Sally Grace’s Reviews > I Blame Dennis Hopper: And Other Stories from a Life Lived In and Out of the Movies > Status Update

I thought, Why would I be anywhere else but here? Making a movie during the day, hanging out hearing stories at night.

Sometimes we would be riding around, & I would look out the window & see something beautiful, such as a full moon, or something sad, such as the town drunk sleeping in the snow; or I'd hear a sad song that reminded me of a boy I liked, but I knew I could never share things like that. I’d be laughed out of the car...I wasn't going to do anything about it. I wasn't going to change anything, but it made me self-aware.

And even though I was not Curt, and not Richard Dreyfuss, foy the first time, I saw myself in a movie, which is one of the greatest gifts a movie can give us. To see ourselves in those forty-foot images.

I was in New York after a big life change. I was feeling a little down, and I decided to go see a psychic. Men go to prostitutes for comfort. Women go to psychics!

A show is a show is a show. All that was left of it were the echoes of the applause. If you could somehow keep that sound, that joy, to remind you of why you were put on the planet. To entertain people. To make them happy just for a little while. I listened to Rudy Vallée's applause and then quietly excused myself.

"Do you know what that is?" he asked.
I listened again very hard but all I heard was a rushing, whooshing sound. I finally said, "Is it the ocean?"
He spun around from the mirror and raised his hand in the air with a flourish.
"It's my applause," he said.
"Oh yes," I said. "Yes, now I hear it."
Rudy Vallée smiled at me with complete satisfaction. "I tape it every night," he said. "I knew you would appreciate that."

She's making out with her date, and getting pretty hot and heavy, and we're holding back tears in the back! Two completely different cinematic experiences.

And Dennis Hopper said, "Don't cry. You're going to be OK." And I said, "No, I'm crying because my father saw Easy Rider when I was a kid and it changed his life and now we're in a movie together and it's a miracle!"

It was inevitable that with the impact that Dennis Hopper had had on making my life like a movie, I would return the favor by being in a movie with Dennis Hopper. It was called Search and Destroyhow appropriate. Once he was cast—Dennis Hopper playing my father-figure lover-I couldn't wait to meet him, tell him how he'd ruined my life, and ask for all the money I believed that he owed me.

My mother seemed to enjoy being poor. Maybe it finally gave her an identity. It was hard to compete with being married to Dennis Hopper, who was busy writing poetry and songs and assembling his band.