Easy Rider dir. Dennis Hopper, 1969
Antecedents:
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Changes in the studio system from the late 50s. Made possible such projects as Easy Rider,
independently financed, distributed by Columbia Pictures. Easy Rider made $50 million on a
$385,000 investment (Peter Fonda, producer; Burt Schneider, producer (“The Monkees” T.V.
series, Head); Terry Southern, writer (Barbarella, Dr. Strangelove, Saturday Night Live;
director, Dennis Hopper; cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs)
“Rebel” films of the 1950s, such as Ray’s 1955 Rebel Without a Cause (James Dean died in a
racing car accident in 1955) and Marlon Brando in The Wild One (motorcycle picture from
1953)
WWII veterans found the Hell’s Angels; beginning of the beatnik movement
Kerouac publishes On the Road in 1957 (Klinger, “The Road to Distopia”: On the one hand
the film appeared as the apotheosis of the car, motorcycle, and highwy cultures that had
escalated since the 1950s thanks to factors as various as the National Highway Act of 1956,
which created a gigantic system of interstate highways, Beat writer Jack Kerouac’s On the
Road [1957], which deified the experience of cross-country travel by freewheeling male
individuals as an antidote to bourgeois complacency, and the highly publicized presence of
the Hell’s Angels, the pack of ‘renegade’ chopper riderswho were a source of public fear and
fascination by the 1960s” [180]).
Importance of Peter Fonda/Henry Fonda connection: “John Ford’s America” and the
settlement of the West (cf. My Darlin’ Clementine); Young Mr. Lincoln (1939): Fonda as
John Ford’s Lincoln
Roger Corman’s low-budget motorcycle films, including The Wild Angels (1966), starring
Peter Fonda
The Civil Rights Movement (“parading without a permit”; Nicholson/George as A.C.L.U.
lawyer)
Anti-War Movement (“Hanoi Jane”)
The King and Kennedy Assassinations
The Moral Geography of Easy Rider (see Klinger, “The Road to Dystopia”)
Compare to the North-South trajectory of It Happened One Night: what is the meaning of going
from West to East? How does this film relate to the Western? (Wyatt and Billy; Monument
Valley; ideology of freedom and frontier in America)
Representation of the West (including Mexico) v. the South (fascism, racism); the city, the small
town, the rural or pastoral (“return to the Earth” linked with frontier mentality)
What exactly is Easy Rider critiquing? (modernity, capitalism, racism towards black, Indians,
Mexicans, ambition, city life, etc.) How effectively does it critique these things? “Naïve”
attempts to found a new economy, a new relationship between genders and to one’s own body, to
find new spiritual values, to re-connect with traditional forms of behavior and etiquette and to
question those traditions. What do Billy and Wyatt seem to represent with respect to the values
expressed by the film? How does George’s character offer another perspective on social
protest/resistance (“We’re all in the same cage here”)? What does Wyatt mean when he says
“We blew it”?
“Speed, mobility, and the vastness of the American landscape” (Klinger 194): the road as a
metaphor for freedom? As part of a young man’s education (the Bildungsroman)? Or as part of
the endless, deadening homogenized American experience paved with asphalt? (latter in many
pop representations of the road: Warhol depicted car crashes, etc., as part of a deglamorization
of the road experience: Klinger: turning the American dream of social mobility and leisure into
a nightmare. “Rewriting the optimism of the frontier ethic” by ending on an apocalyptic vision
(198)
Klinger: “Easy Rider’s relationship to the two major national discourses of its time –the
traditional and the transitional – reveals that what has appeared to be its clear generational
message, its advocacy of the hippie and its denunciation of society, is fraught with
inconsistencies and ambiguities. The film’s canonization obscures its contradictions,
contradictions rooted in the social discourses about nationness in this revolutionary historical
moment. The film is at once a travel poster proclaiming the continued presence of the grand Old
West and its historical and mythic associations, and a nightmarish portrait of small towns, cities,
and the end of the frontier (and the world). It is a celebration of the freedom of the road and the
beauty of the landscape and a dissertaion on the end of the road and the repulsive banalities and
industrial blight that disfigure the scenery. . . . Even as it attempts to fashion itself as a timepiece
about the hippie generation and its conflicts, the film moves between the language of traditional
patriotism founded in the visions provided by ‘grand national scenery’ and a language of
revisionism seeking to dismantle traditional notions of Americanism by detailing the
nightmarishness of its roads, inhabitants, and modernized landscapes” (199).
