* *
An American movie crew finishes shooting in Peru and then this one guy hangs around for a bit instead of going home.Starring Dennis
Hopper, Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Michelle Phillips, Dean Stockwell
Written by Stewart
Stern
Produced by Paul
Lewis
Duration 108
minutes
Bruce Willis, HUDSON HAWK. Eddie Murphy, HARLEM NIGHTS. John Travolta,
BATTLEFIELD EARTH. Mariah Carey, GLITTER. Steven Seagal, ON DEADLY GROUND.
Michael Flatley, BLACKBIRD. Sylvester Stallone, PARADISE ALLEY. Vanilla Ice,
COOL AS ICE.
You know what's
fun? Listing movies that were embarrassing vanity projects. Especially
BLACKBIRD. Wow.
Yes, this is when
stars get so big that they are given carte blanche to make their dream project.
Of course, they headline it. Often they (supposedly) contribute to the writing. Certainly
they have some kind of producer's credit, and many make it their directorial debut:
for the likes of Murphy, Seagel and – yes – ‘the Lord of the Dance’, it's been
their sole turn behind the camera.
Research suggests that the
ultimate vanity project is Jackie Chan's CHINESE ZODIAC (2012). According to
Guinness World Records, it has the most credits for a single person in one
motion picture, with a staggering 15. Chan is credited as writer, director,
actor, producer, executive producer (?), cinematographer, art director, unit
production manager, catering coordinator (??), stuntman, stunt coordinator, gaffer,
composer, propmaster, and theme tune vocalist.
(Chan's movie – and truly it is his – also holds the title of Most Stunts by a Living Actor. Presumably the record for dead actors is a lot less hotly contested?)
All the vanity projects I mentioned above were critical and/or commercial disasters. But that's not always the case. Think Robert Duvall's THE APOSTLE, or Kevin Costner's DANCES WITH WOLVES. And Prince with PURPLE RAIN, although he did push his luck by subsequently directing UNDER THE CHERRY MOON. Um, wait a sec ... Costner went on to make THE POSTMAN. And Duvall later released something called ASSASSINATION TANGO, for a meagre box office return of $1.013 million. Maybe the trick is to only cut the ego loose once and then rein it back in again.
Anyway, that brings us to THE LAST MOVIE. In 1969, Dennis Hopper, alongside fellow counterculture
icon Peter Fonda, unleashed EASY RIDER upon the world. It was an
instant classic, defining a (dying) cultural movement with insight and
cynicism, and raking in a whopping £60 million from a budget of £400,000.
EASY RIDER was Hopper's
directorial debut, and with that level of success (it made 150 times what it
cost) he had Universal Pictures clambering to throw £1 million and full creative control at him to make whatever he wanted next.
What he wanted to
make was THE LAST MOVIE.
Dennis Hopper
directed seven films in his lifetime. That's enough to be considered a body of
work. Of course, he was an actor first and foremost, with over 200 credits. His
directorial debut came at the relatively young age of 33, after only a handful
of movie role and certainly before any as the lead. The final film he
directed was 25 years after the first.
And yet despite this, I don't think many people think 'Dennis Hopper: The Director'. It's kind of hard to imagine him actually doing it, to be honest. You can accept EASY RIDER as a wild and loose one-off that didn't need, didn't want a steady hand. But it's hard to picture the spangled photographer in APOCALYPSE NOW or unhinged Frank Booth from BLUE VELVET as the calm, accountable figure in charge of running a movie set.
So, you'd assume THE LAST MOVIE is going to be bad, or at least a mess. Potentially as calamitous a
follow-up as Duvall, Costner and Prince managed after their own lauded debuts. And for years, its iffy reputation suggested exactly that.
But wait. There's a twist. THE LAST MOVIE is one of those films that's had a critical reappraisal. No one rated CITIZEN KANE, BLADE RUNNER or THE SHINING on first release. THE THING was a flop. HEAVEN'S GATE was a disaster. Each is now held in high regard. (All correct except for HEAVEN'S GATE, which is still boring. And just for the record, I like THE POSTMAN.)
