An American Dreamer
Dennis Hopper, 1936-2010
Remembering an American dreamer
By F.x. Feeney Thursday, Jun 3 2010
…Dennis Hopper and I only briefly shared a table one morning at a film festival four years ago, but we hadn’t talked more than five minutes before he alluded to the death of James Dean. Hopper’s brief friendship with his co-star and mentor on the sets of Rebel Without a Cause and Giant marked him for life; they shared a passion, which Dean was the first person in Hopper’s world to fully articulate.
“I took Jim aside when we were on Rebel,” he told me, reiterating a story he told often. “I said, ‘You’re doing something I don’t understand.’?” As a teenage stage actor, Hopper had trained hard, honing classical chops, but he’d been moved out of his comfort zone by this new friend’s charismatic anarchy. Dean advised him, “Don’t do so much. Stop doing ‘line readings.’ Stop acting. Smoke the cigarette or drink the coffee or whatever, but take it moment by moment. If you’re not feeling anything, accept that. If the emotion comes, great — but don’t ‘presuppose’ it.”…
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
June 10th, 2010 at 22:08
“Don’t do so much. Stop doing ‘line readings.’ Stop acting. Smoke the cigarette or drink the coffee or whatever, but take it moment by moment. If you’re not feeling anything, accept that. If the emotion comes, great — but don’t ‘presuppose’ it.”…
besides acting, could this also be applied during brainstorming sessions?