10 Things You Never Knew About 'The Last Movie' The Disaster Of A Film That Got Dennis Hopper Kicked Out Of Hollywood

By | September 9, 2022

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Actor and director Dennis Hopper and cameraman Laslo Kovacs prepare to shoot a scene from his movie 'Easy Rider' in 1969 in Taos, New Mexico. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

You've seen Dennis Hopper's 1969 film Easy Rider -- have you ever seen his follow-up, The Last Movie

After more than a decade spent scraping the bottom of the barrel in Hollywood, Dennis Hopper hit pay dirt with Easy Rider. Considered to be the first real counterculture film to crossover to the masses, the art house biker movie made $60 million at the box office on a half a million dollar budget in 1969. The film effectively ended the studio system and made Hopper Hollywood’s golden boy overnight.

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source: IMDB

With two Academy Award nominations, Easy Rider made Hopper look like a cinema sage in the eyes of producers looking for the next big thing. Universal wanted to capitalize on the success of Easy Rider, so they gave Hopper free reign with his next film, The Last Movie. The unrestrained freedom that Hopper had with this film gave the writer, director, and star an excuse to lean into the chemical and artistic excesses that would end up getting him kicked out of Hollywood for nearly a decade.