Two Series Highlight the Competing American Visions of Sam Shepard and Dennis Hopper

"It’s probably pure coincidence that BAM is presenting a week of Sam Shepard films right as the Metrograph screens five days of Dennis Hopper–directed titles. The mini-Hopper retro has been prompted by the release of Along for the Ride, a documentary about the troubled actor-filmmaker’s career, as seen through the eyes of his longtime assistant and friend, Satya de la Manitou. The Shepard movies are presumably screening because of the actor-writer’s recent passing. And yet, there’s serendipity here, too: No two actors of their generation better expressed the modern iteration of the lonesome cowboy — that dying myth of the all-American wanderer. Their careers regularly threatened to intersect, but the two almost never worked together. (When they did, on 2002’s prison pen-pal drama Leo, Shepard said Hopper was 'like a crazy brother.') Maybe that’s understandable, too: They were, in some way, opposites — separate sides of the same coin. ..."
VOICE

2017 August: Sam Shepard (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017), 2009 November: Easy Rider (1969), 2010 May: Dennis Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010), 2010 November: The American Friend (1977), 2012 November: Dennis Hopper Documentary (90s), 2013 May: The Lost Album, 2013 December: On the Road, 2016 November: Dennis Hopper: Colors, The Polaroids