Hopper by Tom Folsom

highway, English cobblestones and dirt paths constructed to look from as far off as Timbuktu. They were all made of rubber and ready to be rolled up and taken away. Hopper had promised a charity auction a piece of original art, so he bought fourteen yards of ancient Roman Appian Way, attached a hefty price tag and a title: Found Object: Dennis Hopper .
    Bang! It sold.
    Realizing Hopper’s manifesto was far more valuable than a stretch of yellow-brick rubber road, Stern asked Hopper to sign it, holding on to it with a hunch that it might someday be important.
    What we need are good old American—and that’s not to be confused with European—Art Films. But who delivers? Where do we find them? How much does it cost? Where do they get the quarter of a million dollars? . . . No one knows the answer. But they will appear. America’s where it can be done.. . . Yes we’d better do it then. Or I’m going to die a very cranky Individual, and I won’t be alone.
    Dennis Hopper

Z PICTURES
    A t home in Beverly Hills on his two acres of land with a tennis court and swimming pool, Peter Fonda figured he could do a film for cheap like American International Pictures. The independent studio was servicing the drive-in market with all those Frankie and Annette beach party movies. AIP also single-handedly revived the career of Vincent Price, star of its Edgar Allan Poe films directed by Roger Corman, a no-budget auteur hailed as the Orson Welles of Z pictures (that much further down the alphabet from B).
    Fresh off of playing an astronaut in AIP’s Queen of Blood , Hopper was sick of Z pictures. He was meant for greater things than teaching an attractive green-skinned Martian how to suck water from a straw. And kiss.
    â€œMan, we ought to make a movie,” said Fonda over a beer at his place.
    â€œAw, everybody says that,” said Hopper. “But nobody really does it.”
    â€œI’d like to make a movie about a man who’s lookin’ for love. He’s lookin’ everywhere. At the end he finds out that love was what he had at the beginning.”
    â€œYou serious?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œI mean, you’ll pay for it?”
    â€œFuckin’ A, I’ll pay for it.”
    Fonda formed his very own Pando Productions company, and the two friends excitedly set about working on their first film together. Hopper called it The Ying and the Yang .
    â€œNo, Dennis, it’s Yin/Yang . It’s a one-word concept.”
    â€œNo, it’s The Ying and the Yang .”
    â€œThere’s no g , Dennis!”
    In a rented house in Sherman Oaks, they banged out a screenplay with a third wheel and a secretary taking dictation. The Yin(g) and the Yang , as they compromised on, would begin with a spectacular shot of the sun rising over one of those giant donuts along the highway, like Randy’s Donuts in LA.
    With Peter starring and Dennis costarring and directing, the two were off to New York to look for money to finance their “insane comedy,” reported Variety in December 1965. Fonda told legendary columnist Army Archerd he hoped his dad and sister would make cameos—Yin and Yang.
    In New York, the boys landed at a big art happening full of rock and rollers and models orbiting a sculpture composed of all sorts of things: wheels, bicycles, tricycles, balloons, and a money thrower. On cue, this contraption catapulted coins into the audience as the clanking behemoth began to saw, hammer, and melt itself to the ground. Someone had paid an ungodly amount to commission this sculpture and watch the whole thing collapse on itself in a pile of rubble.
    â€œThis is chaos and anarchy in the top form!” said Peter.
    With all this money flung about in the name of art, surely they would find someone to finance a good old American art film. Ripe for the taking was a gang of rich kids funding acid guru Timothy Leary’s research on the psychic powers of