Nothing exemplified the freewheeling, carefree 1960’s mentality quite like the film Easy Rider. It has become a cult classic for having so seamlessly personified the evolution occurring in late 1960’s America. The film features a young Dennis Hopper as Billy and Peter Fonda as Wyatt and the characters the play were similar to their personalities off screen , essentially they were shown as an exaggerated version of themselves. The film, also directed by Peter Fonda had a pretty low budget from the get go comparatively speaking and was made independent of any big money studio and their influence. It knocks the socks off of studio execs who see the film gross millions of dollars and would wake up the traditionalists in Hollywood as to the new wave of 1960’s cinema. It was a reality show in that you almost feel very voyeuristic just watching two dudes get on with their private life which could be caught on any given day. It features references to drugs throughout representing the “Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out” attitude exhibited in young America through the Hippie movement. Were the actors really under the influence or in a drug induced state when they made this film, it is any ones guess but in looking at the times and the film this probably was the case on some level. It’s two men on the back of a motorcycle heading from California to wherever the road takes them and it’s anything goes and whatever happens happens. They have the freedom to do as they please the question being do they find what they are looking for?
Their travels take allow them to pick up hitchhikers which were commonplace in this era. It also brings them to a commune, a lifestyle for which hippies would embrace as they sought a sort of utopian existence. They end up in trouble with the law and land themselves in jail. Which to the surprise of no one they bounce back from relentlessly as nothing can hold them down and they keep on rolling with the punches. It is jail they meet the crooked character of George played by the witty and enigmatic Jack Nicholson. Jack being a good friend of Hopper and Fonda in “real” life would be a likely fit to add to the mayhem that is the characters in this film. George has his own pre conceived notions about life in a faltering America full of humanity which has perhaps lost its way. He finds his new friends’ suit him very well as they introduce him to the mind altering bliss that is mary jane.
New Orleans in the 1960’s was much like it is today, void of the wreckage and scars it bears in modern day times. Of all the places where debauchery and free love ruled the roost New Orleans was King. The party never stops and the women, drugs and psychedelic abundant. Wyatt and Billy were welcomed into this circus and went for it with great zeal. After dropping too much acid and indulging in too many women they head for the sunshine state experience a seemingly never ending life hangover. Perhaps they begin to wonder what they are running from or where they are running to. Perhaps the world looks a little different from the other side, a little dirtier, a little rougher around the edges, not as pretty. Perhaps they find that the people they meet along the way have led to a loss of faith in humanity itself. Does any of this matter? In the end it does not as they have no direction home.
America was divided at the time by the Viet Nam War and films of this nature much like the graduate would be appreciated by the youth and would reaffirm their defiance and aspirations to seek alternative lifestyles, much to the dismay of the older more reserved and conservative older generation. The actors in this film would be catapulted to stardom. Imagine Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in the 1960’s and this film is them, it is America and it is a picture which doesn’t glorify nor sugar coat but was made to appeal to a certain counterculture for which there became a market for these types of films. It is careless and important all at the same time because it is a huge piece in the puzzle of what was the late 1960’s transition of Hollywood.
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