Easy Rider

Plot synopsis:
The protagonists are two freewheeling bikers: Wyatt (Fonda), nicknamed "Captain America", and Billy (Hopper). Wyatt dresses in American flag-adorned leather (with an Office of the Secretary of Defense Identification Badge affixed to it), while Billy dresses in Native American-style buckskin pants and shirts and a bushman hat. The former is quite open to people they meet on their journey and accepting of help while the latter is more hostile and suspicious.
After smuggling cocaine from Mexico to Los Angeles, Wyatt and Billy sell their haul to "Connection", a man (played by Phil Spector) in a Rolls-Royce, and receive a large sum in return. With the money stuffed into a plastic tube hidden inside the Stars & Stripes-painted fuel tank of Wyatt's California-style chopper, they ride eastward aiming to reach New Orleans, Louisiana, in time for the Mardi Gras festival.
During their trip Wyatt and Billy stop to repair one of the bikes at a farmstead, and have a meal with the farmer (Warren Finnerty) and his family. Wyatt seems to appreciate the simple, traditional lifestyle presented here. Later Wyatt stops to pick up a hippyish hitch-hiker (Luke Askew) and he invites them to visit his commune, where they stay for the rest of the day. Life in the commune appears to be hard, with young hippies from the city struggling to grow their own crops in a dry climate with poor soil and little rainfall. At one point, the bikers witness a prayer for blessing of the new crop, as put by a commune-member (Robert Walker Jr.): A chance "to make a stand", and to plant "simple food, for our simple taste". The commune is also hosting a traveling theater group that "sings for its supper" (performs for food). The notion of "free love" appears to be practised, with two of the women, Lisa (Luana Anders) and Sarah (Sabrina Scharf), seemingly sharing the affections of the hitch-hiking commune-member before turning their attention to Wyatt and Billy. The hitch-hiker asks the two bikers to stay at the commune, saying, "the time is now", to which Wyatt replies "I'm hip about time...but I just gotta go." As the bikers leave, the hitch-hiker (known only as "Stranger on highway" in the credits) gives Wyatt some LSD for him to share with "the right people".
Later, while naughtily riding along with a parade in a small town, the pair are arrested by the local authorities for "parading without a permit" and thrown in jail. There, they befriend American Civil Liberties Union lawyer and local drunk George Hanson (Jack Nicholson), who has spent the night in jail after overindulging in alcohol. George helps them get out of jail and decides to travel with Wyatt and Billy to New Orleans. As they camp that night, Wyatt and Billy introduce George to marijuana. As an alcoholic and a "square", George is reluctant to try the marijuana ("It leads to harder stuff", and "I don't want to get hooked"), but he quickly relents.
Stopping to eat at a smalltown Louisiana diner, the trio's appearance attracts the attention of the locals. The girls in the restaurant think they're exciting but the local men and a police officer begin making loud and denigrating comments and taunts. One of the men menacingly states, "I don't believe they'll make the parish line." The waitress does not take their order and Wyatt, Billy and George, feeling the hostility, decide to leave without any fuss. They make camp outside town. The events of the day cause George to comment: "This used to be a hell of a good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it." He observes that Americans talk a lot about the value of freedom but are actually afraid of anyone who truly exhibits it.
In the middle of the night a group of locals attack the sleeping trio, beating them with clubs. Billy screams and brandishes a knife and the attackers leave. Wyatt and Billy suffer minor injuries but George has been bludgeoned to death. Wyatt and Billy wrap George's body up in his sleeping bag, gather his belongings, and vow to return the items to his parents.
They continue to New Orleans and find a brothel George had told them about. Taking prostitutes Karen (Karen Black) and Mary (Toni Basil) with them, Wyatt and Billy decide to go outside and wander the parade-filled street of the Mardi Gras celebration. They end up in a cemetery, where all four ingest the LSD which the hitch-hiker had given to Wyatt. They experience a bad trip.
Making camp afterward, Billy declares that their trek has been a success. Wyatt disagrees, declaring, "We blew it." The next morning, the two are continuing their trip eastward to Florida (where they hope to retire wealthy) when two rednecks in an old pickup truck spot them and decide to "scare the hell out of them" with their shotgun. As they pull alongside Billy, one of the men lazily aims the shotgun at him and threatens and insults him by saying, "Want me to blow your brains out?" and "Why don't you get a haircut?" When Billy casually flips his middle finger up at them, the hillbilly fires the shotgun and the shot hits Billy. His motorcycle goes down and he lands near the edge of the road, seriously wounded in the side. As the truck then takes off past Wyatt down the road, Wyatt turns around and races back to put his American flag-emblazoned jacket over his critically injured friend, who is already drenched in blood, before riding off for help. Seeing the injured biker, the old pickup truck turns around and closes in on Wyatt. The hillbilly fires at Wyatt as he speeds by, killing Wyatt instantly, his motorcycle goes flying in flames. As the murderous rednecks drive away, the film ends with an aerial shot from a helicopter of the flaming bike in the middle of the deserted road and two bikers lying there, as the camera recedes into the sky.

