You had to be there. During that period the possession of marijuana carried some hard times in most states. Heads or dopers were considered borderline junkies. Some places in the US were exactly like the town depicted and long haired people were looked on as wierd and dangerous. The US was on the verge of a cultural change, the beatles were making drug use an ok thing, vietnam vets who came back, a lot of my friends, came back with a belief that Marijuana was a good high, and they wre right. I remember always saying I could smoke 20 joints and still be able to drive home, but if I drank 20 beers I pretty much was a homicidal maniac for getting behind th wheel. Movies were just beginning to show naked people, use swear words, my senior class of 68 dumped the traditional “Peggy Sue got Married” prom and I remember our senior sponsor crying that we had no respect for traditions. So as far as I was concerned “Easy Rider” was a clarion call for all the freedoms I felt Ihad been deprived of from a brainwashed public education. And man I’m not even touching on the all the racial and social issues of that time. The MLK riots, the riots in watts, detroit, Harlem, the growing dissatifaction of college campuses that would result in campus and student unrest culminated by the Kent State shootings. Take all of that into consideration and then imagine , if you can Easy Rider hitting the big screen. You had to be there.
Even though my parents are Baby Boomers, I dug the film, and grew up thinking Hopper was cool and a little unhinged.
But the best thing about Easy Rider is Jack Nicholson.
“I saw FOUR of em! Flying in FORMATION!”
I like how he was so keen on beating up women. That was pretty cool of him.
I’m talking about him as an actor, buzzkill.
I feel that the Fonda character is more easily relatable than the Hopper character, and I feel that part of the reason Easy Rider succeeded was the Fonda name.
With Henry Fonda, we have a certain view of a good upstanding man, who is strong morally and willing to stand up for what he believes in.
Well, we get the same thing with Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, just turned on it’s ear and speaking to his generation, just as Henry Fonda spoke to his.
Hopper had a interesting view, always just beneath the top rung and that was obvious in this work, kind of well “if you aren’t gonna notice me when I’m playing your way, I’ll play my way.” And Fonda was getting no where following his father’s way, so he and Hopper made a good team in bringing “My Father’s Son is His Own Man” into the wider public view.
And yes, if it wasn’t Easy Rider, it would have been another film, but it wasn’t another film, it was Easy Rider.
Wanna see this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqBchoBv-TY
Valid points, perhaps, but “Dennis Hopper—Easy Rider, Republican” is a very incomplete sketch of his career.
I’m 49 years old, I was “there” (to some extent) but I agree, those commercials that Hopper did over the past several years were an embarrassment. He should have known better than to parlay his reputation to become a well-paid shill catering to over-the-hill Yuppies.
Ehh. Dave, at that point in his career he’d done Speed. You want to make some extra money for the grandkids toward the end of your days, I have no issue. Those commercial deals are lucrative.
I am now 50, and saw Easy Rider for the first time during the 70s, when its currency had passed. It still had an impact as a good yarn, with that devastating ending.
But seeing it again a couple of times as a ‘grown-up’, I was taken with how bad some of the acting was – including that of Peter Fonda.
Mr Uli, your comments about Henry vs Peter Fonda are interesting, and made me think of another film of that era with Henry – “Sometimes a Great Notion” (aka “Never Give an Inch”) directed by Paul Newman. Interesting that it was a story written by the counter-cultural icon Ken Kesey, and featured Michael Sarrazin as the prodigal hippie son returing home. (Sorry, that’s a bit off-topic…)
pjjrfan sums up my generational gripe pretty well; it seems 60s nostalgia boils down to sex & drugs. A generation that had begun to cause great change stopped short, then, as they aged, started (in large part) to push things the other way. Nostalgia for the time seems to rate the social change behind the hedonism, which is also ironic as the boomer generation, when into power, seemed to get pretty repressive themselves. It’s some messed up Forrest Gump trip. I’m not calling all baby boomers selfish sellouts; Hopper just serves as a great embodiment of generational shortfall.
