Quentin Tarantino and critic Kim Morgan talk about the iconic Peter Fonda/Dennis Hopper film in a series of links as part of a marathon of classic 60s films.
Whether you like him or not, it's worth listening to the WTF with Marc Maron interview with Peter, it's illuminating, interesting, and had a couple of stories I'd never heard before
He did it for 'SKY MOVIES' for a few months or so in 2009, but he isn't always as entertaining as he is in this introduction. Sometimes he just goes off and starts rambling about other movies when he's supposed to be introducing a particular one. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mJiCIX7ZmkE.html
He's a big film buff, and a great self-publicist. He certainly ISN'T one of the best 20 directors in history, as some of the bias and ignorant and merely fashionable seem to reckon.
I was a junior in college when this movie came out & I saw it with no advance information. I had recently started transitioning from alcohol swilling straight jock-type to counter-culture pot smoker (thanks to attending the Woodstock festival) but still had one foot in each world. After the movie, I walked out into the night where it had begun to rain and can still recall the emotion of the moment when I realized that our world had become "us against them" and I knew without any doubt that I wanted no part of the "establishment" world. Over the next 10 years I relived the moment a thousand times playing an 8-track of the soundtrack to Easy Rider at home and in my car. To this day I am thankful to Woodstock and Easy Rider for pointing me in the right direction in life. With the exception of a few necessary compromises, I never conformed to any of the establishment norms or boundaries and yet I became financially independent and remain as free in mind, spirit and actions as I was that rainy night 54 years ago.
Tarantino is right it’s what makes the movie about anything. And what clarifies it is that after Jack Nicholson says the things about freedom he is the one who is killed first as if by being self aware made him more free than anyone else and therefore feared by society at the times. Great film
The ending is kind of even suggested when they are a the House of Blue Lights and Fonda’s character passes by a wall that reads “The Paths of Glory lead but to the Grave”. The ending is fundamental to the story.
I have read that (Jack) Nicholson had a tough time working with the late John Belushi (from "SNL") for "Goin' South" (from 1978); Christopher Lloyd (from the "Taxi" sitcom) also starred in that film. In 1978, Belushi also starred in a film about college; a favorite cult classic, "Animal House." (film director: John Landis)
@@dalegriffin6768 Yes, it was great and Hopper did choose some of the songs but my point is the 60's generation, Boomers, were not all part of the counterculture. Most Boomers were as straight as their parents and they were clueless about the music in Easy Rider when the movie came out.
I was 13 years old when I went to the theatre to watch Easy Rider in 1970. I didn’t know the ending. I of course was conditioned to expect the “good guys” to ride off into the sunset. Only time I ever left the theatre crying. Still a vivid memory after all these years.
Years ago when Dennis was still alive there was a lengthy TV documentary celebrating the film. I found it interesting that both stars never mentioned either the bikes or the soundtrack, which is I think far and away the greater part that so many took away from the film. True there is plenty of high brow analysis to delve into and lines to quote but that does put aside aspects that meant much to so many. Huge numbers of Harley riders or chop owners got started by this film and the LP was in soooo many record shelves, look at how "The Weight" has become a revered anthem on the back of this film. (btw, if I had to be stuck in a lift with someone, Quentin would make a great candidate..)
I saw the movie in it's first year of release. I was not aware of the ending. I have many many many friends who also really identified with that movie. Living the free lifestyle was fatalistic. We have all gotten old and gotten educated and worked in the system. We kinda died with Captain America but still live today.
I'm a boomer 2 (1959) and didn't see the movie until I was in my 40's. I was 8 yo when it came out. My generation was spoiled - draft was ended by the time my class of 77 turned 18 and pot was acceptable - think Dazed and Confused. Too many jumped on that YUPPIE bandwagon and I was one of them in the 80's more intent on climbing the corporate ladder into the 90's. I've since snapped back by the time of the 21st century. Hope others have.
