Ripley’s Game", The American Friend follows Ripley as he perpetrates an art scam, forcing the great Nicholas Ray to create forgeries of a dead artist’s work, and enlists an ordinary man dying of cancer to commit some murders when the scheme complicates. (Sam Fuller also cameo’s, perfectly cast as a crime boss. Though sadly the two greats do not get to share a scene).

I have mixed feelings about Wenders. Though I am a great admirer of his early work in particular King Of The Road, Lightning Over The Water, Paris Texas, and Wings Of Desire are all flat out masterpieces, and The New German Cinema in general. I have reservations about him, as anyone who has actually sat through Don’t Come Knockin in the theaters must. Wender has spent the latter part of his career making not merely bad movies but movies in painted with a particular type of badness that call in to question what you liked about his work in the first place.

Still he’s in fine form here. Able to modulate his tone in a way I didn’t know he could do. The film is taught by his standards (and slow by any other). In a way it doesn’t matter that the film doesn’t quite capture Ripley as the film is much more Zimmerman’s (The unlucky dying man. Played in fine form by Bruno Ganz.) then it is Ripley’s. As Zimmerman weighs his decision, Ripley disappears from on screen for nearly an hour, as the film becomes meditative in a way that is completely unexpected in a crime filler. With Wender’s finding some shocking lyrical imagery.

Odd that the one detail from Highsmith’s work that Wender’s deliberately eschews is Ripley’s class, turning Ripley into a high living vagabond rather then Highsmith’s entranched (if on the borderlands) member of the upper class. I’ll admit its not quite a move I understand. Especially seen in context of the Germany this film was made in, in which class was such a touchy issue people were blowing each other up over it. Was he trying to “claim” Ripley as a hero? I don’t believe so, it doesn’t jibe with the Hopper as a symbol of American corruption that the film works so hard to cultivate from the title on down.

The American Friend comes tantalizingly close to nailing down one of the most elusive characters in modern literature. That it doesn’t quite succeed makes it no less of a fascinating film.

Speed

I have a confession to make. I kind of unironically like Keanue Reeves.

Lets set aside for a moment the roles he’s easy to defend in, the likes of My Own Private Idaho, Scanner Darkly and River’s Edge. Lets take a look here at your Constantines, your Lake Houses, your Point Breaks, your Day The Earth Stood Stills. Theres a reason Keanu always gets cast in this high concept shit. Mainly, because he buys it.

Take Constantine, which is for the record one of my favorite guilty pleasures of all time (lower your opinions of me accordingly). There is a scene which finds Keanu sitting in an electric chair, with his feet in a bucket of water and a cat on his lap, patiently waiting to be sent to hell. And he acts like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Presumably because he doesn’t know better. His shall we say, unique cadences, zen outlook, and unflappable demeanor all conspire to make Reeves truly one of a kind. I mean come on how can you not like him a little.

He anchors Speed. Along with Sandra Bullock one of the few women not named Carrie Ann Moss that it can be said Reeves has some genuine chemistry with. Bullock’s appeal has always been not her glamour but her normalacy, which is why she is still a movie star at forty five no matter how many actresses she kisses in public. It’s that ability to keep that Girl Next Door feel even when doing things as patently ridiculous as piloting a multi ton bus over a gorge, that keeps her likable.

Speed serves as the apex of a certain kind of pre CGI blockbuster filmmaking. There’s a purity to Speed that you have to admire it’s a two hour movie that probably has ten minutes in it not devoted to vehicles going fast, shit blowing up, and actors trading pithy bon mots. It’s the Darwinian end result of the action eighties. A movie that has (de)evolved into nothing but a goods delivery mechanism.

And in all fairness Speed does nothing but deliver the goods. Things start off with a fantastic set piece involving an elevator rigged to explode, that would serve as the climax for a lesser film. The plot develops into (white noise) mad bomber (white noise) will explode if it dro- (white noise) -illed his best friend.

Watching anything wreck that much havoc on LA’s nightmarish Freeway system during its Kakaesque rush hour is a guilty pleasure for any Angelino (Let us also take a moment to appriciate the sublime irony of a thriller built around public transporation being set in a city notorious for having the worst public transportation system of any major metropolitan area in the world). Unfortunately the film does little more then nod at the cities multi culturalism. Original director Tarantino might have turned the film into LA’s answer to The Taking Of The Pelham 123. De Bont, just lets everyone have a funny line.

And yet I’ve ended up writing about everything in this movie aside from my reason for revisiting it. Hopper of course, grounds the film. Giving his role a real sense of menace and ruthlessness. Not to mention making the idea that he can outsmart Keanu Reeves seem all too plausible. He gives the role the requisite intensity. But It’s then kind of role that Hopper was all too often saddled with, in the late stage of his career. One that the movie depended on, but gave him little room to do anything but pop his eyes, yell, and get one ker-aizy speech in. Don’t get me wrong, like everything else in the film Hopper is a lot of fun. He’s just not much else.