The things celebrated about the period just seem a bit off sometimes.
I’d be curious to know what people who “were there” think of Electra Glide in Blue, if they’ve seen it. I’d call it an authoritarian corrective to Easy Rider, except that authority is also shown to be kind of perverse.
I studied 60s culture in college, and of course I’m a child of 60s parents and pop culture whether I liked it or not, so I grew up in that shadow.
More than sex and drugs what I take away from the period in a general sense is a real mood of Rebellion, as if what we consider normal teenage angst was thrust out into the mainstream and carried far further than the teenage years (though not much further, since most of these people abandoned their rebellion).
The US was founded in rebellion, and I think it’s an important and healthy part of its identity that we shouldn’t dismiss or forget.
J
As a person old enough to have seen Easy Rider when it first came out, I found the film itself flawed, but the great soundtrack and some of the scenes of the motocycles streaming down the highway made up for the lapses. It was easy to tell that Jack Nicholson could steal every scene he was in and could run circles acting-wise around the Fonda/Hopper duo. The movie picked up when he came on scene and degenerated after. The whole trippy scene later in the film was as confusing then as it appears now. Of course, anyone could identify with the fact that if one had long hair, there were parts of the USA to avoid back then.
Holy Modal Rounders clip from Easy Rider
(No embedded code)
Basically, this was just a kind of feel good film with a bummer – as was the term back then – ending. It didn’t really serve as any kind of commentary on society or social dissent. Still, it was a considerable step up from the atrocious The Trip from the same three (Nicholson as the writer of this, not a star). Roger Corman and Jack have a lot to answer for that pseudo-psychedelic turkey.
As far as the 60’s generation selling-out or getting conservative in their old age: Well, hey man, you had to get a job sometime. Also, families came along, the social trappings that go with them, responsibilities, mortgages, etc. Not everybody ‘sold-out’. The idealism that launched the era, the experimentation on all levels, did subtlely change everything. However, it was just as hard and confusing to be young then as it is now. So, give those aging baby boomers a break, man.
Anybody gotta joint – I just lost my last Viagra pill.
@RLS IN MUBILAND
Did you really find THE TRIP atrocious? I’ve been re-watching it lately, and I find it has much to commend it…
Fonda’s ambiguous relationship with Dern (Is Dern’s character kinda….um…gay, or what?)
The surreal moment of Fonda breaking into the house… and fixing milk for the girl
That wonderful dialogue between Fonda and that drab-but-Mrs-Robinson-sexy laundromat lady
The fabulous sexy blonde waitress who knocks Fonda off in the go-go club
That amazingly erotic sequence of the go-go dancers in the basement nightclub
The tremendously inventive, tachistographic “trip” sequenced by Corman
I’m not sure I’d call the film pseudo-psychedelic…. My own ventures into that territory were actually very much like Fonda’s in the film.
Okay, I could’ve done without the illuminated bed/sex scene and weird “voyeur” moments…
Didn’t know what to make of the dwarf and forest nonsense….
I also think EASY RIDER, as the OP admits, is kind of a weak movie in a number of regards…
But “weak” or “B-ish” movies can sometimes be seminal… and even riveting: I will never, ever get the imagery from 1967’s HOT RODS TO HELL! out of my mind…. It’s positively Lynchian…. has to be seen by any self-respecting modern hipster.
We all know how hip the Sam Fuller catalogue, dismissed in its day, suddenly seems today….
1966’s FASTER, PUSSYCAT! is a B-ish movie…. yet it just might be the hippest thing I saw in the decade of the 1990’s… Three hot S&M dykes in the desert? Pretty damn hip stuff for 1966.
I don’t think that EASY RIDER has lost its relevance, mainly because of its CINEMATIC flair. The moving camera and editing of the on-the-road-again sequences, in combination with the pop music of the period, influenced many other movies. The trip scene in New Orleans was one of the most authentic (and artistic) depictions of psychedelia ever filmed — with its use of distorting lenses, odd angles and poses, and a complex soundtrack. Plus, the film ACTING, as acting, was genuinely “Methodist..”
