Dennis Hooper in front of Julian Schnabel’s plate painting

Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood is Melbourne’s ACMI (The Australian Centre for the Moving Image) current exhibition. Originally produced in 2008 by Cinémathèque Française, in conjunction with Hopper and his production company Easy Rider Productions, the exhibition not only encapsulates his career as auteur and artist but also broadly chronicles a time in cinematic history when the old Hollywood system was being invaded with a new cinematic freedom from formula, convention and censorship.

The exhibition is being held in gallery 1, a long and vast room in the bowels of ACMI, allowing for a grand entrance of sight and sound, somehow fitting for an individual of Dennis Hopper’s cultural stature. A digital slideshow of Hopper’s image and audio from a piece-to-camera/montage – put together by the curator of the original French exhibition, Matthieu Orléan – entitled ‘I Remember’ draw you down the huge staircase to what essentially is the introduction, except your attention is ripped away by the ticket office. The disorientation from the disruption of purchasing a ticket takes a while to regain a sense of harmony with the exhibition, but I’m this can be alleviated by spending some time with the aforementioned video before working your way through the exhibition.

A readymade artwork, Hotel Green (Entrance) (1963) points the way into the exhibition. Hopper apparently met Marcel Duchamp at the Hotel Green, stole the sign and got him to sign it thus collaborating on a Duchamp ready-made. It is completely understandable that this piece presides over the exhibition, not only due to the French origins of the exhibition and Duchamp; it also perfectly symbolizes the freedom and rebellion that is Dennis Hopper’s artistic career.

Navigation around the exhibition is through five thematic sections which guide you through Hopper’s creative life as well as a point of reference for his personally collected artworks. On the Fringes of Hollywood immerses you in his early Hollywood career with the suggestion that while he worked within the Classical Hollywood System he was an outsider. And that he definitely was, after his need for countless takes while shooting Henry Hathaway’s From Hell to Texas in 1958, the director told him that he would never work in Hollywood again and was effectively blacklisted from any major Hollywood role for almost a decade, a film which incidentally is absent from the exhibition. Also in this section are photographic portraits of Hopper, at work and play. Notable favourites are Annie Leibovits’ 1995 picture of Hopper with Christopher Walken at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood and a photo taken at Hoppers house in 1965 by William Claxon. The later, a spontaneous snapshot captures my attention as it holds a lack of realism due to having only ever known Dennis Hopper through image. I feel the need to strip away his icon status and gain a sense of reality about the man.

The New Myths of Hollywood turns the view to world through Hopper’s eyes showcasing his own photographs and iconic art from the 1960’s. While the audience’s attention is easily drawn to a sizable collage of his early Hollywood career, I am drawn to the small screen opposite. Here I find the only direct glimpse into Hopper’s personality as I watch him fool around with his friends in the Andy Warhol film entitled Tarzan and Jane Regained… Sort of (1963). Oddly placed in this section, definitely not within the context of this section, is a small screen showing a sample of recent television and advertising work from his resume. Most amusing is the 1990’s UK commercial for Ford Cougar, where Hopper drives a Cougar down a US highway alongside Billy (himself) from Easy Rider, to Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild (from the film’s soundtrack). Apparently he finds nothing wrong with selling a little of your creative soul to the advertising devil!

Still from 1990 Ford Cougar Advertisement

Leaving Hollywood focuses on Hopper’s second directing effort, Easy Rider (1969), the time following when he left Los Angeles, lived in Taos, New Mexico, for fifteen years and the work that he did during that time. All sorts of Easy Rider paraphernalia is on display with the most fascinating (for me) being the script advisor’s original shooting script. I was torn between the excitement for the history that it holds, having worked on films myself, and the fact that it looked like it could have been anybody’s script. Not a mark on it to suggest that it was even used by anyone during the shoot, except that the paper did look suitably aged. It looked like it could have been a copy I picked from Cinestore in Sydney when I was a film student a fair time ago, still it was pretty cool.

