Intriguing but long-winded, this restored relic from 1970 reveals the two directors holding forth on everything from sex to Elvis
In November 1970, Dennis Hopper flew from Taos in New
Mexico to dine with Orson Welles in LA. Hopper was in the midst of producing The Last Movie; Welles was busily prepping The Other Side of the Wind. Both these productions would later famously combust, but on that evening in late fall, their creators were feeling optimistic, all-powerful. Welles flattered Hopper and said that he should one day play Jesus. They broke bread together in what now looks very much like a film-makers’ last supper.
Hopper/Welles is the periodically fascinating, generally exasperating record of that meeting, an unearthed black-and-white home movie in which the two men get drunk and speak their minds on everything from Buñuel to Visconti, John Wayne to the Fondas. The order of the title’s star billing is intentional and unavoidable, since Welles keeps a hand-held camera trained on Hopper throughout and is content to play the role of off-screen interrogator. Flushed from the success of Easy Rider, Hopper had briefly found himself hailed as the saviour of
American cinema. This film catches the one moment in his life, perhaps, where he could dare to regard Welles as the junior partner.