Once a week long-time radio producer and author Rick Kaempfer shares his favorite brushes with greatness in a feature he calls “Celebrity Snippets.”
Dennis Hopper is an iconic film actor. He is celebrating his 71st birthday this week.
By Rick Kaempfer
One of the first big movie stars I booked to appear on the Steve & Garry show was Dennis Hopper. This was during his BlueVelvet/Hoosiers era, when he was one of the hottest stars in Hollywood.
It took quite a bit of convincing to get him on the show, because his schedule was booked solid with television and print interviews. The local PR firm handling his media tour finally succumbed to my begging.
“OK,” the PR guy said. “But you’ve only got him for fifteen minutes. Not one second longer, because we have to get him over to the TV stations.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
In my own defense, I honestly had no idea that I was promising something beyond my ability to control.
“We’ve only got him for fifteen minutes,” I told Steve. He laughed.
When Hopper and the PR man arrived, I whisked Hopper directly into the studio so that we could maximize our short amount of time. The PR man came into the studio with me.
“Fifteen minutes, right?” he asked sternly.
“Of course,” I agreed.
At the ten minute mark, Hopper was telling great stories about his eight day marriage to Michelle Phillips. Steve and Garry were spellbound.
At the twelve minute mark, the PR guy started pointing to the clock. “Be sure to tell them to wrap it up.”
“I can’t do that from here,” I said. “It’ll have to wait until the commercial break. I’m sure they’ll wrap it up any second.”
At the fifteen minute mark, Hopper was telling a great story about Natalie Wood. When the story ended, I got up to walk toward the door, thinking it was over. That’s when Steve started asking him about his days hanging out with James Dean. It was obvious that there was no way this conversation would be ending anytime soon.
“Go in there and tell him to end the interview,” the PR guy said.
“It’s out of my hands,” I explained.
“But you promised that we would be out in fifteen minutes. We have to get to the TV stations.”
He was doing his best to scare me, but nothing he could say or do could scare me more than the prospect of Steve’s reaction to my ending the interview. I was mute. At the twenty minute mark, I looked over at the PR guy, and could see the veins sticking out in his neck. He kept looking at his watch over and over again, sighing, pacing, and tapping his foot.
At the thirty minute mark, he blurted. “I’m going in there.”
“No you can’t do that,” I said, blocking his way.
That’s when Steve mentioned to Dennis Hopper on the air that they had gone over their fifteen minute allotment.
“Oh,” Hopper said. “Is that it?”
“No,” Steve said. “I’m not letting you leave. We have more people listening to this show than those TV stations have watching theirs. I’m doing this for you.”
“Whatever you say,” Hopper replied, ever the friendly guest.
I thought the PR guy was going to have an aneurysm. He got on the phone and called the next interviewer up, saying some not-so-nice things about Steve & Garry. After he hung up the phone, he said to me: “You know-- you’re not making a very good impression on me here.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m sorry,” I said. “If there was anything I could do, I would.”
Steve finally ended the interview a few minutes later. The PR guy grabbed Hopper and whisked him to the next interview without even saying goodbye.
Over the next fifteen years or so I saw that same PR guy (who I’m intentionally not naming for his sake) dozens of times, and every time I saw him he mentioned that first time we met. He is still doing publicity in Chicago, in fact he’s one of the most prominent PR men in town, but to his credit, he never held this Dennis Hopper incident against me when it came to booking future guests. In time, he even came to trust me again.
As for the interview itself, I really had no idea how it went until I replayed it during the Best of Steve & Garry a few years later. It’s just the postscript to this story, but I must say, once I could listen to it without an angry face staring at me, I really enjoyed it. I consider it to be one of the best interviews that Steve and Garry ever did.
For hundreds of additional celebrity and radio stories, check out my book "The Radio Producer's Handbook," which is still available at Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
If you missed any of the previous Celebrity Snippets, click here: http://celebritysnippets.blogspot.com
