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I didn't see an abstract painting until I was 18, when I went to Vincent Price's house and saw Richard Niebencorn, Wolff, Jackson Pollack. He had an amazing collection. I didn't know people painted abstractly, I thought I was just doing something wholeheartedly.

Dennis Hopper

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Dennis Hopper
Age: 74 †
Born: 1936
Born: May 17
Died: 2010
Died: May 29
Actor
Art Collector
Artist
Character Actor
Film Actor
Film Director
Filmmaker
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
Screenwriter
Sculptor
Dodge City
Kansas
Dennis Lee Hopper
Didn
Collections
Wolff
Thought
Abstract
Abstractly
Something
Price
Vincent
People
Amazing
Wholeheartedly
Saws
Richard
Painting
Jackson
Went
Painted
House
Collection

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The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.
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You want to hear about insanity? I was found running naked through the jungles in Mexico. At the Mexico City airport, I decided I was in the middle of a movie and walked out on the wing on takeoff. My body... my liver... okay, my brain... went.
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I've always been doing some sort of art. I started off, when I was very young, painting.
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I made a picture called Super Mario Bros., and my six-year-old son at the time - he's now 18 - he said, 'Dad I think you're probably a pretty good actor, but why did you play that terrible guy King Koopa in Super Mario Bros?' And I said, 'Well Henry, I did that so you could have shoes,' and he said, 'Dad, I don't need shoes that badly.'
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You know, this is such a rich time that we've just been involved in, and there's really a job now for historians. Film is still very young. This is the first hundred years of filmmaking. So I think it's important that we have some sense of history and continuity. Especially in film.
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People keep asking me, 'What evil lurks in you to play such bad characters?' There is no evil in me, I just wear tight underwear.
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I was reading a lot of Thomas Jefferson at the time, and Jefferson said that every 20 years, if one party has stayed in power, it's your obligation as an American to vote the other party in.
Dennis Hopper
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I was an abstract expressionist before I had seen any abstract expressionist paintings. I started when I was a kid and continued just doing abstract stuff all through high school.
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Work is fun to me. All those years of being an actor and a director and not being able to get a job - two weeks is too long to not know what my next job will be.
Dennis Hopper
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I should have been dead ten times over. I've thought about that a lot. I believe in miracles. It's an absolute miracle that I'm still around.
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I've been a Republican since Reagan. I voted for Bush and his father. I don't tell a lot of people, because I live in a city where somebody who voted for Bush is really an outcast.
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Just because it happened to you, doesn't mean it's interesting.
Dennis Hopper
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I think of [my photographs] as found paintings because I don't crop them, I don't manipulate them or anything. So they're like found objects to me.
Dennis Hopper
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I was very shy, and it was a lot easier for me to communicate if I had a camera between me and other people.
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I was a Shakespearean actor, I had preconceived ideas, line readings - everything was a gesture, everything was conscious.
Dennis Hopper
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When I was about 14. I saw my first mountain. I saw the ocean for the first time. I remember thinking that that ocean looked very similar to our wheat fields. I didn't know what I thought I would see when I looked out at the ocean, but I thought I'd see something different.
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Photography and painting, all of that fed into my directing eventually.
Dennis Hopper
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The best and only authentic book written on the sixties underground.
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Jimmy [Dean] was the most talented and original actor I ever saw work. He was also a guerrilla artist who attacked all restrictions on his sensibility. Once he pulled a switchblade and threatened to murder his director. I imitated his style in art and in life. It got me in a lot of trouble.
Dennis Hopper
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Art is a bad word in Hollywood. You use art too many times and they show you the elevator and then your name is taken off the parking lot.
Dennis Hopper