@ Dave Blakeslee
Aw, dude, ain’t ya bein’ a little bit harsh?
The guy had two years left to live when he made those commercials… The look of them was pretty hip, I thought, and at his age it’s totally cool to “sell out” a little…. especially if maybe he needed a little bread…
It IS possible to “counter-culture” yourself clean out of the public eye…. which no sane actor wants to do…
Personally, the last time I watched Easy Rider, back in the eighties, I still found it to be a relevant and somewhat powerful experience, perhaps because the “We blew it.” ending spoke strongly about where the counterculture movement went after its peak. The suggestion seemed to be that many of the personal experiences that people were grooving on at the time were leading them to ignore or move away from a larger understanding or incorporation into society at large which would destroy the positive aspects of the movement as people became more interested in a sort of selfish dropping out/pleasure seeking. It was a critique that cut both ways since Hopper, Fonda and Nicholson command our attention and sympathy as opposed to the reactionary forces they encounter, but their journey is one to nowhere so they don’t become trgic individual figures so much as tragic representatives of the counter-culture’s fatal flaw.
Interesting setup, but I don’t think either of those two points are correct. Sorry if this has been covered already (I didn’t read all the posts, but Greg X seems to have it), but I think this film gets misread by both camps.
It’s neither blind anti-authoritarianism/stoned ramblings nor genius counter-culture/nostalgic love for the 60’s.
You were on to something with the last line. The characters really did blow it, and in the end the film doesn’t spare the counter-culture from critique. In fact, it gets it the worst of all. It’s a difficult, bleak film but ultimately very rewarding and intelligent.
“forward movement for comfort, repression, and nostalgic stagnation.”
I will always think boating is cooler than motorcycling. Therefore, the retiree in this ad is cooler than Fonda and Hopper’s counterculturists of EASY RIDER.
@Ricky: Well, this is an aptly named thread, because the view is entirely contrarian and completely misses the point of Easy Rider. Fonda was the ‘relatable’ protagonist and Hopper was his reckless sidekick – just a random correction to whoever said the opposite (not Ricky I don’t think). Again though, not the greatest film of all time and hardly a criticism that would (even if it were true) hurt Hopper’s catalog. Try to criticize his performance in Apocalypse Now or True Romance (not great films IMO, though AN is a fine film, but Hopper steals the show nevertheless) or Blue Velvet, not to mention the other films he’s directed which you’ve probably never even seen. I apologize for jumping on your case, but I can be controversial too. ;)
And besides, whenever I hear some hot shit complaining about some artist “selling out” I have to grin and reply, “But you’ll never even have the chance to ‘sell out.’” Since we’re on the subject, care to define the term and explain how that definition applies to Hopper?
He had a career before easy rider though. Why not say he betrayed his 50s greaser ideals from rebel without a cause to be in easy rider?
“We seem to view to view the Hopper of that period as a generational figure, putting the thoughts and impulses of his generation on screen. "
Well, his generation got older, and people (and Hollywood) moved on. Were there many hippy centric movies in the mid to late 70s? Those retirement ads are pretty honest statements about his generation.
David – Well, you obviously have a better recollection of the film than I did – or maybe a better appreciation of Corman kitsch than me. I stand by my original appraisal. I found the ‘trips’ in the film laughably inane and nothing like the real thing, from my point of view. In that sense, Hopper did a better job of equating some of the hallucinatory power of a trip in the New Orleans Easy Rider segment. Frank got that right above.
There does not exist – imo – from what I have seen a version anywhere on film of what a true psychedelic experience is like. Huxley and Alan Watts (in A Joyous Cosmology) come the closest on paper, but some of the wilder sections of Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits come closer to capturing this cinematically than versions attempting to literally duplicate this experience on film, such as The Trip.
