He numbers among the original Dreamlanders, the group of actors and artists who worked with independent filmmaker John Waters on his early films.
He wrote for the United Feature Syndicate, Associated Press, Baltimore Sun, American Film, Rolling Stone, People and the website Splice Today.
Fifty years later, Koper recalled how the crowd had fallen silent as King began to speak, and how his words had made it seem like the struggle for civil rights could be won.
[7] Author Richard Ben Cramer, a freshman when he began at The News-Letter in 1967, remembered Koper as a role model, one of the "giants" to whom he hoped he would someday "measure up.
Koper recalls how, in 1968, shortly before Waters made Mondo Trasho, the group later known as the Dreamlanders coalesced from three distinct groups: recent Maryland Institute College of Art alumni, many of whom lived at the Hollywood Bakery; the Johns Hopkins University literary set, including Koper himself; and Waters' friends from Baltimore's suburbs by way of Baltimore's gay scene, including Divine.
[12] After what one contemporary called "several frantic years in Fells Point,"[13] Koper sought a quieter life, and purchased a twenty-six acre farm twenty-five miles north of Baltimore in Hampstead, Maryland.
[15] Production manager Robert Maier recalls the challenges of the location, including flooded dirt roads and limited septic facilities, acknowledging Koper's patience throughout the ordeal.
[7] In 1981, Peter and Gina Koper relocated to New York, where they purchased an unfinished industrial loft on Prince Street in Lower Manhattan, north of Little Italy and east of SoHo.
Cultural commentator John Strausbaugh described the area at that time as "a no-name wasteland of dark streets prowled by Bowery winos, heroin addicts and Mafia block capos."
"[21] Koper accepted his first academic position at the University of the District of Columbia in 1972, where he served as an assistant professor in the communications department until the fall of 1980.
For United Features, Koper traveled to Port-au-Prince, Haiti to shadow Aubelin Jolicoeur for a day,[26] and reported on the underground free press from Warsaw during a period of martial law in Poland.
[30] Media advocate Jaci Clement also remembers Koper as one of her favorite professors at Hofstra, and his demanding classes as the "best training to prepare me for working in a newsroom."
[11] Koper received co-screenplay credit for his contributions to the Kathy Acker script on which director Bette Gordon based her 1983 arthouse film Variety.
"[39] Bob Strauss of the Los Angeles Daily News described the film as Paul Verhoeven's "Showgirls without the budget," criticizing both the screenplay produced by "Koper's tabloid ink-stained hands," and Bruce's "uncertain direction.
"[41] David Stratton of Variety described the film as "gripping," praised Bruce's "fluid direction" and predicted that "prospects look brighter for video release.
[45] In 1996, Koper took up seasonal residence in the Long Island hamlet of Springs, New York, where he became interested in the story of the four Nazi saboteurs who disembarked from a U-boat on the morning of June 13, 1942, to land on Amagansett's Atlantic Avenue Beach, then boarded the Long Island Rail Road bound for Manhattan as part of a plan to attack the United States.
[46][47] In 2011, the East Hampton Historical Society staged a reading of the screenplay at Mulford Farmhouse to raise funds to restore the Amagansett Coast Guard Station.
[49] Koper won the 2001 Santa Barbara International Film Festival's Peter Stark Screenwriting competition for his screenplay Joyful Noise.
[50] In 2004, the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg honored Koper with a second commission, this time to write a dark romantic comedy about capital punishment entitled The Executioner in Love.
[51] In 2016, Koper wrote and co-produced the documentary Trump Tribe, filmed at that year's Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, and featuring seventeen voters who speak candidly about their zeal for the presidential candidacy of Donald J.