EASY RIDER B
USA (95 mi)
1969 d: Dennis Hopper
Written by Peter Fonda,
Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, with a stand-out performance by Jack
Nicholson, whose legendary career took off afterwards with twelve Oscar
nominations, winning two Best Actor and one Best Supporting Actor awards
throughout his career, it’s interesting that the three main stars got their
start in the film business with low-budget B-movie producer Roger Corman,
working together in the pot-smoking motorcycle saga THE WILD ANGELS (1966) and
the LSD fantasy THE TRIP (1967), where Peter Fonda was under contract to make
one more biker movie. Hopper persuaded
Fonda to let him direct this final film, written by Southern, where the initial
idea had to do with a couple of young guys who are fed up with the system, want
to make one big score and split, using the money to buy a boat in Key West and
sail out into the sunset, a notion where capitalism is alive and well. It was only after several drug-induced
revisions that their shallow, materialistically-based dreams of grandeur led
them to question the notion of the American Dream. From the outset, Fonda and Hopper’s
characters are fairly well established, with Fonda as the calmer of the two,
quieter and more stoic, given to meditative and conscientious moments, while
Hopper’s frenzied, overly anxious paranoia is largely based upon incessant drug
use, where he remains stoned throughout the movie. The film’s ideology is rooted at the beginning
of the picture, where they have accumulated enough money from a drug deal to
“head out on the highway” for a pot-infused road trip to Mardi Gras, where
their notions of freedom from conventional mainstream society are reflective of
Timothy Leary’s 60’s counterculture mantra of turning on and dropping out. There is barely a scene in the film that is
not inundated with rock music playing over images of two men riding their bikes
through a vast and seemingly endless landscape.
Coming from a tradition of the American western, the motorcycles take the
place of the horse, a point expressed early on when they’re seen fixing a flat
while simultaneously in the same frame ranchers are repairing the shoe of a
horse. The look of the film is largely
the creation of Hungarian cinematographer László Kovács, whose earlier credits
had included the B-movie biker classic HELL’S ANGELS ON WHEELS (1967), starring
Nicholson as a hot-headed gas station attendant that rides with the Hell’s
Angels with predictable results. While
not glorifying hippie ideology, something it ultimately criticizes, it also
cynically embraces the language, attire, and habits of the counterculture, and
in doing so becomes a defining film for that generation.
Basically a B-movie made on
the cheap, made for about $375,000, but grossing $50 million dollars, opening
the floodgates for the youth market in Hollywood, believing there was an
untapped market to exploit, spawning several spin-offs, but none captured the
attention of the 60’s counterculture quite like this one. The fascination with the film was that it
starred a couple of long-haired hippies that hit the road, which mirrored what
plenty of young, mostly white, middle-class youth were doing at the time,
getting out of the cities and making their own discoveries about this vast nation
of ours. Some of the music is
disappointing, but there’s no question that one of the draws to the film was
the use of music by Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Roger McGuinn and the Byrds, the
Band, and Steppenwolf, all of which were bands that the youth in America were
listening to at the time of its release, where there were plenty of marketing
posters advertising this film much like they would a rock concert. For the most part, people liked experiencing
the film even if they didn’t particularly “like” the film, much like Melvin van
Peebles’ SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADDASSSSS SONG (1971) struck a similar nerve with
black America. For the most part, it was
the identification with freedom and open expression that attracted legions of
younger kids, who were probably equally turned off by the apocalyptic message
of doom, as the movie foretells the end of the Age of Aquarius, bringing an
abrupt halt to the hopes and ideals of the 60’s. Surprisingly, as portrayed by these two leads,
the film has a relatively paranoid and conservative outlook, more reflective of
the director suffering the after-effects of large-scale drug consumption, as
revealed in L.M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller’s The
American Dreamer (1971), a documentary portrait of Hopper that reveals just
how unoriginal and uninspired he was as an artist shortly after making this
film, unable to break through his own delusions and self-imposed psychological
barriers. That’s not to say there aren’t
inspired moments in this film, as there’s plenty of artistry to acclaim, but
overall, the film rarely rises above convention and is content to portray
characters as stereotypes, never really delving into an inner life of anyone,
as opposed to the more complex character study shown in Bob Rafelson’s Five
Easy Pieces (1970), or the bare-bones expression of an achingly lonely life
on the road revealed in Monte Hellman’s critically dismissed Two-Lane
Blacktop (1971), which is much more of an authentic time capsule of the
era.
The film has all the
elements of an exploitation movie, sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll music
coinciding with a prevailing mood of social alienation and discontent, as this
was an era of protest marches against the war in Vietnam, which grinded on for
another four years, actually escalating into Cambodia, where the political
acceptance of the status quo sent kids out of the cities in droves looking for
an alternative lifestyle, as the authoritarian rigidity of the powers that be
were being challenged on every front.
