00:01Dennis, what is it like to direct a film of your own that you're in?
00:06It's sort of like being quarterback on a football team.
00:10Except that you're writing the plans also because Peter Fonda and I wrote the screenplay.
00:16You were involved in every inch of it. You must not have ever been able to put it down for
00:21a minute.
00:21Well, I edited it also for a year and got the music together for it.
00:25I have a wild score with Steppenwolf and The Birds and Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix.
00:33Well, since you were involved in it from top to toe, then I guess you can take complete credit and
00:38complete blame and complete everything.
00:41Well, yeah.
00:41That's the only advantage or disadvantage of it.
00:44Yeah.
00:44Is it what you wanted to say?
00:46Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:48I've always, I've been talking for 15 years about making a film that would be an art film and also
00:52be commercial.
00:54And that I'd win either Cannes or Venice and we took it to Cannes and we were the only film
00:59there that won two awards.
01:01I won Best First Direction of a Picture, which is an honorary award.
01:05They give it, well, the last time they gave it was for man and woman.
01:09Gave it to the director of that and we won the World Protestant Church Award for the best film in
01:14the festival, which I thought they were putting me on about.
01:17I was very honored, but I couldn't see how cocaine smugglers and people who smoke marijuana from beginning to the
01:23end of the movie could possibly win that award.
01:25But it was a, it was a great honor and it is a very moral film.
01:28It's about man's inhumanity to man.
01:31Now, tell me a little bit how it goes.
01:33You say you ride motorcycles in it.
01:34Yeah, well, we ride from Los Angeles to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and then on into Florida.
01:41And, uh...
01:42It's kind of the people what you meet on the way and what happens to you?
01:45Yeah, different types of people in the country.
01:47It's about what's happening in America today and, uh, uh, I don't like the generation gap, but it's about having
01:55long hair.
01:56We're not allowed into restaurants.
01:57We're not allowed into, uh, motels.
02:00And we camp out at the side of the road and it sort of becomes a Western for a while
02:04and it's a very beautiful open country.
02:06And, uh, uh, we ride motorcycles rather than horses.
02:09And then as we get back into the civilization, uh, we start getting into problems in Texas and Louisiana and
02:17Mississippi.
02:18The stars don't have to look a certain way just to look like a star.
02:22No.
02:23I mean, you don't have to pull up with a Cadillac in front to come in here to do an
02:26interview here.
02:27No, but that's fun too.
02:28Do you like that too?
02:30Well, I'm just, you know, I'm just thinking.
02:32Um...
02:32It's okay if it's fun then, is that it?
02:34Well, no, I, I wear long hair and everybody says, well, you people wear long hair to be different.
02:39Uh, I wear long hair because I identify with long-haired people just like I assume that people wear short
02:44hair,
02:44not because they want to have long hair, but because they want to identify with short-haired people.
02:48People have preconceived ideas, uh, you have long hair, you're a communist, uh, you're on welfare, uh, you're on your
02:55way to the Poor People's March,
02:56you have hepatitis, you have venereal disease, uh, preconceived ideas, and preconceived ideas are destroying this country.
03:26Dennis, do you think that your San Diego acting experience served as a good foundation for your career in Hollywood?
03:31I think it was invaluable. My, uh, my training at the Globe Theatre, and I, when I graduated from high
03:36school,
03:36I played Shakespeare here at the Old Globe Theatre, and that was, uh, that was a marvelous experience,
03:40and I worked at La Jolla Playhouse, and, uh, as an apprentice, and I met a lot of people there.
03:47I had a great opportunity to watch professional actors work and rehearse, and it was invaluable, I think.
03:52You went to Hollywood at the tender age of 18, you're 26 now, how many roles have you performed in
03:57the ensuing eight years?
03:59I've done about 10 or 11 movies, I'm not quite sure which, and about 150 guest star shots on television.
04:05Are most of the opportunities now in Hollywood on television rather than in motion pictures?
04:10Oh, I think all of them, unless you're a star, unless you're a big established star, you have to make
04:14your living from television.
04:16And there are very few movies, I understand there were only 200 movies made in Hollywood last year, a lot
04:21of them abroad.
04:22You haven't gone overseas to make any pictures, have you? No, I haven't. Why not?
04:25I haven't been offered them, and most of the younger people are being used from Europe, they're European actors, actually.
04:32Is Hollywood going through a transition now, perhaps for the better, in order to recoup its lost fortunes?
04:39I think it'll have to. I think, first of all, I think that they have to get younger people in,
04:44you know,
04:44younger people in producing and directing and so on.
04:47I think that they're going to have to compete with the Europeans now rather than the Europeans competing with us.
04:53You see, the Europeans started making art films because that's the only way they can have them seen in this
04:58country.
04:58I think we're now going to have to start making art films for the art theaters in this country
05:03and then eventually send them to Europe.
05:05Do you think there's really a market for art films large enough for Hollywood to support?
05:08I think definitely, especially in Europe. I think that's the biggest market there is in Europe right now are art
05:13films.
05:14The United States in the last, I think, three years ago there was something like 300 art theaters
05:19and now there are 2,000 and more than that, about 2,500, I would say, art theaters in the
05:24United States alone.
05:25Have you been typed quite a bit in the roles that you've been getting?
05:29I would say that I have, yes. I have to, on television, you know, do a guest star shot on
05:35television, which is what I do.
05:36You have to play, most of the time, heavies. So I'm playing heavies.
05:40Actually, in Night Tide, though, the film that is opening here, I play a very nice, naive kind of American
05:46boy from Kansas.
05:47Last week in the Twilight Zone, you were the leader of the American Nazi Party, weren't you?
05:51Yes, that's right, that's right.
05:53As a matter of fact, your very first television role, the one that really got you started big, was a
05:59very offbeat role, wasn't it?
06:01Yes, I played an epileptic. I played an epileptic on Medic.
06:04But at the same time, even though the boy was very sick, he was very sympathetic. It was a very
06:08sympathetic part.
06:09Dennis, you have a remarkable similarity to Napoleon. I wonder whether people have told you about that.
06:14Yes, as a matter of fact, I played Napoleon at Warner Brothers about 1957, I think, in The Story of
06:19Mankind.
06:21Marie Windsor played Josephine. It was a small part. It was a vignette in The Story of Mankind.
06:27Vincent Price was in it, and Ronald Regan, and Ronald Coleman, and just various, you know, stars.
06:33It was one of those big star things. But it was, I loved the part. I loved playing it.
06:37Do you have anything big coming up in the near future?
06:40Well, just television. I just, you know, I'm doing television.
06:42I'm up for three or four films, but there's nothing concrete about it, so I don't know.
06:47How do you like the life up there? Is there enough security for you to be happy with it?
06:53Yes, yes, there is. It can get better. I would like to, you know, do a lot more than I'm
06:59doing at the present time.
07:00But I'm surviving very nicely.
07:02Well, actually, you and Victor Buno are probably the most successful graduates of San Diego to make the big time
07:08in Hollywood.
07:09I guess so, yes. Of course, when you think back a few years, there was Gregory Peck, too. He was
07:14from here.
07:15And then Marla English was up there for a while. I guess she left and came back down here.
07:22And I guess that's about it, isn't it?
07:25Congratulations, Dennis, and welcome back to San Diego, your hometown.
07:28Thank you very much, Mr. King.
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