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 Easy
Rider 35th Anniversary Edition
Starring: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson
Directed by: Dennis Hopper
Buy
it
Bluntly
speaking? Easy Rider opened thirty-five years ago knocking
the general movie-going audience upside its head. On the outside
this small film was an easy going tale of drug dealing motorhead
joint-token fringe hippies rollin' down the highways and headin'
for some fun after a major drug deal. But the film is much more
than that. And sure, the beautiful saunter of its quiet star Peter
Fonda - all bikered out for your visual pleasure - drew a menagerie
of man-lovin' gawkers, but the reason Easy Rider became
a major box-office hit and ultimately spawned a trillion wanna-be
flicks and has remained a major film, was its deeper social massages
of intolerance, moral polarisms, armchair politics and self-cynicism.
Oh, and that kick-ass soundtrack attached to it helped...
Welcome
to Easy Rider's 35th birthday celebration. The dvd comes
with a great booklet all about the going ons behind the legendary
culty film, interviews with Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda in a behind
the scenes making-of featurette, audio commentary by Dennis Hopper
and a second cd of music from the film- including everyone's headin'
out for mayhem anthem, 'Born to be Wild', by Steppenwolf. Rights
were not gotten for The Band's version of 'The Weight', but Smith
doesn't completely disappoint. And 'San Francisco Nights' by Eric
Burden & The Animals may make you feel as if someone slid
a quarter panel of blotter in your after-dinner coffee selection.
The
story (or perhaps calling Rider an urban folk tale is more
identifying) goes... Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper)
are non-descript long-hairs who've just made a huge drug score
and are planning to retire. It's an altered state of the American
dream.
Their
new lush life will kick-off with a road trip from Los Angeles
to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, then it's off to where the Wildwood
weeds blow 'em.
They pack up their choppers, pack a kettle of pot, hide the loot
in Wyatt's gas tank and the hit the road.
Along
the way to their idea of heaven the boys will have to tap-dance
through hell. Remeber it's 1969-ish and the country's interior
aint so Haight-Ashbury Love-In tolerant.
They
stop for a hitch hiker (Luke Askew) who brings them home to his
commune. And a little further into middle-America their special
brand of ballsout humor gets them jailed. But before the local
yokels can lynch the boys they befriend a important man's drunken
son named George (Jack Nicholson). George is actually quite philosophical
if you listen carefully. Either way they agree to let him ride
with them to New Orleans -a s he too seems to need a new environment.
The trio are about to get a big ol' lesson in the world's anger
towards the unknown - oddly still valid all these years later.
We'll learn Wyatt and Billy's carefree pit stops are going to
shape their lives forever, as the road becomes a peculiar classroom
on social identities. And while the times are a changin' it's
not without a fight from the less forward thinking sorts our puritan
country was born from.
Peter
Fonda as Wyatt is the more free-spirited positive guy. Dennis
Hopper's Billy character is a bit of a mad hatter with an anger
management issue topped with a socially disabled cherry. The finest
character is Jack Nicholson's George. The film actually picks
up while he's on the screen - and wow that pudgy Laker-lovin'
behemoth we all know now was tre hottski back in 1969! Um, yum-purr.
Easy
Rider can be slow at times - but the style and scenes were
brave stepping stones for a new generation of of film makers.
And what now seems a tad artsy-grandious, was at the time taboo-ish
and the acid-trip scene is still one of the best on film.- the
Willy Wonka boat ride aside natch. Enjoy. Buy
it
DVD
Features:
Bonus CD songtrack with music from the movie
Dennis Hopper Commentary
Featurette w/ Interviews with Hopper and Fonda
80-page British Film Institute Modern Classic book Easy Rider
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