The aftermath of the “revolution”: the SUV (Cadillac Escalade now uses Led Zepplin to attract
baby boomers to its product; Dennis Hopper in Lincoln commercial encountering motorcyclists)
Visual style and sound in Easy Rider:
16mm scenes of Mardi Gras
breaking of rules of editing; inclusion of formerly forbidden things like “flares” (characteristic of
the New American Cinema of the 1960s—Penn, Altman, etc.)
Role of diegetic and non-diegetic sound.
Rock and roll as soundtrack revolutionized relationship between “canned” music and film scores.
The Making of Easy Rider
Director Dennis Hopper recalls
the making of his indie cult classic
If the DGA's Independent Directors Committee (IDC) created its "Under the Influence" series to
honor films of independent spirit that have inspired contemporary directors, then on several
levels you can't get much more "under the influence" than Easy Rider.
Directed and produced by two Hollywood iconoclasts — Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda —
with under a half-million non-studio dollars, Easy Rider shook up a languishing industry when it
grossed more than $19 million in 1969. Along with other such landmarks of the late 1960s as
Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and 2001, it opened Hollywood's eyes to the power of young
audiences and socially relevant films. Indeed, Easy Rider became the definitive counterculture
film.
Shot on location by Laszlo Kovacs, Easy Rider rejected old-fashioned polish for rough
immediacy, enhanced by improvised dialogue and realistically "stoned" acting. It turned Jack
Nicholson, who received an Academy Award nomination for his role as George Hanson, into a
star. Hopper, Fonda and Terry Southern were nominated for their screenplay. Hopper also
received the Best New Director at Cannes '69.
The Directors Guild acknowledged the impact of this film, which helped lead the way for all
low-budget independents, with its screening followed by an acutely spirited discussion between
Hopper and David O. Russell (Three Kings) on August 5. The atmosphere of confusion and rage
from which the film emerged has come full circle in light of recent events, and those who
attended the event would attest that Easy Rider still resonates deeply.
In discussing his groundbreaking film, Hopper put Easy Rider in its context. "You have to
remember that at the time I made this movie, blacks and whites were still not allowed to go to the
same bathrooms. The Civil Rights movement was happening, Martin Luther King had just been
killed. Bobby Kennedy was killed in the middle of our shooting the movie. Cities were burning
down; there were riots everywhere. The whole country was ablaze."
Hopper said that the movie's portrayal of Hippie persecution in the South was based on his own
observations. "On the trip across the country [location scouting], I found out a lot. Everywhere
we went there was somebody wanting to beat me up because I had long hair."
He also gave a colorful account of how he came to direct the movie. "Peter [Fonda] called me
from Canada with the idea of making this film. He was having dinner with the owners of
American International Pictures (AIP). We were all working at AIP at the time. Jack Nicholson
was there writing for Roger Corman. I had directed The Glory Stompers, a motorcycle movie
that I was in. Nicholson was doing Hell's Angels on Wheels. So we were all these bike stars.
"And I said, 'Peter, we don't want to become singing cowboys. You know, the Western-singing
cowboys? It's looking like that. So whatever we do as a movie, let's not do a motorcycle picture.'
"And Peter said, 'Well, I told [AIP] this story and they said you could direct it, and I could
produce it, and we could both act in it, and it goes like this. There's these two guys and they are
on dirt bikes, down in Mexico, and they score a bunch of marijuana. They bring the marijuana
back and they sell it. Then they get these two big gleaming, beautiful bikes and they go across
the United States to Mardi Gras. They have a wonderful time in Mardi Gras and they're going to
retire on the money they made. But on their way to Florida, they're killed by a couple of duck
hunters. OK? Now, what do you think of that?'
"I said, 'Man, did they tell you they'd give you the money?' Peter said, 'Yes.' And I said, 'Man,
that sounds terrific to me.'"
And that was that. Hopper said he and Fonda then "talked and talked and walked and walked,
and we talked out the whole screenplay before anybody went anywhere."
About the famously emotional cemetery scene, where Fonda clutches a huge statue, crying the
words, "Mother, you're such a fool. I hate you so much." Hopper said he urged Fonda to dive
back into something very painful to reach that depth of emotion.
"I actually knew this fact about Peter [his mother committed suicide when he was 10 years old]
and I used it in the true Kazan, Strasberg method kind of way. It may seem cruel to others. But I
wanted something out of it — the statue he was sitting on represented liberty to me and I wanted
him to be talking to liberty. Because he says, 'Were you just a piece of paper, mother? Is that all
you were? Were you just a piece of paper? Why did you leave me?' And so it was about freedom
to me and it was about the Declaration of Independence. I saw our freedoms as Americans being
peeled away. That was where I was coming from."
Hopper acknowledged his seminal role in independent filmmaking. "I'd taken seriously Goddard
and Truffaut's statement out of France that the way to beat the system was to just isolate them
inside their studios and go out in the world. The whole world was your sound stage, you didn't
need them anymore. That was my thinking at the time."
