Reel Classics: Easy Rider

Today’s Reel Classic looks at the sto­ry of a cou­ple of young men meet­ing up with a rather well-to-do busi­ness­man, who is in his Rolls Royce accom­pa­nied by his chauf­feur. They com­plete the busi­ness trans­ac­tion and decide to take a trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. The film is set in the late six­ties at the height of the “six­ties coun­ter­cul­ture.” Our busi­ness­men are not dressed in suits nor do they have hotel reser­va­tions await­ing them in New Orleans.  Our busi­ness­men are what were referred to as “hip­pies” — and the busi­ness deal com­plet­ed involved the sale of cocaine. 

The trip to New Orleans will be on motorcycles. 

Easy Rider has been described as encap­su­lat­ing “the dreams, hopes, and hope­less­ness of the 1960s coun­ter­cul­ture.” Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper are our two bik­ers on their trip across coun­try. They have just made this deal that gives them enough mon­ey to set off on their adven­ture and a new life.  The goal is to pro­ceed to Florida after Mardi Gras and live a care­free life.  Dennis Hopper is Billy and Peter Fonda is Wyatt (also known as Captain America because of the flags on his out­fit and bike).

The jour­ney from California takes them across the Southwest.  They find that they are not wel­comed at some of the places they stop because of their non­con­formist ways and appear­ance.  They end up sleep­ing out­side and enjoy­ing camp­fires.  Along the way they do meet some accept­ing folks. A ranch­er and his wife invite them to din­ner with them, and they pick up a hitch­hik­er who invites them to the com­mune in which he lives. 

From there they pro­ceed to Texas, where they come into a town that is hav­ing a civic cel­e­bra­tion. They decide to join in the parade but are arrest­ed by local law enforce­ment for “parad­ing with­out a per­mit.” It is in jail that they meet the alco­holic attor­ney George Hanson who has his own issues with “the estab­lish­ment,” par­tic­u­lar­ly his wealthy father. A friend­ship devel­ops and George Hanson decides to take off with them upon their release from jail and go to New Orleans.  Sitting around a camp­fire one night George par­takes in smok­ing pot for the first time. He becomes quite glee­ful and talks of how crea­tures from Venus are among us. 

The next day the three men stop at a small café for lunch but leave when con­front­ed by hos­til­i­ty and the lack of accep­tance because they are “dif­fer­ent.”  They are attacked that night at their camp­site and beat­en.  The sto­ry pro­ceeds as the bik­ers find their way into New Orleans where they encounter a “bad trip” in a local ceme­tery. These var­i­ous expe­ri­ences wear on Wyatt, and he begins to ques­tion of what and why he con­tin­ues on.

As usu­al, no spoil­ers here. As the sto­ry plays out, we see the pow­er of dreams and hope, we see the pow­er of hate and nonac­cep­tance, and we see the strug­gles that both of those ele­ments bring to folks’ lives. Peter Fonda report­ed­ly came up with the con­cept of the film and approached Dennis Hopper to join him in the effort as direc­tor. Fonda stat­ed that he imag­ined the two char­ac­ters as mod­ern-day cow­boys, so he named them Billy (after Billy the Kid) and Wyatt (after Wyatt Earp). He has stat­ed that one of the inspi­ra­tions for the con­cept was the movie The Searchers.

Fonda said “It would be about the Duke (John Wayne) and Jeffrey Hunter look­ing for Natalie Wood.  I would be the Duke and Dennis Hopper would be my Ward Bond.  America would be our Natalie Wood.  And after a long jour­ney to the East across John Ford’s America, what would become of us?”

Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider were approached by Fonda to help finance the pic­ture.  They had just scored well with their TV show The Monkees. The film was shot with many of the lines ad-libbed, mak­ing it up as they went.  Fonda and Hopper often uti­lized locals to assist in the film shoot­ing.  It did not have a set screen­play.  Reportedly Fonda and Hopper argued often dur­ing the filming.

