Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel [Hardcover]

Peter L. Winkler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2011

One of America's most intriguing show-business luminaries and true rebels, Dennis Hopper's amazing life was a roller-coaster series of triumphs and failures. Always intent on proving his genius and leaving a legacy, the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated Hopper acted in more than 115 movies and four TV series, directed seven films, and passionately pursued an artist's life as a photographer and creator and collector of modern art, embracing the work of artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein before the label "pop art" was even coined. Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel explores Hopper's life from his lonely childhood in Kansas, where he became determined to win the affection of others by becoming a great artist, to his often drug-fueled days and nights in Hollywood and his spiritual home in Taos, New Mexico.

Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel unsparingly documents Hopper's journey from a self-destructive bad boy to a reformed member of the Hollywood establishment and iconic survivor of the counterculture, providing a revealing look at his early days in Hollywood, when he had an affair with sixteen-year-old Natalie Wood and took acting lessons from James Dean, the making of Easy Rider, the crushing failure of The Last Movie and Hopper's lost years in Taos, and his recovery and political right turn in the late 1980s. The book also delves into Hopper's tumultuous personal life, including his dramatic attempt to divorce his wife while he battled terminal cancer.

This is the first book to cover the entire life and career of the man who hung out with James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Jack Nicholson, costarred in and directed Easy Rider, and came back big in Blue Velvet, overcoming years of alcoholism and drug addiction. Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel is a must-read for Hopper's fans, film buffs, and readers hooked on celebrity scandals.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This week I read 'Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel,' and instantly fell in love with the story.  Peter Winkler figured out how to make the book so engrossing, so sensational . . . It's the one book you need to pick up and read at some point in your life." -- Tommy Garrett, Canyon News

I also told you . . .  that Barricade Books was publishing Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel by Peter L. Winkler. Well, I read it, and all I can say is ... whew! Wild Ride is exactly that. One incredible drug and drink-fueled tale tumbles over the next. Hopper, as presented by author Winkler, is fascinating. - Liz Smith, wowowow.com

I knew Dennis Hopper in his wild days and his sober days, and this book captures the man in his many incarnations. Winkler's deeply researched biography of Hopper is the definitive book on this live wire who lived on the high wire. -- Filmmaker Philippe Mora

"Entertaining and eventful." - Jenny Diski, London Review of Books

"Run -- don't walk -- to the nearest book vendor and get your hands on a copy of Peter L. Winkler's 'Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel.' I was hooked on Winkler's biography from the minute I picked it up, and I suspect that will be the case with other film addicts." - David M. Kinchen, huntingtonnews.net

"Well researched, well written, and highly entertaining, Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel is an engrossing look at one of Hollywood's most colorful legends." — Warren Beath, author of The Death of James Dean

“Peter Winkler's new book, Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel, beautifully captures the life, the legend, and the long career of this extraordinary individual. The product of meticulous research and expert wordsmithing, this biography details Hopper's many achievements as actor, director, painter, and photographer. With empathy and insight, Winkler provides an unforgettable portrait of an actor blessed with multiple artistic talents and yet cursed with strong tendencies toward self-destructive behaviors. Readers of this book are sure to enjoy sharing the wild ride.”— Richard L. Kellogg, author of Vignettes of Sherlock Holmes

“Peter Winkler has used his great skill as an interviewer to unlock the mystique behind a troubled and not always attractive Hollywood legend.”— Ronald Martinetti, co-founder American Legends publishing company and website

"A readable and remarkably even-handed chronicle of one of Hollywood's wildest cards. Peter L. Winkler knows his subject – and the territory – and he objectively delivers the goods on Dennis Hopper." — Stephen M. Silverman, author of David Lean and The Fox That Got Away: The Last Days of the Zanuck Dynasty at 20th Century Fox.

"Dennis Hopper exploded in our midst like a firecracker thrown from a dark shadow in a passing car. Peter Winkler's new biography of the counter-culture symbol, first across the finish line since the actor's death, is full of tough research and interviews, and reads as fast and furious as the man." — Patrick McGilligan, author of Jack's Life (a biography of Jack Nicholson) and Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director.

