Easy Rider (1969)

During a recent snowy day I drove a few blocks to the library to find a movie, knowing I could be homebound for awhile. The selection there is not great, but I picked up the 35th anniversary edition of the film, including a 1999 documentary, Making Easy Rider: Shaking The Cage. I was mostly interested in watching this, but ended up watching both.

Peter Fonda wrote the film with Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern...Hopper directed. I understand Dennis Hopper is terminally ill with cancer so this seems to be a good time to re-visit the era through the eyes of this film. The music alone is fantastic, but it's amusing to hear the language that marked the time...groovy, freak, dude, get it together...all commonplace now.

Peter Fonda was inspired by a speech by Jack Valenti on behalf of The Motion Picture Association of America. "We have to stop making movies about motorcycles, sex and drugs...and make more movies like Dr. Doolittle." Fonda, Nicholson, and Hopper had each already starred in motorcycle films. The last thing he wanted to create was another one, but Fonda took the speech as a challenge and began imagining Easy Rider as a modern western. By the way, an "easy rider" lives off a whore, though he is not actually a pimp. I guess he is simply charming.

The 1960s had already happened, but box office movie hits were the squeaky clean Pillow Talk and Beach Blanket Bingo. These films had nothing to do with what had happened in the country during the 1960s so he created two counterculture biker characters, Captain America and Billy, on a roadtrip from LA to New Orleans. The film's tagline is "A man went looking for America and . And couldn't find it anywhere." The story is about what happened after the 60s were over.

The financing was largely Fonda's Diner's Club credit card. They used their own record collections to put together the soundtrack, but still brought in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to improve upon it. They all recognized how perfect it already was and left it alone. I wonder what Captain America and Billy would say about the America of today?