Fishing with John, Volume 3: Thailand with Dennis Hopper (1992)

***1/2

John Lurie is an actor and a musician, best known for his leading role in Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise and as a founder of the Lounge Lizards, and as the vhs box puts it: “John Lurie knows absolutely nothing about fishing, but that doesn’t stop him from undertaking the adventure of a lifetime by traveling with his special guests to the most exotic and most dangerous places on Earth.” With Volume 3 of the Fishing with John series, John takes Dennis Hopper on a trip to Thailand in search of the much-fabled, but seldom-seen giant squid.

As Lurie and Hopper are guided by locals along the Andaman Sea, video narrator Robb Webb pokes fun at the absurdity of their mission. “Somewhere in this ocean there are squid 59 feet long and weighing more than a ton. It is not likely that they inhabit these parts, but one never knows.” More of a tongue-in-cheek talk-show than anything else, Fishing with John is as funny as it is surreal, with Lurie and Hopper candidly acting more like uncle and nephew than professional counterparts.

  

High on dramamine, they hook a sting-ray that they can’t figure out how to unhook, play ping-pong on the beach, visit a shady pirate outpost, and share tea with Buddhist monks. They do in fact spend much of the program trying to catch fish, but their true overriding intent is revealed by Webb as even more plainly practical: “Whether there is such a thing as a giant squid or not, life is still beautiful.” Other episodes in this series feature Matt Dillon in the Amazon, Tom Waits in Jamaica, and William Dafoe on Long Island, and they figure to be just as quirky and as interesting as this one.