Easy Rider

Hopper and Fonda's first collaboration was in The Trip (1967), written by Jack Nicholson, which had themes and characters similar to those of Easy Rider.[7] Peter Fonda had become "an icon of the counterculture" in The Wild Angels (1966), where he established "a persona he would develop further in The Trip and Easy Rider."[8] The Trip also popularized LSD, while Easy Rider went on to "celebrate '60s counterculture" but does so "stripped of its innocence."[9] Author Katie Mills wrote that The Trip is a way point along the "metamorphosis of the rebel road story from a Beat relic into its hippie reincarnation as Easy Rider", and connected Peter Fonda's characters in those two films, along with his character in The Wild Angels, deviating from the "formulaic biker" persona and critiquing "commodity-oriented filmmakers appropriating avant-garde film techniques."[7] It was also a step in the transition from independent film into Hollywood's mainstream, and while The Trip was criticized as a faux, popularized underground film made by Hollywood insiders, Easy Rider "interrogates" the attitude that underground film must "remain strictly segregated from Hollywood."[7] Mills also wrote that the famous acid trip scene in Easy Rider "clearly derives from their first tentative explorations as filmmakers in The Trip."[7] The Trip and The Wild Angels had been low-budget films released by American International Pictures and were both successful. Fonda took Easy Rider to AIP however, as it was Hopper's first film as director, they wanted to be able to replace him if the film went overbudget so Fonda took the film to Burt Schneider at Columbia Pictures instead.[10]

When seeing a still of himself and Bruce Dern in The Wild Angels, Peter Fonda had the idea of a modern Western, involving two bikers travelling around the country and eventually getting shot by hillbillies. He called Dennis Hopper, and the two decided to turn that into a movie, The Loners, with Hopper directing, Fonda producing, and both starring and writing. They brought in screenwriter Terry Southern, who came up with the title Easy Rider. The film was mostly shot without a screenplay, with ad-libbed lines, and production started with only the outline and the names of the protagonists. Keeping the Western theme, Wyatt was named after Wyatt Earp and Billy after Billy the Kid.[11] However, Southern disputed that Hopper wrote much of the script. In an interview published in 2016 [Southern died in 1995] he said, "You know if Den Hopper improvises a dozen lines and six of them survive the cutting room floor he'll put in for screenplay credit. Now it would be almost impossible to exaggerate his contribution to the film—but, by George, he manages to do it every time."[12] According to Southern, Fonda was under contract to produce a motorcycle film with A.I.P., which Fonda had agreed to allow Hopper to direct. According to Southern, Fonda and Hopper didn't seek screenplay credit until after the first screenings of the film, which required Southern's agreement due to writers guild policies. Southern says he agreed out of a sense of camaraderie, and that Hopper later took credit for the entire script.[12]

According to Terry Southern's biographer, Lee Hill, the part of George Hanson had been written for Southern's friend, actor Rip Torn. When Torn met with Hopper and Fonda at a New York restaurant in early 1968 to discuss the role, Hopper began ranting about the "rednecks" he had encountered on his scouting trip to the South. Torn, a Texan, took exception to some of Hopper's remarks, and the two almost came to blows, as a result of which Torn withdrew from the project. Torn was replaced by Jack Nicholson, whom Hopper had recently appeared with in Head (along with another Easy Rider co-star, Toni Basil).[13] In 1994, Jay Leno interviewed Hopper about Easy Rider on The Tonight Show, and during the interview, Hopper alleged that Torn had pulled a knife on him during the altercation, prompting Torn to sue Hopper successfully for defamation.[11]

The filming budget of Easy Rider was $360,000 to $400,000.[1][14] Peter Fonda said that on top of this, he personally paid for the costs of travel and lodging for the crew, saying, "Everybody was taking my credit cards and would pay for all the hotels, the food, the gas, everything with Diner's Club".[15][14] Laszlo Kovacs said that an additional $1 million, "about three times the budget for shooting the rest of the film" was spent licensing music that was added during the editing.[16]

According to Bill Hayward,[14] the associate producer of the film, in interviews included as part of the bonus DVD feature, Shaking the Cage, Hopper was difficult on set. During test shooting on location in New Orleans, Hopper fought with the production's ad hoc crew for control. At one point he entered into a physical confrontation with photographer Barry Feinstein, who was one of the camera operators for the shoot.[14] After this turmoil, Hopper and Fonda decided to assemble a proper crew for the rest of the film.[5]

Allegedly, the characters of Wyatt and Billy were respectively based on Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of the Byrds.[17]

The hippie commune was recreated from pictures and shot at a site overlooking Malibu Canyon, since the New Buffalo commune in Arroyo Hondo near Taos, New Mexico, did not permit shooting there.[16]

A short clip near the beginning of the film shows Wyatt and Billy on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona, passing a large figure of a lumberjack. That lumberjack statue—once situated in front of the Lumberjack Cafe—remains in Flagstaff, but now stands inside the J. Lawrence Walkup Skydome on the campus of Northern Arizona University.[18] A second, very similar statue was also moved from the Lumberjack Cafe to the exterior of the Skydome.[19]

Most of the film is shot outside with natural lighting. Hopper said all the outdoor shooting was an intentional choice on his part, because "God is a great gaffer." The production used two five-ton trucks, one for the equipment and one for the motorcycles, with the cast and crew in a motor home.[16] One of the locations was Monument Valley.[16]

The restaurant scenes with Fonda, Hopper, and Nicholson were shot in Morganza, Louisiana.[16] The men and girls in that scene were all Morganza locals.[16] In order to inspire more vitriolic commentary from the local men, Hopper told them the characters of Billy, Wyatt, and George had raped and killed a girl outside of town.[5] The scene in which Billy and Wyatt were shot was filmed on Louisiana Highway 105 North, just outside Krotz Springs, and the two other men in the scene—Johnny David and D.C. Billodeau—were Krotz Springs locals.

