by Julian Spivey
Easy Rider was the ultimate 1960s movie.
Easy Rider is probably one of the few really
low budget Hollywood
movies to wind up being considered a classic, the movie is 88th on the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest
Movies list.
The movie was basically a Dennis Hopper
and Peter Fonda project. Hopper directed the film and Fonda produced it. Along with the help of Terry Southern, Hopper and
Fonda co-wrote the film. The duo where also the movie’s lead actors; Fonda played “Captain America”
Wyatt, who wore a stars and stripes helmet and a leather jacket with the American flag on the back. Hopper played Billy, a
long-haired, hippie type. The two, upon their motorcycles, made their way across the country.
The movie’s tagline states,
“A man went looking for America and couldn’t find
it anywhere.” Wyatt and Billy come across many prejudices and injustices along their way for the way they look, dress,
and act. America is supposed to be free, but you wouldn’t
know it based on the way the small town folks treat the main characters of Easy Rider.
Easy Rider’s scenery and soundtrack
are some of the most spectacular characters of the movie. The landscapes that Wyatt and Billy pass on their cross-country
trip are reminiscent to some of the great landscapes in John Ford’s westerns. The movies soundtrack featuring The Band,
Steppenwolf, Roger McGuinn and others gives the movie its ultimate ‘60s feel.
The movie is small on dialogue and the
best lines come from Jack Nicholson’s George Hanson. Nicholson’s character isn’t on the screen that long
in his supporting role, but his lines might add up to equal more than Fonda and Hopper’s combined. Nicholson’s
character also provides most of the movie’s humor and spouts off what may prove to be the movie’s most important
line, “"They're gonna talk and talk to you about individual freedom, but when they see a free individual, it's gonna
scare ‘em."
Because the movie is low on dialogue
the images seen on the screen are that much more important. The camera work is cinematically beautiful and one of the most
important scenes in the movie proves to be the trippy LSD scene in the New Orleans
cemetery featuring Fonda, Hopper, and two prostitutes. The ending of Easy Rider proves to be a shocking one that many people,
although a Fonda premonition somewhat reveals it, won’t foresee.
