my next problem

Every night we're all forced to watch Charlie Sheen self destructing before our very faces and on HDTV, nonetheless.

Do I want to watch a crazed maniac talk about his amazing will power and "magic?" Not when I can see through his addict's language and rampant denial that he has a very real problem.

What pisses me off the most about his media spree is his constant self-championing and his claim that his chaotic scenes and parties with porn stars and free basing are absolutely original, extreme, "radical," and basically beyond anything anyone else in humankind has ever been able to experience, survive, endure, outlive, or outlast.

His proclamation that "the run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, and Richards look like droopy-eyed, one-armed children" not only makes no sense, as all 4 men have both upper body appendages, but also, Keith Richards? Are you serious?

Not to mention what I actually screamed at the television tonight.

"Honey, Dennis Hopper created 'magic' before you even knew what magic was."

Hopper blew himself up with dynamite and survived the blast. He ran naked through the jungle for days straight. He threw a burning mattress out a hotel window. He drank fifths of vodka just to counteract the cocaine, but most of all, the man made movies that inspire, last, and ultimately, kick the ass of Two and a Half Men back about 5 miles in the race of cultural relevance.

Top 10 Movies in 2010

10. The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski

9.5. Daddy Longlegs, Safdie Brothers

9. Youth in Revolt, Miguel Arteta

8. Making Plans for Lena, Christophe Honore

7. Inception, Christopher Nolan

6. Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold

5. Tiny Furniture, Lena Dunham

4. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg

3. Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese

2. Broken Embraces, Pedro Almodovar (technically I think this was 09, but I saw it in 10.)

1. Black Swan, Darren Aronofksy

...and the top 10 not necessarily from 2010 that I viewed for the 1st time:

10. Sin Nombre, Cary Joji Fukunaga

9. The Proposal, Anne Fletcher

8. Gigante, Adrian Biniez

7. Mala Noche, Gus Van Sant

6. Diary of a Chambermaid, Luis Bunuel

5. A Christmas Tale, Arnaud Desplechin

4. The Maid, Sebastian Silva

3. Blue Beard, Catherine Breillat

2. Elegy, Isabel Coixet

1. The Last Mistress, Catherine Breillat

Today I just watched The King of Marvin Gardens (Rafelson) and Drive, He Said (Nicholson) and A Safe Place (Jaglom). So the list above isn't entirely accurate. But I watched a ton of films this year, and I'm glad I did. Those French examinations of our psychology and sex still win with me every time, but nothing, and I really mean nothing, beats the American 1970's, beginning with 69's Easy Rider. Here's to the cinephiles out there, may 2011 be a year of fascinating films!

And, of course, I dedicate this post to the great Dennis Hopper because it is through his watchful and poetic eyes that I understood what it means to love a film: the day after I saw Easy Rider, I crashed my car, and my life has never been the same because I take the time to really see. Thank you, Mr. Hopper. We're all in your debt, and we'll miss you forever.

Henry Hopper in GVS's new flick Restless

Henry looks just like his Dad... can't wait!

i wasn't born to follow

dennis hopper. you are my hero, and i am so sorry for your family. i will always be grateful for everything you achieved and survived, and i am infinitely more aware, happy, and engaged due to your creative output during the time you spent on this earth. thank you. more than you will ever know.

To Dennis Hopper (1st draft)

“I take up/the nourishment of his pale green eyes.”

Just like Frank O’Hara wrote about James Dean

I will write your eyes. Not Dodge City sky blue, not

the azure of a clean Mexican ocean, not even the shade

of Midwestern cornflowers.

No, your eyes are the color

of a sad-angled guitar twang. The medium acid wash

of naturally faded jeans. The cerulean abstraction

of a man’s splash as he jumps seventeen stories

into a chlorinated swimming pool.

Your eyes are more

powerful than Yves Klein’s monstrous monochromatic

case studies. As iconic and otherworldly as Neptune.

And through insomniac purgatory, cocaine insanity, cold

cases of beer, brown bottles of room temperature whiskey,

self-induced dynamite explosions, Hollywood

black lists, and your Blue Velvet return, always alive.

Your eyes

are as tragic and magnetic as the promise

of that Last Movie nightmare, that Easy Rider

dream, the so-sweet-you-can-almost-taste-it color

of the upper left corner of our American flag.

Hopper, man

a crack pot idea

It's no secret that I'm probably one of the biggest Dennis Hopper enthusiasts on the planet. On Wednesday I finally went to Tony Shafrazi Gallery to see the Hopper exhibit Signs of the Times. I felt like I was there for 10 minutes, but I stayed for over an hour and a half. Shafrazi's a huge gallery, and most of the wall space is devoted to photos that Hopper took from 1961-67. When you get all the images from the scenes of his amazing experiences (just in the 60's!) into one room-- civil rights marches, Warhol's factory, the beginnings of Pop Art, Taos NM, Hollywood, etc.-- the quintessentially American status of Dennis Hopper's icon-ship becomes manifestly apparent.

And then when you go into the long 3-room chamber of film clips, forget about it. They've got clips from virtually every reel of film his face has been exposed on, even the super rare documentary The American Dreamer, in which drugged-out Hopper struggles to edit his best and most honestly experimental work The Last Movie.

So yeah, it was basically just a cavern of awesomeness that I could house up in until the show's end. My Hopper worship just multiplied about 500 times, and I'm happy because this guy doesn't get enough credit for his incredible career and production of art work in multiple genres. His eye's phenomenal, from collecting art to creating it to making the films that take my soul (and many others) and put them into visuals and words that are so heartbreakingly beautiful you just wanna blow yourself up with dynamite! (Yeah, he did that and SURVIVED!)

And survival's what it comes down to for me when I think about Dennis Hopper. He started out as a golden boy actor straight from the farms of Kansas. Hello, American Dream! He made it in Hollywood until he got too creative and sure of his own ideas and was blacklisted from film for rebelling against his director. Then he got creative, played around with Art's elite, roamed the country, made Easy Rider, and fell off the deep end from alcohol and drug abuse. He made a masterpiece that won the Venice Film Festival (THE LAST MOVIE) and went bat-shit crazy in Taos, NM. But he kept film in his life, and film kept him alive. He pushed life to the absolute limits, suffered and destroyed because of that craving for the edge of the abyss, but the most American thing about Hopper is that he came BACK from that. He realized the American Dream is the most major mythic lie (and stubbornly sought goal) in our culture, said fuck it and did his own thing, but then reintegrated himself back in the artistic society on his own terms.

best part of the best movie

1:55- 2:25 pretty much explains everything.

get in me.

I have a problem. I like jerks. Think Dennis Hopper in The Last Movie, Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces, Matt Dillon in The Outsiders, or Josh Hartnett in The Virgin Suicides. Better yet, think Daniel Desario in Freaks and Geeks.

Turns out James Franco is back in on the jerk action in the Wholphin No. 8 DVD of "rare and unseen short films." Watch a clip above. I have to go now, I have to die.

you used to get it in your fishnets

Lox took this sweet picture of a picture of Dennis Hopper at the Times Warner Center.