Sunday, May 30, 2010

Dennis Hopper, R.I.P. (or Something)

I'm writing this at the request of my brother, Andrew, who reminded me of it upon the recent death of Dennis Hopper. The story, as I heard it, ran like this.

In the 1980s, when Hopper was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor nomination, he was called the morning the nominations were announced by a New York Times reporter. The conversation went like this (caution: all quotes are approximations and may, in fact, be apocraphyl):

Reporter: Dennis, congratulations, you've been nominated for best supporting actor.
Hopper: Thanks. To be honest, I've been expecting this. I've got something prepared, if you don't mind.
Reporter: Great. Go ahead.
Hopper (reading from a paper): I want to thank the acadamy for this honor. "Blue Velvet" is one of the greatest pictures I've ever worked on --
Reporter: Dennis --
Hopper: David Lynch is a genius, a true artist --
Reporter: Dennis!
Hopper: And one of the great directors of our time.
Reporter: DENNIS!
Hopper (nonplussed): What?
Reporter: You weren't nominated for "Blue Velvet."
Hopper (after a pause): I wasn't?
Reporter: No.
Hopper: Then what the fuck was I nominated for?
Reporter: "Hoosiers."
Hopper (incredulous): "Hoosiers"?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Reporter: That's right.
Hopper (increasingly incredulous): I was nominated for "Hoosiers"!??!?!?!? For that piece of crap?!?!?!? "Hoosiers"?!?!?!?!?!? I can't fucking believe it!!!!!! What a piece of shit!!!!!! "Hoosiers"!?!?!?!?!? Those fucking fucks in the fucking academy wouldn't know a good fucking piece of work if it bit 'em in the fucking ass!!!!!! Fucking "Hoosiers"?!?!?!?!!?!? Those fucking fucks ....

Apparently, it went on like that for a while. And, unfortunately, not a word of it could be related to the paper's readers.

The story, as I mentioned above, may be apocraphyl. But, for the record, if Hopper made that point, I think it was a really good one.