Even so, the film did have some connections to mainstream Hollywood. Hopper had been acting
in Hollywood films since the 1950s, and co-producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson had
produced the 1960s series The Monkees. Terry Southern, who collaborated with Fonda and
Hopper on the script, had also co-written the classic film Dr. Strangelove. Not to mention the
fact that Easy Rider was released by Columbia Pictures, a studio about as 'Establishment' there
was.
Hopper said Columbia distributed the film "because producer Burt Schneider's dad was
Chairman of the Board at Columbia and his brother, Stanley, was head of production." He still
speaks highly of Schneider. "Burt was sensational because you made a deal with him and then he
didn't want to see you until you had your first cut. It took me a year to show him my first cut,
which was two hours and ten minutes long."
Actually there were many cuts. "I couldn't see any of my dailies because we went across country,
and I shot it in 5½ weeks. So I didn't see anything, but I shot a lot of film."
Before Columbia got involved, however, it was Fonda who fronted the money. "Peter, God bless
him, it started out with Peter and his credit card. Paul Lewis and I went across country on Peter's
credit card while Peter was in New York with Terry [Southern]."
It's hard to believe that Easy Rider cost $360,000 and made about $20 million. Peter Fonda,
Russell said, was quoted as saying that when the movie started to gross those numbers,
"Columbia executives stopped shaking their heads in non-comprehension and started nodding
their heads in non-comprehension."
Hopper chuckled; it still impresses him, too. "We made back our money in one theater in New
York in two weeks. And that's incredible because it was like 85 cents and $1.25 to go to the
movies then."
Regarding the music, comprised mostly of popular tracks by artists of the 1960s, Hopper said he
didn't have to pay a dime. "I got all those songs by just going to the artists and asking. Those
were the good old days. Nobody would ever put found music in a film; they'd always written a
score. So I merely needed the artist's permission to use the music.
"As I was driving to work, I'd listen to the radio and I'd hear, 'Goddamn the Pusher Man' or 'Born
to Be Wild' and I applied them to scenes, and it was amazing that they worked... At times there
are great mysteries involved in all of this. But I find that if you allow yourself to get in the space
where you're really creating, it seems like you're just manipulating or floor managing something
that's coming in to you. And you lay it down and it just fits; it goes together, and there's not
really a lot that can stop you."
And what about Nicholson's George Hanson, whose line, "people who are threatened by
freedom, they'll kill you to prove that they're free," cuts to the very core of the film? Well, it was
a breakthrough role in the truest sense of the term, but Hopper said Nicholson wasn't his first
choice. "I thought he was going to ruin the picture. I love Jack, but I couldn't see a guy from New
Jersey playing this Texas guy. I thought he was a wonderful actor, but I just couldn't see it."
Obviously he's since changed his mind. "What a great talent [Nicholson] is, and what a great
contribution he is to our business."
As the film approaches its conclusion, Wyatt [Fonda] confesses to Billy [Hopper] that they "blew
it." Just in case you, like many, were wondering what this line really means, Hopper explained
his version.
"'We blew it' means that they'd made their money in a criminal way and that they'd gone against
their heritage, which was at stake because they were doing criminal things. And the guy with the
American flag on his back [Fonda] thought that they'd blown it because they'd made their money
in a criminal way."
Hopper noted that the film was received in a wide variety of ways, depending on where it
screened. "In Los Angeles, at the end of the movie people got up and screamed, 'Kill the pigs!
Kill the pigs!' And in New Orleans, they applauded when we were shot at the end. And when I
showed it in Yugoslavia the Russians thought it was incredible that the criminals were killed at
the end and yelled, 'Yes! Up for the workers!' I went crazy in Yugoslavia. 'There are more
communists in the university in the United States than there are in Moscow!' I screamed. The
American ambassador fell off his chair. But ... people see what they want to see, I'm afraid."
Throughout the making of Easy Rider, Hopper said he knew that he was part of something big. "I
didn't think it was going to be able to be stopped. I felt that from the beginning, man, I never had
any question about it. I mean, I was crazed. I was crazed. It was a one-way conversation with me
directing this movie."
Finally, Hopper was asked whether he thought in light of the film's violent ending, that freedom
died when the main characters died. Is freedom dead in America or was it just a myth all along?
Hopper responded vigorously. "I think freedom's here, man. We are free, and we've got to
always remain free. I could never have made this movie if we weren't free ... Our only prisons we
make for ourselves, I'm afraid. That's what I was making the movie about."
-Allison Holmes
http://www.dga.org/news/v27_3/indie_easyrider.php3