Easy Rider is a 1969 American road drama film written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. Fonda and Hopper play two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and the South, carrying money made from a cocaine deal. Other actors in the film include Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, and Toni Basil. An independent production,[8][9] the film was released by Columbia Pictures on July 14, 1969, and earned $60 million worldwide compared to a modest filming budget of $400,000.[2][3] Critics have praised the performances, directing, writing, soundtrack, and visuals. It received two Academy Awards nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Jack Nicholson).
Hrdinové a cesta jako zkouška svobody
Wyatt (Fonda) and Billy (Hopper) are freewheeling motorcyclists. After smuggling cocaine from Mexico to Los Angeles, they sell their haul and receive a large sum of money. During their trip, Wyatt and Billy stop to repair a flat tire on Wyatt's bike at a farmstead in Arizona and have a meal with the farmer and his family. Later, Wyatt picks up a hippie hitchhiker, and he invites them to visit his commune, where they stay for the rest of the day. "Free love" appears to be practiced, with two of the women, Lisa and Sarah, seemingly sharing the affections of the hitchhiking commune member before turning their attention to Wyatt and Billy.
Když se motocykly mění ve znak hnutí
Later while riding along with a parade in New Mexico, the pair are arrested for "parading without a permit" and thrown in jail. There, they befriend lawyer George Hanson (Nicholson), who has spent the night in jail after overindulging in alcohol. Mentioning that he has done work for the ACLU, George helps them get out of jail and decides to travel with Wyatt and Billy to New Orleans. As they camp that night, Wyatt and Billy introduce George to marijuana. Stopping to eat at a small-town Louisiana diner, the trio attracts the attention of the locals. The girls in the restaurant think they are exciting, but the local men, including the sheriff, make denigrating comments and taunts. Wyatt, Billy, and George decide to leave without any fuss.
They make camp outside town. In the middle of the night, a group of locals attack the sleeping trio, beating them with clubs. Billy screams and brandishes a knife, and the attackers leave. Wyatt and Billy suffer minor injuries, but George has been bludgeoned to death. They continue to New Orleans and find a brothel George had told them about. Taking prostitutes Karen and Mary with them, Wyatt and Billy wander the parade-filled streets of the Mardi Gras celebration. They end up in a French Quarter cemetery, where all four ingest the LSD the hitchhiker had given to Wyatt. The next morning, as they are overtaken on a two-lane country road by two local men in an older pickup truck, the passenger in the truck reaches for a shotgun, saying he will scare them. As they pass Billy, the passenger fires, and Billy has a lowside crash. The truck passes Wyatt, who has stopped, and Wyatt rides back to Billy, finding him lying flat on the side of the road and covered in blood. Wyatt tells Billy he is going to get help and covers Billy's wound with his own leather jacket. Wyatt then rides down the road toward the pickup as it makes a U-turn. Passing in the opposite direction, the passenger fires the shotgun again, this time through the driver's-side window. Wyatt's riderless motorcycle flies through the air and comes apart before landing and being engulfed in flames. His body is seen lying still in the background.
Kritická poloha a síla konvenci
Robert Walker Jr. Hopper and Fonda's first collaboration was in The Trip (1967), written by Jack Nicholson, which had themes and characters similar to those of Easy Rider.[11] Peter Fonda had become "an icon of the counterculture" in The Wild Angels (1966), where he established "a persona he would develop further in The Trip and Easy Rider."[12] The Trip also popularized LSD, while Easy Rider went on to "celebrate '60s counterculture" but does so "stripped of its innocence."[13]
Postava Captain America a skutečné techniky snímání
The film was mostly shot without a screenplay, with ad-libbed lines, and production started with only the outline and the names of the protagonists. Keeping the Western theme, Wyatt was named after Wyatt Earp and Billy after Billy the Kid.[1] However, Southern disputed that Hopper wrote much of the script. In an interview published in 2016 [Southern died in 1995] he said, "You know if Den Hopper improvises a dozen lines and six of them survive the cutting room floor he'll put in for screenplay credit. Now it would be almost impossible to exaggerate his contribution to the film-but, by George, he manages to do it every time."
According to Terry Southern's biographer, Lee Hill, the part of George Hanson had been written for Southern's friend, actor Rip Torn. When Torn met with Hopper and Fonda at a New York restaurant in early 1968 to discuss the role, Hopper began ranting about the "rednecks" he had encountered on his scouting trip to the South. Torn, a Texan, took exception to some of Hopper's remarks, and the two almost came to blows, as a result of which Torn withdrew from the project. Torn was replaced by Jack Nicholson.
Motorky a jejich proměna ve vizuální ikoně
In total, two dirt bikes, and four former police bikes were used in the film. The 1949, 1950 and 1952 Harley-Davidson FL Hydra-Glide bikes were purchased at an auction for $500,[28] equivalent to about $4800 in 2025. Each bike had a backup to make sure that shooting could continue in case one of the old machines failed or got wrecked accidentally. One "Captain America" was demolished in the final scene, while the other three were stolen and probably taken apart before their significance as movie props became known.[28] The demolished bike was rebuilt by Dan Haggerty and offered for auction in October 2014 by Profiles in History, a Calabasas, California-based auction house with an estimated value of $1-1.2 million. The provenance of existing Captain America motorcycles is unclear, and has been the subject of much litigation.[30] The EMP Museum in Seattle identified a Captain America chopper displayed there as a rebuilt original movie prop.
Vliv filmu na kulturu a filmový průmysl
Easy Rider holds an 84% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 56 reviews, with an average rating of 7.70/10. Along with Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, Easy Rider helped kick-start the New Hollywood era during the late 1960s and 1970s.[54] The major studios realized that money could be made from low-budget films made by avant-garde directors. Heavily influenced by the French New Wave, the films of the so-called "post-classical Hollywood" came to represent a counterculture generation increasingly disillusioned with its government as well as the government's effects on the world at large and the establishment in general.[54] Although Jack Nicholson appears only as a supporting actor and in the last half of the film, the standout performance signaled his arrival as a movie star,[54] along with his subsequent film Five Easy Pieces in which he had the lead role.
The film's success, and the new era of Hollywood which it helped usher in, gave Hopper the chance to direct again with complete artistic control. The movie was financed with money made from the Monkees, and features a cameo of record producer Phil Spector in the opening scenes, but neither provided any music. Bob Dylan was asked to contribute music, but was reluctant to use his own recording of "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", so a version performed by Byrds frontman Roger McGuinn was used instead. Originally, Peter Fonda had intended the band Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young to write an entirely original soundtrack for the film, but this failed to materialize for two reasons.