Easy Rider

1 9 6 9 (USA)

Road movies were never the same after Billy (Dennis Hopper) and Wyatt (Peter Fonda) embarked on a magical mystery tour in a quest for "the real America".

The movie about two rootless drug-dealing drop outs was the brainchild of Hopper and Fonda. Its exclusive use of location filming and contemporary music on the soundtrack made it a surprise box-office hit, and altered all the rules in an industry suffering from financial elephantiasis at the time - Easy Rider cost just $400,000 to make (and took about 25 times that amount at the box-office).

The heroes were so representative of the time, and their motorcycles became emblems of both their rebelliousness and their freedom, independence and mobility. At the time, the film felt fresh and modern and helped popularise the look of a psychedelic experience.

Jack Nicholson earned the first of numerous Oscar nominations for his portrayal of George Hanson - a parasitic middle-aged alcoholic Southern lawyer who attaches himself to Billy and Wyatt in a last desperate fling at youth and freedom. George is the heart of the movie, and at one stage perfectly expresses its theme; "This used to be a helluva country. I can't tell you what's wrong," he says. "They're scared not of you but of what you represent to them . . . Freedom".

The shocking violence at the end of the film (when Billy and Wyatt are shot by bigoted rednecks) was attacked by some at the time as being unprepared and excessively pessimistic. Yet it seems the inevitable culmination of the antagonism between youth and age in the movie. Thematically, Easy Rider is an eloquent eulogy for the Sixties.

TRIVIA NOTE
Famed record producer Phil Spector makes a brief appearance at the beginning of the film as a drug dealer.