“Well, I read it, and all I can say is … whew! Wild Ride is exactly that. One incredible drug and drink-fueled tale tumbles over the next.  …Hopper, as presented by author Winkler, is fascinating.”-- Liz Smith

About the Author

Val Holley, author of the definitive biography of James Dean, calls Peter Winkler "A genuine Hollywood historian." Peter Winkler has written about movies for CineFan, Crime Magazine, Filmfax, The Jimston Journal, Playboy, PopMatters, and spiked; and reviewed movies for Video Theater, where he served as associate editor. Mr. Winkler has also written for The Huffington Post, PC Laptop Computers Magazine, PICO-Laptops and Portables, and Smart TV & Sound. He was the subject of a feature story in the Los Angeles Times and has been a guest on talk-radio shows in the U.S. and Europe. Mr. Winkler graduated with academic honors from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1978.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Barricade Books; First Edition ~1st Printing edition (September 16, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569804494
• ISBN-13: 978-1569804490
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.6 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #164,866 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Philippe Mora, who directed Dennis Hopper and knew him as a friend, hails Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel as "the definitive biography of this live wire who lived on the high wire." Val Holley, author of the definitive biography of James Dean, calls Peter Winkler "A genuine Hollywood historian." Peter Winkler has written about movies for CineFan, Crime Magazine, Filmfax, The Jimston Journal, Playboy, PopMatters, and spiked; and reviewed movies for Video Theater, where he served as associate editor. He has also written for The Huffington Post, PC Laptop Computers Magazine, PICO-Laptops and Portables, and Smart TV & Sound. He was the subject of a feature story in the Los Angeles Times and has been a guest on talk-radio shows in the U.S. and Europe. Mr. Winkler graduated with academic honors from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1978. He resides in North Hollywood, California.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Get Your Motor Running - Head Out On That Highway!!! September 11, 2011

By Richard Masloski

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Wow! What a wild and utterly wonderful ride of a book! Peter Winkler has given us a highly detailed, totally unbiased and beautifully written biography of one of the most interesting and exciting stars to ever shine in the Hollywood firmament - even if this one blinked on and off more unpredictably than most every other actor or actress in the history of cinema.

Winkler's chapter on the classic EASY RIDER is in itself worth the price of admission: he presents all of the facts as to EASY RIDER's conception and inception and reception - facts that crash and conflict all over the map of the movie's history due to human fallibilities and foibles - yet doesn't make a definitive case for any one angle, as the best of truly honest writers would do. Like Welles' first (and arguably best)film CITIZEN KANE and the wars that ensued as to who actually wrote what, so it is with Hopper's first (and definitely best!) movie EASY RIDER. Ego prevents the total truth from ever being known about just about everything under the sun and stars (celestial as well as cinematic) - and this historian's dilemma is fully conveyed in Mr. Winkler's remarkable book. Continuing with the Wellesian parallel: Welles' second film - THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS - did unto him what Hopper's second film THE LAST MOVIE likewise did unto Hopper. Both second films tanked. The one from a certifiable genius, the other from one who believed himself to be a genius and with the jury largely still out on the verdict for that claim. After both men's second shots having missed their targest, both actor/artists became nomads, pilgrims in search of profit and projects, selling their acting wares across the world in order to live the lives they felt predestined to live. Hopper himself noted this comparison betwixt himself and Welles in so many words. The echoes in the movie theater of history are truly remarkable to contemplate.