Red Rock West

I somehow managed to miss Red Rock West, John Dahl’s mean little Neo Noir, until now. This despite the fact that it is so far up my alley that its practically down my throat.

The film’s premise is a standard Neo Noir one. A drifter comes into town and ends up mistaken for a hitman and ordered to kill the interested party’s wife. Paid but not wanting to do the job, he skips town with his employer’s money, but not before telling his target about the plot and accepting another cash payment from her to off her husband. He skips town a several thousand dollars richer and heads for the hills.

Simple right?

You haven’t seen many Neo Noirs.

It’s worth noting that Red Rock West is one of the most relentlessly structured movies of all time. You could basically read it with a screen writer’s manual in hand and mark it off all the stuff you’re supposed to do minute by minute. You can basically hear Robert McKee weeping in delight. Its not really a positive or negative just an observation. It does however show that there is occasionally something to be said about the three act structure. Red Rock West is a relentless movie, and every complication (and there are plenty) hits with maximum impact.

Nicholas Cage plays the hapless drifter, and its from that weird pre The Rock post Wild At Heart period of his where you could say that Cage was the most subdued part of the film and actually mean it. Its safe to like Cage again, thanks to his great performances in Kick Ass and Bad Lieutanent making it OK for hipsters to retroactively praise the bug eyed crazy shtick that Cage has been trotting out for the last ten years, and pretend like they were in on the joke all the while. (Look for this to reach some kind of annoyance Nexus when The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which I’m actually looking forward to, comes out). But as much as I enjoy Cage’s “Mega Acting”. I miss these types of roles to. There’s not much too it. But he plays it well, lean and compact. An average, likable schmoe forced to survive on his limited wits in a harsh situation.

Hopper plays the real hitman, and while his role is more his “That guy in Speed.” Level of villainy rather then Frank Booth. He gives the role both a real sense of danger, and more importantly a real sense of amorality. He even gets a few moments to radiate that genuine Hopper Lunacy we all know and love. As in the scene where he forces Cage to race a speeding Freight Train.

If there’s a weak link in the chain it’s Laura Flynn Boyle as Cage’s intial target, and later partner in crime. Boyle is a fine actress given the right material, but she is convincing neither as a vulnerable victim, nor a cold blooded Femme Fatale. Dahl to his credit seems to realize this, and she spends the minimal amount of time on screen until the final thirty minutes or so.

Red Rock West, might at the end of the day be nothing but a poor man's Blood Simple. But damned if it doesn’t do a good job of it.

Easy Rider

One of the lines thrown around in the Hopper obits was the statement that Easy Rider could never be made today. Like so much conventional wisdom its right for the wrong reasons. Its true that today Easy Rider could never be made but not because of its libertine attitude towards sex and drugs, loose non plot driven structure and fearless attitude. Easy Rider could never be made today because any movie as earnest as it would be laughed out of the theater.

Easy Rider is about as deeply unironic as movies get. Shocking coming from the pen of perennial smart ass Terry Southren. It’s a film filled with pompous dialogue, a smug central performance by Fonda, cheap obvious symbolism, and dated editing trips. And if the film lacked a single one of these elements it would not be near so great. It’s a student film in the best sense, that its earnest enough to think it matters. There are worse faults to have.

But there’s no getting around the fact that so much of Easy Rider is so unabashedly goofy from literally beginning to end. From the shot of Peter Fonda throwing away the watch, to the soulful hippies endless prayer in the commune, and the film’s New Orlean’s climax which once seemed revolutionary and now seems like a kind of event horizen for datedness. Most spectacularly is the scene when well hell I’ll just let Ebert tell it…

One of their bikes needs work, and they borrow tools at a ranch, leading to a labored visual juxtaposition of wheel-changing and horse-shoeing. Then they have dinner with the weathered rancher and his Mexican-American brood, and Fonda delivers the first of many quasi-profound lines he will dole out during the movie: "It's not every man who can live off the land, you know. You can be proud." (The rancher, who might understandably have replied, "Who the hell asked you?" nods gratefully.

A hitchhiker leads them to a hippie commune that may have seemed inspiring in 1969, but today looks banal. A "performance troupe" sings "Does Your Hair Hang Low?" on a makeshift stage, while stoned would-be hippie farmers wander across the parched earth, scattering seed. "Uh, get any rain here?" Billy asks. "Thank you for a place to make a stand," Captain America says. The group leader gives the Captain and Billy a tab of acid and the solemn advice, "When you get to the right place, with the right people -- quarter this."

And yet incredibly. Hell damn near inexplicably Easy Rider ISN’T just a dated period piece and does keep some of its elemental power. The scene where an impossibly young Jack Nicolson solemly tells Nicholson and Hopper about the aliens, is still a blast. The shots that Hopper gets of the American landscape are as a beautiful and haunting distillation of the country as anything I’ve ever seen on film. The montage of the pairs final drive cut to “Its Alright (I’m Only Bleeding)” still conjures up a terrible dread. Hopper, Nicholson, and yes even occasionally Fonda are all charismatic as can be. And the editing and techniques are dated as hell but there audacity still impresses.

