"Thank you for a place to make a stand," Captain America says. A "performance troupe" sings "Does Your Hair Hang Low?" on a makeshift stage, while stoned would-be hippie farmers wander across the parched earth, scattering seed. You can be proud." (The rancher, who might understandably have replied, "Who the hell asked you?" nods gratefully.)Ī hitchhiker leads them to a hippie commune that may have seemed inspiring in 1969, but today looks banal. Then they have dinner with the weathered rancher and his Mexican-American brood, and Fonda delivers the first of many quasi-profound lines he will dole out during the movie: "It's not every man who can live off the land, you know. One of their bikes needs work, and they borrow tools at a ranch, leading to a labored visual juxtaposition of wheel-changing and horse-shoeing.
There's heavy symbolism as Fonda throws away his wristwatch before setting off on the journey, and the establishing scenes, as Captain America and Billy stash their loot in a gas tank and set off down the backroads of the Southwest, are slowly paced - heavy on scenery, light on dialogue, pregnant with symbolism and foreboding. It plays today more as a period piece than as living cinema, but it captures so surely the tone and look of that moment in time. "Easy Rider" was playing in theaters at about the time Woodstock Nation was gathering in upstate New York. "Hell's Angels on Wheels" is a great-looking movie, but it took "Easy Rider" to link two symbols of rebellion - motorcycles and the hippie counterculture - and catch the spirit of the time. Directed by Richard Rush (" The Stunt Man"), it was a largely overlooked precursor to "Easy Rider," sharing the same cinematographer, Laszlo Kovacs, and even the same little-known actor in a colorful supporting role: Jack Nicholson, who played a gas station attendant named Poet. Motorcycle movies were not fashionable in 1969, although " Hell's Angels on Wheels" made an attempt in 1967 to break free of the booze-and-violence cliches. The executives loved the sound and insisted the songs be left in, and "Easy Rider" begat countless later movies that were scored with oldies. The budget was so limited, there was no money for an original score, so Hopper, the director, slapped on a scratch track of rock 'n' roll standards for the first studio screening. But Sam Arkoff turned them down, and they finally found funding at Columbia. Fonda and Hopper took their screenplay (co-written with Terry Southern) to the traditional home of motorcycle movies, American-International Pictures. The making of the movie became a Hollywood legend. (It would be a year later, after the release of "Joe," that flag decals were co-opted by the right.) Captain America, who could handle it better, is cool, quiet, remote, a Christ figure who flies the American flag on his gas tank, his helmet and the back of his leather jacket. Billy gets the giggles around the campfire at night. The drug is cocaine (sold to a dealer played by rock producer Phil Spector), but their drug of choice is marijuana. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper play Captain America and Billy, journeying cross-country on their motorcycles, using a drug deal in Los Angeles to finance a trip to Mardi Gras. It provides little shocks of recognition, as when you realize they aren't playing "Don't Bogart That Joint" for laughs. Seeing the movie years later is like opening a time capsule.
It did a lot of repeat business while the sweet smell of pot drifted through theaters.
It became one of the rallying-points of the late '60s, a road picture and a buddy picture, celebrating sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and the freedom of the open road. Nobody went to see "Easy Rider" (1969) only once.
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