Dennis Hopper Quotes
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The inside of the Pentagon is an incredible place and a dramatic set. We do [travel] outside, but the inside workings of the civilian oversight of the military inside the Pentagon is really about as exciting as anything you ever want to deal with. It is really amazing.
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Art is a bad word in Hollywood. You use art too many times and they show you the elevator and then your name is taken off the parking lot.
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Jimmy [Dean] was the most talented and original actor I ever saw work. He was also a guerrilla artist who attacked all restrictions on his sensibility. Once he pulled a switchblade and threatened to murder his director. I imitated his style in art and in life. It got me in a lot of trouble.
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Banks wont even loan each other money, everybody's going broke, and here we are inside here, these people are going to be out on the street selling apples and pencils and they're still going to be buying paintings for this money, so I don't know what's going on in this world.
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The best and only authentic book written on the sixties underground.
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I think not being a professional photographer was actually a blessing, because it allowed me to shoot things professional photographers wouldn't shoot, or wouldn't try or attempt to shoot without lights. So I did all my stuff natural and without lights.
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... I'm sort of a nervous person with the camera, so I will just shoot arbitrarily until I can focus and compose something, and then I make a shot. So generally, in [the] proof sheets, there are only three or four really concentrated efforts to take a photograph. It's not like a professional kind of person who sets it up so every photograph looks really cool.
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I wanted to be an actor. I decided when I was very young, when I first saw movies, that I wanted to be an actor.
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I didn't see an abstract painting until I was 18, when I went to Vincent Price's house and saw Richard Niebencorn, Wolff, Jackson Pollack. He had an amazing collection. I didn't know people painted abstractly, I thought I was just doing something wholeheartedly.
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My whole written history is one big lie! I mean, I can't even believe my history.
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Dialectic logic is there's only love and hate, you either love somebody or you hate them.
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There are moments that I`ve had some real brilliance, you know. But I think they are moments. And sometimes, in a career, moments are enough.
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People keep asking me, 'What evil lurks in you to play such bad characters?' There is no evil in me, I just wear tight underwear.
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I've always been doing some sort of art. I started off, when I was very young, painting.
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The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.
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I've been sober now for 18 years. With all the drugs, psychedelics and narcotics I did, I was [really] an alcoholic. Honestly, I only used to do cocaine so I could sober up and drink more. My last five years of drinking was a nightmare. I was drinking a half-gallon of rum with a fifth of rum on the side, in case I ran out, 28 beers a day, and three grams of cocaine just to keep me moving around. And I thought I was doing fine because I wasn't crawling around drunk on the floor.
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I am just a middle-class farm boy from Dodge City and my grandparents were wheat farmers. I thought painting, acting, directing and photography were all part of being an artist. I have made my money that way. And I have had some fun. It's not been a bad life.
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Every time I go to Europe, I remember that James Dean never saw Europe, but yet I see his face everywhere. There's James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe - windows of the Champs Elysees, discos in the south of Spain, restaurants in Sweden, t-shirts in Moscow. My life was confused and disoriented for years by his passing. My sense of destiny destroyed - the great films he would have directed, the great performances he would have given, the great humanitarian he would have become, and yet, he's the greatest actor and star I have ever known.
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Independent films in this country are in the same position. Miramax and Fine Line are not independent - they're with Disney! Come on. Or they're with Warner Brothers. They're all with somebody.
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The alcohol was awful. I was a terrible alcoholic. I mean, people used to ask how much drugs I did. I said, 'I only do drugs so I can drink more'. I was doing the coke so I could drink more. I mean, I don't know any other reason. I'd start drinking in the morning. I'd drink all day long.
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I've been a Republican since Reagan. I voted for Bush and his father. I don't tell a lot of people, because I live in a city where somebody who voted for Bush is really an outcast.
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Like all artists, I want to cheat death a little and contribute something to the next generation.
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I couldn't get a job acting all the time and there were down periods where I could take photographs or paint. I got into a lot of trouble when I was young, from making two films with James Dean, watching him work and then him dying and thinking I could turn down work. There was a big difference, he was a star and I wasn't. So I got in a lot of trouble and was essentially banned from Hollywood.
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When we're out of the eighties, the nineties are gonna make the sixties look like the fifties!
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I should have been dead ten times over. I've thought about that a lot. I believe in miracles. It's an absolute miracle that I'm still around.
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To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.
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I was always involved in art and when I went under contract at Warner Bros. at 18, it afforded me the possibility of never having to stop painting, never having to stop taking photographs and so on, and to actually live a cultural life.
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Photography and painting, all of that fed into my directing eventually.
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I was reading a lot of Thomas Jefferson at the time, and Jefferson said that every 20 years, if one party has stayed in power, it's your obligation as an American to vote the other party in.
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I never really made any money and it certainly cost me more to take photographs than I got for them.
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