Tourist Magazine

"live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse" It has long been the siren call of rock & roll excess, the nihilistic swan song of the counterculture hero. James Dean, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix. The old gods who we’ll never have to see doddering and cancer-stricken, reduced to pale effigies of their former selves. Kurt Cobain wrote it in his suicide note before sticking a shotgun under his chin (although it’s actually a Neil Young quote) – “It’s better to burn out than to fade away”, a statement to grace the hoodies of fourteen year olds for years to come. What is it about such wilful nihilism that attracts us?

Last month, live-fast-die-young hero Dennis Hopper died. He was 74, and the cause of death? Advanced prostate cancer. Not the most glamorous way to go. So here we had it – the handsome, swaggering Billy in Easy Rider; the crazed photojournalist of Apocalypse Now; reduced, after years of hedonism and spectacle, to a frail old man in the middle of his fifth divorce, by the time of his death. Should he have gone the same way as former partner in crime James Dean, heading out in a blaze of glory to be forever remembered as someone who died at the height of their talent, their looks, their lives?

The thing about living fast and, in particular, dying young, is that it leaves behind a world of possibilities and no responsibility. These people have paid the ultimate sacrifice for their transgressions, and in doing so become blameless. They will never have to face court cases, stints in rehab, messy divorces and tabloid exposés. We, the public, the normal people, can project our own debauched fantasies onto them, imagine living the live they did, a life without restraint or responsibility.

The philosopher Jean Baudrillard has written extensively on the notion of the ‘hyperreal’, the process of detaching from the real world and immersing only in the simulation, in the media-created constructions of a world that will never truly exist. Our dead celebrities take on new and immortal personas. We will never have to see, for instance, Jimi Hendrix as an old man, too arthritic to play. But then, we’ll never get to hear what else he could have been capable of.


That’s the problem with the celebrity death. In death, the celebrity becomes an icon, something fantastical and out of reach. In life – and this is what we find problematic – they are not so different to us. They are human beings with potential.

When Dennis Hopper died, he did not leave behind a young, perfect body or a tragically small amount of thrilling performances. What he did leave behind, however, was a wide and varied career spanning acting, directing, writing, and art.

Although he built his maverick reputation on counterculture classics like Rebel Without a Cause and Easy Rider, it was his role as the damaged Photojournalist in Francis Ford Copolla’s Vietnam classic Apocalypse Now that cemented him into the minds of the public and critics alike. Interesting, as in between the cocaine orgies and suicide attempts rewritten as ‘art happenings’ (perhaps his most famous stunt, Hopper lay in a coffin surrounded by live dynamite and tried to convince passersby to blow him up, shortly before disappearing into the Mexican desert), much of Hopper’s life was spent behind the camera.

As well as a prolific career in photography (in addition to painting and sculpture), Hopper made a significant contribution to directing and writing, singlehandedly helping to create the louche, free directorial style so reminiscent of the Seventies with movies like The Last Movie and Out of the Blue – not box office smashes by any means, but met with critical adoration and enjoying film festival success; Out of the Blue was nominated for the Pal d’Or. Hopper pioneered the technique of the lens flare – something you’ll see in every hazy indie movie going these days. Usually seen as a defect to be left on the cutting room floor, Hopper recognised the strange beauty of the damaged. Perhaps he saw a kindred spirit.

For me, Hopper’s true high point came in 1986, with his gleeful portrayal of the fucked up Frank Booth in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Hopper invaded the character of Booth, a morally repugnant sadomasochistic nutter, replete with inhaler, with a sick delight and an uncharacteristic intensity, giving a genuinely unsettling performance opposite the beautiful Isabella Rossellini. Reportedly, Hopper jumped at the chance to play Booth, exclaiming, “I’ve got to play Frank; I am Frank!” which says it all, really.

So maybe Hopper had the right idea all along. He lived fast, and he did it for seven decades. Instead of burning out, he chose to fade away, and by doing so managed to live a life of excess (he was reportedly taking up to three grams of coke a day at one point; it’s not like he was doing it half-arsedly) whilst still achieving more than most of us could dream of. Even though he died frail and ravaged by disease, was it anymore undignified a death than Hendrix choking on his own vomit? Maybe Hopper won’t be leaving a beautiful corpse, but he has left a massive, diverse and critically acclaimed body of work. Which, really, is worth a whole lot more in the long run.

Sophie Hanson