And with a life which up to that point had so much drama, including being pronounced clinincally dead during the making of Philippe Mora's MAD DOG MORGAN, he probably had good reason to worry about lapsing into those dark behaviors. But as writer Ann Bardach reveals in her podcast interview, he was still not quite feeling calm about it all.
He had received the best notices in years for his performances in HOOSIERS and BLUE VELVET, and positive reviews for directing Sean Penn and Robert Duvall in COLORS, his first major studio picture since THE LAST MOVIE in 1971. As he says himself during the film, "There's something going on here that I really don't understand, but I like it."Īt the time production was initiated, Hopper was enjoying a career revitalization. Regardless of bad editing and missing storyline, I still have a decent hunch about what Hopper had in mind. Pip may as well have been right at the controls of my remote saying, "Look at the cover again - whatever gave you the idea this was a Director's Cut? This is the CATCHFIRE edit!" Bloody Artisan mastered a pre-Smithee print to DVD, and Lionsgate has never done a damned thing to correct it! By the time my DVD player stopped at 98 minutes, despite the 102 promised on the cover, Sebastian Cabot as Mr. I kept thinking, Egad, imagine how much more horribly incoherent the CATCHFIRE edit must have been. Upon finally watching it, I was increasingly taken aback by the very abrupt cutting, where many scenes seemed to be trimmed to the most necessary seconds, very reminiscent of the Fox-sanctioned Kenneth Lonergan-contested theatrical cut of MARGARET. When I saw it was released on DVD in 16x9 widescreen, with Hopper's preferred title and director credit on the cover, naturally I eagerly bought it, though again, it sat on my to-watch pile for a long time. I was keenly following the trajectory of BACKTRACK during my college years, as a fan of Hopper and of then-upstart studio Vestron Pictures, but had never gotten around to actually watching it I didn't have Showtime when they aired the Director's Cut, and always just had something else more pressing whenever the VHS was handy. What you will be likely left without is the Why? And since Hopper is gone, and co-star Jodie Foster is probably about as anxious to revisit that experience as she is to share a stage with Seth MacFarlane, that's where my speculative prose comes in. In short, you can find the How, the Who, the What, the When, and the Where. You'll even find revealing testimony from credited screenwriter Ann Louise Bardach and uncredited punch-up writer Alex Cox. You'll find scintillating details of the shoot, involving a writer's strike, Hopper's white-knuckle sobriety, and spur-of-the-moment attempts to include his favorite artists and actor friends. You'll find a thorough comparison and breakdown of differences between the initially-released 98-minute cut retitled CATCHFIRE, for which Hopper demanded an Alan Smithee credit, and the 1992 compromised-but-approved Director's Cut sanctioned by Showtime and released on VHS, including a crucial revelation of a character's heel turn that is completely missing from the shorter cut. There will be the requisite negative and baffled reviews. If you do the cursory Google searching, you will find plenty of information about Dennis Hopper's troubled and mystifying 1990 film BACKTRACK.
0 kommentar(er)
