I Blame Dennis Hopper

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  For my mom—the most cinematic woman I know.

  To my four grandparents. My grandfather Melvyn Douglas told me, “When you find someone you can learn from, hold on to them.”

  Prologue

  Mike Nichols had just screened his masterpiece, The Graduate, in New York. Afterward, I was standing in line next to Glenn Gordon Caron, who had directed me in Picture Perfect, waiting to meet Mr. Nichols. I was holding one of his legendary comedy albums he had recorded with Elaine May, hoping to get him to sign it. Glenn whispered to me, “Only you could get away with that.” I held out my album to Mr. Nichols, and he pointed at me and said, “You … you know what I like about you? You manage to be both in the movie and outside it, commenting to us in the audience.” Then he signed my album: “With admiration, Mike Nichols.”

  Among the pantheon of movie gods I have traveled in, Mike Nichols was Zeus. I was getting the nod from Zeus. Mike Nichols was not just insightfully describing my on-screen persona. He was also describing my life, which has often played like a movie with me both in the movie and outside it, commenting to the audience, “Well, I remember how it began, but I have no idea how it’s going to end.” I pass this on not to impress you about me but to impress you about Mike Nichols. His words, and the advice he was about to give, had a profound influence on me.

  He asked me, “Have you ever read De Tocqueville?” It sounded like a name that had come off the Nichols and May album I was holding, Improvisations to Music.

  I shook my head and said no, I had not read De Tocqueville. I had never even heard of De Tocqueville.

  “You should read it,” he said thoughtfully. He sounded like a doctor prescribing a vital prescription. “In fact…” And he started to rattle off other books I should read.

  I quickly grabbed the pen he had used to sign my record and wrote down the books he suggested. Anything by Alexis de Tocqueville, especially Democracy in America.

  Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, Memory. Augusten Burroughs: Running With Scissors and Dry.

  “Thank you,” I said, not really sure what I was thanking him for but absolutely sure that I would be running to a bookstore the next day. You certainly don’t disappoint the gods when they show you favor.

  “Let me know what you think,” he said. “Write me after you’ve read them.”

  “I will,” I said, still unsure of why he had taken the time with me.

  I had come there hoping just to meet Mike Nichols, to get his autograph. I was a fan of his. A picture of him directing Catch-22, along with those of other movie gods, had graced my bedroom wall when I was a kid. I was his admirer and champion. His quotes were pinned up on my office walls, including “The only safe thing is to take a chance. Play safe and you are dead.”

  And yet this god also seemed to be my admirer and champion. Why? What did he see in me that I could not yet see in myself? I never once told him that I had aspirations to write. I read the books he suggested, and he was astute—if not downright psychic—in having suggested them. Those books led me in the direction of this book, so thank you, Mike Nichols—thank you for giving me a through line to my life. In the pages that follow, I am both the narrator telling you about my experiences in the movies but also outside them; I’m a delighted fan sitting next to you on the couch exclaiming, “Aren’t these people fascinating? Aren’t movies the best?”

  A word of warning. This is not a memoir with a wonderfully linear beginning, middle, and end. Sadly, it’s not a tell-all, unless you consider being alone in a hotel room with Ethan Hawke and watching Paul Mazursky’s movie Blume in Love a tell-all. It’s also not a book about my career, which I hope explains the omissions of some of the films and television shows I’ve been in. That may sound surprisingly humble for an actor—don’t worry, I make large, large costarring appearances—but I am always more comfortable talking about the actors and directors I have worked with and how their work has changed me.

  Oh, this is a book about movies. How movies tell a story. In this case, mine. It’s called I Blame Dennis Hopper because I think you will see from the first chapter that sometimes a movie or an actor can change your destiny. I believe that all of us have been changed by the experience of movies. Think of the first movie you saw. What effect did it have on you? Who took you to see it? These questions, and the answers you give, connect us in a vital and emotional way. You may not know some of the people I write about—such as Roddy McDowall and Rudy Vallée—yet their contributions are part of film history. These days, to look back at a classic movie is somehow considered to be old-fashioned. More and more we are asked to look forward without a glance back at the films and film stars that got us here.

  The actor Rod Taylor recently died. He starred in such iconic films as Hitchcock’s The Birds and George Pal’s The Time Machine. I had an intense crush on Rod Taylor when I was a kid, and I thought I was the only one who was devastated when he died. But when I mentioned his passing to a friend, she said, “Well, a piece of my childhood just died.” She was sobbing. “Time Machine,” she cried, “and it wasn’t even that good!”

  “But it was good,” I said. “It was good because you remembered it.”

  That’s how movies change us: in ways we cannot even remember. Those images of movies stay in our brain; those fragments become shards in our memories. So when these gods die, it’s as if a piece of our childhood dies with them. That’s why it’s important to be a living historian. To pass on stories of why these movies and movie gods matter. It’s all a part of our collective memory, and we all have to take part in upholding it.

