"The man's, uh........he reads poetry out loud, alright?"

With all the other bullshit stress I deal with on a daily basis, the last thing I wanted to see on the front page of the Herald today was the passing of Dennis Hopper. Like Ronnie James Dio leaving this earth but any member of Nickelback being allowed to stay, I'm angry that God took Dennis but left all the mongoloid fuckwits from the Twilight movie series. Although I won't give any of the new crop of vacuous assclowns that make the equally vacuous soccer moms and tweens of America moist in the cotton briefs, I will, however, give several examples to make my case that we lost a huge talent this weekend.

Apocalypse Now is, as far as I'm concerned, the greatest triumph in the pursuit of genius cinema. Dennis Hopper plays a photojournalist who has gone insane and is living in the wilds of Cambodia with the equally wild Colonel Kurtz. He has two monologues that were cornerstones of the film and prime examples of why no one but Hopper could bring that role into flesh and blood like he could. First is at the beginning of the clip, the second is at 6:20. They are both equally spellbinding but the first one takes on a whole new poignancy in the wake of Hopper's passing...

Watch and be amazed.



Then, of course, there's the epic 10 minutes between Dennis and Christopher Walken in True Romance:



And the encore - a classic scene from Blue Velvet. I saw a documentary about Roy Orbison recently that said he was initially horrified by David Lynch's use of "In Dreams" for this sequence, but eventually came to love and embrace it. If that's the case then Roy Orbison was even cooler than I thought, and I already thought he was pretty damn cool.