Blogs in Focus: Editors Blog

The last clip I featured, a scene from The Other Side of the Wind, had only a brief snippet of The Last Movie era Dennis Hopper in it, but I could not resist using Hopper (rather than the more prominently featured Paul Mazursky and Henry Jaglom) as the subject of this next post.

I have to admit that when I was growing up I watched probably more films starring Dennis Hopper than any other actor. I remember watching a documentary about Hopper in which he recalled inhaling gasoline fumes from his grandfather's truck and hallucinating until he smashed the truck up, believing it was a monster. (You can, in fact, watch that documentary over at YouTube.) It's a story you can't imagine having happened to anyone but Hopper, and taps into that unhinged quality that makes him so compelling as an actor. Honestly, watching Hopper in a film is always a pleasure whether or not the film itself is any good. Lord knows he has been in some stinkers as well as some great films, but he is watchable and entertaining regardless of the overall quality of the movie.

I personally have a soft spot for some of Hopper's films that I know in my heart of hearts are not good but that I still love watching. One of those is Catchfire (aka Backtrack), a 1989 film that Hopper directed as well as starred in. It's about a mob hitman (Hopper) who falls for the woman he's supposed to bump off (Jodie Foster), and has a wonderful supporting cast that includes John Turturro, Fred Ward, Dean Stockwell, Joe Pesci, Vincent Price, Charlie Sheen, Catherine Keener, Alex Cox and Bob Dylan. One hell of a group of people, I think you'll agree. The plot is very hackneyed and the idea of Foster and Hopper as an item is just plain bizarre, but the cast is so fantastic that watching them having fun onscreen is more than enough to make it a top grade guilty pleasure.

When it was released, the director of Catchfire was given as "Alan Smithee," the name the WGA grants to directors who have disowned their films. It seems the studio had hacked up Hopper's masterpiece beyond recognition, but it turns out that a 116-minute Director's Cut is in existence, as well as 3-hour Original Cut. I'm sure that seeing either of those would be a real trip. The reason I'm mentioning Catchfire is because the Dennis Hopper-Dean Stockwell thing and Alan Smithee aspect are very relevant to the below video for Gnarls Barkley's Smiley Faces. It's a Zelig-style romp through 20th century music, and Hopper and Stockwell appear at the beginning and end as experts on the elusive figure of Gnarls Barkley, who they say is believed to be the music industry's equivalent of Alan Smithee. If that's not a nod to Catchfire, I don't know what is.