Easy Rider, an Enduring Groovy Experience

by Pa Rock
Film Fan 

I first saw the film, "Easy Rider," at a movie theatre in Springfield, Missouri, back in 1969 just after its release.  Little did I imagine that the next time I would sit down to watch it would be more than fifty years later - and the cult classic would be playing on television - with commercials!  If ever there was a movie not suitable for commercials, "Easy Rider" should have been it, yet here was the movie, five decades on, playing on the IMDB Channel with regular commercials from "Nordictrack" (a fitness company) and "Jos. A. Bank" (a men's clothier).  And neither Peter, nor Dennis, nor even Jack presented themselves in that movie (or any other that I can remember) as fitness freaks or fashion icons.

 But aside from that cultural incongruity, the film has held up very well.

"Easy Rider" was written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern.  Dennis Hopper directed the movie, and it was shot on a budget of $400,000, an amount that today might not buy the two "chopper" motorcycles that were the mainstay of the film.

The plot begins with Fonda and Hopper making a drug deal in rural Southern California - or perhaps Mexico - and then reselling the white powder product to a very young Phil Spector who operates from the back seat of a limousine.   The young (and suddenly very rich) drug dealers take their cash proceeds, hide it in their motorcycles, and hit the hit the road on a trip unlike anything Bing Crosby and Bob Hope ever envisioned.  Their ultimate goal was to reach New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras - a trip that would take them through the racially and socially intolerant American South.

Along the road to New Orleans they spend time in a commune as well as one night in a small town jail where they meet a young drunken lawyer - Jack Nicholson - who dons his old high school football helmet and joins them on their journey.  Nicholson is the central focus of two of the best scenes in the movie - one where Peter Fonda shows him how to smoke pot, and the other where he explains to Fonda that people resent them because they are experiencing the freedom that most others have feared to pursue.

One other memorable scene in the movie involves Fonda and Hopper visiting a whorehouse in the French Quarter of New Orleans.  Hopper is up for anything but Fonda isn't getting into the experience as much as his friend is.  Fonda finally suggests that the four of them (he and Hopper and two prostitutes) head out onto the streets and enjoy the Mardi Gras parades.  They wind up in the famed St. Louis Cemetery of New Orleans where the guys show the girls how to take LSD - and then the four have a long and emotional wander through the tombstones and ornate vaults where they shed many of their inhibitions and quite a bit of their clothing.

And then there is the inevitable tragic ending.  If you have ever seen the movie, you remember the ending.

Some of the language may seem stilted by today's standards, and the clothing over-the-top (even for the sixties), but at the time "Easy Rider" was filmed it was seen as an authentic representation of the American counterculture - and fifty years on it's still an enduring groovy experience!