ABSTRACT
This chapter explores one of Hopper’s most fascinating periods: the wilderness years of the 1970s that began with the critical and commercial failure of his second directorial film The Last Movie. The film’s soundtrack encompasses mostly live on-set diegetic sound, American folk music, and traditional indigenous music from Peru, the film’s location, to create a layered and immersive experience. Over the course of the last decade, The Last Movie has gained a resurgence of interest with a restored DVD/Blu-ray reissue and a limited issue of the film’s soundtrack on vinyl. The chapter also takes into account the “making of” documentary The American Dreamer (1971), as a supplemental film to The Last Movie.