Early on in the film Hopper has a flat tire on his bike and they push it to a farm where the farmer allows them to use his barn to fix it and invites both to supper. Here is a farmer with his wife and a tribe of kids and at the table and Fonda - via body language and expression - realizes this is what he wants. "We blew it Billy". Certainly did. Anyway that is pretty much what I got from the movie.
and then once they're in the commune, Captain America has an itching to stay and settle-in with them, especially the woman he sits with. It's Hopper who insists they continue on
I'm not the greatest fan of most of Tarantino's films but damn, his knowledge of film history is just encyclopaedic! Of Australian cinema too, if you ever get a chance to hear him talk about it at length (as in the doco "Ozploitation" which impressed the heck outta me) or of world cinema history generally, probably.
1969 was the year that movies were changing from the old guard of Hollywood to the new movement and making films independently from the studio system, and Easy Rider clearly reflected that, as did Midnight Cowboy, released just a couple months apart and was given an X rating. The times were definately changing and paved the way for even grittier films in the 1970s.
Don't forget the then-controversial "the Wild Bunch", which pushed the envelope in screen violence and interpreted by some as an allegory of America's involvement in Vietnam.
To understand this movie is to dissect its story structure...i.e. what genre is it and what is the desire line. It’s a combo of the buddy-buddy and on the road picture which means several things: two characters who bond with each other with no sex (otherwise it is a love story) while traversing a physical distance where they encounter a series of opponents. The desire line is to find utopia or in this case, the American dream. This is illustrated by the beginning where they score from selling coke or heroin making the big cash, meeting the Mexican family on the farm on which Captain America says, “you have a nice spread here,” respecting the the Mexicans’ utopia, thru the hippie commune which represents the hippie utopia, onward thru other sequences till the end. The road journey becomes darker as they travel from LAX to New Orleans encountering more of a distopian universe. After the drug trip, Captain America comes to a self-revelation: “we blew it. There is no ...(utopia).” This is cemented by their killing....the final cap on the story which converges the theme. Tarentino is 90% correct when he says the ending is the story.... for if they kept on living and cycled to other communities, the theme would have never been resolved.
Until a few months ago I had only heard of easyrider. I had no idea of anything that actually happened within the movie. The ending caught me off guard but it was definitely fitting
The music 🎶 was a major factor in the success and mood of this film. Contrary to Quentin, I was 16 when I saw it in Lebanon in 69. It was a very powerful piece of cinema and style with its dark quick ending and some great music (most significant parts by Steppenwolf) a fantastic rock band of the time
If I could interview Quentin, we would spend a great time talking about movies. In addition, Tarantino, apart from being a great screenwriter, has a good ear to choose the soundtracks for his films, to be honest I don't know any other director who has that ability, so that's why Tarantino's movies are so good. I remember he said in an interview Rosemary's baby is the greatest movie ever made, I'm a cinema-lover and i wonder, is it a good film to watch?
Please watch it. It's an incredible film! Btw...I think other director who chooses good music for his movies is guy Ritchie. The songs always match so so so good with the scenes..Rock n rolla for example
I hate to break it to you , but the one who chooses the music for the movies Quinturn Tarantino makes , is Mary Ramos , i’m sure Quinten has final say , but she is his music supervisor on those movies
There is a context here that many fail to appreciate. To fully grasp the extent to which Peter Fonda’s character had transcended the practical norms of our society is to juxtapose his movie, “Easy Rider” with that of his father’s (Henry Fonda) movie, “The Grapes of Wrath”. These movies were produced only a mere three decades apart! Yet the visceral discontinuity is difficult to fathom. But I think they act as bookends to an American era that was radically changed by the effects of a world war and then global economic dominance
Made in 1969, the movie shows that a number of people--a small number of people--recognized at that early date that 'the 60s' as we understood them to be at that time, was already dead. Captain America might be looking for freedom, but his sojourn into the heart of America looking for something better, was fueled by drug money...when he says 'we blew it' he was talking about the entire counterculture....Jim Morrison, in an interview of about the same time, said, ruefully, 'The Love Street days are over." Dylan wanted nothing more to do with the movie when he realized "You are projecting death...our deaths."
