Easy Rider

film by Hopper [1969]

Written by Lee Pfeiffer

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Article History

Easy Rider, American countercultural film, released in 1969, that was hailed as a youth anthem for its message of nonconformism and its reflection of social tensions in the United States in the late 1960s. It helped spark the New Hollywood of the late 1960s and early ’70s, in which a style of filmmaking based on low budgets and avant-garde directors arose that differed greatly from the traditional moviemaking of the Hollywood studios.

Hippie drug dealers Wyatt (played by Peter Fonda, who also produced) and Billy (Dennis Hopper, who also directed) are ostensibly en route to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but in reality they are on an odyssey in search of freedom and some meaning in life. Along the way they encounter an eclectic array of individuals, including George Hanson (Jack Nicholson), an establishment lawyer with a penchant for alcohol. The people they meet and the situations that follow represent the best and worst aspects of modern American life and reflect upon issues that were particularly popular with youth at that time, from the hippie and commune movement to racism, war, religious tolerance, and drug use.

Many of the scenes are crude and rambling—the film’s original cut ran nearly four hours—and Easy Rider can easily be viewed as a period piece, albeit a significant one, that reflected simplistic, though common, perceptions of the day, with everything countercultural or mainstream deemed either good or evil, respectively. The film’s bleak conclusion—in which Wyatt and Billy have a violent encounter with men in a pickup truck—is still jarring for audiences. The success of the low-budget film revolutionized filmmaking and hastened the end of the power wielded by the studio moguls in Hollywood. In addition, the film’s use of popular rock songs in place of original music was a concept later adopted by other filmmakers. Easy Rider proved a breakthrough for Nicholson, who earned an Academy Award nomination.