Los Angeles, the Real Face of Hollywood centers on Hopper’s returned interest in Los Angeles, within his art and filmmaking. Polaroid photos and his fifth directorial Colors (1988) express his interest in street culture, while his return to abstract expressionist art reflects his curiosity with street culture’s key art form, graffiti. In accompaniment to the film is a media deconstruction by New York digital media artist Cory Arcangel. Known mostly for his reprogrammed Nintendo game cartridge videos, Arcangel has written a computer program based on slit-scan imaging. By separating the colours, scanning one row of pixels at a time and then stretching it down the screen, the resulting video is a mesmerizing cascade of colour with an approximate duration of 33 days.

A still from Cory Arcangel’s Colors, (2005)

And the last thematic section, Exploding Hollywood, explores post New Hollywood and his disillusion with the rise of the Blockbuster and the studios regaining control. In this final section we see how Hopper’s disenchantment in the film industry and his own history if self destructive drug abuse manifests itself creatively by blowing himself up at a speedway in Texas titled Life After On Canvas (1983). But amongst Lichtenstein’s Mad Scientist (1963) and Robert Longo’s awesome eight foot charcoal drawing Bodyhammer Glock (1993) we find my favourite Hopper film, Out Of The Blue (1980). Originally banned in the UK and missing out on the Palme d’Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival it is Hopper’s finest yet most oppressive masterpiece about a young punk girl trying to find her place in the world. I remember randomly coming across a suspiciously fraudulent VHS copy many years ago and it has been a prized film of mine ever since.

Overall I loved the exhibition, although I believe it was to do with my personal admiration for Dennis Hopper’s creative career. As somebody who also uses multiple art forms to creatively express myself, I found the experience invaluable. With that said, it clearly was not an exhibition originally designed for gallery 1 at ACMI. Sound was a small issue, while it was not a problem with overlapping audio as you survey the photography and art – it even worked in its favour by almost becoming an avant garde soundscape – it did pose a menace when trying to listen to clips of Hopper’s film work where headphones were not supplied. I found myself on occasion wondering if I was listening to the right audio. If you are a fan of Dennis Hopper or the American avant garde that he represents I highly recommend paying the admission fee. If not then you’re probably better off hanging onto your money and wandering into Screen Worlds or gallery two.

Explicit Depictions in Sexual Films

I don’t consider myself a feminist, mainly because it implies as sense of misandry that I don’t hold. This isn’t to say that it actually does, I’m well aware that it’s just a misapprehension that I grew up with. While I’m right behind gender equality I’m pretty sure that in the fight for this equality, both sides have forgotten their reasons for being.  How I see it, as ‘surrealist’ Meret Oppenheim did, we are all feminine and masculine and each of us is a variation on that, agreeing with Judith Butler that feminism needs to allow people to form their own identity without the ideals of patriarchy or feminism. Then I guess that’s an ideal itself.  

Film in my view has a tendency to distort any representation of a true because it is too wound up in extricating itself from any expression of gender whether it’s masculine or feminine. Up until Catherine Breillat’s Romance, I had not seen a film that works in setting up sexuality so that it shifts gender representation to a more equal footing.

Breillat has shifted the gender emphasis of her two protagonists. While you could read it as a straight swap, I think it works perfectly in leveling the ‘sexual’ playing field, presenting one of the most ‘truly feminist’ texts I’ve ever seen. 

I can see how some would find the sex in Romance confronting if your not comfortable with experiencing images of real sex outside the confines of your own bedroom. But to someone whose seen her fair share of pornography, the sex between all the characters is nothing like the emotionless orgasm directed sex of porn. Marie (Caroline Ducey) walks into each encounter with her eyes open, even when she ends up gettting raped by the stranger in her stairwell.

When you take up a stranger’s offer for ten dollar head I’m sorry but you need to take responsibility for any consequences no matter what your gender, which she does in her refusing to feel ashamed. It intrigues me when a film like Romance is banned in Australia for this scene when you compare it to the nine minute rape scene of Alex (Monica Bellucci) in Irreversible, which was never banned because the Classification Review Board refused to hear the application because it was ‘out of time’ (!?!?).