Josh & David – I may indeed be harsher than necessary on the recently departed, but I hated those commercials from the moment I first saw them. I identify a lot more with Gen X (though I’m supposedly too old) than I do with the Boomers (though I supposedly fit into the tail end of that demographic) and Dennis Hopper strutting his stuff on those sand dunes just stirred up my issues, I guess. :o)
The best thing about Easy Rider is Jack Nicholson he single handily steals the movie and his exit is the beginning of the end.
Hopper as an actor or filmmaker I don’t have a huge problem with. I ceded some of his performances, and I could make a case for Colors. I’m not so much griping about selling out in general, though it’s odd that we cut people breaks for that who already have money; I’m not acting above being in a commercial or Super Mario Bros; I’m not an actor myself, I’m a broke chump who doesn’t sit in judgement.
It’s Hopper’s broader relevance as we eulogize that I attempt to discuss. His career & his personal life just seem to somehow symbolize the worst about his generation.
The 60s still don’t sit so well; on some cultural level we celebrate them, but renounce them in practice. the dissonace in America regarding the period is even stranger because it’s the generation who lived it who’ve been running the country my whole life; I just can’t reconcile it.
if “selling out” is a valid concept, I wouldn’t think it applies to an actor doing commercials or bad movies; it does apply to a generation who (in large part) began to make changes in society, then almost desperately stopped doing so.
@ RICKY RICHTOFFEN
In light of your discussion here:
Promise me you will watch the movie RAM DASS:FIERCE GRACE. (2000) A biopic doco about one of the most seminal/important figures in shaping “The Sixties” as we romantically envision it.
It will interest you that Ram Dass was born into great East Coast wealth and had a camera following his every movement from the day he was born. Born in a manger, he was not.
Whether you will find him a great man of the spirit………….or the most calculating charalatan America has ever known……….will be your call..
(-:
GREG X pretty much summed it up. However, the appeal of the film is most certainly that it’s of its time, and that cannot be denied. I do like it, but it’s more than a little bit dated and that is inevitable really. It also doesn’t help that Nicholson steals every scene he is in and the movie suffers without him.
As for the whole concept of ‘selling out’, what i do not like is how the baby boomers point the finger at the younger generations for being selfish and consumerist etc, when they are just funhouse mirror reflections of themselves. They need to take more responsibilty for the values, or lack thereof, that they imparted on the younger generations.
As for Hopper himself, he was more of a great presence than a great screen actor per se. Can’t say i liked all the film he directed, in fact, i dislike most of them, but the man was a force of nature in his prime, and a totally unique individual.
ricky richtoffen
I’m not going to hijack the threads on Dennis Hopper’s death to argue him; that seems a bit troll-y. I like some of his acting a lot; my own generation got to know him first as a 90s bad guy, but he will leave some good performances behind. I’d like to advance two points about him, and hear anyone’s thoughts. I don’t put these out as statements of authority, but conversational prompts.
Point A:
Easy Rider is a cultural milestone, but kind of a shite movie. Was it appealing to audiences at the time because they heard current music on the screen? They saw some sex & drug use? Some pessimism & anti-authoritarianism? Hatred for “square” America? These were on their way into film (and broader culture) already; some credit Easy Rider’s success for the American studios’ 70s flirtation with auteurism. I’ll contend that if Easy Rider hadn’t struck the chord that it had, some other film would have.
I guess you had to be there.
Point B
When I was thirteen, a bunch of my friends saw & dug Easy Rider a lot. I’m now 27, and people I know in my age group don’t bring the film up often. As our parent’s generation wanes, so does Easy Rider_. It’s slipping relevance highlights the true relevance of Dennis Hopper. We seem to view to view the Hopper of that period as a generational figure, putting the thoughts and impulses of his generation on screen. Mirroring the baby-boomers, the hippie firebrand aged into a cigar-puffing Republican, trading rebellion, discontent, and desire for forward movement for comfort, repression, and nostalgic stagnation.
US&fs=1&" type=“application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=“always” allowfullscreen=“true” width=“480” height="385">
If you ask me, they did blow it.