Easy Rider (1969)

Two drug dealers (Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper) score a large sum of money by selling cocaine. They then precede to travel from Los Angeles to New Orleans through the American Southwest and the South. Produced by Peter Fonda and directed by Dennis Hopper (THE LAST MOVIE), who also co-wrote the screenplay with Terry Southern. A time capsule of a movie, very much of its era that revolutionized Hollywood during the 1970s and ushered in a new wave of film makers like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Bob Rafelson, Brian De Palma to name but a few. With a budget of $400,000, it grossed 60 million! It perfectly captures America at a certain point in time with the drug counterculture, "hippies", the American youth's frustration of the status quo. Does it hold up today? As an artifact of the 60s, yes but as cinema, I'm not so sure. It's a landmark film in Hollywood's history but I wonder what a 20something watching it for the first time would think of its characters. The whole sequence of the hippie commune plays weirdly ("Are those people for real?") to someone who wasn't there when it was all happening. Still, an important film that should be seen at least once to anyone interested in the history of cinema. With Jack Nicholson in his breakthrough role, Karen Black, Luana Anders, Toni Basil, Luke Askew, Carmen Phillips, Phil Spector and Robert Walker Jr.