As a young boy living in NYC I used to spend summer with my father in Florida. I had never seen racism before I went there. At that time (mid 1950's) there was still segregation in the south. Being from NYC growing up around black people I was shocked and disgusted by what I saw even though I was only 6 or 7 years old. Fast forward 10 years to 1968. As a teenager I took a trip to North Carolina from New York and I was truly horrified by the place. The Viet Nam war and civil rights movement were raging. And the New York plates on our car with surfboards on top marked us as "Yankees". And those southerners seriously hated yankees. I thought I was going to end up like Captain America and Hopper buried in a swamp somewhere. Such was the mood of the times.
I've had friends specifically rent the video in the day, thinking this film is all about what I'm all about. I rarely stayed to watch, to their shagrim, explaining that the first half of Easy Rider was about one of the best I ever saw... the music was AWsome!! But after Jack got clubbed to death, it displayed every bummer of the 60s... got hard to watch - the bad LSD trip, the grease-balls, no long hairs at the motel, trying to keep ahead of tragedy, hippies headin to the country... But I can't think of a movie before it that had a musical score of various artists throughout... a first...
Easy Rider today is still relevant. Freedom. One's lifestyle that does not intrude upon another is still an offence to the point of violence. Hate the ending but it's important. It's a commentary that forces the viewer to think. Probably the most important part of the film - tying it together with the dark reality in the USA. Never goes out of fashion, because it isn't a "fashion". It is being: Freedom. Authenticity. Escapism. Searching. Freedom.
Hi! Thanks so much for posting these! Do you by any chance have Tarantino's intro for 'Model Shop' from this series? I've been looking for it everywhere but no luck. I would be super grateful if you happened to have it and would please post? Thanks!
And now we are the younger generation who are now the older and here in the new millennium. The youth are crying out for a Art historical, counter cultural movie. Easy Rider was a Hit !!
Quentin listed Dawn of the dead for his movie credits, when he was trying to get acting jobs. He said he was one of the adult bikers. It's pretty funny if casting directors didn't realize that he would have been 12 at the time.
ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fFIFOMzyg8I.html I think this was the movie Dust till Dawn not Dawn of the dead. Might have been a misprint.
I've had them shotguns leveled at me going thru rural Texas in the early 70s. Easy Rider a beautiful snapshot of the late 60's that has moral preachments about freedom and judging others
"Oh, yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em." "Well, it don't make 'em runnin' scared" "No, it makes 'em dangerous." As true then as it is today, sadly...
You don't see freedom out there, it's not like the seventies, people don't go to the park to play Frisbee and smoke a joint. Darn spiritual wasteland. And what they are calling free now is nitpicking and taking away freedom for lockdown and strange rites, dig.
Stilted and difficult presentation of a genre' that is actually very easy to describe.... surprised Quentin had such difficulty. Me thinks he was more interested in the gal interviewing him than the actual subject matter ?
Nice intellectual and professional review..but missed the soul. I cut a senior class to see the movie at an afternoon performance in the Bronx New York. The actors and screenplay we’re current and natural, but what gave the movie it’s almost 60 year emotional wallop, is the integration of songs by The Band, the Byrds, Steppenwolf, and others. The songs were not a soundtrack they were as integral as the dialogue between Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. They framed the scenes and painted the sets of American life back then. Reminds me now 50+ years later of a brilliant production of a counter culture “Showboat”.
min 0:28 Did he just say the "soup du jour"? "We blew it, Billy"... Karma's a beeeeeeeotch! Easy Rider deserves a better pre-quel (not the 2012 one)... How Cap'n and Billy the Kid got into coke smuggling in the late sixties :)
@@seth210 Yeah, I didn't mean they had any problem with Easy Rider, it is an accurate portrayal of the random bikers that are not part of a biker gang. But I bet if those Hell's angles saw werewolves on wheels, which came out in 1971. they would know what I meant. They used real bikers from a bike gang, with no acting experience, and many parts of the movie are them just doing whatever they wanted, almost like a reality show. Not that I prefer that, I am not and never have been involved with biker gangs, and never owned a large motorcycle.
The greatest ending of any movie. The Vietnam war, napalm, agent orange, violence, intolerance, despair all caught in one shot. The United States, land of the free and home of the brave.
Niotice in the movie..Fonda and Hopper just left the lawyer after he was killed..did not notify anyone not his family or the police. just rode away, BIG plot hole