With the success of the film Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper had the world on a string. Hopper’s next project, The Last Movie, took him to Peru. This sprawling project, while an award winner at the Venice Film Festival, would not see a commercial release in Hopper’s lifetime.
The American Dreamer is a documentary about the making of that film, which was directed by Lawrence Schiller and L.M. Kit Carson. Initially released in 1971 on the Mediarts label, the soundtrack LP was scarce as hen’s teeth. In 2018, reissue specialists Light in the Attic released the album for the dreaded Record Store Day. While that pressing went out of print, they saw fit to also reissue the soundtrack on CD.
Highlights of the 10-song collection of outsider folk music are a pair of cuts by Byrd Gene Clark, whose tortured genius is right in line with Hopper’s. The suggestion is that this era is the crossroads where the promise and optimism of the ’60s crashed into the cynicism that would derail a generation’s hopes. John Buck Wilkin’s “The Screaming Metaphysical Blues” offers a glimpse into the sunset of the hippie dream.