Those involved in the film­ing claimed that Hopper was angry and para­noid and very dif­fi­cult to deal with.  Hopper lat­er attrib­uted some of his behav­ior to the pot he was smok­ing.  He claimed it was not help­ful to his cre­ativ­i­ty.  Also, Hopper’s ver­sion of the film was report­ed­ly four or more hours in length. Dennis Hopper was pro­vid­ed a trip away so he would not inter­fere with the edit­ing of the film. Though ini­tial­ly upset about the edit­ing, he lat­er accept­ed the final prod­uct as being what he had intended. 

Besides the beau­ty of the coun­try­side high­light­ed in the film­ing, anoth­er out­stand­ing fac­tor is the sound­track. Instead of hav­ing music com­posed for the film, exist­ing songs were col­lect­ed to pro­vide the accom­pa­ny­ing music. Performers includ­ed Steppenwolf, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix and Roger McGuinn. The sound­track was released as an album and was a top ten album and the sec­ond most suc­cess­ful sound­track of the year. 

Easy Rider also had a num­ber of actors involved in small­er roles.  Bridget Fonda made her film debut as a five-year-old child in the com­mune. Robert Walker Jr and Carrie Snodgrass were also seen as mem­bers of the com­mune. Phil Spector appeared as the cocaine deal­er and Karen Black as one of the ladies in New Orleans. Karen Black and Jack Nicholson went on to star in Five Easy Pieces the fol­low­ing year. 

An actor with a Kentucky con­nec­tion got a men­tion in the film.  Amidst the graf­fi­ti on the jail­house wall is writ­ten “H.D. Stanton.” That was meant as a trib­ute to Harry Dean Stanton, a friend of Jack Nicholson. Easy Rider was released in July 1969 and was a box office suc­cess.  It became the fourth high­est gross­ing film of 1969 and grossed $60 mil­lion world­wide.   It received two Oscar nom­i­na­tions includ­ing Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Jack Nicholson) and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay.

Critical recep­tion was for the most part pos­i­tive.  The crit­ic in The New Yorker said the film “speaks terse­ly and apt­ly for this American age, that is both the best of times and the worst of times.  The Village Voice wrote of Peter Fonda, “He comes off like a com­bi­na­tion of Clint Eastwood and James Dean.” The New York Post wrote, “Individual scenes are so well and tru­ly made that they remain in your mind like your own expe­ri­ence . . . it’s hap­pen­ing. It’s not a movie.” The crit­ic for the Los Angeles Times wrote “. . . Easy Rider is an aston­ish­ing work of art and an over­pow­er­ing motion pic­ture experience.”

Not every­one appre­ci­at­ed the film in 1969.  Vice President Spiro Agnew crit­i­cized both Easy Rider and the band Jefferson Airplane as being exam­ples of “the per­mis­sive­ness of the 1960’s counterculture.” 

Just so you know, Jefferson Airplane is one of my favorite bands.  No sur­prise to those who know me.

Easy Rider was added to the United States National Film Registry in 1998.  Roger Ebert added it to his list of “Great Movies” in 2004.  In 2007 the American Film Institute ranked it at #84 on their list of “Greatest Movies of All Time.” 

In 2012 Easy Rider: The Ride Back was released as a pre­quel to the orig­i­nal film.  No one from the orig­i­nal film was involved in the pro­duc­tion of this film.  The focus of the pre­quel was on the fam­i­ly of Wyatt (“Captain America”).  It was pro­duced and writ­ten by Phil Pitzer and the rights to the name of the orig­i­nal film were pur­chased.  It did not do well.  Leonard Maltin described it as a “bomb” and said it was a “stag­ger­ing­ly bad attempt to cash in on the icon­ic orig­i­nal” and that it was “poor on all accounts.” 

The Internet Movie Database rates Easy Rider at 7.3 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a crit­ics score of 84% and an audi­ence score of 82%.  In perus­ing my Roku device, I was unable to find any free stream­ing sites.  However, there is a copy of the DVD on the shelf at the Clark County Public Library. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.

I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies, please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as WinCity Voices Facebook page.