NEW YORK TIMES: Dennis Hopper, whose portrayals of drug-addled, often deranged misfits in the landmark films “Easy Rider,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Blue Velvet” drew on his early out-of-control experiences as part of a new generation of Hollywood rebel, died Saturday at his home in Venice, Calif. He was 74. MORE
LOS ANGELES TIMES: What went down behind those corrugated steel walls of Dennis Hopper’s Venice fortress as he lay dying at age 74? He was divorcing his fifth wife after 18 years together, obtaining an “emergency restraining order” to keep her at a 10-foot distance. They battled over his valuable artworks. She also filed complaints about him keeping marijuana joints throughout his compound, ready to provide quick relief from pain, and loaded guns in strategic locations, ready to provide quick resolutions. If a person’s manner of dying is a distillation of their life, then Hopper’s death seemed a revisit of the same stories about a man once called the “patron saint of the deranged.” Never an easy rider. But the private Dennis I spent a decade alongside, working on his biography, had a different persona. The artist I came to know was a serious careerist calculating his return from illegality and literal madness, tenaciously managing his sobriety. I wonder if Hopper saw his exit as a last movie? Or a final chance to play the lead in a Shakespeare tragedy? MORE