Tags: comedy, avant garde, dark, murder, realism, cult, atmospheric, psychedelic, humor, satire

Review:
Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider is often cited as being an all time classic, and while I don't think this is a great film in terms of technical brilliance, it sums up the era it was made and the tongue in cheek, cynical take on the 'American dream' is both potent and well done.
These two were obviously in the thick of what was cool in the sixties, and that gives the film an element of authenticity as we feel like what we're seeing isn't too far away from the things really going on at that time.
We follow their exploits as they travel the country meeting various people including, most notably, George Hanson; an offbeat lawyer, played by the great Jack Nicholson.The American Dream has always been about freedom.
Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper's story of two men who go in search of America and 'freedom' is a bona fide sign of the times.
I may not have been around at the time, but it is great to see a film portraying the long-haired, hippie attitude towards an America in turmoil in the form of a biker flick, circa 1969.EASY RIDER is an exploration of vast and desolate parts of the country.
Sex, drugs, and music were exploding socially and 1960's ideology may have come to an end in 1969, literally and figuratively speaking - much like it shockingly does in this film.Peter Fonda plays cool "Captain America", otherwise known as Wyatt, while Hopper is a paranoid prophet of the hippies as "Billy the Kid".
Fonda breaks down during an acid trip, and instead of music we hear the jarring sounds of an industrial, urbanized landscape -- geographically and symbolically far away from that Arizona commune.This film doesn't glorify the hippie ethos -- in fact, it almost seems like a neo-conservative critique on the limitations of the hippie experience.
Fonda had recently made 'The Wild Angels', Hopper the less remembered 'The Glory Stompers', and Jack Nicholson 'Hells Angels On Wheels', but 'Easy Rider' reinvented the biker movie, and things were never quite the same in Hollywood for the rest of the Seventies.
In this counterculture film, we have a spaced-out trio of Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and a funny Jack Nicholson tooling down the "high"way, on motorcycles and "stuff", en route from L.A. to Mardi Gras.
Self-enslavement is a popular past-time for today's numb middle class; a group of people who, I am convinced, do not dream when they sleep.This movie defined the road film genre, even though it was not the first of its kind.
There are moments of greatness, but the overall film doesn't live up to the hype.Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) are two hippie bikers who smuggled cocaine across the Mexican border to earn money and travel their way across America to live the American dream.
Easy Rider has a few things that will ensure it's iconic place in movie history: 1) a classic soundtrack 2) Jack Nicholson 3) the 2 principal actors are out shined--and out acted-- by their choppers.
Jack Nicholson's character really doesn't say anything profound.These are 2 drug smugglers who've scored a lot of money and do nothing with it except getting wasted and doing hookers.I was a theater usher when this movie came out and must have seen it 60 times.
'Easy Rider' makes the simple and valid point that the counter-culture had a lot more to fear from mainstream society than vise-versa.However, it doesn't achieve this by glorifying the hippie ethos, showing it be ultimately a rather empty and pointless mentality.What makes the film still relevant and moving is the poignance of a failed search for personal freedom in the supposed 'land of the free'..
Nicholson's short performance not withstanding, the film has basically no plot, very little dialog, and blindly simplistic notions of issues.The commune scenes left me, admittedly, unclear whether Hopper was attempting to portray them in a positive or negative light.
These young actors were cementing themselves without possibly wanting or knowing it, as career legends of the big screen."Easy Rider" is not a movie I can watch too many times.
"Easy Rider" likely made a generation of young men want to take to the road on motorbikes, sticking it to the man and living the American dream.
"Easy Rider" isn't about living the American dream; it's about finding out there is no such thing.That's what I like most about this movie.
The ending packs a wallop, and I'm always amazed that two newbies who were probably both loopy most of the time on drugs could manage to put together such a strong, resonant film.Jack Nicholson appears in a supporting role as another drifter the two pick up on their travels, and the always fascinating Karen Black appears briefly as well as one of their female companions.Grade: A.
The movie Easy Rider which was made in 1969 and directed by Dennis Hopper who was not only the director but also one of the two main characters.
The other main character is played by Peter Fonda who along with Hopper wrote the script to the movie Easy Rider.
Fonda said he thought Easy Rider was like a western, but on bikes through John Ford's America, and while the comparison to Ford is ridiculous (Ford put more thought into one line than these clowns put into an entire movie), Kovacs captured the road beautifully.
Reflection of an Era. The partners and friends Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) buy drugs in Mexico and deal in Los Angeles, raising money to travel to the Mardi Grass in New Orleans in their bikes.
