A uthor Tom Folsom is no stranger to larger-than-life figures; his past subjects include Crazy Joe Gallo and drug kingpin Leroy Barnes. SFR spoke with him regarding his latest bio, Hopper: A Journey into the American Dream.
Dealing with such an iconic subject as Dennis Hopper, how did you keep your material fresh?
That’s a great question. I was not only dealing with Dennis Hopper, who has a lot of well-worn stories, but it’s also Andy Warhol, Elvis and this rogue’s gallery of American pop icons. What I really tried to do is get back to the source material and imagine what it was like for an 18-year-old kid who comes to Hollywood by way of Dodge City, Kan. For me, it was just seeing it with fresh eyes.
No. I came to this project through his literary agent—they had been trying to do this for 30 years. I started from scratch. What I basically did was storm Dennis Hopper’s world. I lived in Taos for three months and collected stories. I was also able to sit down with Peter Fonda for a few hours and was lucky to get not just raw emotions but reminiscences and weirdly enough, confessionals.
That he was a wild man to be sure, but he also had an extraordinary artistic sensibility. The same sensibility that made Easy Rider what it was. People sometimes forget that he directed it and they consider it a fluke—which isn’t the case at all.
Featured image: Mark Seliger