  “Illeana, your life is like a movie.” I hear that all the time—so much so that I finally accepted it. My life is like a movie! But so is yours. The greatest compliment I can give myself or anyone reading this is to say, You are the star of your own movie. You are surrounded by an amazing set of characters with a story that only you can tell. Now, you may not think it’s the healthiest thing in the world to live your life as if it were a movie, but somehow it has worked for me, with Dennis Hopper and many other movie gods to blame for every glorious moment.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I Blame Dennis Hopper

  We were poor, but we were unhappy.

  In 1969, my parents, like many others of their generation, saw the counterculture movie Easy Rider. It’s a road movie about two alienated and rootless hippie bikers (Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda) traveling on their choppers through a broken America. It depicted the rise of the hippie culture, celebrated drug use and free love, and condemned the establishment. The tagline of the film was “A man went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere,” which is apparently how people felt in 1969 because it was the third-highest-grossing film of the year. Easy Rider was written by Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Terry Southern and was directed by Dennis Hopper. It became a cultural phenomenon, and many people who saw the film so identified with it th
at they sought to emulate the values of its two main characters, Captain America (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper).

  Little did I know that my life was about to change forever because of a movie, but that is exactly what happened.

  My father seemed convinced that when Dennis Hopper’s character said “This is what it’s all about, man!” he was speaking directly to my father and telling him to change his life. Years later I met Dennis Hopper. I told him this story, basically blaming him for everything that had ever happened to me, and he grinned sheepishly and said, “Sorry.”

  You see, after my father saw Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, he started, well, acting like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider. He started to see “signs” as he drove home to suburbia in the endless rush hour traffic from a nine-to-five job. He heard the song “Nowhere Man” on the radio and said to my mother, “That’s me, man! I’m a Nowhere Man!” He started saying “He knows what it’s all about, man,” meaning Dennis Hopper. And spouting such Dennis Hopper–esque philosophy as “I go to work every day, and you know what it means, man? It’s just more garbage cans, man! I mean we started out with one garbage can and then we had two garbage cans, and now we’re up to three garbage cans, man!” One day he grabbed my brother’s orange plastic Hot Wheels set and shouted, “We don’t promote plastic in this house. Not anymore!”

  I blame Dennis Hopper for not having any cool toys growing up.

  I didn’t know we were rich until we became poor, but we became poor because of Dennis Hopper. At one point in Easy Rider, the two bikers visit a commune. My father decided to start a commune.

  “This is what it’s all about, man!” he said to my mom the day he left his job. He came up the driveway beeping the horn on the Buick convertible, which was usually his sign for “Kids, I’ve got some good news! We’re going to live off the land! Have a garden, and animals! Support ourselves!” My mother looked worried. We had just moved into a large Colonial house in a wealthy community in Connecticut. My parents were achieving what my mother had always dreamed of: an upper-middle-class life in the country with estates on both sides of us. That life, which for many is the American Dream, came to an end because of Dennis Hopper and Easy Rider.

  My father grew a mustache. Just like Dennis Hopper’s. He bought a gigantic poster of Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda riding their choppers and hung it in the middle of the living room. My father stared at the poster, that iconic image of two rebels, and I stared at my father. His mustache had filled in, and his sideburns and hair had grown longer. It was the first time I began to see a resemblance between my father and Dennis Hopper.

  I blame Dennis Hopper for my never liking men with mustaches. Nope. Don’t trust ’em.

  The theme song to Easy Rider was “Born to Be Wild,” by Steppenwolf. My father started playing the album incessantly. I don’t remember any other songs on it. Were there any other songs on that album? For that matter, did Steppenwolf even have any other songs, ever? Some nights while my mother was trying to make dinner there would be fifty hippies in the other room, all looking like Dennis Hopper, alternately singing “Born to Be Wild” and shouting, “This is what it’s all about, man!” When they got tired of singing and shouting they’d come in the kitchen and ask my mom, “Hey, is there any more spaghetti, man?”

  I blame Dennis Hopper for making me hate the song “Born to be Wild” and for our always being out of pasta.

  At first it was a challenge for my father even to find a hippie. You have to remember that in 1969 there was neither the Internet nor a hippie handbook to guide people led astray by Dennis Hopper. Eventually my father found one. His name was Tom. Tom the Hippie, I guess. I don’t know if he had a last name. Tom was the first hippie I ever saw, and I was impressed—and what I mean by impressed is I was terrified of him. Tom had long hair, a mustache, aviator sunglasses, and a leather fringe jacket. He reeked of booze and smoke, rode a large chopper, and ended every sentence with man. Does that sound like Dennis Hopper to you? Well it should, because my father found a hippie who looked and acted exactly like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider! To his credit, Tom the Hippie was an excellent hippie.

  Now that my father had a friend—I’m not going to say that he had his Peter Fonda, because Tom the Hippie and my father were both Dennis Hopper—they started going to demonstrations and protests. Tom seemed to know the day and time of every peace rally in the area, and since neither of them worked, they went to a lot of them. They went to so many peace rallies and staged so many demonstrations that for a time I thought that that was my father’s job. They took me with them once on one of their protests. I’m not sure what my father and Tom the Hippie were demonstrating when they went into a White Tower hamburger joint and started to chant “We’re white, and we’re in a tower. We’re white, and we’re in a tower.” My father seemed to think this “message to the man” had great significance, but to me it signified only that we were called “dirty hippies” and asked to leave immediately and never come back.

