Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel - Hardcover

Peter L. Winkler

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1569804494 ISBN 13: 9781569804490

Publisher: Barricade Books, 2011

Synopsis

One of America's most intriguing show-business luminaries and true rebels, Dennis Hopper's amazing life was a roller-coaster series of triumphs and failures. Always intent on proving his genius and leaving a legacy, the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated Hopper acted in more than 115 movies and four TV series, directed seven films, and passionately pursued an artist's life as a photographer and creator and collector of modern art, embracing the work of artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein before the label "pop art" was even coined. Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel explores Hopper's life from his lonely childhood in Kansas, where he became determined to win the affection of others by becoming a great artist, to his often drug-fueled days and nights in Hollywood and his spiritual home in Taos, New Mexico.

Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel unsparingly documents Hopper's journey from a self-destructive bad boy to a reformed member of the Hollywood establishment and iconic survivor of the counterculture, providing a revealing look at his early days in Hollywood, when he had an affair with sixteen-year-old Natalie Wood and took acting lessons from James Dean, the making of Easy Rider, the crushing failure of The Last Movie and Hopper's lost years in Taos, and his recovery and political right turn in the late 1980s. The book also delves into Hopper's tumultuous personal life, including his dramatic attempt to divorce his wife while he battled terminal cancer.

This is the first book to cover the entire life and career of the man who hung out with James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Jack Nicholson, costarred in and directed Easy Rider, and came back big in Blue Velvet, overcoming years of alcoholism and drug addiction. Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel is a must-read for Hopper's fans, film buffs, and readers hooked on celebrity scandals.

About this title

About the Author:

Val Holley, author of the definitive biography of James Dean, calls Peter Winkler "A genuine Hollywood historian." Peter Winkler has written about movies for CineFan, Crime Magazine, Filmfax, The Jimston Journal, Playboy, PopMatters, and spiked; and reviewed movies for Video Theater, where he served as associate editor. Mr. Winkler has also written for The Huffington Post, PC Laptop Computers Magazine, PICO-Laptops and Portables, and Smart TV & Sound. He was the subject of a feature story in the Los Angeles Times and has been a guest on talk-radio shows in the U.S. and Europe. Mr. Winkler graduated with academic honors from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1978.

Review:

"This week I read 'Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel,' and instantly fell in love with the story.  Peter Winkler figured out how to make the book so engrossing, so sensational . . . It's the one book you need to pick up and read at some point in your life." -- Tommy Garrett, Canyon News

I also told you . . .  that Barricade Books was publishing Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel by Peter L. Winkler. Well, I read it, and all I can say is ... whew! Wild Ride is exactly that. One incredible drug and drink-fueled tale tumbles over the next. Hopper, as presented by author Winkler, is fascinating. - Liz Smith, wowowow.com

I knew Dennis Hopper in his wild days and his sober days, and this book captures the man in his many incarnations. Winkler's deeply researched biography of Hopper is the definitive book on this live wire who lived on the high wire. -- Filmmaker Philippe Mora

"Entertaining and eventful." - Jenny Diski, London Review of Books

"Run -- don't walk -- to the nearest book vendor and get your hands on a copy of Peter L. Winkler's 'Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel.' I was hooked on Winkler's biography from the minute I picked it up, and I suspect that will be the case with other film addicts." - David M. Kinchen, huntingtonnews.net

About this edition

• Publisher: Barricade Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1569804494
• ISBN 13: 9781569804490
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432