As ever, I had to watch this thing myself and make up my own mind. And it's fair to say that THE LAST MOVIE didn't convince me.
The signs weren't promising from the get-go. It starts by dropping us into an interminably long parade on the streets of
a Peruvian town. Dennis is there, in the lead role (natch), and the poor sod looks as confused as we are as he wonders around among
all the chanting and, um, parading. I'd say that the film has lost the plot,
but that would be inaccurate, since there's not yet been any sign of one.
Somehow, it feels a bit like a Sam Peckinpah movie in this early stretch, the beginning of THE WILD BUNCH especially. Come to think of it, Hopper's image was pretty similar to Peckinpah's: the hard-drinking, drug-taking, live-wire rebel. He also looks as dishevelled and out-of-sorts as vintage Big Sam, and shares his affinity for shooting south of the border.
And in fact, now that I'm warming up to this kind-of hypothesis: since here our Dennis is playing a filmmaker, maybe THE LAST MOVIE is really some kind of indirect Peckinpah biopic? There's even some of the punctuating moments of slo-mo that the great man loved. And here's something else Peckinpah was known for: westerns. Which THE LAST MOVIE basically is. The dusty, wood-building town. Those shoot-outs. Horses. Hats and ponchos.
But, um, it’s also
not. After all the western imagery, we pivot to funkadelic 1970's disco dancing. Someone gets their ear pierced. There's a general free-love, hippy vibe, with much
singing along to acoustic guitar – sometimes as strummed by
Kris Kristofferson.
Then I realised:
the western bits are just the movie that Dennis's character is shooting! Oh right, OK, got it now. The town they're filming in looks like it's from a bygone era, but maybe that's just because it's Peru? Wait, wasn't Peru where Butch Cassidy and
Sundance were trying to get to? Is that significant? Probably not.
But this isn't
some kind of film-within-film thing. Because after 25 minutes of (pretty
interminable) screen time, the movie being filmed wraps and the crew buggers off. Except for Dennis's character, who seems to have fallen in love with a local girl. They go for long walks in mountains straight out of THE SOUND
OF MUSIC, including stopping off to romp under a waterfall where we are, um, treated to the sight of our director/star's bony white bottom. Thanks for that, Dennis old chum.
So he gives up his career as a ... whatever job he had on the film crew, to hang around with her, decked out in his ever-present hat/poncho combo. Mostly this involves the couple wandering around town or more mountains while holding hands. It goes on like this for quite a while.
And as for the last hour of the film, I'm going to let
Wikipedia do the work for me:
He [Hopper] thinks he
has found paradise, but is soon called in to help in a bizarre incident: the
Peruvian natives are 'filming' their own movie with 'cameras' made of sticks, and acting out real western movie violence,
as they do not understand movie fakery.
It's kind of an interesting idea, I guess? If a bit patronising. But it
doesn't really go anywhere. Instead, some vacationing Americans come to town and it becomes a hangout movie. Hopper and his lady start to
argue, trouble arriving in paradise. He takes solace in helping the locals make their
fake movie. I guess he's retreating into fiction to avoid facing a
less-than-perfect reality? Is that the message?
That would
probably be giving THE LAST MOVIE too much credit. Because suffice
it to say, this is 100% another disastrous vanity project. And in terms of sophomore
efforts, sadly director Hopper's is no PULP FICTION. Or THE TERMINATOR. Or SEVEN. Or, I don't know, even UPSTREAM COLOR or THE TOWN or something like that.
Two stars out of
five.
Valid use of the
word ‘last’? Clearly not,
either for Hopper or wider culture.
What would a movie called THE FIRST MOVIE be about? It was that one with the rocket hitting the
moon, right? Or the train coming towards the screen and making the audience lose their shit?
Previously: LAST DANCE
Next time: I’LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
Check out my
books: Jonathanlastauthor.com