While shooting the cemetery scene, Hopper tried to convince Fonda to talk to the statue of the Madonna as though it were Fonda's mother (who had committed suicide when he was 10 years old) and ask her why she left him. Although Fonda was reluctant, he eventually complied. Later Fonda used the inclusion of this scene, along with the concluding scene, as leverage to persuade Bob Dylan to allow the use of Roger McGuinn's cover of "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding).[14][5]

Despite being filmed in the first half of 1968, roughly between Mardi Gras and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, with production starting on February 22,[20] the film did not have a U.S. premiere until July 1969, after having won an award at the Cannes film festival in May. The delay was partially due to a protracted editing process. Inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of Hopper's proposed cuts was 220 minutes long, including extensive use of the "flash-forward" narrative device, wherein scenes from later in the movie are inserted into the current scene.[14] Only one flash-forward survives in the final edit: when Wyatt in the New Orleans brothel has a premonition of the final scene. At the request of Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, Henry Jaglom was brought in to edit the film into its current form, while Schneider purchased a trip to Taos for Hopper so he wouldn't interfere with the recut. Upon seeing the final cut, Hopper was originally displeased, saying that his movie was "turned into a TV show," but he eventually accepted, claiming that Jaglom had crafted the film the way Hopper had originally intended. Despite the large part he played in shaping the film, Jaglom only received credit as an "Editorial Consultant."[11]

It is unclear what the exact running time of original rough cut of the movie was: four hours, four and a half hours or five hours.[14] In 1992 the film's producers, Schneider and Rafelson, sued Columbia Pictures over missing negatives, edit footage and damaged prints holding them negligent concerning these assets. Some of the scenes which were in the original cut but were deleted are:[21]

• the original opening showing Wyatt and Billy performing in a Los Angeles stunt show (their real jobs)
• Wyatt and Billy being ripped off by the promoter
• Wyatt and Billy getting in a biker fight
• Wyatt and Billy picking up women at a drive-in
• Wyatt and Billy cruising to and escaping from Mexico to score the cocaine they sell
• an elaborate police and helicopter chase that took place at the beginning after the dope deal with police chasing Wyatt and Billy over mountains and across the Mexican border
• the road trip out of L.A. edited to the full length of Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" with billboards along the way offering wry commentary
• Wyatt and Billy being pulled over by a cop while riding their motorcycles across a highway
• Wyatt and Billy encountering a black motorcycle gang
• ten additional minutes for the volatile café scene in Louisiana where George deftly keeps the peace
• Wyatt and Billy checking into a hotel before going over to Madam Tinkertoy's
• an extended and much longer Madam Tinkertoy sequence
• extended versions of all the campfire scenes, including the enigmatic finale in which Wyatt says, "We blew it, Billy."

Easy Rider's style — the jump cuts, time shifts, flash forwards, flashbacks, jerky hand-held cameras, fractured narrative and improvised acting — can be seen as a cinematic translation of the psychedelic experience. Peter Biskind, author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls wrote: "LSD did create a frame of mind that fractured experience and that LSD experience had an effect on films like Easy Rider."[22]

Hopper received the First Film Award (Prix de la première œuvre) at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.[27] At the 42nd Academy Awards, Jack Nicholson was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and the film was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay.[28] Nicholson had also received nominations for Best Supporting Actor at the 27th Golden Globe Awards and the 23rd British Academy Film Awards.

The film appears at number 88 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Years, 100 Movies. In 1998, Easy Rider was added to the United States National Film Registry, having been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." [6] In April 2019, a restored version of the film was selected to be shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.[29]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "pretty but lower case cinema" despite the "upper case" "pious statement about our society which is sick". He was mildly impressed by the photography, rock score and Nicholson's performance.[30] Penelope Gilliatt in The New Yorker said that it "speaks tersely and aptly for this American age, that is both the best of times and the worst of times."[31]

Roger Ebert added Easy Rider to his "Great Movies" list in 2004.[32]

The film opened on July 14, 1969, at the Beekman theater in New York City and grossed a house record of $40,422 in its first week.[33] It grossed even more the following week with $46,609.[34] In its fourteenth week of release, it was the number one film at the U.S. box office and remained there for three weeks.[35][36] It was the fourth highest-grossing film of 1969, with a worldwide gross of $60 million, including $41.7 million domestically in the U.S. and Canada.[2][37]

Along with Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, Easy Rider helped kick-start the New Hollywood era during the late 1960s and 1970s.[38] The major studios realized that money could be made from low-budget films made by avant-garde directors. Heavily influenced by the French New Wave, the films of the so-called "post-classical Hollywood" came to represent a counterculture generation increasingly disillusioned with its government as well as the government's effects on the world at large and the establishment in general.[38] Although Jack Nicholson appears only as a supporting actor and in the last half of the film, the standout performance signaled his arrival as a movie star,[38] along with his subsequent film Five Easy Pieces in which he had the lead role. Vice President Spiro Agnew criticized Easy Rider, along with the band Jefferson Airplane, as examples of the permissiveness of the 1960s counterculture.[39]

The film's success, and the new era of Hollywood that it helped usher in, gave Hopper the chance to direct again with complete artistic control. The result was 1971's The Last Movie, which was a notable box office and critical failure, effectively ending Hopper's career as a director for well over a decade.

It also gave Fonda the chance to direct with The Hired Hand although he rarely produced again.[40]