This film is certainly the first road-movie of cinema history and together with its stunning music score (among the bests of the cinema), partially portraits my youthfulness and my generation in a period of free love, drugs, relative freedom (I lived my adolescence in a period of military dictatorship in my country) and wonderful songs of some of the best bands of the planet, and also the never-ending intolerance of a conservative society that does not accept the changing and evolution of the next generation.
Why this film would have an overall rating of 7 is beyond my comprehension.Worse yet,why it is considered,by some,an important film of its time.The plot is virtually non-existent(I know that's kind of the point,but geez...);the direction is sloppy and,as I stated above,extremely self-indulgent;most of the dialogue is incoherent and pointless;and all but ONE character is likeable in any way.There are exactly 3 things good about this movie:1)Jack Nicholson, 2)the various locations they travel through and 3)the music.THAT'S ALL!Don't waste your time on this misguided "classic"..
Here are a couple of bikers on the road, and things go wrong, and they meet up with some ordinary and less than savory folk, and they are less than admirable themselves.In other words, some reality here, and the movie was released 30 days before Woodstock, which is a kind of final rallying cry to the starry eyed (thank god) and a warning, in a way, that having too simple an idea of a new future is dangerous.Literally.Maybe the most telling moment in the film (and no accident that it's there) is the Mexican-American family toward the beginning, where they are living, successfully, on the land.
It won't rain, they don't know what they are doing, they are acting only on ideas.So it is with our two bikers played by Peter Fonda and director Dennis Hopper (and for awhile, their tagalong lawyer in the form of Jack Nicholson).
Good and Bad. All things considered, I liked the movie.I loved shots of scenery as Fonda and Hopper ride cross-country.
A couple of young guys (played by Peter Fonda and Denis Hopper) decide to "rebel" by becoming drug smugglers - and then become "free" on a slow motorcycle ride through the backwaters of America.Art is no different from any other aspect of life.
What painters call a "happy accident." This was the right film at the right time and despite fine work all round, especially Jack Nicolson who became a star on the back of his short performance as boozed-out back roads lawyer, it is clearly a B movie.
What kind of person needs to live in a world of controlled self-poisoning other than people that don't like reality?The Terry Southern script was probably written on the back of cigarette packet and actor/director Hopper was merely reflecting what he knew and felt at the time.
While both Hopper and Fonda are still with us (though co-writer Terry Southern is not), so much time has gone by, and so many drugs have been consumed, that perhaps the crystalline purity of their original artistic vision has been, let us say, diluted, to at least some extent, I'm sure you'll agree.My view is that a lot of the good that ended up happening in this film was a result of pure serendipity and luck.
It's a well-known fact that EASY RIDER is a touchstone film of late 1960s Hollywood, one in which the youth market overtook the old Hollywood studio system and, even if they didn't destroy it, they changed it in such a way that it could never go back again.There is only a small need to revisit the plot: these two guys on Harleys, producer/co-writer Peter Fonda and co-writer and director Dennis Hopper, take a ride across the country to find the heart and soul of America, all the while fueling their journey with plenty of grass and powder, but what they find is disillusionment and a whole hell of a lot of distrust...especially once they get into that part of America known as the Bible Belt, where people who look like them are looked upon with disdain.
Indeed, even if much of the rest of the film is clearly still stuck in its 1969 time warp, Nicholson's performance remains timeless, with his incredible eccentricities, Southern-fried drawl, and crazy philosophy, But it is really in the fireside scene where he lectures both Fonda and Hopper about the nature of what they represent to those in Red State America, who view "longhairs" like them as Commies, not "true" Americans; and that their idea of freedom is not what Hopper and Fonda view it as.
As Nicholson tells them: "They're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom; but they see a free individual it's gonna scare 'em."As of this date, almost half a century has passed since this landmark film hit screens during the long, hot summer of 1969, and, though a lot of EASY RIDER is very dated (hear how many times Hopper utters "Man!" throughout the film, plus a lot of weird psychedelic scenes), a lot of it remains relevant because, sadly, very little about America has necessarily changed for the better; and indeed, a lot has gotten noticeably worse since.
Besides both Black and Nicholson, Fonda and Hopper got some of their close circle of Hollywood friends like Warren Finnerty, Luke Askew, Toni Basil (she later had a #1 pop hit with "Mickey" in 1982), and Robert Walker, to appear here, along with the innovative cinematography of Lazslo Kovacs.All in all, EASY RIDER, despite its datedness, remains a must-see movie to understand what America was like as the 1960s came to a close, and what changes have been wrought since then..
Two free spirits (Peter Fonda/Dennis Hopper) road-trip across the country on their chopper motorcycles, going through hippie communes, small towns, hick-infested backwoods towns and New Orleans -- all while doing a plethora of drugs.
