Last Movie
In 1969, Dennis Hopper was the toast of Hollywood having changed the cinematic landscape forever with a little film called Easy Rider and cementing the longtime antiestablishment rebel himself (who had always had numerous clashes with many of his peers in Hollywood) as an undisputed genius and all of the additional accolades that go along with it. So much was the adulation that Universal Pictures decided to set up their own âyouth film divisionâ, making lower budgeted, counterculture based projects with no studio interference and full artistic control for the filmmaker, basically all just for Hopper. In 1971 as he was getting ready to release his new followup film, Hopper went on a mini tour of college campuses, meeting excited students who would tell him that they all wanted to see ânewâ types of movies to which Hopper (in reference to his new project) would reply âWait til you see what Iâve got for you.â Years later, in looking back upon the failure of his second directorial effort, Hopper would be quoted as saying that he had âoverestimated his audienceâ, releasing an almost entirely abstract work that belied Easy Riderâs relatively simple âride motorcycles from point A to point Bâ concept and instead tried to take on bigger meanings with not just a page, but rather an entire book taken from the style of Alejandro Jodorowsky, who was invited by Hopper into the editing room to consult and even assembled his own personal cut of the film which Hopper would reject in favor of his own. But what had really irked the studio bosses (and resulted in the film being given a limited release before being buried for over forty years) was that the film defied standard Hollywood conventions by actually mocking Hollywood filmmaking itself, even going so far as to say that the effects of the movie industry on a mostly indigenous people was that of a corrupting influence that brings out the worst qualities in them and ultimately saying that what passes for mainstream âartâ in the neighborhood multiplexes is mostly just a pile of bullshit (a relevant and strong statement even today). The story opens by showing us a movie crew working in a South American country (the movie itself was shot in Peru). The genre of movie being worked on is that of a Western which Hopper had rightly ascertained to be amongst the most generic of movie types. The onscreen director for this epic is one Samuel Fuller (who himself remains one of the most overrated directors of all time in his own right) and the story is allegedly that of Billy The Kid (although clichĂ© and inaccurate as all hell) with such luminaries as Peter Fonda, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn and Kris Kristofferson (who himself would play The Kid a couple of years later in the Sam Peckinpah masterpiece about the infamous outlaw) jammed into this mess somewhere if your eyes are sharp enough to spot them. Hopper shows us just how innovative the story approach to this fake Western is by having us watch one big shootout scene which just results in everyone getting mindlessly shot down either all at once or one at a time (including a woman) with absolutely no rhyme or reason whatsoever and is just obvious violence for the sake of violence (while we watch the same actors partying off the set as their ârealâ selves). Hopper himself plays Kansas, a stuntman and horse wrangler on the film and the brilliance of nearly the entire first half of the movie is that Hopper as a director makes it pretty unclear if what we are seeing is from either the âmovieâ story or the ârealâ story, albeit to say that the domineering, bigmouthed onscreen director Fuller appears to be filming the worst Western ever made and just doesnât know it yet while Hopperâs character remains a enigma until the movie finally wraps and leaves town. Hopperâs Kansas decides to stay behind for reasons known only to him and shacks up with the local village prostitute (Stella Garcia), promising her a better life with money that he obviously doesnât have and itâs here that Hopper temporarily drops the abstract style to show his character meeting up with an old buddy (Don Gordon) and hanging out with an apparently rich acquaintance of theirs (Warren Finnerty, who was the old rancher in Easy Rider) with the only real plot developments at this point being their acquiring knowledge of where a hidden gold mine is located and Hopperâs whore girlfriend longing to own a fur coat. But since the storytelling is pretty straightforward through this part of the film, it actually brings much of the feverish momentum of the film to a screeching halt, save for a very quick cameo from Michelle Phillips (from The Mamas And The Papas) as the rich manâs very spoiled daughter. Meanwhile, back in the village, an insidious thing has happened: the simple people who had stood by watching the filming of the actual movie have now assembled non working, makeshift film equipment out of bamboo and wicker and are not just only reenacting the badly done Western that they saw being filmed in their village, but are also gleefully recreating the attitude and mannerisms of the CREW MEMBERS they saw in action with one very assertive type playing the role of the dickhead movie director on top of all that. Problem is that they are also trying to recreate the dangerous stuntwork they saw with no training or preparation, putting themselves at serious risk for getting hurt or killed (and worse, thinking that such life and limb costing calamities are all âpart of the processâ). Hopper tries to go in to at least advise them on safety measures only to find himself not only getting completely sucked into their process, but also being led to believe that he himself is going to be sacrificed and killed in order to make their movie the best one ever, even though their âcameraâ is made out of bamboo with no film in it to actually capture the moment! At least the film itself does go off the deep end in its surreal symbolism (a far cry from the scenes involving Hopper and his old buddy) with the last five minutes in particular almost appearing to be a resounding âfuck youâ straight from Hopper to the Hollywood executives who were obviously trying to tap into the youth market created by Easy Rider (complete with a VERY familiar sound effect from that film coming into play) in order to generate more revenue for themselves without realizing the extent of Hopperâs abilities as a filmmaker and artist to make something that not only could they never fully comprehend, but to lay it right out on the line and openly declare that the so called âart of cinemaâ was really just little more than smoke and mirrors fakery (hence the title âThe Last Movieâ). To say that it took balls of steel for Hopper to do what he did in such a way almost goes without saying even as the real MVP of the film is cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs, who manages to justify the craziness of Hopperâs directing by effortlessly making this film into one of the most amazingly and beautifully shot films of all time, producing landscape after landscape that could easily be used as still photos even as it is used here as the backdrop for whatever Hopperâs crazed mind could come up with. Of all of the blink and youâll miss them big name supporting players on hand here, the only one who makes a real contribution is Kristofferson with the inclusion of his legendary Me And Bobby McGee on the soundtrack, even being shown performing it on camera before he stops and utters his one spoken line of dialogue in the movie to Hopper. But in the end, this is all about Hopper completely subverting the moviemaking process by intentionally breaking all of the rules that he had only begun to bend with Easy Rider, not showing the opening titles for the movie until nearly 30 minutes in and occasionally throwing in bits like a random âscene missingâ card out of nowhere in order to give the IMPRESSION that the movie was incompetently edited (or maybe edited while under the heavy influence of drugs). Is the movie as good as Easy Rider? Well, obviously not, but with Kovacsâ magnificent work behind the camera (proving the old adage that many top name DPs on a set are usually off doing their own thing while the director fusses with the actors and script) and the concept of apocalyptic insanity spawned from being on a movie set (something Francis Ford Coppola would experience for real several years later on Apocalypse Now), this definitely can be considered a movie ripe for rediscovery on the notion that so much worse has been foisted on us both before and sinceâŠ
8/10