#Cast of easy rider movie#
The rough-cut of the movie reportedly ran over three hours, and Hopper edited it to a reasonable length by throwing out the story details and keeping the rest. If you follow the story closely in "Easy Rider," you find out it isn't there. And when this alcoholic, tragic ACLU lawyer from a small Southern town enters the picture, suddenly that's us there on the bike with Fonda. So Hopper and his co-writers Fonda and Terry Southern write in a brilliant character, Old George (played magnificently by Jack Nicholson). (Whether you believe this is immaterial to the symbolism, which works anyway.)īut it's hard to identify with the Fonda and Hopper characters. So Fonda and Hopper the dope-smugglers are symbols of every earnest, hard working, law abiding, middle-class wage-slave selling his integrity to the establishment every day. And now they want to go to Florida and retire. They sold their dope to the establishment (represented ironically by rock tycoon Phil Spector in a Rolls-Royce). But during most of the picture they have cash money hidden in their gas tanks, not dope. "Easy Rider" takes the gang leader (Fonda) and condenses his gang into one uptight archetype (played by director Hopper.) It takes the aimless rebellion of the bike gangs and channels it into specific rejection of the establishment (by which is meant everything from rednecks to the Pentagon to hippies on communes).įonda and Hopper specifically break with the establishment by smuggling cocaine across the Mexican border that's a no-no. They didn't repent all over the place, but they did repent, and if you looked close you could catch them at it in the last scene. But, unlike Brando (in "The Wild One,") they usually repented when they saw the suffering they'd caused. The down-and-dirty directorial debut of former clean-cut teen star Dennis Hopper, Easy Rider heralded the. There was usually an ounce of worth in the hero, however.Īctors like Peter Fonda and Adam Roarke played gang leaders in the tradition of Brando. This is the definitive counterculture blockbuster. They used drugs and beat up each other, and cops hated them on sight. They rejected the establishment values (but took them seriously enough to attach importance to putting them down).
In all the exploitation-type motorcycle movies, the central characters were outlaws from conventional society. Because the Hell's Angel, like the gangster, was a bad guy produced by the society he victimized and was tied to it by a love-hate relationship that created some really neat sex and violence scenes.Īnd someday it was inevitable that a great film would come along, utilizing the motorcycle genre, the same way the great Westerns suddenly made everyone realize they were a legitimate American art form, "Easy Rider" is the picture. When the Hollywood establishment was dismissing motorcycle movies as an unpleasant low-budget fad, the kids already knew that something was happening here. In fact, the same kids who did "Easy Rider" were on dates in the drive-ins a few years ago when "The Wild Angels" and " Hell's Angels on Wheels" and all the other motorcycle pictures came along. But these kids apparently sprang into existence full-blown, and did not grow up or go to any other movie before they found this one. (He also has made a great film, but more of that later.)Įverybody "knows" that "Easy Rider" is tremendously popular with high school and college-age kids. Hopper has applied this technique to the motorcycle movie. Fifty years ago, Hollywood figured out that if you put the good guys in white hats you could eliminate 10 minutes of explanation from every Western. He has told his story in cinematic shorthand, instead of spelling it out in dreary detail. The film holds an 86% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 44 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10.But in fact, director Dennis Hopper has done an old and respectable thing. Peter Fonda as Wyatt, "Captain America".After a terrifying drug experience in New Orleans, the two travelers wonder if they will ever find a way to live peacefully in America. On their journey, they experience bigotry and hatred from the inhabitants of small-town America and also meet with other travelers seeking alternative lifestyles. Wyatt ( Peter Fonda) and Billy ( Dennis Hopper), two Harley-riding hippies, complete a drug deal in Southern California and decide to travel cross-country in search of spiritual truth.
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