Double Exposure, 

Roddy McDowell's photo book,

letter tributes - © 1989

 

Dennis Hopper's Letter (accompanying picture of Dean):

 

The text of it reads: 

BACKTRACK PRODUCTIONS INC.

September 12, 1988

 

Roddy:

What a strange place to be in.  You Roddy, who encouraged me to keep photographing and I really knew before Dean, and Dean who after became and is my best friend.  Boy with the green hair, Wallace Berman, Bruce Connor, George Herms, Gustave Moreau, Man Ray, your champs and mine.

 

Dean my man, Paris, London, Taos, Cannes, Peru, NY – LA, Mexico City.  Best performance by an actor, anytime, anywhere in Married to the Mob.  Go get'em killer, father of two and who's the godfather.  Love to Joy.

 

Your friend,

Dennis Hopper

 

Dean Stockwell's Letter (accompanying picture of Dennis):

(GK KOMET, long haired=KOME, hair of the head)

 

He is a force in the arts that we can't evaluate correctly yet.  His work is not yet done.  Few complete careers contain as impressive a series of accomplishments, but I suspect his greatest works are yet to come.  Why do I think this?  One of a number of heavenly bodies in highly eccentric orbits around the sun.  Komets were for ages regarded with awe and sometimes terror.  It was formerly thought that komets entered the solar system from regions beyond; recent studies, however, indicate that they have elliptical orbits and are permanent members of the solar system.  Who ever thought the 'Enfant Terrible' would shape up and survive?  Maybe he changed?  No, he hasn't.  Shifted gears?  Too simple.  He's just different?  What else is new.  Hitter has chilled out?  No.  Sobriety appeared to him wearing a garter belt?  Aha!  That's close enough. 

 

A bright, cloudy head, within which a bright nucleus or sometimes two or more nuclei may be seen; there may be no tail or one or more.  When a komet approaches the sun, its tail streams out behind it; but beyond the perihelion the tail precedes the komet.  The spirit of James Dean is in him.  The spirit of Wagner, Jesus, Thomas, Rimbaud, Ramanujan, Casanova, Wells, Hermes . . . . . . . Materials appear to be thrown out from the nucleus; under the radiation pressure of the sun's light these are driven off in a direction opposite the sun and spread along the heavens.  And Kansas is the name of the star.  He is real surreal.  The origin of the komets is not understood.

 

(for Jill’s interpretation of the above letter, go here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theSassies/message/1136)

 

The End