One only needs to follow Dennis Hopper's career to see just how far things got in the 70's. As the 60's rolled along, Hopper was known as a rebellious minor star in the old Hollywood system. When the counterculture sprang up, he joined Peter Fonda, Dean Stockwell, Bruce Dern and Jack Nicholson as a young actor who saw the new potentials of cinema. He appeared in Hollywoods first psychedelic epic THE TRIP 1967. Full of flashforwards, strobic cuts, swirling colors, mythic images, and blissed out dialogue, it was the big carnival ride of LSD on the silver screen. Hopper's roll was as a hippie acid veteran who swings around in a room of memories and inner landscapes helping to guide Peter Fonda through his first trip. Hopper next appeared in THE GLORY STOMPERS 1968 a typical example of the biker genre. EASY RIDER 1969 was an altogether different biker film. Hopper co-wrote, directed and starred in the surprise hit, the quintessential sixties movie. Suddenly he's on top of the Hollywood game, he captured the elusive youth market and the big studios wanted him to do it again. But what they got was more then they could deal with, much less comprehend. THE LAST MOVIE 1971 was his follow-up to the hugely successful RIDER, but it's core was much more elusive and abstract, dealing with the nature of film reality and reality it's self. The editing was loose, the story half told. Hopper shot tons of footage in Peru and brought it back to his home in Taos, New Mexico. He seemed lost in this editing process and the studio was getting upset. For a while Alexandro Jodorowsky, who's EL TOPO 1971 Hopper greatly admired, assisted in the editing. During this time the documentary THE AMERICAN DREAMER 1971 was made showing Dennis toting a machine gun, frolicking with numerous groupies, and acting supremely wasted. After THE LAST MOVIE bombed, Dennis did get one more acting gig in Tinseltown playing the lead in KID BLUE 1973. Soon after he was in unofficial exile, shunned from Hollywood as quickly as he was embraced. He worked on films abroad. For a time Jodorowsky considered Hopper (along with John Lennon!) for a part in THE HOLY MOUNTAIN 1973, until friction between the two ended that prospect. In Australia he starred as MAD DOG MORGAN 1975. THE SKY IS FALLING 1976 was a sicko flick about avenging GODSPELL-like hippies, angels of death for decadent American expatriates in a small Spanish village. Hopper portrays Chicken, a burned-out junkie poet. He went on to TRACKS 1976 portraying a psychotic Vietnam veteran transporting his dead comrade to his hometown grave. Later in 1976-77, Hopper contributed his manic self to APOCALYPSE NOW 1979 the ultimate 70's big budget psychedelic death trip. By the end of the '70s, Hopper wound up in Canada starring in OUT OF THE BLUE 1979. After the original director walked off the shoot Hopper, who was hired to play the alcoholic father, was chosen as the director.