I really think this is the 60's defining movie, it is simply great in every way from Fonda's and Hopper's acting, to the music, it really is amazing, it really makes you feel part of it, you feel like you're riding with both Billy and Wyatt.
This really is the perfect and defining road movie, and what can i say about the landscape, it is marvelous, charming and somehow relaxing.As I said before the music is great, it really fits with every scene it is on, it completes the film.I really recommend this movie to everybody, no exceptions, it really is one of my favorite films of all time, it never gets old,one can really identify with the characters, you feel free like them, you really do feel like a rebel, a feeling few films can manage to create in its viewer, 60's hippie movement in all its glory..
When the music's playing, the iconography kind of works.The rest of the time, it's like root canal, except the dentist's the one on laughing gas.We join Billy (Dennis Hopper) and Captain America a.
Nicholson is amusing, and it's fun seeing him settle into an early version of his wild-man persona, but it's still a long way to the Overlook Hotel, and the film loses him in a big scene that, like others in this movie, is not resolved but abandoned, for a final section set in Mardi Gras which includes a graveyard acid trip, glimpses of female nudity, and much mumbling.The whole film suffers from this slackness.
However, having recently watching this film again, I enjoyed it and fully understood the message of freedom and the lack of it during the '60's in the U.S.The story revolves around two long-haired hippies Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) who make a successful drug deal that leaves them with a lot of money and a lot of time on their hand to do whatever they please.
If you can't handle the counter culture movement of the late 60s and early 70s and all that went with it (hippies, drugs, free sex and communes) I suggest staying away from "Easy Rider." For everyone else, this is an excellent period piece from 1969 that explores the nature of freedom and the quest thereof.Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper star as Wyatt and Billy, two hippies who travel by choppers from Los Angeles to New Orleans to attend the Mardi Gras.
Along the way they experience gorgeous landscapes, a commune, jail, new friends, unexpected enemies, drugs galore and a whore house when they arrive.Jack Nicholson stands out as one of the friends they meet; while the beautiful Karen black & Toni Basil star as two prostitutes in New Orleans.What makes "Easy Rider" great is that it's more than just a road adventure with a modern Western garnish (i.e. cowboys on motorized "horses").
There's a reason communes never really caught on in America, and the film shows why.In an interview with Rolling Stone in the early 70s Fonda pointed out that Wyatt represented everybody who feels that freedom can be bought, that you can find freedom through other things, like riding motorcycles across the country or smoking pot.
Now I am NOT going to say that Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda (who made and starred in the film) were geniuses here but they managed, with some amazing luck, to hit on something with this movie.
While the film would SEEM to make it look like it was idealizing drug dealing, it did not--as Fonda's character eventually realizes that all this money didn't give them the peace and happiness that some others had.
The only high point was Jack Nicholson's appearance and even that was minor, the filmmakers gave him a tiny role in which to remember one long, perhaps classic monologue, to which the other actors Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper gave deadpan reaction to, only to get beaten to death in an all too short existence.What kind of person would spend $8.00, enjoy movie theater butter popcorn, suck on lollipops, drink down their Diet Pepsi's and watch these two guys who obviously didn't have a better idea of what to do with their pathetic lives, booze, drug, sex and screw themselves to their own demise - not me.
The two characters in the film Hopper and Fonda weren't necessarily admirable people, the freedom of riding your motorbike across America wasn't as great as you imagined it would be, and besides they were doing this to get drugs to a certain destination.
Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper travelling across the country, scoring drugs, taking risks, trying to find America (the cliché of the time).
George's character was really refreshing and it was interesting that he is the one that gets killed by people that he 'represents.' I thought that the scene when they finally get to New Orleans and are tripping the cemetery is really telling of how religion was viewed by Wyatt and Billy.
I'm a big Jack Nicholson fan, and I'd heard such good praise for Easy Rider, a film that was generally described as being 'a sign of the times'.
Jack Nicholson even was only passable as turning in a good performance, and it seemed like Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper were just...talking.
And as is always the way the damn thing started early so I missed a little of the start, Fonda & Hopper were already in the junkyard doing their drug deal, so I don't exactly know about the what's and why's of the start.The film is a very psychedelic look at late 60's America, It's almost like someone read some Jack Kerouac and decided to make it into a film.
Like Fonda and Hopper just wanted it to be there, for no actual purpose and without actually saying anything.When the film isn't showing the 'dudes' wasting their lives away with random acts of pointless hedonistic pleasure, it's displaying the beautiful landscapes of America on the road from the West coast (L.A.) to the southern states (New Orleans) with iconic rock and country songs from the time as they're riding their majestic bikes, the great big token of "freedom".
this film is about two hippies who are riders Wyatt and Billy (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper) that go to Mexico to buy cocaine, sells that to "Connection" (Phil Spector), then go on a journey on their bikes to, what they hope, New Orleans, in time for the Mardi Gras.