This film makes no reference to Vietnam, yet the movie is immersed in
its shadow, as there’s nowhere they can go to get away from the national divide
that separates the two sides on this issue, turning what is essentially a biker
flick into an ambitious generational statement.
The initial hopes at the beginning of the trip turn sour, where the film
is both a celebration and a death knell for the inflated idealism of the late
60’s, leaving the audience with a grim view of things to come. While there are some that believe this is a
defining film of its generation, as Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda are the faces
of the counterculture, seen rubbing elbows with flower children, communal
lifestyles, and forced to deal with the violent backlash against the
counterculture, where the choices they make, eluded to at the end, represent
that of an entire nation that failed to live up to the promise of helping
create a better world. One might also
argue that the film is too passive in dealing with the real issues of its day,
and instead bypasses social content by dealing so exclusively in stereotypes,
making it more of a cult film. While it
may hold an iconic status, this is only because the media elevated the film
into anointed territory. There are few
films that actually get the 60’s right, but certainly one of the best is
Francis Ford Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), made nearly a decade afterwards
(which also ironically features Dennis Hopper), but it is the definitive
portrait of the horror and madness of the Vietnam War, which remains the
singlemost significant event in the lives of the last draftable generation, a
film teetering on the edge of chaos, yet producing some of the more deliriously
hallucinogenic and breathtaking sequences of any film made in our time, this
from a director who already gave us THE GODFATHER (1972–74) saga. According to Coppola, “APOCALYPSE NOW is not
about Vietnam, it is Vietnam.”
Certainly one of the
reservations about this film’s place in history are the two lead characters
themselves, not only two conflicted, morally dubious souls, drifters making
their way on a road trip across America from Los Angeles to Mardi Gras in New
Orleans, but they are both criminal outlaws, set up by a major cocaine deal
going down in Mexico as the film begins, generating a huge cash profit when
they sell the cocaine to a ridiculously wealthy customer (ironically played by
record producer Phil Spector, currently serving 19 years to life for
murder). If these two drug dealers got
caught today, they’d be thrown right alongside Spector in serving 20 years of
hard time. Had they made a pot deal,
perhaps it might be different, as the 60’s generation never viewed pot smoking
as illegal, considering how prevalent it was, but instead considered it a sign
of the times, a part of the counterculture, like underground comics, dropping
acid, or loving the one you’re with.
Instead we get a taste of Steppenwolf’s grinding guitars expressing the
amoral indifference of the drug dealer in “The Pusher,” Steppenwolf - The Pusher -
YouTube (5:48).
You
know I smoked a lot of grass.
Oh Lord! I popped a lot of pills.
But I've never touched nothin'
That my spirit couldn't kill.
You know I've seen a lot of people walking 'round
With tombstones in their eyes.
But the pusher don't care
If you live -- or if you die.
God Damn! The pusher.
Oh Lord! I popped a lot of pills.
But I've never touched nothin'
That my spirit couldn't kill.
You know I've seen a lot of people walking 'round
With tombstones in their eyes.
But the pusher don't care
If you live -- or if you die.
God Damn! The pusher.
Played while the audience
sees Peter Fonda stuffing wads of cash in a plastic tube inserted into the gas
tank of his Stars and Stripes Harley chopper, the two immediately transform
themselves into Captain America (Fonda as Wyatt) and his sidekick Billy
(Hopper), a spinoff of mythical Western heroes Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid,
where the popularity of the song, played alongside the rebellious rock anthem Born to be wild - Steppenwolf
- YouTube (3:15), two songs that would forever be associated with
motorcycles afterwards, suggests a liberating spirit associated with a life on
the road, where you are your own boss, answering to no one else, free to set
your own agenda. EASY RIDER is part of a
long line of American films that revere outlaws, like Raoul Walsh’s White Heat
(1949), Arthur Penn’s Bonnie
and Clyde (1967), or Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild
Bunch (1969), where all the attention focuses upon the internal
psychological profile of outlaws as compelling figures, even as they may resort
to reckless acts of violence, often captured in a slow motion montage of
cinematic beauty, rarely dwelling for long on the plight of the victims. Instead the camera languishes long and hard
on the chiseled profiles of the featured characters set against the vast
expanse of the American landscape, where they are viewed as the last of a dying
breed, the last vestiges of the untamed Western frontier. Too often these films are greeted with
initial disgust at glorifying criminality, before giving way to critical
acclaim, where these outlaws become symbols against authority and the
establishment, embraced by a youth culture, where Bonnie
and Clyde screenwriters David Newman and Robert Benton observe:
If
Bonnie and Clyde were here today, they would be hip. Their values have become
assimilated in much of our culture—not robbing banks and killing people, of
course, but their style, their sexuality, their bravado, their delicacy, their
cultivated arrogance, their narcissistic insecurity, their curious ambition
have relevance to the way we live now.
