What's it like to hop in the van with Dennis Hopper, man?

I had written off Tom Cruise. He was trapped playing Tom Cruise in every Tom Cruise movie, which were repetitive, predictable and ridiculous.

Cruise finally pulled out of the rut in “American Made,” now in theaters. He plays the real-life Barry Seal, a drug-smuggling pilot from Louisiana who worked for both the CIA in Central America and Pablo Escobar in Colombia during the cocaine-crazed ‘80s. Seal was very good at his job until he became an informant for the DEA and ended up with a bullet through his head in 1986, courtesy of Pablo.

In “American Made,” Cruise switches into full charm mode playing the amoral, apolitical pilot who runs guns for the Contras and coke for the Medellín Cartel but does not get high on his own supply. Seal is in it for the thrills and the adrenaline rush. Cruise hasn’t been this funny and loose since “Risky Business” (1983). 

I was prepared not to like “American Made” because I thought it could not top the made-for-HBO film “Doublecrossed” (1991), the first bio-pic about Seal. “Doublecrossed” starred Dennis Hopper, one of my favorite American actors of all time, and was filmed in Louisiana.

In 1990, when I was living in New Orleans, I visited the set of “Doublecrossed” while a courtroom scene was being filmed across the Mississippi River in Algiers, La. It was my big chance to interview the legendary Hopper in person and it turned out to be just as intense as I expected.

Boom goes the dynamite

Hopper started his career with a bang as a teenager in such straight-up classics as “Rebel Without A Cause” (1955) and “Giant” (1956), both starring James Dean. He quickly gained a reputation as being hard to work with on the set. Famed director Henry Hathaway forced Hopper to do 80 takes of one scene as punishment while filming “From Hell to Texas” (1958).

During the ‘60s, Hopper found smaller roles in such movies as “The Trip” (1967) and “Cool Hand Luke” (1967) until he and Peter Fonda made a biker flick called “Easy Rider” (1969). Suddenly, Hopper and Fonda were the poster boys for the counter-culture. “Easy Rider” became a phenomenon and Hopper morphed into a wild man during the drug-addled ‘70s. Check out his performance as the chain-smoking photographer in “Apocalypse Now” (1979) and that will tell you all you need to know about Hopper’s state of mind.

In 1983, Hopper traveled to Houston to screen his edgy family drama “Out of the Blue” (1980) at Rice University. He arrived in Houston with writer Terry Southern (“The Magic Christian”) and German film director Wim Wenders (“The American Friend”) in tow. After the screening, Hopper invited the audience members to board school buses and ride out to the Big H Speedway. The obviously coked-up Hopper announced he was going to surround himself with six sticks of dynamite, light the fuse and perform the Russian Dynamite Death Chair Act.

And he did.

A reporter from the Rice newspaper had this to say about the big bang: “Dennis Hopper, at one with the shock wave, was thrown headlong in a halo of fire. For a single, timeless instant he looked like Wile E. Coyote, frazzled and splayed by his own petard. Then billowing smoke hid the scene. We all rushed forward pass the police, into the expanding cloud of smoke, excited, apprehensive, and no less expectant than we had been before the explosion.

"Were we looking for Hopper or pieces we could take home as souvenirs? Later Hopper would say blowing himself up was one of the craziest things he has ever done, and that it was weeks before he could hear again. At the moment, though, none of that mattered. He had been through the thunder, the light, and the heat, and he was still in one piece. And when Dennis Hopper staggered out of that cloud of smoke, his eyes were glazed with the thrill of victory and spinout.”

In the mid-’80s, Hopper wisely checked himself into rehab and kicked the drugs and booze. His movie career bounced back, too. Fresh out of rehab and sober, he played a paranoid drug dealer named Feck in the cult classic “River’s Edge” (1986), a drug-huffing kidnapper-rapist in the surreal “Blue Velvet” (1986) and got an Oscar nomination playing an alcoholic coach in “Hoosiers” (1986). Who says the universe does not have an ironic sense of humor?

Get in the van, man

When I arrived at the movie set in Algiers, it took all afternoon to shoot one courtroom scene. Everyone thinks making movies is a glamorous job, but it’s actually pretty tedious work. In between takes, Hopper sat silently at a large table with his arms stretched out and his palms flat on the surface. He stared straight ahead. I couldn’t tell if he was in the zone or trying to summon a demon.

The day dragged on and the sun started to set. I sat in the hall talking to Hopper’s co-star Robert Carradine (“Revenge of the Nerds”), who was self-effacing and funny. Just when I thought my shot to interview Hopper had expired, an assistant ushered me to a van that looked like it had been borrowed from a basketball team. The interview would take place during the drive back to Hopper’s hotel in New Orleans. I got in the back seat. 

Hopper climbed in the van and sat directly in front of me. When he turned around and draped his arm over the back of the seat, his face was just a few inches away. I was staring into the eyes of Frank Booth from “Blue Velvet.” Yipes.

The actor talked in clipped breaths, punctuated occasionally by machine-gun bursts of laughter. He spoke openly about his cocaine use and the Death Chair stunt.

“Don’t let anybody tell you cocaine won’t drive you crazy,” he said.

To land his most infamous role as Frank Booth, Hopper got on the phone with director David Lynch, whom he had never met, and said, “Don’t worry about me playing Frank Booth because I am Frank Booth.”

Lynch got off the phone and told “Blue Velvet” co-star Laura Dern: “God, I just talked to Dennis Hopper and he said he was Frank Booth. He’s wonderful for the part, but how in the hell are we going to have lunch with him?”

While we were on the subject of bad boy Booth, I asked Hopper if the character’s habit of putting cloth in his mouth before he committed a despicable assault was based on his character in “Out of the Blue,” who also put cloth in his mouth before committing a despicable assault.

Hopper squinted his eyes and gave me an ever more intense look. Then he said, “You know, I have been interviewed a lot over the years and no one has ever asked me that question.”

I felt a little thump of pride.

Then he said, “But the answer is no. Next question.”

And the van raced on through the night, over the Mississippi River, while I was trapped in the back with nowhere to hide.

Contact Mark Hinson at mhinson@tallahassee.com