Easy Rider

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just saw Easy Rider for the first time.

Ugh!

Jack Nicholson, in a supporting role, stole the film and said a few "heavy" comments. It was interesting to see how his acting style has not changed ever since he was young. Some nice classical rock. Other than that, there was no real story. I do not feel any richer for having seen this boring film. Here's the plot for those who haven't seen it.

Two drug dealers, one cocky (Dennis Hopper) and one meditative (Peter Fonda), buy what looks like 2 kilos of cocaine in Mexico, sell it to a dude in LA (Phil Specter) for a huge profit, take off on some righteous bikes to go cross country presumably to retire in Florida (with LOTS of long boring National Geographic-like traveling shots), stop over in a hippie commune, run into different kinds of trouble with Southerners because of their long hair and strange clothes, take an alcoholic Southern lawyer they met in jail (Nicholson) on the road to go down and see the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, get beat up at night in their sleep while the lawyer gets killed, go to a whore house, drop acid with two whores in a cemetery during the Mardi Gras and get crazy for a while, leave and get shot and killed on the road by a country bumpkin for no good reason. Nonstop shots of smoking marijuana all throughout the film.

Like I said:

Ugh!

Artsy-fartsy crap.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Michael; Easy Rider was frequently described as a movie for the baby boom generation. I was very happy I was not a baby boomer.

Someone who didn't like the movie said he was cheering for the rednecks. I could understand that sentiment.

Jack Nicholson is always fun to watch. I must say that As Good as It Gets, A Few Good Men and Witches of Eastwick are more enjoyable.

[Brant Gaede]

I just saw Easy Rider for the first time.

Ugh!

Jack Nicholson, in a supporting role, stole the film and said a few "heavy" comments. It was interesting to see how his acting style has not changed ever since he was young. Some nice classical rock. Other than that, there was no real story. I do not feel any richer for having seen this boring film. Here's the plot for those who haven't seen it.

Two drug dealers, one cocky (Dennis Hopper) and one meditative (Peter Fonda), buy what looks like 2 kilos of cocaine in Mexico, sell it to a dude in LA (Phil Specter) for a huge profit, take off on some righteous bikes to go cross country presumably to retire in Florida (with LOTS of long boring National Geographic-like traveling shots), stop over in a hippie commune, run into different kinds of trouble with Southerners because of their long hair and strange clothes, take an alcoholic Southern lawyer they met in jail (Nicholson) on the road to go down and see the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, get beat up at night in their sleep while the lawyer gets killed, go to a whore house, drop acid with two whores in a cemetery during the Mardi Gras and get crazy for a while, leave and get shot and killed on the road by a country bumpkin for no good reason. Nonstop shots of smoking marijuana all throughout the film.

Like I said:

Ugh!

Artsy-fartsy crap.

I saw it in a theater when it came out. I enjoyed some of it, especially the parts shot in northern Arizona where I had spent two of my college years. The film made Jack and he knew it would before it was made. When I saw in on TV it was too slow and boring for my taste. Supposedly made for $640,000 it grossed millions. A film teacher I had at NYU said it was common knowledge in Hollywood that it cost a lot more, but I can't see it in the picture.

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

Brant; Your comment about the cost is interesting. Could people have taken deferred payments on the film? I was thinking of Hopper and Fonda

On a slightly different tack I finally recently saw Five Easy Pieces. I found that movie very boring.

[Brant Gaede]

Brant; Your comment about the cost is interesting. Could people have taken deferred payments on the film? I was thinking of Hopper and Fonda

On a slightly different tack I finally recently saw Five Easy Pieces. I found that movie very boring.

I think it was Fonda's film--or Fonda/Hopper. Hopper was his friend. I think Fonda was the meditative type because he had nothing to say. It's interesting that Sean Flynn, son of Errol, whom I met in Vietnam in 1967, did the "easy rider" thing straight into the hands of the Cambodian communists in 1970 only a few score miles from where I met him. He and his buddy were held a year and executed.

--Brant

Edited October 30, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[Chris Grieb]

Brant; I did not know that Sean Flynn's body had been found. I thought he was still missing. Taking a motorcycle into a war zone is not the smartest thing.