Not that I believe that it should have been banned, for artistic reasons. Being one of the most harrowing scenes I’ve ever seen (another is the fire extinguisher scene earlier in the film), to me this depiction expressed is the closest one could imagine to actually falling victim to such an attack and as a filmmaker this ‘reality’ is one aesthetic I search for in film.

It was brought to my attention last week that I haven’t expressed my personal film aesthetic. While I am aware that many factors go into building a personal film aesthetic, I thought I would retrace my film-going history as a source of aesthetic building. I also want to mention at this point that these are skimming the top of all that I would like to make mention of but hopefully you get the idea. What draws me to a movie? When I was an undergrad studying television production over a decade ago, two friends and I asked ourselves this same question. Funnily enough our three answers varied, auteur, cast and narrative. While my friends were more into who directed or acted, I was for the journey of the story.

My first remembered movie experience was a double feature at the drive–in. The Forestville drive-in was my favourite place on earth. First up was On Golden Pond and the second was The Man from Snowy River,  I don’t remember much only that I preferred the former and the wild horse’s eye shot in the later kind of freaked me out. However, I was only around 7. What I do remember very vividly around the same time was that The World According to Garp was also playing, I never saw it til decades later but whenever we drove past I was just mesmerised by its title. 

A few years later I remember going with friends to see Ghostbusters. I can’t say that I think that highly of the film now but I was so excited by my experience that when I got home I told my mum absolutely everything that happened, down to every cinematic detail. It’s also a stage of life where your able to watch the one film a gazillion times til you know it inside out and in reverse.

Singing along with the Gilbert & Sullivan (a staple thanks to Dad) spoof The Pirate Movie (I was so in love with Christopher Atkins , developing major crushes on Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club and Andrew McCarthy in St Elmo’s Fire (Am I showing my age?) beating the characters to their one-liners in Police Academy and Ferris Buller’s Day Off(You don’t know how excited I was to meet Alan Ruck at The Astor last month), and hiding behind your fingers at House and Demons to name but a w.  At this point I hate to omit countless more but you get the idea.

Over the next  several years though the majority were of the b-gradestraight to video type. Countless dodgy narratives, bad sfx and even worse acting, but I was glued to every second. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend dreary winters in rural NSW. I spent little time at the the cinema taking only a few like Dirty Dancing and The Big Steal, yet I was developing a strong interest in the making of film and television. I spent time on the set of various Australian television drama and in the post production department at ABC on shows eventually enrolling in a degree in Television and Sound production.

This is where I directed my first short film, an over exposed, grainy black comedy about a girl whose effort to escape a town she dreads is foiled by the insane driver that picks her up on the road out of town. Unfortunately the original left me a long time ago but a remake is in pre-production. Completing my undergrad I couldn’t tell you the number of film that I saw, particularly that last year when me and my flatmate would watch dozens of videos a week.

Some that have remained with me, Citizen Cain (No-one makes a trailer like he did.), the melancholy of Bagdad Cafe, Europa, Icicle Thief, powering through the length of Altman’s Nashville, and loving the narrative twists and turns of In The Mouth of Madness. What followed was an average of 50 films a year for the last, taking in everything that I could from the Hollywood blockbuster’s like Contact (I cannot explain the effect the hope in its narrative had on me) to quite independents such as The Station Agent while gaining my own experience in costume and production design,  and editor on various short films as I accidentally built a career as a  sport TV director.

I don’t like sport that much so I jumped out, and found myself following the European film festival circuit a couple of years ago. I was deeply disappointed to find only one Australian dish on the menu Sarah Watt’s Look Both Ways, a film I’m not really that interested in although its ponderous interpersonal relationship aesthetic I am drawn to. So off I headed back to uni to gain a better understanding of how the rest of the world view films.

