The Second Coming of Christ — Dennis Hopper?

by Gary T. McDonald, author of The Gospel of Thomas (the Younger)

Almost 50 years ago now, I had the great good fortune to spend a fair amount of time with the actor/ film director Dennis Hopper. I was living at the Mabel Dodge House, actually a compound of houses Dennis had bought near Taos, New Mexico. He also owned a movie theater down the road in Ranchos de Taos and there was a bar next door. We spent many an hour one summer in that bar doing Dennis’ favorite thing — drinking. I was a young wannabe film director and I was eager to learn how I could become one from someone who had done it. Dennis was helpful, but naturally he often steered our conversation in different directions.

Now, though I hesitate to do so, I could claim this —

During those conversations, Dennis revealed to me that he was the Second Coming of Christ. Like Jesus does in the Gospel of Mark, Dennis asked me not to tell anyone else.

He said the reason he didn’t reveal himself to the world and drank so much was that he was disgusted at the way the world had ignored his message from 2000 years earlier and how Christians had re-purposed him into a defender of wealth accumulation (and finally, capitalism, in the last couple of centuries).

Dennis said when he “returned”, he initially thought the best way to get his message another hearing was to become a movie star. So he managed to get himself cast in a very Christ-like role in Giant, hung around James Dean trying to improve his craft, but finally realized he was going to have the go the next step — become a director so he could better control the message of his films.

So he joined with Peter Fonda in making Easy Rider — a film about a Christ figure who realizes that he’s “blown it” (Fonda actually says this in the film) playing the capitalist game by selling drugs. The title of the film was meant to convey that, in the end, Hopper and Fonda were pimps, which is what the old blues song with that title is about.

The message got lost and the movie became another capitalist commodity itself — a huge hit. But that afforded Dennis/Jesus the chance to make a more direct attempt at re-stating his message in a form that would defy commodification — The Last Movie. It’s a film about a stuntman that leaves the movie business in disgust and ends up getting crucified by outraged Peruvian Indians — Christian converts who don’t understand Jesus any better than American Christians do.

Of course, that film failed miserably as a Hollywood product, few understood it and by that time Dennis was so into cocaine and alcohol that nothing much of anything made sense to him anymore. He advised me to do something better with my life than become a movie director.

I ignored his advice. And eventually my old friend and mentor sobered up, wandered through various other acting and directing jobs and then died of cancer. He did get to make Colors — a nice little film about a good man in a corrupt world. Other than that, the Second Coming was a bust.

Now, I could go on to claim this —

I have an ongoing personal relationship with Jesus Christ/Dennis Hopper. We have daily conversations in my mind or in my heart, whatever. Many times when I was directing a film and was stumped, I’d silently ask him what to do and, ever the saint he was at heart, he would give me excellent guidance. Of course, my films, though they sometimes trod over the same thematic ground he did in both his lives, never achieved the success of the best of his. And that’s okay — after all, he was the Second Coming of Christ.

Now, no one can disprove my claims here anymore than I can disprove that Jesus said what the gospels have him say or that some Christians have ongoing “personal relationships” with him . And I don’t think my claims are any more absurd than anyone else’s. I have living witnesses to the time I spent with Dennis in Taos. His films speak for themselves and his post-death solutions to my directorial problem are right there in my films. So, if you don’t think Dennis was actually Jesus returned, sue me.

Or… take a moment to re-consider the claims of Christians who say they have a personal relationship with Jesus.

In one sense, it is simply impossible to have “a personal relationship” with a non-material being, if such a thing even exists. Everything we associate with a personal relationship happens by virtue of some form of direct contact and/or communication between beings. You may have a relationship with the foreign pen pal whom you’ve never met, but that relationship rests upon and is validated by the emails, notes, letters you send each other. You might have a relationship with a pet, or another animal, but it’s because you have had and continue to have some sensory contact with that animal. And that’s true of the people in your life. If they were to die, the relationship would end. There would only be memories of it.

If Jesus ever existed, he died. Some say he was resurrected and ascended into heaven, whatever all that means. But no one today has a direct, sensory experience of him… unless they are hallucinating and then, not really — it’s just an hallucination. And no one gets letters, emails, etc. from him… except on a stupid CBS series.

On the other hand, we probably all have sub-personalities. We all have a dominant, conscious personality. Freud called it the Ego. But we also may have various other, less conscious parts of ourselves with different agendas that rise up onto consciousness at times to work those agendas.

Freud also thought we each have a Super-Ego. It contains all the information about how we are to think, feel and behave according to the cultural norms we were raised within. But it also contains what we used to call a conscience — that voice in us that tells us what we should do at any given moment and troubles us when we may have done something wrong. Is the conscience/Super-ego a sub-personality? In the sense that it is always in a negotiation with our conscious, dominant personality, I think it is. Do some Christians give it a name — “Jesus” — and engage in a sometimes loving, sometimes contentious relationship with it? Does it become the imaginary friend? To consciously split it off as a distinct being within yourself definitely seems like a step into self-delusion, but as long as it’s only serving as a conscience, an imaginary friend and a guiding moral presence, it sounds pretty harmless. It’s only when it becomes a source of moral judgment and condemnation of others or a crippling source of guilt that it could get problematic.

But is it really Jesus? I don’t like that idea.

If Jesus really existed as a historical figure — and I personally believe he did — he lived out his life and died. Then a bunch of people who wanted to keep his memory alive started to tell stories about him. Those stories were embellished over and over again over time and they were finally written down in the various canon and non-canon gospels we have. Various strategies of how to relate to those stories have evolved over time. One of them is this “personal relationship” thing. I think we would do better to wrestle with our own consciences, as imperfect as they are, than tell ourselves that we are inhabited by a perfect deity that always knows best. If it is a sub-personality with its own agenda, we might do things in Jesus’s name and by his authority that we probably shouldn’t do.

One way to keep from going that route is to struggle with the historical figure of Jesus and come up with the best idea of him we can. One that keeps him firmly in a historical context. I’ve tried to do that in my book The Gospel of Thomas (the Younger). It tells the story of how the memory of this highly charismatic wandering teacher got hijacked into a religion that he would never have accepted. Oh, and by the way, he did not return as Dennis Hopper. Nor did Dennis ever claim that. I was just trying to make a point. Happy April Fool’s Day.

Learn more about The Gospel of Thomas (the Younger) here — www.garytmcdonald.com

“A convincing faux gospel that challenges orthodoxy. Thomas traverses his world encountering First Century figures from Jesus to Nero bringing his times and the origins of Christianity alive in a fresh, new way with wry humor and exciting storytelling.”
―Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump

“Gary T. McDonald is a born storyteller, and his research is impeccable. The book is fascinating from beginning to end, and his long-overdue, iconoclastic portrait of the Apostle Paul made me stand up and cheer.”
―Lewis Shiner, author of Glimpses

“An inherently fascinating and deftly crafted work of truly memorable fiction, The Gospel Of Thomas (the Younger) is an extraordinary novel by an extraordinary writer and unreservedly recommended…”
― Midwest Book Review