Is it possible to find information about the costs of movies. Is there any accurate information on how much a movie actually makes. I would like to know about movies before 1960.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Supposedly made for $640,000 it grossed millions. A film teacher I had at NYU said it was common knowledge in Hollywood that it cost a lot more, but I can't see it in the picture.

Brant,

Drugs cost money.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Supposedly made for $640,000 it grossed millions. A film teacher I had at NYU said it was common knowledge in Hollywood that it cost a lot more, but I can't see it in the picture.

Brant,

Drugs cost money.

Michael

Sure, but what they were smokin' wasn't that expensive! And they WERE smokin' it in that pic.!

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

The trick, today, for a moviemaker, is to make a cheap flick that'll make millions but that MSK 30 yrs from now will say ________________________, but make millions!

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Brant; I did not know that Sean Flynn's body had been found. I thought he was still missing. Taking a motorcycle into a war zone is not the smartest thing.

Is it possible to find information about the costs of movies. Is there any accurate information on how much a movie actually makes. I would like to know about movies before 1960.

His body was not found, but the rest was surmised buttressed by testimony. They moved the bones. What happened at the end of "Easy Rider" was analogised to what happened to Sean Flynn: too much testosterone, not enough brains. One of my teammates, whom Sean had taken a cotton to, was invited to visit him in Paris. He also had something going on in Bali. I learned that there was a young lady there he had taken a cotton to but whose family didn't take to him. Like father like son, but I'd wager the son was better than Dad.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Brant; I did not know that Sean Flynn's body had been found. I thought he was still missing. Taking a motorcycle into a war zone is not the smartest thing.

Is it possible to find information about the costs of movies. Is there any accurate information on how much a movie actually makes. I would like to know about movies before 1960.

All I know about the cost of movies in the 50s was that somebody headed a studio, Paramount I think, who decreed that none would be made in excess of three million dollars. See Frank Capra's autobio "The Name Above the Title."

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

Brant; I think the studio head was Cohan of Columbia. He is the person who said that if he squirmed while watching a movie he knew it was bad. Somebody commented on hearing that statement "Just imagine the whole world wired to Cohan's ass."

[Ross Barlow]

Michael, et al, I can understand your contempt for *Easy Rider*, as it is not the most rational, uplifting or inspirational film ever made. Your points are all very well taken. But the movie has a lasting place in my memory.

I saw *Easy Rider* -- definitely a *decadent* classic -- when it first appeared in my area, long after first release. It was the first film I saw after returning from my tour in Vietnam, and it had quite an impact on me, as a 20-year-old who had been out of the States for a while. Let me give you some background on my own context in those days.

Upon getting out of high school in 1968, I was the first guy in my hick hometown to grow long hair and a beard, and I was treated as an outcast by most. I resented being mistakenly called a “hippie,” as I was actually just more of a fellow-traveler who liked the same music and freedom of lifestyle. I had left home before graduation because of conflicts with my parents – mainly over my atheism – and I lived in the woods. I hitchhiked throughout the eastern US during the summer and fall and joined the Marines in November 1968.

When I returned home in 1970, definitely aged and brutalized, and also “experienced” by Jimi Hendricks’ standards, my old friends had all turned on to good music and rather libertine lifestyles. We bonded and partied like hell. When *Easy Rider* showed in a theater in a nearby city, about a week after I returned from military service, we packed everyone into a van and went to it. I had never seen so long a queue at a theater; it went around the block, and it was packed with “freaks,” the name we often affectionately called our peer group in those days.

The big impact of *Easy Rider* on us in 1970 was mainly the very realistic way it portrayed the extreme hate and violent reaction against our generation – mainly against those of us who looked different because of our hairstyles and clothing choices. There were conservative assholes in those days who had murder in their eyes. Pre-military, I personally out-ran a good many of these idiots who vowed to cut my hair and beat the shit out of me. Post-military, no one fucked with me.

Yes, definitely, another realistic aspect of the film was in showing how irrational many in my generation were. Dennis Hopper, “Billy” in the film (and also the director), is a case in point, as a stoned and brain-dead hippie. There were a lot of mindless “freaks” in those days. Terry Southern, a writer for *Dr. Strangelove*, helped Hopper and Fonda write it, which probably gives it some of it’s shock and humorous punch. Wyatt (Peter Fonda) tells Billy: “We blew it.” I think he has realized how empty their whole quest has been.