In my time as a post grad I have learnt more about the human condition that I would have ever thought. I have learnt that Ghost In the Shell is an apt metaphor for the extinction of humans as an organic race. Cried for Laura and Alec’s doomed relationship in Brief Encounter (Which has been added to my favourite films). Faced my long lived fear of Texas Chainsaw Massacre to find it a disappointingly average example of the genre. What I have also learnt is that I am no critic, as a filmmaker I have trouble putting down the director’s intention in order to place psychoanalytic, cultural or political meanings in its context.

My personal aesthetic? Its kind of like studying the evolution of genre, an ever changing ideal I place on film which alters as I age and gain insight into the world. While I can say that I prefer truth hidden in myth, hope in humanity and innovation in filmmaking techniques, a film just needs to teach or amaze me as both a filmmaker and ardent spectator searching for an enlightening journey. With that said, five of my never ending list of all time favourite films which I think define my aesthetic, Wings of Desire, Requiem for a Dream, Things to do in Denver When Your Dead, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and This Is Spinal Tap.

Apparently, Kim Ki-Duk‘s films don’t do any good in his home country of South Korea. To be honest I really liked the two of his films I have seen, but then I’m not a Korean watching film in Seoul.  

The first time I saw Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (2003) I marveled at the ‘circular’ resolution of the film. I don’t know if most people notice but the little boy at the beginning of the film is the same boy as in the end of the film (I checked the credits). So on first viewing it read like the ‘spring’ sequences were mirrors and that you can only truly guide someone through something that you have previously been through yourself. In addition, I stand by my theory that in the film emotional materialism equates to moral decay (n.b. bradtriesunderstandingcriticaltheory). The morals of the monk were certainly in decay when he was so blinded by his emotions at the though of having lost the girl that he obviously saw an object. 

His second film that I saw was The Isle (2002). Although this film was set on a similarly sleepy lake, it was quite open in its portrayal of self-sacrifice. While I personally don’t believe that I could fish hook myself either way, I could completely understand Ki-Duk’s characters motivation. 

Another view if found interesting was from Ki-Duk’s ‘biggest fan’ (I use that term with great irony), Tony Rayns. Rayns thinks that he is a bad filmmaker because his films come across as naive when it comes to sexual politics, social criticism, and religious inklings. So his films are naive, that doesn’t make him bad at what he does, particularly when that appears to be an aesthetic, or does it?  

If something that occurs, which appears to be a fault (depending on how you look at it), with regularity in a director’s body of work does it become an aesthetic, rendering the ‘fault’ an auteur device? I guess if repetition occurs then enough then yes it becomes a device. It seemed to work for Ed Wood.  

In regards to why Ki-Duk’s films don’t do any good in South Korea, my findings from analyzing box office statistics and taking a small sample of other films released at the same time suggested it was down to his aesthetic. Additionally, hypothesizing why different demographics don’t respond to certain films does not make for insult (n.b. bradtriesunderstandingcriticaltheory – again). 

I honestly don’t know why his films fail, because they don’t for me. With that said he says he makes films for his own comprehension so low box office attendance is not going to deter him when his films stand in as personal therapy and when you get constant funding for somewhat selfish reason like that then you don’t need any other reason to be filmmaking.

When it comes to DVD’s it is always a toss up as to whether I watch the trailer or the film first. Although, when it came to Danis Tanovic’s No Man’s Land (2001) I’m quite certain that if I had seen its trailer prior to watching the film my expectation of its narrative aesthetic would not have been quite the same as watching it after (as I did).

Having just paused to savour the surreality of the film’s ending, I don’t know if I was caught off guard by the trailer’s openly comedic view of the narrative or that I just misread the film’s objective. Sure it is a ‘black comedy’, but I would have to place the emphasis on ‘black’ more than ‘comedy’. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing the existence of this cinematic phenomena, I’m just bemused (considering that I would have to describe myself as a ‘trailer purist’, believing in an honest rhetoric to draw the audience) at the overt difference in the trailer’s comedic aesthetic to that of the film’s, which can only result in an altered expectation of the film.

