3/13/2024 0 Comments Easy rider magazine art doing it![]() In fact, he was kind of doing the Rick Dalton thing and taking guest spots in TV Westerns. It was impossible to capture the specific formula and spark that made Easy Rider such a smash.Įven more significantly, the film is credited as one of the key works that helped create the New Hollywood movement, which began a new era of creativity and independence in the 1970s.ĭespite his famous father, Fonda was not a huge audience draw at the time of the film's release, and Hopper was struggling after co-starring with James Dean ( Giant, Rebel Without a Cause). It gave a voice to a dissatisfied group of Americans who were unhappy with the status of the world.Įxecutives scrambled to connect with this new "outsider" audience, approving young new directors and stories about rebels and drugs, mostly unsuccessfully. It looked different, was made for no money, was filmed and edited differently, and dealt with dark subject matter their own glossy movies weren't touching. Studio heads were stunned at the movie's success. It eventually grossed $60 million worldwide and was the third highest-grossing film of the year. Hopper (who also served as the film's director) received the "First Film Award."Ĭolumbia Pictures released Easy Rider on July 14, 1969, starting in a single New York City theater and going wide several months later. We made a movie for these people that didn't have their own movie." Easy Rider's Effect on the Studio SystemĪfter the film's completion, it was accepted into the 1969 Cannes Film Festival. Those were not really films of the youth that I had grown into and up with, shutting away the establishment, going on their own. "They were making films like Pillow Talk and Glass Bottom Boat. In 2015, Fonda looked back on his motivation for making the movie during an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. Though there was a script and source material, co-writer Terry Southern revealed that scenes were heavily improvised.Īccording to DP László Kovács, the film functioned with a 12-person crew, and the Mardi Gras segments were filmed on rented Bolex 16mm cameras by the actors themselves before production even started. It was a production that flew by the seat of its pants a bit. It was produced for roughly $400,000 by Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson (the team behind the TV show/pop group The Monkees). How Easy Rider Pioneered Indie Filmmakingįonda and Hopper partnered on the film, co-writing the script, at a time when the movies making money were generally happy, big-budget, shiny projects.Įasy Rider was one of the first successful films to be made outside of the reigning studio system of the period. ![]() They meet other hippies, do drugs, pick up hitchhikers, and get into mischief before meeting their violent ends.Ĭriterion has called it "the definitive counterculture blockbuster." The film was a surprise cult hit and led to a seismic shift in many areas of the filmmaking process. ![]() Wyatt and Billy are drug-dealing hippies traveling from Los Angeles to the American South, including New Orleans, during the height of the tumultuous Vietnam War era. The film is a revolutionary road movie, starring Peter Fonda as Wyatt and Dennis Hopper as Billy, plus a star-making turn from then-newcomer Jack Nicholson as ACLU lawyer George Hanson.
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