Flashing back to a vintage Letterman interview with the late, great Dennis Hopper discussing Lynch’s BLUE VELVET.
I’m really having fun with these “Remember When” blasts, SHOCK’s ongoing series in which I dig through the dense, often treacherous YouTube jungle in search of vintage clips featuring mainstream pop culture outlets discussing horror and dark fantasy film culture…usually negatively.
It’s partially an exercise in nostalgic self-indulgence, but it’s also fascinating to map the lifespan of a film, from common perceptions upon release to the way we see the picture now. Horror films need at least a decade to become what they will become. If a picture can find its cult and endure beyond that initial ten-year window, then it’s immortal. More contemporary critics should consider this when they decimate a new genre film…
Speaking of immortal, we lost actor, director and iconoclast Dennis Hopper in 2010 and, though sad, it wasn’t exactly a tragedy. Hopper’s intense, chemically-drenched lifestyle in his 1960’s/70’s heyday is the stuff of legend and should have rightly wiped him out 30 years earlier. But in 1985/86, the man had a virtual professional rebirth, getting clean and sober and starring in three coal-black motion pictures that were diverse, bizarre and unforgettable: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2, RIVER’S EDGE…and David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET.
And although CHAINSAW and EDGE gave Hopper meaty roles, with ample room to amplify and explore his own storied strangeness while etching rich characters on-screen, it was his work as the deranged, perverted and completely dangerous Frank Booth in Lynch’s thundering surrealist psychodramatic noir that really put him back on the map.
It put Lynch back on the map too, after the crushing defeat that was 1984’s DUNE. BLUE VELVET put the weirdness that Lynch was experimenting with in his early short films, his 1978 industrial-strength shocker ERASERHEAD and the steampunk-tinted melancholy of his Mel Brooks-produced THE ELEPHANT MAN, into sharp, sickening focus and truly defined the style that he would exploit over the next three decades making movies and art.
And in the eye of BLUE VELVET’s storm is Hopper, whose lethal Frank sucks on the titular fabric while huffing gas through a ventilator and sexually assaulting the woman (Isabella Rossellini) he is obsessed with. Simply put, it’s the ultimate Hopper performance in the ultimate David Lynch joint.
So with that, let’s dial back the clock to 1986. The show was NBC’s Late Night With David Letterman. Letterman was at his peak of popularity and in the prime of his celebrated edge. No one was funnier, weirder and cooler than 80’s Letterman. Well, except 80’s Dennis Hopper…
In this amazing clip, Hopper and Letterman – who is obviously in awe of Hopper’s performance – get into great detail discussing his turn as Frank Booth in BLUE VELVET, revealing some great insight into how Hopper helped bring that character to life. He also discusses his work in RIVER’S EDGE and even touches on CHAINSAW 2.
It’s a great interview. And will make you want to watch BLUE VELVET again immediately, something I plan to do as soon as I press ‘publish’.
Enjoy…
