Easy Rider | |
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Original poster
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Directed by | Dennis Hopper |
Produced by | Peter Fonda |
Written by | Peter Fonda Dennis Hopper Terry Southern |
Starring | Peter Fonda Dennis Hopper Jack Nicholson |
Music by |
The Band The Byrds The Jimi Hendrix Experience Roger McGuinn Steppenwolf |
Cinematography | László Kovács |
Edited by | Donn Cambern |
Production
company |
Raybert Productions
Pando Company Inc. |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date
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Running time
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95 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $360,000 |
Box office | $60 million |
Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers (played by Fonda and Hopper) who travel through the American Southwest and South after selling a large score of cocaine. The success of Easy Rider helped spark the New Hollywood era of filmmaking during the early 1970s. The film was added to the Library of Congress National Registry in 1998.
A landmark counterculture film, and a "touchstone for a generation" that "captured the national imagination",Easy Rider explores the societal landscape, issues, and tensions in the United States during the 1960s, such as the rise and fall of the hippie movement, drug use, and communal lifestyle. In Easy Rider, real drugs were used in scenes showing the use of marijuana and other substances.
The protagonists are two freewheeling bikers: Wyatt (Fonda), nicknamed "Captain America", and Billy (Hopper). Wyatt dresses in American flag-adorned leather (with an Office of the Secretary of Defense Identification Badge affixed to it), while Billy dresses in Native American-style buckskin pants and shirts and a bushman hat. The former is quite open to people they meet on their journey and accepting of help while the latter is more hostile and suspicious.
After smuggling cocaine from Mexico to Los Angeles, Wyatt and Billy sell their haul to "Connection", a man (played by Phil Spector) in a Rolls-Royce, and receive a large sum in return. With the money stuffed into a plastic tube hidden inside the Stars & Stripes-painted fuel tank of Wyatt's California-style chopper, they ride eastward aiming to reach New Orleans, Louisiana, in time for the Mardi Gras festival.