A Kickstarter campaign to complete Dennis Hopper’s unreleased final film has topped its $90,000 fundraising goal in three weeks.
The funds will enable director Linda Yellen to finish the comedy “The Last Film Festival,” which was halted in 2010 when Hopper died. The funds will pay for the rights to use footage from other motion pictures, edit the movie and add special effects to complete the film’s narrative.
Yellen said she plans to release the movie in May to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Hopper’s death. She explained that other investment offers would have required cutting certain scenes, altering the film’s score and changing Hopper’s voice.
“Dennis saw a rough cut of the movie before he died and loved it,” she said. “We want everyone to see the same film that Dennis and I envisioned.”
“The Last Film Festival” tells the story of a big-shot Hollywood producer, played by Hopper, whose recent flop of a film is accepted in just one film festival – the badly organized O’Hi Film Festival, where the clash of Hollywood egos and small town ambitions result in unexpected chaos. The cast includes Jacqueline Bisset, Joseph Cross, JoBeth Williams, Katrina Bowden, Chris Kattan, Leelee Sobieski and Donnell Rawlings.
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One backer paid $4,000 for a dinner with Bisset, and three backers paid $10,000 each for an associate producer credit.
Yellen wrote the script with her writing partner Michael Leeds. She thanked supporters Monday.
“It’s been a long, hard journey and the fulfillment of a promise I made to Dennis a long time ago,” she said. “This could never have been done without Kickstarter and all of you who have supported this campaign. Now that we have reached our goal, we will move post-production into high gear.”
Hopper was nominated for Oscars for the screenplay for “Easy Rider” and for supporting actor in “Hoosiers.”
