The Wild Story Behind the Film That Nearly Ended Dennis Hopper’s Career

I’ve always assumed it was a pile of self-indulgent crap. Curiosity finally got the better of me and I’m downloading a torrent. Here’s an off the net comment.

I honestly don’t even know what to say about this film. Dennis Hopper’s “The Last Movie” is basically a nonstop barrage of batshit ideas that are tossed around with such abandon that it’s almost impossible to reach any sort of coherent summation. It’s a film where people whose opinion I respect think it’s brilliant and other people whose opinion I respect will claim it is among the most self-indulgent nonsense ever committed to celluloid.

Personally I’m inclined to agree with the former opinion but I couldn’t argue with the latter. What I can say about the plot is that it’s basically a Peruvian western, with meta moments of films within films while also being a character study that is also a commentary on the Hollywood machine of the 60’s.

The cast includes Tomas Milian, Dean Stockwell, Peter Fonda, Toni Basil, Kris Kristofferson, Sam Fuller, Don Gordon, Julie Adams, John Alderman, John Phillip Law, Michelle Phillips, and Russ Tamblyn but most of these people are floating in and out of the narrative(s) and they’re lucky if they even get a line of dialogue. This is the Dennis Hopper show.

    • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      5·
      5 months ago

      I stuck 4 torrents into my queue. Two downloaded.

      report back

      You should write a review. I have a hunch that I’ll watch ~20m and hate it.

        • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
          5·
          5 months ago

          If I have no choice when I want an old movie - I’ll grab their torrent and put ~5 (or more) other (very) badly seeded torrents into my queue and go to sleep. The next day I’ll have the likely shitty YIFY and if I’m lucky - something better.

          People have a YIFY fetish and they must see it as torrent release group “brand”. But it has the worst quality of any group I’m aware of.

          https://www.magnetdl.com/y/yify/se/desc/

          100s of seeds and up to 12 years old. I bet ~20% of the movies have serious problems with video or audio - especially audio. I really don’t understand people.

          • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            I may have a better copy (not from a public torrent)–if you’re interested, I could stick it up on GoFile or something, and if you (or anyone else who happens to read this) want it just hit me up on Matrix (“Secure Message” on my profile). Here’s the mediainfo if that’s helpful:

            Mediainfo 
            Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4
File size                                : 4.71 GiB
Duration                                 : 1 h 48 min
Overall bit rate                         : 6 205 kb/s
Frame rate                               : 23.976 FPS
Movie name                               : The Last Movie (1971)
Encoded date                             : 2020-07-10 16:26:36 UTC
Writing application                      : mkvmerge v44.0.0 ('Domino') 64-bit
Writing library                          : libebml v1.3.10 + libmatroska v1.5.2