Filmed just months after the
Tet
Offensive of 1968, a North Vietnamese attack that took the Americans by
surprise, making counterfeit all the military and political hyperbole about “winning
the war,” EASY RIDER is an anthem of opposition, giving voice to the 60’s
counterculture in their use of drugs, style of dress, embracement of free love,
distrust of law enforcement, irreverent display of American symbols, for being
perceived as having radical views, not the least of which is dropping out of
mainstream society and setting an uncharted path of their own, where the open
road represents some mysteriously existential, sought-after freedom. Many might argue that this duo was
ill-prepared for the journey, where the initial panorama of stark natural
beauty makes way for a southwest populated by abandoned vehicles and
dilapidated buildings, by motels that shut their doors, or Mom and Pop café’s
that refuse to serve them. In contrast,
the film is an affirmation of hippie ideology, though one has to scratch their
head at the questionable merits of a hippie commune visited along the way,
which is a far cry from self-sufficient, and without any source of food or
income could hardly be viewed as self-sustaining. Something suggests this picture of America as
an open road of untapped freedom is misguided, where the initial naïve optimism
is met instead with a newly discovered pessimism at what was missing from this
picture, as the purveyors of peace and love are met with unflinching hostility,
where they run up against small town police authority that would just as soon
see them rot in jail. It is there that
they meet George Hanson (Jack Nicholson), an American Civil Liberties Union
lawyer sleeping it off in a drunk tank, who helps them get out of jail and
decides to join them on their odyssey to New Orleans, which begins with his
ominous pronouncement, “This used to be a hell of a good country. I can’t understand what's gone wrong with
it.”
As an alcoholic and
something of a southern square, upstanding citizen George may seem a bit out of
touch, but he understands the southern landscape and is familiar with how
locals feel about hippies, already experiencing incidents of adverse run-ins
with the law, and excessive abuses of authority. When George smokes a joint under a gorgeous
nighttime sky with Wyatt and Billy, he rambles on for awhile about aliens and
UFO’s, but also gets philosophical, becoming the mouthpiece for the filmmakers,
suggesting ordinary people are bound by concepts of work and responsibility
that limit their understanding and appreciation of freedom, suggesting they
actually resent the idea of others having a freedom they no longer have:
They
don’t hate you. They hate the idea of
you…Oh, they’re not scared of you.
They’re scared of what you represent to them. ... What you represent to
them is freedom. ... But talking about it [freedom] and being it — that’s two
different things. I mean, it’s real hard
to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. ‘Course don’t ever tell anybody that they’re
not free, ‘cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove
to you that they are. Oh, yeah — they’re
gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom —
but they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare 'em. ... It makes ‘em
dangerous.
George doesn’t survive the
night, as the three are brutally beaten in their sleep by men with clubs, where
Wyatt and Billy suffer only superficial injuries. The further the two travel away from the west
coast, the more the film is about being a stranger in your own country, where
the fundamental principles that you’re taught in school do not apply, where the
interactions with various people they encounter along the way serves as an
example of an American society unwilling to live up to its professed
ideals. By the time they reach New
Orleans, they visit an upscale brothel that was George’s intended destination,
where they meet two prostitutes, Karen and Mary, Karen Black and Toni
Basil. It is only when the four of them
leave the premises and hit the streets of Mardi Gras that the movie elevates in
form and turns into an experimental film shot on various film stocks, becoming
the most memorable and artistically impressive sequence in the film. As they wander to a nearby cemetery, they
take LSD, expressed through a kaleidoscopic sequence of distorted sights and
sounds, resembling a hallucinogenic experience with jarring sound effects,
bizarre camera angles, and quick edits, where instead of a rapturous
embellishment of sensuous delight, it’s instead a disquieting portrait of
personal disillusionment, becoming a near wordless montage that produces some
of the most visually shocking images of the film. The psychedelic sequence includes a flash
forward moment, a split second foreboding image of what’s about to happen to
them, only seen out of context, where it’s only an image seen amidst a flood of
constantly changing images, ending with an unusual note of pessimism where
Wyatt tells Billy “We blew it,” suggesting that brief moment in one’s life when
they have a chance to actually accomplish something meaningful had been lost,
which may as well speak to the end of an era.
It’s a stunning admission, holding themselves up to a mirror, reflective
of a larger cultural landscape that was embarking upon a similar path of
misadventure. In Vietnam, there were too
many senseless deaths and lives destroyed, creating a divided and morally
disenchanted nation, where the inevitable collision course that lay ahead would
play out like a bad dream, where the film is both a celebration and an epitaph
for 60’s counterculture ideals that never materialized.
What
happens to a dream deferred?
Does
it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe
it just sags
like a heavy load.
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
A Dream Deferred (by
Langston Hughes), from Harlem,
also known as Montage of a Dream
Deferred, 1951
