Hip Hopper

SPOTLIGHT

test of your mental skills: try looking at this face without thinking of the sixties. Impossible? Probably—at least if you're over thirty, and hence old enough to remember the Dennis Hopper who directed and starred in Easy Rider. Of course, Hopper has hardly been idle since. In 1988, for example, he directed the Robert Duvall—Sean Penn hit Colors; in fact, two movies he directed more recently—Back Track, with Jodie Foster, and Hot Spot, with Don Johnson—are still awaiting release. But as skilled a filmmaker as he may be today, and as versatile and powerful an actor, so long as there are thirtyand fortysomethings around to remember the grooviest of all road movies, man, Hopper's face will remain an indelible reminder of the gonzo years. Besides, the sixties just won't go away. You'll be hearing about them throughout 1990, because it was twenty years ago, in 1970, that the turning point arrived, the moment when the paisley exuberance of the flower-child era began to curdle into something more complex and disturbing. It was the year of Kent State, the year Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died, the year the Weathermen blew up their own headquarters, the year of the Manson and My Lai trials, the year the Beatles broke up. And now, two decades later, in his new picture, Flashback, directed by Franco Amurri, Hopper portrays an Abbie Hoffman-like sixties survivor who's been on the lam for twenty years. Who better to play the part?