| Photo: Easy Rider |
| Hopper’s message to conservative America in the 1969 classic, “Easy Rider.” |
Operators of the dispensary where film legend Dennis Hopper bought medical marijuana in his final days said they have lost one of their star clients, and a good friend.
“We’re sorry to see one of our favorite patients go,” said a staffer at The Farmacy Cannabis Club in Venice, California, according to Radar Online. The staffer confirmed that Hopper was a “frequent patient” as he battled terminal cancer.
| Photo: Flash City |
| Hopper was photographed in January as he visited The Farmacy Cannabis Club in Venice, California. |
”Our love and condolences go out to his family and friends,” the staffer said. “He will be sorely missed.”
Hopper, 74, died Saturday, May 29, after a long illness with prostate cancer.
His six-decade film career, including more than 100 movies, spawned fans all over the world.
“We had Easy Rider playing on one of our televisions for the first time and he happened to come in on that very day,” the Farmacy staffer said. “He was excited to see that the movie was still relevant, because a lot of us in here hadn’t seen it yet. It was really cool.”
Hopper’s filmography contains many high points in addition to that 1969 counterculture classic which he directed, which featured an iconic pot-smoking scene with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson.
Near the beginning of his film career, Hopper appeared in the 1955 classic Rebel Without A Cause, the movie that immortalized James Dean. He was also in Dean’s 1956 vehicle, Giant. Hopper had a bit part in 1957’s Gunfight At The OK Corral, and legend has it that he was forcibly ejected from the set of True Grit by a shotgun-toting John Wayne.
| Photo: Los Angeles Times |
The actor started coming into his own in the 1967 drugsploitation flick The Trip alongside Peter Fonda, who was of course his co-star two years later in Easy Rider.
Hopper’s career kicked into high gear in the late 1960s, with appearances in the Monkees’ experimental movie Head and Clint Eastwood’s Hang ‘Em High in 1968, then in True Grit and Easy Rider in 1969.
The mercurial actor had a memorable role as a deranged journalist in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 epic, Apocalypse Now. He also appeared in Coppola’s Rumble Fish four years later.
Dennis chewed up the scenery as a chainsaw-wielding madman in Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 in 1996, and played yet another psycho in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet later that same year.
Among Hopper’s more recent efforts are 2008’s Swing Vote, 2007’s Memory and 2005’s Land Of The Dead, directed by zombie film king George Romero.
In January, Hopper filed for divorce from Victoria Duffy, his wife of nearly 14 years.
“I wish Victoria the best,” Hopper said, “but only want to spend these difficult days surrounded by my children and close friends.”
Duffy had filed complaints about Hopper’s practice of keeping joints throughout his Venice compound, ready to provide quick pain relief, and his habit of keeping loaded guns in strategic locations at his home, reports Richard Stayton of The Los Angeles Times.
“He was just a really nice gentleman,” said the Farmacy staffer. “He was literally one of the staff’s favorite people that come in here.”