This No Man’s Land trailer got me thinking, and the more I thought about it the more my amusement turned into intrigue. A French-Belgian-Italian-Slovenian co-production, bought by United Artists (an MGM Company) for international DVD release, has placed its trailer firmly in the hands of this American production company, stamping the head with the company logo and a voice-over which states “United Artists proudly presents”…

Since it is clear that No Man’s Land openly deals with the moral confusion and realistic complexities that arise when multinational institutions, such as the UN, attempt to deal with the predicament of ‘civil war’ [1] and while the trailer is by no means entirely contradictory to the film’s aesthetic, I want to muse with the idea that there is more than just the comedic ‘beefing up’ of the films political allegory going on here. Like the possibility that unintentional ramifications of this advertising device appear to bear a deeper grudge within this politically loaded film.

The MGM/United Artists trailer has taken the film’s bitterness towards United Nation’s superiors  and explicitly humour-ized it. The trailer inserts jocund music (which incidentally does not exist in the film), an almost sardonic voice-over and editing that places heavy handed emphasis on the comedy of the film by matching shots from completely different scenes. This points the spectator towards the expectation of an externally comedic aesthetic narrative while setting aside the dramatic; where as the comedic aesthetic of the film would be best described as more internal or more personal while utilizing the dramatic of the story to strongest effect.

Tanovic purveys a distancing humour within No Man’s Land, which is a symptom of emotional survival for sufferers of war, and does not estrange the viewer from its ‘victims’ as the trailer does. The film’s narrative carries the viewer into the story by following the soldiers into the ‘no man’s land’ trenches between Serbian and Bosnian lines and then resituates the viewer back with the lone ‘surviving’ soldier once the Media and UN plots have been played out. Where as the trailer carries us in, in the same way, then relocating the viewer as if we are watching a News broadcast, which is when the comedy ensues. Which for obvious ‘plot spoiling’ reasons if fair enough but what occurs as a result is a disassociation with the soldiers, concluding the trailer with the question of what amusing high jinx will get these men out of their predicament. Indeed.

As intentional as the trailer appears to be in it’s skewed comedic expectance of No Man’s Land’s narrative aesthetic, creating a truly surreal finale, I also cannot help but question the possibility that the comedic over tone of the trailer is a possibly ‘unintentional stab’ at the media industry as an international whole. It is not only apparent that the trailer is making fun the plot to lighten its narrative aesthetic but it also appears that the trailer is making fun of itself, an inversion of propaganda if you like. To be just in my argument I cannot surmise that this antithesis of the trailer’s external comedic aesthetic is either coincidental or self reflexive, it is nevertheless there.

With that said it appears to be pointed towards the ‘Hollywood’ system of entertainment and its association as part of the international media network[2]. In that although the media prevented the Bosnian tragedy from fading from people’s minds through its “CNN Effect”[3], it did little to appease those directly affected. So in turn, the humour conveyed in the No Man’s Land trailer could be read as acknowledgement of the media’s ‘misappropriation of the reasons for conflict’ and thus failing to provide ‘an effective resolution’ [4].

So in succeeding to almost nullify the existence of the soldiers quandary to that of basic plot device the No Man’s Land trailer has not only lulled the film’s prospective audience into a false state of expectance, so as to be more receptive for its final scene, but it has also become a signifier of the film’s rhetoric towards the media. Making the No Man’s Land trailer one of the most poignant self reflexive incarnations of a ‘film paratext’[5] I have seen in a while.

[1] Stewart, Matthew. ‘Danis Tanovic’s No Man’s Land and the Contemporary War Movie’. The Midwest Quarterly, Autumn 2005, Vol. 47 Issue 1, p9. 

[2] United Artists is a subsidiary of MGM, which handles syndication sales for New Line Television. That is an arm of New Line Cinema, which is a subsidiary of Time Warner who produces CNN. And before you argue this seemingly tenuous link, my point is only to illustrate their interconnectedness.    

[3] Spencer, Graham. ‘Bosnia and Kosovo’. The Media and Peace: From Vietnam to the ‘War on Terror’. New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. p91. 

[4] Spencer. pp90-91.

 [5] Kernan, Lisa. Coming Attractions: Reading American Movie Trailers. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. p7.