Hollywood did not come crawling back apologetic, as Hopper had hoped it would. At the time, The film gathered a cult following with audiences seeking it out at late night theatre screenings and finding pirated videotape copies to view at home. Out of the Blue had a better reception critically and commercially in the European market, although it remained banned in the United Kingdom until 1987. ![]() An effort to take America back to the time before the 1960s and erase that decade’s social gains was in motion. Reagan’s campaign slogan of “Let’s Make America Great Again’ was a reactionary statement to the ethos of Hopper’s generation and the artistic, and sometimes inflammatory work they produced. However, the film’s failure really came from the provocative subject matter that dealt with child abuse, incest, and the corrosion of the American family unit, which wasn’t a positive selling point to an American audience wishing to embrace a more positive and conservative outlook of traditional family values and patriotic vigor that was endorsed by the Ronald Reagan/George Bush presidential team run that was occurring at the same time. Predictably, it was a commercial failure, although the film was entered in competition into the year’s Festival de Cannes and played well with film critics. The finished film, shot in four weeks and edited in six, and now titled Out of the Blue, became one of the most uncompromising films of the early 1980s. Seasoned actor, Raymond Burr, for example, was a central character at one point in the film’s production, playing the child psychiatrist who redeems the story, but this role was reduced to nothing but a cameo. In his role as director and screenwriter, Hopper also reduced a number of key characters. The film now dealt with the terrifying ordeal of Cebe (Linda Manz), a young teenage girl destroyed by abuse and violence at the hands of her father Don, portrayed by Hopper. Feeling the film was a potential lost cause, they also gave Hopper full creative control.Īfter taking control of the production, Hopper rewrote the screenplay in a mad rush, and cast the film in a much darker and nihilistic tone than what was originally intended. With little to lose, they agreed, as long as Hopper could complete the film on time and within budget. Seeing an opportunity to take over and direct the project, Hopper convinced the producers and backers of the film to give him a shot. The project was all but abandoned by the cast and crew. The film’s inexperienced director, screenwriter Leonard Yakir, soon jumped ship after a few weeks of shooting turned up no usable footage. ![]() The story goes that at the tail end of the 1970s, Hopper, then an outcast from mainstream Hollywood film due to his substance abuse and wildman personality (see Francis For Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, 1979, for reference), was cast in a small Canadian television film production, which at the time was titled The Case of Cindy Barnes (1980). An interview with John Alan Simon accompanies this piece. Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, a 4K restored DVD/Blu-ray version of the film ( click here for more information about the restoration project) is being released later this year by John Alan Simon and Elizabeth Karr of Discovery Productions. ![]() This movie marked Hopper’s third directorial effort (after Easy Rider in 1969 and The Last Movie in 1971) and, in a filmography of iconoclastic and uncompromising work as an actor and director, perhaps this film marks his most vitally charged and disturbing film. This year marks the 40-year anniversary of Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue.
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