#JACK NICHOLSON EASY RIDER MOVIE#

Having just traveled back to Los Angeles to deliver drugs from Mexico, the pair decide to take a spiritual journey to New Orleans and celebrate Mardi Gras. The heavily repeated plot surrounding the two main characters is the ultimate in outlaw art.

#JACK NICHOLSON EASY RIDER MOVIE#

And of course Jack Nicholson is the third star of Easy Rider – although only appearing in the second half of the movie – it was still enough to open the doors of his career and lead to a string of memorable films. Easy Rider was an extension of The Trip, the characters were drawn from the same universe. Hopper on the other hand is more reminiscent of the cowboy with the brown and tanned leathers.Īt this point Peter Fonda was already the cool cat who got the cream, a poster boy for the new revolution after starring in The Wild Angels in sixty-six and the Jack Nicholson penned The Trip in sixty-seven. The clever use of symbolism as Fonda is draped with the American flag on his leathers and helmet as well as across the bike itself. A lot of it was about politically what was going on in the country.” The search for the American Dream is first and foremost at the core of Easy Rider, an outlaw movie which takes the standard story of the Spaghetti Western and places it on a highway instead of a high plain and a Harley-Davidson instead of a horse.Īs the strains of the Steppenwolf biker-classic “Born to Be Wild” erupt, the perfect picture of cool appears on screen: Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as ‘Wyatt’ and ‘Billy’ ( note: Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid), on slick motorcycles with the wind in their hair, speeding down a highway. Yet what’s even more significant is what the movie represents as an artistic statement.ĭennis Hopper said “ ‘Easy Rider’ was never a motorcycle movie to me. Easy Rider landed hot on the heels of well-received hits The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, gathering huge earnings of sixty million on top of a modest budget. It may not have single handedly made large studios sit up and take notice of low-budget, independent movies but it did reinforce the idea. Looking back fifty-years later it is easy to recognize its impact on cinema in the nineteen-seventies. Where the lost innocence and truth of the movement was displayed for all the world to see, not just those in San Francisco or Los Angeles. These ideals danced in the daylight as Easy Rider displayed the counter-culture stripped to its bare bones. A country torn apart by racial hatred, the Vietnam War and a desire to change without the knowledge of how to.Īs a movie, it brought all the underground notions and views to surface. This outsider montage fired a shot of rebellious-equality into the heart of a country. In the midst of all these situations, the revolution became cinematic with the release of the ultimate road movie, Easy Rider.

These dark-days called a halt to the dreams of a generation, as murder and violence extinguished the notions of peace and love. Whilst in December of that year, The Rolling Stones played Altamont outside San Francisco, where the ‘Hells Angels’ rampaged, killing African-American Meredith Hunter. Then of course the world witnessed the lows as the Manson Family murders rocked the Los Angeles hills. In nineteen-sixty-nine the world experienced the heights of the hippy-movement and Jimi Hendrix’s guitar soared over Woodstock signaling the highs.

Jack nicholson easy rider