Dennis Hopper, R.I.P.

So, if you’re a little younger, and wondering why all the fuss and nostalgia in the wake of Dennis Hopper’s passing, you’re just going to have to take our word for it.

Hopper’s an icon of the Baby Boomers. His loss hurts, confirms our mortality.

He was Billy in “Easy Rider” for chrissakes. There isn’t enough time and space here to explain what things were like in ’69. Or why this seat of the pants, making it up as they went along flick about a couple of guys, flush with cash from a drug deal, taking off across country on motorcycles, still resonates.

It both instilled the rebel in my generation, and certified why it was legit. There was a basis for our paranoia, things needed to change, and with a little help from our friends, human and chemical, we could get it done.

Or, as the movie so adroitly taught us, maybe not.

By the by, that is Phil Spector with whom they did that deal at the movie’s beginning. And Jaaaaaaaaack Nicholson as a lawyer on the lam, talking about “Venutians” around a campfire.

But, Hopper’s career didn’t start there. He was in “Rebel Without A Cause.” And “Giant.” He acted in over 200 movies. “Red Rock West” is one of my faves. You surely know him from “Hoosiers” and “Blue Velvet.” Or, maybe, “Apocalypse Now.”

Not a bad career for for an egocentric, out of control druggie. Which apparently Dennis Hopper was for a long time.

By the time I ran into him at Churchill’s Turf Club one Derby Day, he seemed sort of quiet and subdued. And short. He was supposedly sober by then.

Dennis Hopper also directed one of my favorite guilty pleasure movies, “The Hot Spot.” A noirish steamer, it features Don Johnson, and Virginia Madden and Charles Martin Smith and comely newcomer, Jennifer Connelly. Rent it some time, it’s a fun one.

It’s worth it, if only for the soundtrack. John Lee Hooker moanin’ and groanin’ over his guitar and Miles Davis’ horn. It smolders.

Dennis Hopper. You mighta been a rascal, but you done good, dude. R.I.P.