Word: rider
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Still, these are minor lapses in a major movie. In terms of contemporary mores and methods, Easy Rider has told its story from the far side of the generation gap. For once the aura of evil that clings to drug-and-motorcycle movies is gone. Like other films directed to-and by-youth, Easy Rider could have settled for catcalls and rebellion. Instead the film has refurbished the classic romantic gospel of the outcast wanderer. Walt Whitman might not have recognized the bikes-but he would have understood the message...
...straddle motorcycles instead of horses, and they smoke marijuana instead of tobacco. But the central characters in Easy Rider are as remote as the freedom they are seeking. Wyatt (Peter Fonda) is a vague, unshaven pothead who likes to refer to himself as "Captain America." His manic sidekick Billy (Dennis Hopper) has a droopy Stephen Crane mustache and shiny eyes fixed on some wild interior vision. Flush from the profits of dope selling, the cyclists symbolically cast off their wristwatches and head for that persistent American symbol of adventure, The Road...
Bedeviled Minds. With the single exception of Nicholson, Easy Rider's authentic force resides not in its professional but its amateur performances. Filming throughout the Southwest, first-time Director Hopper let the townspeople "rap" as they pleased, then caught them on camera. The result is a harrowing gallery of American primitives, from mindless high-school girls to the redneck truck drivers who case the cyclists' long hair and ad-lib: "Looks like refugees from some gorilla love-in . . . We ought to mate 'em up with . . . black wenches. That...
Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America and author of the movies' new rating system, may be astonished to learn that he is the father of Easy Rider (rated R). In a speech before the M.P.A.A. in 1967, Valenti said he was weary, weary, weary of the excesses in drug and motorcycle films. He wished for theaters full of Doctor Dolittles. Waiting in the wings, the next speaker made a perverse resolution: to make a good movie about drugs and motorcycles...
Ultimate Sacrifice. If Fonda was difficult, his close friend and fellow Easy Rider was impossible. A compatriot of James Dean, Director Dennis Hopper has become the caricature of the surly, inarticulate "man, like I mean" Method actor. He had once announced to Fonda that "the first movie I make will have to win at Cannes." But his appearances in films belied the boast. The mad stare, the simian stance could have been reproduced, everyone thought, by a dozen actors. Everyone but Peter Fonda. He persuaded Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove) to collaborate on the Easy Rider script, and talked American International...