88. Easy Rider


    (1969) directed by Dennis Hopper

Next: #87. Frankenstein
Prev: #89. Patton


Are you gentlemen here for the 'Doonesbury' auditions?
My Thoughts Before I Watched It

I was curious about this one - it certainly had the rep of being one of the Sixties' greatest achievements; it launched the careers of Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, no slouches, and it supposedly had a cool soundtrack. I have to say I was looking forward to finally seeing this. Be careful what you wish for.

The Premise

Peter Fonda (Captain America) and Dennis Hopper (Billy) hop on their motorcycles to drive from California to New Orleans; on the way they learn about UFOs, smoke enough pot to kill a family of hippos, and run into those square establishment-types.

Notes and Stuff
  • The opening scene establishes early on that this is a weird movie. They're buying drugs from some Mexicans, and it looks like a cross between The Grapes of Wrath, Pulp Fiction, and Three Amigos. Weird.
  • These costumes (particularly Peter Fonda's glasses) are more dated than Winona Ryder.
  • Maybe I'm getting old - (or maybe it's cause I don't smoke weed, maybe it's cause I shower regularly, maybe it's cause I have a job) but hippies just plain annoy me. Whether they're following Phish around now or wandering around a pueblo in this movie scattering seeds in a trance. I guess I'm just turning into a square, man. How un-groovy.
  • Some of the cinematography in the movie is pretty good - the scenes where they're riding through the desert and over bridges and stuff. It also confirms my (not based on much) theory that, according to movies, all of the detritus of American society winds up in the South.
  • On the flip side, the editing style in this movie is painful. Just awful to watch. Is it a statement, or could they not afford an editor?
  • And is the background music in one scene really some clown wailing "Don't Bogart That Joint"? Am I in Hell?
  • In one of the rare scenes in this movie that has more than a minute of dialogue, Jack Nicholson rambles on about how UFOs and aliens have infiltrated society. I wonder if this was a shocking concept at the time, considering I'm watching this on the other side of the X-Files, National Enquirer, Hard Copy looking glass.
  • I think I figured out what's wrong with this movie. In day one of screenwriting class, we learned that every movie needs CONFLICT. Without conflict, it's in the words of Homer J. Simpson, "just a bunch of stuff that happened". Until they get into the restaurant in Hazzard County, this movie is basically just a bunch of stuff that happens. Even then, not much happens.
  • Then they get to the whorehouse in New Orleans, and take two of the ladies to Mardi Gras and get them tripping. The trip scene looks like a cross between The Blair Witch Project and a Guns 'n Roses video, and is notable only for the fact that Toni Basil (of 1981 "Micky" fame) appears nekkid for a second. If you call that notable. As far as 80s singers goes, I personally would have preferred Sheena Easton (Remember? "Strut"? "Sugar Walls"? The lucious little pout? That faint Scottish accent? The pastel tops halfway unbuttoned? That, my friends, is the moment I knew I was fated to live life as a heterosexual.) I'm sorry; was all that out loud? Um. Well. Back to your movie review.
  • When they're all coming down, one of the um, working girls is laying in a heap, sobbing and moaning "I wanna get out of here" over and over again. Finally - a character I can identify with.
  • OK, I'll spoil the end - Hopper and Fonda get shot off their motorcycles by a couple of rednecks. You know, I was disappointed by this movie; I was disappointed by Deliverance, too - maybe I want my hillbillies more evil. Maybe if they could have combined the two into one movie - y'know, and Ned Beatty-ized the hippies before killing them - it would have been a little more satisfying. Aesthetically satisfying, I mean. Not personally satisfying. Heh heh.

Best Line

George Hansen: "It's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. But don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, cause they'll get real busy killin' and maimin' ya to prove to you that they are."

Summary

Perspective is a funny thing. In the Sixties, I'm sure this was a landmark movie. A movie that challenges authority, that shows the so-called "decent folk" as obnoxious killers, that shows the ironies inherent in freedom. But let's face it; the Sixties are over. Most of the hippies have grown up now. If they had lived through this movie, I imagine Captain America would now be a successful day trader and Billy would have 3 kids and would be regularly writing to the local paper protesting smutty billboards. And, natch, instead of tooling around New Mexico on motorcycles, they'd be tooling around the mall parking lot in Ford Explorers. And with that perspective, this movie looked to me like less of a scathing indictment of the Moral Majority and more of a lone nut's wistful remembering of a past that never really was. And a badly filmed one at that.

Cast

Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as the stoned bikers, Jack Nicholson as the drunken lawyer, Toni Basil as the so fine, so so fine you blow my mind hooker, and Karen Black as the other hooker. Plus a bunch of dirty hippies as themselves.