Hopper by Tom Folsom Page B

people did drugs and alcohol and were nymphomaniacs,” figured Hopper, “then that must be the way to creativity, and creativity’s where we wanna be. We wanna be the best.”
    One night at Nick’s rustic cabin in La Cañada, Hopper set the scene of a boozy salon where madness and genius thrived. Natalie starred as bombshell Jean Harlow, luxuriating in the bubbly decadence of Hollywood’s golden era.
    â€œOK, Natalie,” directed Hopper. “We’re ready for the orgy.”
    Natalie disrobed. Stepping naked into a tub filled with champagne, she screamed when the bubbles fizzed up into her nether regions. (“Set her on fucking fire ,” said Hopper.) The next scene featured Natalie in the emergency room, back to those doctors who once cast her as a delinquent.
    First Dean died. Then Hopper’s sidekick Nick was found dead in his apartment in 1968, having overdosed on pills. Perhaps even murdered.
    Having OD’d on his porcelain throne at Graceland in 1977, Elvis was dead, all bloated up on his rebel image. Hopper cried when he heard the news over the telephone.
    Lastly, in 1981, over the course of a stormy night of sambuca with her fellow actors, husband Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken, Natalie fell off her yacht and drowned, to forever star in an enticing unsolved Hollywood mystery set off Catalina Island.
    So the winner of the James Dean Replacement Sweepstakes by default was Hopper. Inquiring Weekly World News readers wanted to know: Would Hopper be the next victim of the diabolical Rebel curse? The intrepid tabloid asked him to comment on their story “Dreadful Death Curse of Cult Movie.”
    How did they even manage to track him down? He wasn’t exactly readily available at the time. His skin was pale and slimy. Even in newsprint, he looked wet, drenched in a psychotic’s perspiration. His bugged-out eyes were wide as the mysterious fanged Bat Boy, a regular on the cover of this Martian-infested supermarket rag.
    â€œIt’s very strange the way they all died,” admitted Hopper, then at the height of his coke-addled paranoia. “I only know I’m a survivor. I won’t let it get to me.”

GIANT
    T he imaginary line was the lesson Hopper took from the set of Giant , the Warner Bros. epic shot on the heels of Rebel in the summer of 1955. The studio machine spared no expense on what promised to be a Gone with the Wind for the Lone Star State. The whole town of Marfa, pop. 3,500, sweltered in the heat as Elizabeth Taylor chugged in on the Texas and Pacific Railway to the dirt-dry whistle-stop. They’d all come out to see her, finer than four thousand head of the finest Texas cattle brought in for the big roundup scene. Not to mention Clear View Snuffy, the National Brangus bull champion imported from Oklahoma to play King Tut, pride of the Benedict ranch. Cordoned off from the set with a huge wooden derrick atop a well filled with real oil imported from California, ready to gush on cue, a crowd of thousands shuffled about in cowboy boots, wiped sweat off with worn handkerchiefs, all to catch a glimpse of Liz—“jack-off material,” said one onlooker. Powdered and puffed and cleavaged, she was the biggest movie star James Dean had ever worked with, and he couldn’t help but be nervous, so he did what came naturally. Sauntering over to the good people standing around to see this tale of oil and greed, he whipped out his dick and peed.
    Riding shotgun back to town after wrapping for the day, Hopper said, “Jimmy, I’ve really seen you do a lot of strange things, but today, really, that takes it, babe. I mean what was that, what was that all about?’”
    â€œWorking with Elizabeth Taylor,” said Dean. “Really nervous, first time I have a scene with her, I can’t even speak. So I had to take a pee, and I thought, ‘Well, it’s not workin’ in this sequence for me,’ so, uh, I