Easy rider
“Getcha motor running . . .. Head out on the highway . . . . . Lookin’ for adventure, in whatever comes my way . . . ”
Thursday, Dec. 6 is your chance to relive the 60s at their finest, as the Great Films Series presents “Easy Rider” in the A&S Auditorium at 7 p.m. See the film that made Harley-Davidson’s THE motorcycle and Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson stars! (Nicholson won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.) Along with “Woodstock,”
“Easy Rider” helped create the visual icons of the hippie movement.
The poster caption read, “A man went searching for America. He didn’t find it.” Captain America (Fonda) and Billy (Hopper) make a bundle of money on a heroin sale (see legendary rock’n'roll producer Phil Spector as “the Connection”!) in Los Angeles. They take off on their bikes for New Orleans and Mardi Gras. Along the way, taking Route 66 West, they pass buttes, pick up a mysterious hitchhiker, stop off at a commune, meet an alcoholic ACLU lawyer in a redneck town (Nicholson), get beat up by other rednecks, take acid in a New Orleans cemetery with future “Airplane” stewardess Karen Black, and ride off into a fiery climax. Directed by Hopper on a budget of $340,000 with no publicity, it captured a prize at the Cannes Film Festival and then swept America. Many a teenage boy dreamt of buying a bike and heading off on his own quest, and if you check the “Easy Rider” websites, you’ll see that many did.
The film will be introduced by Professor Walter Bilderback, who will share some of the facts and legends behind the times and the making of this classic film, which helped redefine what American filmmaking was all about.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Nov 30 2001. Filed under News.
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