Cinema: From Adolescent to Puerile

That sound you hear is of checkbooks closing all over Hollywood. The books belong to the smart money; the reason for their action is The Last Movie* by Dennis Hopper—the same Dennis Hopper who recently opened the checkbook:, with Easy Rider. The faults of that film are legendary—the paranoid swagger, the inept drug trips, the comicbook heroism. But the film also shared with other examples of naive art an undisciplined energy and a curious magnetism. Its minuscule production cost (under $500,000) and giant grosses (over $50 million) made it the Volkswagen of the American film.

If this flint-eyed, wild-talking pothead could do...

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