The Hot Spot - 35MM

“𝙎𝙖𝙛𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙨𝙚𝙭. 𝙄𝙩’𝙨 𝙙𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙨.”

Three days before beginning production on a heist thriller called THE HOT SPOT written by Mike Figgis, Hopper abandoned the script and pivoted to to a vintage 1962 screenplay originally intended for Robert Mitchum and written by legendary noir writer Charles Williams, adapting his short story “Hell Hath No Fury”. Eager to make a “last tango in Texas”, Hopper sets the story in a queasy netherverse between the actual 1980s of the film’s making and a more oblique 1950s Southwest imaginary. Don Johnson features in the Mitchum role as an amoral drifter named Harry Maddox. After he washes up in a desert town and finds work as a used-car salesman, Maddox finds himself in a pained lust triangle between an innocent young girl (Jennifer Connelly) and the femme fatale wife (Virginia Madsen) of his newfound employer. Slickly photogaphed by Uli Steiger with music by Jack Nitsche, Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal and others, THE HOT SPOT is pure Hopper: a lurid-beyond-belief vision of America as breeding ground for incestuous fascism.

Programmed by writer Steve Macfarlane. Introduction 9/9!