The shocking ending of the film left me numb. What kind of sick country did I just return to? I thought I had left violent insanity behind me at the port of Da Nang, but this whole country was split wide open with hate and mistrust. At about the exact same time, the Kent State massacre happened, which reinforced my dismay. I was not shocked at the fact that students were shot (I was callused to violence and just thought they should have known better and kept low), but the conservative reaction astounded me: “They should have shot more of those commie hippie creeps.” The US was torn asunder by the war and cultural division. We dropped out and kept to ourselves. I did a lot of solo sojourns in the wilderness.

A footnote to the whole *Easy Rider* mindset: In about 1971 or 1972, four of us loaded into a VW bug and headed for Mardi Gras. Pretty crazy scene. (We found the same type of cemeteries as depicted in the film.) After four days in New Orleans, on our way back, we were in Alabama and stumbled into a truck stop for breakfast. We were feeling quite beat and looked very ratty, with long hair, beards, etc. One buddy, who had traveled a lot more than the rest of us, told us in a low voice: “Don’t look around now, but this place is Red.” He meant “redneck,” which in our lingo of the day meant conservative, dimwitted, prejudiced, violent monsters.

As each of us took our turns going back to the men’s room, we got a chance to see what he was talking about. Five BIG rednecks were sitting at the back table glaring at us. I didn’t know they made clothes big enough to fit these apes. The waitress was a gorgeous teenage Southern lass, and when we each went to the register to pay, there was one of these apes standing behind her, watching every glance and expression we made. There were two at the inside of the door and two outside. They were waiting for the slightest excuse to thrash us. I never knew that my buddies could ever be that polite before this. We were the epitome of modest courtesy. “Thank you, Ma’am. It was a very good meal, Ma’am.” Eyes never glancing lower than her chin.

We got into the VW and hit the highway, looking in the rear-view mirror anxiously. After 5 miles of freedom on the highway, we all let out a relieved breath. We all actually thought we were going to die back there. This was the reality of social relations in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

By the way, I agree that Jack Nicholson is great in this early role.

All in all, *Easy Rider* had a great soundtrack. I especially love The Byrds “Wasn’t Born to Follow,” which captured my sense of the Age. Also on the soundtrack were: Jimi Hendricks, Steppenwolf (“Born to Be Wild,” and “The Pusher,” this last song being the unofficial theme-song of our battalion of Marines as we came home on ship), and The Byrds’ great Roger McGuinn.

It was a decadent flick, but those were decadent times, and it will always be a part of my own life’s soundtrack.

-Ross Barlow.

Edited November 1, 2007 by Ross Barlow

[John Dailey]

~ I was in the military and overseas during these 'hippie' times, hence can't relate at all. Ntl, we're I not, methinks I'd probably have been in the movie, from what I've gathered upon reading so much about it (movie-buff mebeen.) --- I mean, were I not 'over there', even here I'd've probably been just as much 'out there' (ifyanowadimeen.) But, that was then, and here we are now.

~ I'd caught a 'trailer' on this movie (way-back-'when') and it struck me as no more than just a nice 'road-traveling' kind of story (didn't realize 'till MSK spelled it out that they were also drug-dealers enjoying the cyclists' highway; still, if we're just talking 'm-j', I got no moral prob there with the characters...on that specific point, that is.)

2Bcont

LLAP

J:D

[John Dailey]

~ But, all said and done, unless one expects to vicariously experience (as I remember the original trailer hinted at) a justification for accepting (at the time, of course) the life-style of O'Leary's "Tune in, Turn on, Drop out", I have no idea why anyone would bother spending time watching this.

~ Well, yes, there's film-history for students that's definitely relevent there (apart from Nicholson and Hopper establishing a name for themselves), and, there is the (then 'underground') cultural-view about 'rednecks' (aka 'authority') setting the oppressive climax at the end (as I've said: I read about it), but...

...why bring up a movie you don't like?

