The Dennis Hopper Western Movie That Set a Guinness World Record

There are films you see and you are left bewildered. Dennis Hopper's 1971 Western, The Last Movie, is one such film. The Last Movie's somewhat confusing use of flashforwards and flashbacks, non-linear structure, "missing scene" texts, jump cuts, and juxtaposition of realism and fiction defies every rule of traditional storytelling. With a plot centering around a movie within a movie, the film is an opulent disarray. Coming on the heels of Hopper's success with his 1969 debut feature Easy Rider, which marked a radical shift in Hollywood storytelling, the director sought to build on that accomplishment with The Last Movie. He co-wrote, directed, co-starred in, and edited the film — a testament to his cinematic machismo of the time. According to an article by Life Magazine titled "The Easy Rider Runs Wild", Hopper promised his friends, "My next picture is going to be really heavy, man." Alas, The Last Movie underwhelmed both Universal Pictures and the film's audience. Its making was even more chaotic, and it nearly became Hopper's literal last movie, as he didn't direct another until nine years later. Even so, his experiment with The Last Movie bore a film that was unconventional, with a beginning that claimed the Guinness World Record for the longest pre-credit sequence in a film.