Easy Rider
Easy Rider is a 1969 film which has become an anthem to the hippie lifestyle of the 1960s.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
The film tells the story of two young men, played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, who smuggle undescribed white powder with small off-road motorbikes from an junk yard where spanish is spoken to Los Angeles, selling it to a guy in a Rolls Royce (Music producer Phil Spector supplying both car and body guard).
With the Dollar bills stuffed into the fuel tanks of their California style Choppers (customized Harley Davidson motorcycles that were popularized by this film), they "went looking for America but couldn't find it anywhere", riding east through desert landscapes like Monument Valley, accompanied by contemporary songs of Steppenwolf, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix and others.
Calling themselves Captain America and Billy (the Kid) and being dressed in Stars and Stripes and buckskin leather they encounter several other American types, a motel owner refusing to give them a room, a helpful farmer, a hitch-hiking stranger on the highway, a Hippie commune, and after getting arrested for parading without a permit, Jack Nicholson in his breakthrough role as an alcoholic lawyer with ACLU affiliations.
After the three get verbally abused in a Lousiana restaurant as being long haired Yankee queers, they wonder "This used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it." while smoking marihuana at the camp fire. At night, the lawyer gets beaten to death by local citizens, leaving the two others injured. They continue to New Orleans to visit their initial goal, the Mardi Gras celebrations, and a brothel which had been recommended by Jack Nicholson's character in the most hilarious scene of the movie. After a psychedelic LSD trip with two prostitutes on a cemetery, Fonda's character Wyatt (Earp) resignates and declares sadly "We blew it".
In a shocking ending, they get shot from the motor bikes by two rednecks in a pickup truck, and the bike painted with the US flag explodes into flames.
The movie title comes not from the anything but easy ride on the bikes which lack any rear suspension, but from the slang term easy rider, which describes the lover of a whore who gets the free ride. The authors are claiming that individual freedom has become a whore nowadays: "I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace."
The movie was written by Fonda, Hopper and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. Despite being shot in the first half of 1968, between Mardi Gras and the assination of Robert F. Kennedy, it took nearly a year until its US debut in July of 1969, as Hopper couldn't come to an end with editing, so this was done by several persons. This explains the different styles within the movie, especially the few funny scenes which come in between rather serious ones.
Both film and (new) director won a Golden Palm at the 1969 festival in Cannes, France.
Also, it was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Jack Nicholson) and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Material Not Previously Published or Produced.
The film was #88 on American Film Institute's list of 100 Years, 100 Movies, and has been selected for preservation in the United States' National Film Registry.
Trivia: The scenes playing on a New Orleans cemetery towards the end of the film were shot first on 16mm film. During the shooting, Dennis Hopper, legendary at the time for his drug excesses, tyrannized the crew so much with his paranoid control freakiness that everyone quit. The rest of the film had to be shot with an entirely new crew.
Track List (music from the film)
- 1 The Pusher (Steppenwolf) (5:50)
- 2 Born to be Wild (Steppenwolf) (3:38)
- 3 The Weight (Smith) (4:33)
- 4 Wasn't Born to Follow (The Byrds) (2:08)
- 5 If You Want to be a Bird (Jimi Hendrix Experience) (5:34)
- 8 Kyrie Eleison Mardi Gras (The Electric Prunes) (4:02)
- 9 It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) (Roger McGuinn) (3:42)
- 10 Ballad of Easy Rider (2:15)