Dennis Hopper felt himself to be a genius - but in what particular way no one truly knows. Perhaps he was a genius in believing himself one. Well, genius or not - Hopper was beautiful and brutal, passionate and perverse, marginal and central. An actor, director, artist, writer, lover, drug addict, sex maniac, alcoholic, gun nut - Hopper had the elements so mixed in him that, truly, here was a man! And in Mr. Winkler's book we get to truly meet that man. Making a prolific use of the actual voice of Dennis Hopper himself (via choice excerpts from his myriad interviews throughout the years of his long career), added to a generous amount of critics' reviews of the most salient of the actor's films, and hundreds of quotations from Hopper's friends, enemies, wives and fellow artists, Mr. Winkler paints in prose a compelling and complex portrait of a compelling and complex man. Mr. Winkler does not shy away from Dennis the Menace's dark side at all - nor does he wallow in it or sleazily sensationalize it as a lesser writer might. When there are errors of fact in some of the many quotations that are richly interwoven with the main text of the book, Mr. Winkler points them out to his readers - as only the best film historians and writers would do. This is such an absorbing and humanely constructed biography that when it came to the final pages, I wept. I wept for the end of Dennis Hopper - and the end of the book. This speaks volumes for this volume: the book so vividly reflected the life of its subject, that when the final page was turned I truly felt that I had just lost someone I had personally known. Bravo, Mr. Winkler!

One caveat: the book's illustrations are fine but could have been so much better. I would love to have seen Hopper's parents or brother or children or some of his art or one of the final pictures taken of him when he received the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, mere months before his passing. Mr. Winkler painfully describes Hopper in those final days as prostate cancer took its toll on the actor. He was down to 100 pounds. When I subsequently googled photos from the honorary event of Hopper's receiving the star award, I was stunned. And profoundly saddened. A picture can be, yes, worth a thousand words - so being a biography of one to whom the visual was his very purpose in life, the text would only have been enhanced with better illustrations.

Addendum: Given the impact of James Dean on Hopper's life, I always thought it more than coincidental - and most probably somewhat cathartic for Hopper - that in the end of Hopper's first and best directorial effort, his character of Billy ends up - as did Dean - a roadside casualty of a collision with some other. Yes, for Dean it was another car (albeit operated by a man) and for Billy it was a shotgun blast (the shotgun likewise operated by a man) - but the correlation is unmistakingly there, whether Hopper wrote the whole of EASY RIDER including its ending (which he claimed) or not. And both deaths - that of the now mythic but once frail flesh-and-blood Dean and the fictional "easy rider" were the results of accidents. "What happened?" asks the one duck hunter of the other after the probably subconsious pull of the trigger that blasts Billy into oblivion - and Dean's alleged final words to his passenger/mechanic were (upon seeing the giant, solid Ford making an ill-timed left-turn in front of his small and fragile Porsche racing car) something along the lines of - "He's got to see us!" The ripples from the rock in the water are as fascinating and as mysterious as is the rock itself.

A final word: I wonder what is next on Peter Winkler's literary agenda. DENNIS HOPPER: THE WILD RIDE OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL has definitely made me truly anticipatory of this extremely talented film historian's future work!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Introspective View of Hopper as the Artist August 29, 2012

By Carolyn K. Jonas

Format:Hardcover

This is a well-written, carefully documented account of Hopper's life with great insight into his career and artistic side. Of particular interest, is the focus on the time spent in Taos, New Mexico, which became Hopper's spiritual home and a primary source of artistic inspiration to him. The author vividly documents the years Hopper spent in Taos, capturing the counterculture of the time and the impact of the New Mexico environment on some of the best movies made by Hopper. While there is plenty in this book to entertain those who are interested in the man as a wild rebel, there is also much focus on Hopper as an artist and his significant contributions to American film. This book shows the many facets of Hopper's personality, and his complexity as a person. It is an intriguing account of an American film icon and artist.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Thank you Mr. Winkler December 4, 2011

By Jeff Miller

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

After reading a story in the "LA Times" online (link below) about the painstaking effort the author made to research and write this book I decided to buy this book about one of my favorite actors. So far it is a great read! Thank you Mr. Winkler for both the mental and physical effort you put forth to write this book. I have missed Dennis Hopper since the day he died and I am looking forward to enjoying every page of your writing. I am currently in Asia and was happy to see I could get the "Kindle" version...I would have bought the hard cover and had it shipped to me if I needed to though!

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