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Main 10@L4@Main
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration                                 : 1 h 48 min
Bit rate                                 : 5 996 kb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 036 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 1.85:1
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.126
Stream size                              : 4.55 GiB (97%)
Writing library                          : x265 3.3+10-g08d895bb6:[Windows][GCC 10.0.1][64 bit] 10bit
Encoding settings                        : cpuid=1111039 / frame-threads=3 / numa-pools=12 / wpp / 
no-pmode / no-pme / no-psnr / no-ssim / log-level=2 / input-csp=1 / input-res=1920x1036 / 
interlace=0 / total-frames=156159 / level-idc=0 / high-tier=1 / uhd-bd=0 / ref=4 / 
no-allow-non-conformance / no-repeat-headers / annexb / no-aud / no-hrd / info / hash=0 / 
no-temporal-layers / open-gop / min-keyint=23 / keyint=250 / gop-lookahead=0 / bframes=8 / 
b-adapt=2 / b-pyramid / bframe-bias=0 / rc-lookahead=80 / lookahead-slices=4 / scenecut=40 / 
hist-scenecut=0 / radl=0 / no-splice / no-intra-refresh / ctu=64 / min-cu-size=8 / rect / no-amp / 
max-tu-size=32 / tu-inter-depth=1 / tu-intra-depth=1 / limit-tu=0 / rdoq-level=2 / 
dynamic-rd=0.00 / no-ssim-rd / signhide / no-tskip / nr-intra=0 / nr-inter=0 / 
no-constrained-intra / strong-intra-smoothing / max-merge=3 / limit-refs=3 / limit-modes / 
me=3 / subme=3 / merange=57 / temporal-mvp / no-frame-dup / no-hme / weightp / 
no-weightb / no-analyze-src-pics / deblock=-3:-3 / no-sao / no-sao-non-deblock / rd=4 / 
selective-sao=0 / no-early-skip / rskip / no-fast-intra / no-tskip-fast / no-cu-lossless / 
no-b-intra / no-splitrd-skip / rdpenalty=0 / psy-rd=2.00 / psy-rdoq=1.00 / no-rd-refine / 
no-lossless / cbqpoffs=0 / crqpoffs=0 / rc=abr / bitrate=6000 / qcomp=0.60 / qpstep=4 / 
stats-write=0 / stats-read=2 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ipratio=1.40 / pbratio=1.30 / 
aq-mode=3 / aq-strength=1.00 / cutree / zone-count=0 / no-strict-cbr / qg-size=32 / 
no-rc-grain / qpmax=69 / qpmin=0 / no-const-vbv / sar=0 / overscan=0 / videoformat=5 / 
range=0 / colorprim=0 / transfer=0 / colormatrix=2 / chromaloc=0 / display-window=0 / 
cll=0,0 / min-luma=0 / max-luma=1023 / log2-max-poc-lsb=8 / vui-timing-info / vui-hrd-info / 
slices=1 / no-opt-qp-pps / no-opt-ref-list-length-pps / no-multi-pass-opt-rps / scenecut-bias=0.05 / 
hist-threshold=0.01 / no-opt-cu-delta-qp / aq-motion / no-hdr10 / no-hdr10-opt / no-dhdr10-opt / 
no-idr-recovery-sei / analysis-reuse-level=0 / analysis-save-reuse-level=0 / analysis-load-reuse-level=0 / 
scale-factor=0 / refine-intra=0 / refine-inter=0 / refine-mv=1 / refine-ctu-distortion=0 / no-limit-sao / 
ctu-info=0 / no-lowpass-dct / refine-analysis-type=0 / copy-pic=1 / max-ausize-factor=1.0 / 
no-dynamic-refine / no-single-sei / no-hevc-aq / no-svt / no-field / qp-adaptation-range=1.00 / 
no-scenecut-aware-qpconformance-window-offsets / right=0 / bottom=0 / decoder-max-rate=0
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 1 h 48 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 192 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 1 channel
Channel layout                           : M
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 149 MiB (3%)
Title                                    : Dolby Digital Audio / 1.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps
Language                                 : English
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Text #1
ID                                       : 3
Format                                   : UTF-8
Codec ID                                 : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info                            : UTF-8 Plain Text
Duration                                 : 1 h 48 min
Bit rate                                 : 53 b/s
Frame rate                               : 0.213 FPS
Count of elements                        : 1382
Stream size                              : 42.5 KiB (0%)
Title                                    : English SRT
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Text #2
ID                                       : 4
Format                                   : PGS
Muxing mode                              : zlib
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                                 : 1 h 48 min
Bit rate                                 : 3 189 b/s
Frame rate                               : 0.056 FPS
Count of elements                        : 360
Stream size                              : 2.47 MiB (0%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

Text #3
ID                                       : 5
Format                                   : PGS
Muxing mode                              : zlib
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                                 : 1 h 48 min
Bit rate                                 : 38.8 kb/s
Frame rate                               : 0.460 FPS
Count of elements                        : 2984
Stream size                              : 30.0 MiB (1%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
  • AlicePraxis [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    5·
    5 months ago

    I just watched this recently after having it in my watchlist for ages so it’s funny to see a post about it here. It’s a really hard movie to rate or have a definite “take” on but it’s worth experiencing. While it’s hard to digest I certainly don’t regret watching it and will probably even revisit it someday because there’s a lot to take in. It’s an ugly, raw, and flawed work of art from a flawed person. To me that’s the most compelling type of film. And as far as experimental art films go, it certainly wasn’t boring.

    idk, it was a good movie to watch stoned and alone in the middle of the afternoon