1/5/2024 0 Comments Billy easy riderA young Nicholson, every bit as charismatic here as he is in any of his later roles. In jail, they meet George, a drunken lawyer played by Jack Nicholson. Meanwhile, a sign hangs on the jail wall: “Jesus Christ - the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Is this akin to Christ’s entrance to Jerusalem riding an ass? “Do you know who this is, man?” Billy asks the arresting officers, gesturing to Wyatt. At the commune, the traveling duo again partakes in a meal with strangers.Īt one point the duo is arrested for riding their motorcycles through a small-town parade. Billy is skeptical, but Wyatt reassures his disciple. He looks over the land, the dinner table, tells the farmer, “You sure got a nice spread here.” Later, Wyatt and Billy encounter a hitchhiker, a hippie who takes them back to his commune. They dine with a white farmer and his Mexican wife and children. Just as they are rejected by some, they are welcomed by others. The film’s first half meanders more so than the second half, Wyatt and Billy drifting from one episode to the next like a haze of smoke. Hopper directs and shares screenwriting credit with Fonda and Terry Southern. They are denied service at a southern lunch counter, not because of the color of their skin but because of the length of their hair. They are denied a room at a roadside inn, like the Holy Family a couple thousand years prior in Bethlehem. Wyatt and Billy navigate the highway frontier with a “live and let live” attitude. Think of them as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, only instead of windmills they’re chasing the American Dream. Think of Wyatt as Christ, Billy as a sometimes misguided disciple. “Out here in the wilderness, fighting Indians and cowboys on every side,” Billy says. At night, they bed down by a fire in the wilderness. Looking to celebrate, they head east to Mardi Gras, taking in the landscape, cruising through Monument Valley not unlike characters in a John Ford film. They’ve made a drug deal out west, scored a bunch of cash. Wyatt and Billy (Fonda and Dennis Hopper, respectively) are cowboys here, outlaws, their motorcycles their steeds. The film’s leads are stand-ins for the movement, chasing pleasure that burns out fast as a joint. It mourns the failures and shortcomings of the counterculture movement in 1960s America. On a deeper level, however, Easy Rider chronicles wasted youth. There’s beautiful scenery, humor, drugs, sex. Put the movie on in the background of a party and you have a pretty good playlist of classic rock tunes. On the surface, Easy Rider is a good time. Nixon was president, Cassius Clay was now Muhammad Ali, and the Manson murders wouldn’t happen for another month. America was coming to terms with free love and women’s lib. This was a time when New Hollywood was still new, a time when America was firmly entrenched in Vietnam and still reeling from the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X. Just as much as it is a movie about rebellion, Easy Rider is also a movie about brotherhood, fellowship, and acceptance.Įasy Rider rolled into theaters July 14, 1969, a week out from Neil Armstrong stepping foot on the moon. It screams rebellion as loud as an engine’s roar.Īnd yet, despite its fiercely independent spirit, there are moments around dinner tables and campfires, quiet moments of communion and connection between strangers. Take a look at some other songs on the Easy Rider soundtrack: “I Wasn’t Born to Follow,” “If I was a Bird,” Hendrix’s “If 6 was 9.” This is a movie about freedom. Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” blasts on the soundtrack. He revs up his motorcycle and hits the road. Columbia Pictures (Sony Pictures Entertainment)Ī few minutes into Easy Rider, Peter Fonda tears off his wristwatch, tosses it down into the dirt.
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