Press Interviews
Dennis Hopper - Press Interviews and Statements
Dennis Hopper Talks Super Mario Bros. the Movie
"I made a picture called Super Mario Bros., and my six-year-old son at the time -- he's now 18 -- he said, 'Dad, I think you're probably a pretty good actor, but why did you play that terrible guy King Koopa in Super Mario Bros.?' and I said, 'Well Henry, I did that so you could have shoes,' and he said, 'Dad, I don't need shoes that badly."
December 2, 2008 by Noel Murray, A.V. Club
AVC: Super Mario Bros. (1993)—"King Koopa"
Dennis Hopper: Wow, you really did a jump there. [Laughs.] My son, who's now 18 years old, was 6 or 7 when I did that movie, and he came up to me after he saw it and he said, "Daddy, I think you're probably a really good actor, but why did you play King Koopa?" And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Well he's such a bad guy, why did you want to play him?" And I said, "Well, so you can have shoes." And he said, "I don't need shoes." [Laughs.] So that was my 7-year-old's impression. It was a nightmare, very honestly, that movie. It was a husband-and-wife directing team who were both control freaks and wouldn't talk before they made decisions. Anyway, I was supposed to go down there for five weeks, and I was there for 17. It was so over budget. But I bought a couple buildings down there in Wilmington, NC, and I started painting. I made an art studio out of one.
AVC: You had a real run there in the '90s of playing villains in big movies like Super Mario Bros., Speed, and Waterworld. Was that fun for you?
Dennis Hopper: Speed and Waterworld…I like both of those films, actually. I did not like Super Mario Bros. I thought Waterworld got a bad name for itself in the United States, but it did really well in Europe and Asia. I think the studio sort of shot themselves in the foot by announcing it was so over budget, blah blah blah, it's going to be a failure… All this came out before we released it in the States. But I enjoyed it. And Speed, I really loved; I thought it was a terrific movie. Jan De Bont's first directorial job, coming from being a cinematographer. He did a terrific job. That was fun.