Ten Interviews That Shook Hollywood

3. ROBIN GREEN VS. DENNIS HOPPER

("Confessions of a Lesbian Chick," Rolling Stone, May, 1971)

When this all-time classic hit the stands back in 1971, Rolling Stone ran a disclaimer for Green's parents, assuring them that it wasn't she who was the lesbian. Instead, that distinction belonged to Dennis Hopper, so named after telling his interviewer that he'd "rather give head to a beautiful woman than fuck her, really... I'm just another chick, a lesbian chick."

This really was one of those devastatingly honest interviews. At the time, Hopper was riding high off the success of Easy Rider and, even though his most recent effort, The Last Movie, had been an incomprehensible bomb, he was still regarded as some sort of genius who knew how to make movies for the counterculture. Green interviewed Hopper at his home in Taos, New Mexico during an underground press junket arranged by Universal Pictures to promote a documentary about Hopper called The American Dreamer.

Throughout the day, a lot of hallucinogenics were passed around, and though everyone (except Green) was fairly stoned, Hopper quickly reached a state best described as absolutely fried. By the time Green sat down with him and turned on her tape recorder, the man was blathering off into infinity, with occasional practical asides ("What we need is a roach clip"). Green, angry at the sheer arrogance of it all, devoted almost half of her article to quoting him (and his space-cadet friends) verbatim. Reading her piece confirmed what Hollywood studio chiefs had already begun to suspect: Dennis Hopper had levitated so far off the planet that he was incapable of making a commercial movie. His career as a director was soon over, not to be resurrected until he achieved sobriety in the mid-'80s.

"What I saw that night was a lot of nonsense," recalls Green, now a writer for the CBS TV series "Northern Exposure." "There was a lot of cruelty, and a lot of people sitting at Hopper's feet, just lapping it up. I couldn't stand it finally and just ran off into the desert. This was my first piece, and it was a real initiation."

4. TOM BURKE VS. RYAN O'NEAL

("The Sheik of Malibu," Esquire, September, 1973)

It was Peter Bogdanovich who talked O'Neal into doing this infamous interview. Having written for Esquire in the '60s, Bogdanovich felt a certain connection with his colleagues there that would not be shared by O'Neal. In fact, in the actor's view, the interview turned out to be a near-disastrous career move.

Describing a visit to O'Neal's Malibu home, which included exchanges with the actor's tanned, beach-attired friends, Burke observed that it was "an atmosphere in which blond-ness was important. No one here has ever had pimples on his back. If one comes here shielded by smoked glasses, wrapped in unnecessary clothes, not beautiful, then one is an emissary from a gray, anxious, motivated world... and is gently, circumspectly mocked." Burke proceeded to note that O'Neal "appears feverish, excited, as if he tended... to run a temperature consistently higher than normal, like a dog's." And upon the arrival of brother Kevin O'Neal, Burke observed, "there is something noisy, flushed, expectant about him, as though his temperature was even higher than a dog's."

What upset O'Neal the most when the article appeared, however, was the illustration--a David Hockney-like painting of O'Neal doing a handstand on his diving board and staring at his reflection in the pool, an image that seemed to sum up Burke's condescension at a glance. Burke reports that O'Neal called him in New York soon after publication, complaining that, "you're making me sound like such a beach bum ... you didn't have to emphasize that angle so much! Never again am I going to do a piece like this." The episode was a sobering experience for the actor, like Warren Beatty, he refused to do in-depth interviews for the next several years.

5. JULIE BAUMGOLD VS. DAVID GEFFEN

("The Winning of Cher," Esquire, February, 1975)

One of the dishiest celebrity interviews ever written-- impudent, keenly observed, scathing--this 1975 classic seems almost to have had direct access to Geffen's own scattered consciousness, so close and particular are Baumgold's observations. Here, for example, is Geffen as he walks down Manhattan's Fifth Avenue: "The pain is unbearable. It jags down his hipbones to his groin. David Geffen thinks it might be the boots, the walking. Having lived so long in California with his legs dangling over the plump leathers of his Eames chair and his Rolls-Royce, he has forgotten how to walk."

At the time, Geffen, 31, was chairman of the board of Elektra/Asylum Records and living with Cher, upon whom he lavished all manner of luxuries and possessions. The underlying portrait was of a skinny Jewish kid from Brooklyn looking to prove he had really made it and getting caught up in his own momentum. The real fun of the piece, though, was in Baumgold's descriptions of Geffen's eccentric, money-to-burn lifestyle, his too-successful-to-care work habits ("Sure, I wouldn't mind signing Paul McCartney or Elton John, but I'm not very hungry"), and his occasional intimacies with Cher: "Cher's tongue is deep inside Geffen's mouth. Her thick braid swings forward onto his neck. She straightens up and smooths her leotard into her famously flat midriff. 'Feel my ass,' she says to Geffen. 'Hard as a rock.'"

Not surprisingly, the piece put Geffen on the rack. When Esquire writer Robert Sam Anson called him seven years later to request another interview, this was Geffen's response: "Do you know what your magazine did to me last time? Do you know? ... Reading that article was the worst single moment in my life. Do you know what I did after I read that article? I threw up, that's what I did. I threw up! And then do you know what I did? I left the country! I went to Brazil! Brazil! Do you know that? For six months! That article nearly caused a breakdown! Do you hear that? Breakdown! Now you want me to do it again? Do you think I'm crazy? Is that what you think? That I'm crazy?"

Eventually, Geffen consented to the interview, which was printed under the heading "David Geffen Talks a Little" in the November 1982 issue of Esquire. But it was nowhere near as funny as Baumgold's.

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