Dennis Hopper Rides Again For Tarantino
Source: MTV
Earlier this year, “Easy Rider” icon Peter Fonda paid tribute to his motorcycle movie lineage with an enjoyably evil role in “Ghost Rider.” Now, his legendary partner-in-crime is eager to do the same…with some help from Quentin Tarantino. “I am doing a motorcycle movie this year that Quentin Tarantino is producing,” Dennis Hopper told us this week, confirming rumors that he’d been cast in the currently-filming action film “Hell Ride,” which co-stars the pic’s writer and director, Larry Bishop.
The old-school flick, which tells the story of three tough guys (veteran “Kill Bill 2” actor Bishop, Michael Madsen and “24” heartthrob Eric Balfour) settling a score between them, is described as a modern day “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly,” and is currently filming in the Los Angeles area. “I am playing Eddie ‘Scratch’ Zero,” laughed Hopper, a “Blue Velvet”-like wickedness growing across his face. “And I couldn’t possibly begin telling you who that is, but he is weird enough.”
Adding that “I know Quentin and I love all of his work,” the actor who so memorably delivered Tarantino’s dialogue in “True Romance” added that when Tarantino and Bishop asked him to hop back on a hog one more time, he couldn’t say no.
In other news, Hopper revealed to MTV that he hopes to step behind the camera again soon. “I am going to direct another movie this next year,” said the tireless counter-culture icon, who recently turned 71. Hopper also will be seen in two more films coming out later this year. “I just did a thing with Charlize Theron, who produced her first movie,” he said of the drama. “I play her father in it, and it’s a terrific thing called ‘Ferris Wheel.’ [Another is] a wonderful thing with Penelope Cruz and Sir Ben Kingsley called ‘Elegy,’ based on the Philip Roth novel ‘The Dying Animal,’” Hopper said of the impressively-cast sexual drama, which also includes Patricia Clarkson, Deborah Harry and Peter Sarsgaard. “I play Ben Kingsley’s best friend. We are both womanizers and college professors, and I am giving him advice on how to have an affair with a younger woman.”