Its true that I can’t make it through a good dozen of Easy Rider’s sequences without laughing. But looking at the way the film so unabashedly mattered, both to those who made it and those who saw it; I can’t help but think the joke is on us.

(Expect a Hopper heavy week here on TTDS. I’m not doing anything formal and I certainly have other stuff I’m going to write about. But I write what I watch. And I’m watching a whooooollllleeee lot of Hopper.)

Dennis Hopper

What can be said about Dennis Hopper?

Nothing conventional of course. Hopper was not a conventional man, many things but never that.

Let us be frank, Hopper gave some of the worst performances in some of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. He was in the Crow Wicked Prayer, playing a satanic gangster named El Nino, a role that required him to refer to Satan as an “OG Pimp Daddy”. He was in Firestarter 2. He was in American Carol for fuck sakes.

But it’s just this very fact that made Hopper feel so intimate. Some stars are so perfect you never feel attached. Hopper always felt like ours, we’d seen him with his pants down so to speak.

And yet, Hopper also gave some of the best performances in some of the best films I’ve ever seen. To see Hopper connect with a role is to see acting at its finest, an invisible energy that is not something as tawdry as authenticity but something truer.

One of my favorite things about Hopper is the sheer amount of work he did. Its almost impossible to keep it straight. Which means that I’m often surprised and delighted to find Hopper showing up in a piece of work I had no idea he was in. So when he shows up in Cool Hand Luke, or The Trip, or Hang Em High, or True Grit. The experience is always an uncannily friendly one. As though I’ve ran into an old friend under strange and unexpected circumstances. Coupled with the fact that I often times don’t quite recognize Hopper at first glance (The Osterman Weeknend) it becomes even stranger; because he’s older… or younger… You never know what you will see when he walks through the door.

I don’t know what it is that makes me take Hopper’s death so personal. I only know I will miss him terribly, and miss that feeling of him walking on screen. Bringing with him the instantaneous knowledge that the film I was watching was about to get a whole lot more interesting.

I’ve taken the liberty of writing up my five favorite instances where Hopper just brought it. Making the films, and the lives of the film watchers. More complete.


Rumble Fish:

Rumble Fish

“Accute perception can drive you crazy.”

This is, in my opinion Hopper’s most underrated role. Simply put without Hopper this movie doesn’t work. Coppala’s teenage melodrama, a collection of beautiful black and white shots, ridiculous poses, and dreamy elliptical dialouge relies on Hopper for its heart.

He plays his character as a grand ruin of a man. Mickey Rourke in twenty years on without the good sense to die young, all the poetry driven out of him by the world and the bottle.

It’s the way they talk, the way they connect, that makes Dillon’s performance in the film so poignant. The family that’s his that he’ll never had. He’s big, friendly, stupid Irish Setter born into a family of noble wolves. Not grand enough to even be wrecked so terribly as his family.

Hopper’s a wretch, you can nearly smell him. But he has grandeur, and the presence of mind to know how terribly he’s fallen. And in that final tracking shot, where he makes the simple act of wiping his mouth and turning away speak volumes, we watch that one last piece light left in him go out forever.



Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

“Lord show me what I fear. So I don’t fear it no more.”

One of Hopper’s greatest gifts was his ability to simultaneously over and under play a role. I think Hooper’s wonderful mutant of a film showcases this talent best. Hooper’s film is played at level of Grand Guignol to which the term over the top does not quite cover. Hooper’s film and Hopper’s performance are both hysterically funny, but precisely because they never wink (Even the scene in which Hopper takes a few Chainsaw’s for a strenuous test drive in front of a baffled clerk is handled straight).

Hopper brings all the intenisity he can to the part, and when he marches into the Sawyer’s Lair, fearlessly singing “Bringing In The Sheaves.” He has transcended any notion of camp or kitsch, and simply become big enough for such a grand gesture to seem completely natural.



True Romance

"You know I study history."
Sure this is an obvious choice and sure its all too often appreciated for the wrong reason. But it perfectly embodies another aspect of Hopper’s talent. That ability to come in for just a fraction of the time he deserves and invest a character with enough inner life and history and weight to make him unforgettable. The way he reactions to Slater’s words like body blows briefly made Slater look like a credible actor, and that’s something nobody has ever pulled off.



Apocalypse Now


"I'm a small man."

Again Hopper acts as the glue for Coppala’s film (can you imagine his Van Helsing?) Nothing else inspires the same understanding of the stakes at hand as his performance as a man driven round the bend by Kurtz’s vision. Raising the stakes to a battle not just for Sheen’s life, but his soul and sanity as well. For all the vision and startling images and moments in the last third of that film it’s those jumbled snatches of Hopper’s poetry that haunt, “A pair of ragged claws scuttling…”



Blue Velvet


"It's Dark Now"

Of course. The most convincing depiction of evil ever put on film. Fearless is a word too often thrown around like confetti. But Hopper earned it. Again and again and again. He put himself on the line. Every time. And I will sorely miss him.