Easy Rider

Director: Dennis Hopper
Released: 1969
Length: 95 min.

What began as revolutionary filmmaking exploring the freedoms of the counter culture has now become the mainstream image of modern road culture. Over the decades, Easy Rider has become reduced to a song (Born to Be Wild) and an image (two chopped motorcycles).    

Dennis Hopper's and Peter Fonda's characters embark on a motorcycle journey across the Southern United States, eventually winding up in New Orleans for Mardi Gras.  Their encounters with people living under the radar present philosophical questions for the mainstream public without preaching.  Potentially offensive aspects of counter culture life confront the viewer directly, almost provoking conflict, yet maintaining a distance.  As the main characters wind their way across the country, they almost seem nostalgic about their journey, almost seem to know this may be their last.

The film opened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1969 prior to its release two weeks later in the US.  It was made on a very low budget, without much crew, and had tremendous success throughout the world.

Easy Rider marks the end of an era (it was made in 1969); most profoundly by its somewhat bombastic conclusion.  It juxtaposes youthful idealism with apathy, foreshadowing the decades to come, when drugs would be harder, the counter culture more dangerous, and everyone less carefree.  It doesn't question the price of freedom, it throws it in our faces.