LLAP

J:D

[Greybird]

... why bring up a movie you don't like?

Yeah, I wouldn't mind knowing the answer to that myself.

Can you tell us, MSK? Are there any non-Objectivist-ish movies you DO like?

I was going to belatedly review the romantic-comedic-adventure-fantasy "Stardust," due out on DVD a week before Christmas. (It's still playing at second-run theaters and in Europe and Australia.)

I may still do so. I've written about 3,000 words about it in other venues. I've seen it ten times. I've bought the making-of book and soundtrack album. I've grabbed mediocre copies twice from the Net out of sheer disc-impatience.

That in itself should give you a lead as to what I think of it.

Still, I'm not at all sure that a positive review ... no, scratch that, an ecstatic review ... really fits what's generally expected around here. This not being Rants, I'm not inclined to wantonly upset the mood. Again, anyway. *sigh*

(By the way, no, I haven't seen "Easy Rider." Not beyond some extended clips. But I know how it resonated with those a few years "ahead" of me, and, Ross, I was captivated by your cultural and personal commentary.)

Edited November 8, 2007 by Greybird

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Can you tell us, MSK? Are there any non-Objectivist-ish movies you DO like?

Steve,

Sure. I just re-saw Witness last night. I absolutely love that film. I am a sucker for unexpected spins on cliches (like, in this case, the jaded violent loner cop landing in the middle of the passivist Amish people) and heavy on symbols (for starters, the name of the cop who lives for justice as his moral compass is John Book, with "book" being a popular term for the Bible, the name of the family where he lands for safety and recovery is Lapp, as in "the lap of God," the chicken-wire fence separating Book from Rachel when he tells her why he didn't make love to her the night before was a minor symbol of the divide between their worlds—I could go on and on and on). The climax, where the Amish people showed up en masse and shamed the dirty cop into submission by their silent witness to the evil he was doing—making him finally admit it to himself (without a word on his part after it hit home)—is one of THE GREAT climaxes of all cop stories.

Maurice Jarre simply outdid himself on the score. The electronic effects (long high "voice of angels" passages with church organ-like bass and a brass-like melody in the center) now sound a bit dated because they were imitated so much that they became overused. But even so, the music fits the film like a glove and is an all-time inspirational score.

The predominant "warm tones of brown" kind of lighting in this film during the indoor Amish parts always left me with a very pleasant glow inside. I watched the documentary on the DVD after this film and the reason was finally explained. The director, Peter Weir, took the director of photography, John Seale, to a museum and they looked at Vermeer paintings. Weir told Seale he wanted that kind of lighting for the film. Seale did a brilliant job of it. Some of the indoor scenes actually look like the layout of a Vermeer painting, with light coming from a window on the left and the bulk of the people on the right.

This is a film that is all good to me. The actors were fantastic. Hell, I even think the coffee delivery for the crew during the shooting had to have been fantastic. I love this film.

Incidentally, have you read the other movie reviews on OL, or just the few negative ones? You might notice a strong tilt towards the positive. I personally think it is healthy to mention the positive and the negative. Also, the general idea (to my mind) is to critique films, not film reviewers.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Ross;

I do remember the hatred of hippies during the late 60ths and early 70ths. I think it was well represented by the movie Joe.

The worst example I heard of was a man who told me he'd execute his own son if he was a hippie.

[John Dailey]

Chris:

~ True, re JOE. A-N-D, let's not forget THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT either (not to mention T.O'Leary's/P. Fonda's euphoric-drug-advocating THE TRIP). They all, of the times, fit into the H'wood orientation that was clearly sympathetic to the VN war-protestations and sympathy to anti-'authoritarianism'...to the extreme. --- 'Drugs' aside, it seems some things never change; only the 'actors.'

MSK:

~ GREAT alternative of movie reviewing. Yes, WITNESS was...well, great. Wasn't aware of some of the things you astutely specified (I love this background stuff.) --- You're correct about pointing out the 'negative' of movies (or books), but, such, if bottom-line 'negative' isn't really all that worth bringing up to begin with, in my view. I mean, I can write pages about what's wrong with the HELLRAISER (or FRIDAY THE 13TH) movie series, but, as a main post? I see no reason to bother.