A Dennis Hopper eulogy

On the day Dennis Hopper died, I can only think of Easy Rider.  It is not among my favorite movies, but there is one shot that is embedded in my memory like no other.  What I remember is not just its composition, but how what it showed penetrated me emotionally at a time when I did not quiet yet grasp the cultural significance of cinema.  After I saw it, I believed.  

Has there ever been a shot filled with more brilliance and love than this one (and somehow Google Image search fails to turn up a single screen shot!), where the camera pans inside the tent of a commune, and slow reveals for us, the faces of a generation, as if great poetry was being painted onto a canvas at that very moment?

The very first time I saw this shot, I patiently waited for it to end.  After some point I realized the point of this shot was not for it to end, but for it to continue, until every face had been given a chance to speak to the audience, whisper a badly remembered song, blow a kiss, etc. Whatever it was, I had never seen a daring shot like this attempted in cinema (outside of Godard), and its raw, unapologetic power pierced me right away, and had me at its disposal like a cowardly POW.  Although I had no connection with the hippie movement, I had a connection with any works of cinema that chooses to linger on the faces of those who have soul (Another example: Masculine & Feminin).  Like many have said, Easy Rider was a film for us, it was a film for love, and this shot, was an aria of the greatest romantic power--not just love for that generation, but love for everything that takes place in the process of making a movie.  It was not a sentimental shot.  In fact, its color and the excruciatingly slow pan was stark and ominous, but if there was an ever a shot to signal the essence and the disappearance of a generation, this was it.

In an documentary I watched on the making of Easy Rider, Laszlo Kovacs said that they shot this in a hurry, as the shoot for the day was wrapping up and they had to leave in a hurry.  This could all be hearsay, but it also made sense.  Genius is usually born in these hurried moments, where certain particles collide in the mind of one, or a few, and create things of lasting power.

Exactly what went on between Dennis Hopper or Kovacs I cannot know, but, why ask anyway?