  I blame Dennis Hopper for my being afraid ever to set foot in a White Tower restaurant.

  My mother seemed pretty accepting of Tom. I remember her admonishing him only once. She was in the kitchen cooking spaghetti, and Tom had dropped acid—something Dennis Hopper does a lot of in Easy Rider—and soon started tripping. He wandered into the kitchen and kept repeating to my mom, over and over again: “It’s so beautiful, man; it’s just so beautiful, man; so beautiful, man…”

  Anyway, after about fifteen minutes of his twirling around the kitchen and saying everything was beautiful, my mother said rather sternly, “I don’t need to take drugs to see it’s beautiful, Tom. It’s nature.”

  He was quiet for a time, taking that in, and then he started in again: “Yeah, nature, man. Nature is beautiful, man. Beautiful nature, man…”

  Eventually Tom became less scary to me. I realized he wasn’t going anywhere, so he became a kind of Crazy Uncle Tom the Hippie. He bought this old Dodge paneled van that didn’t have any seats in the back, so he cut tree stumps to use as makeshift seats for us. My brother and I were sitting on our stumps, and Tom was driving along, smoking pot, with his Neil Young blasting, and as we rounded a corner, the stumps all tipped over and rolled to the back. The doors flew open, and my brother and I went rolling out of the van. The music was so loud that Tom drove another few hundred feet before he even noticed. I learned to balance on my stump, because riding with Tom was how I first learned about music. We would play Neil Young or the Beatles. Pretty soon a new hippie girlfriend named Annette came along for our rides.

  Tom the Hippie had that same Dennis Hopper charm with the ladies. He had a string of girlfriends after Annette and even had an affair with a married housewife. This was definitely an opposites-attract kind of romance. She was wealthy and had hired Tom to do some construction on her house, to good and bad results, since he smoked pot every day before going to work. He often asked me to guard it for him, forgetting he had stashed it under her kitchen sink. The only time Tom got mad at me was when I flushed his precious “herb” down the toilet as a joke. I thought it was the kind of herbs my mom used in her cooking, and couldn’t understand why Tom was so furious.

  Meanwhile, my father started constructing something of his own. It was his very own commune, just a short walk from our own house at the bottom of the hill. He called it The Studio.

  I blame Dennis Hopper for The Studio.

  My father built it with his own two Dennis Hopper–strong hands. We didn’t live in the commune, only my father did, but we could visit it or watch its progress or gradual demise any time we wanted. From the top of the hill you could look down at the pond and The Studio and see the large American flag hanging down the front.

  The Studio itself was an impressive two stories, sitting atop an old barn foundation that had burned to the ground years ago. The sleeping quarters were upstairs, accessed by ladder. The main floor featured a wood stove. The indoor plumbing amounted to a well pump with a handle that cranked water from
the nearby pond. If you were inclined to bathe, there was an old claw-foot tub outside. You just had to carry about a hundred buckets of water from the pond to fill it. The roof was corrugated plastic, and plywood was slapped onto the front. When the chicken coop went up, my father threw a party to celebrate and invited all the neighbors. My mother described it as if it were fun. “We drank champagne and danced inside the chicken coop!” It was the last time we ever saw a bottle of champagne in our house.

  I remember that the first goat that arrived was named Samson. He came from a petting zoo and had been given away because he was unable to mate. And no wonder: Whenever you went near him he would butt you within an inch of your life. We learned to stay away from him. My mother loved Samson and used to say that he was “just troubled or misunderstood.” Like everything else, it all seemed out of my control, so I learned to play along as though our lives had become this fun, circuslike movie with “Dennis Hopper” now at its center.

  Such as the time I came home with my mom from grocery shopping to find that a “happening” was happening in the middle of our living room. There were hippies holding hands and singing “This Land Is Your Land.” My mom made her way through the throng to the kitchen to unpack the food, pretending that the happening wasn’t happening.

  My father got some help at The Studio from local college students. They built a garden, although I’m not sure they were supposed to be studying the pot plants that soon sprang up in the front yard. It seemed as if those students never left. The Studio was soon filled with college kids smoking pot; goats; nicer goats; and chickens laying eggs in their coops. Hippies spent the days making pottery. It was idyllic. They were going to change the world with those clay bowls, right?

  And let me tell you, those hippies were like rabbits. They kept multiplying. Tom the Hippie had brought Annette, who brought Jane, who brought Michael, who brought Sasha. Every third person seemed to be called Sasha, whether a boy or a girl. Naturally, there was a lot of free love. But here’s the thing about free love: It’s expensive! As The Studio grew, so did the speed with which we slipped from being rich and privileged and comfortable to being poor and on food stamps. For my parents, this was a life choice. But I was becoming aware that my life choice was to still be rich and privileged.