Born to be Wild: The defi­ant, laid-back lega­cy of Easy Rider

It was in Sep­tem­ber 1967, dur­ing the pub­lic­i­ty tour of The Trip in Toron­to, that Peter Fon­da first encoun­tered Jack Valen­ti, the Pres­i­dent of MPAA. ​“It’s time we stop mak­ing movies about motor­cy­cles, sex and drugs,” said Valen­ti. ​“We need to make more movies like Dr Doolit­tle!” Hav­ing expe­ri­enced suc­cess with low-bud­get bik­er movie The Wild Angels, which earned $16 mil­lion, Valenti’s com­ments infu­ri­at­ed Fon­da. He didn’t believe that Doris Day’s Pil­low Talk reflect­ed a soci­ety marred by civ­il unrest, polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, seg­re­ga­tion, recre­ation­al drugs and sex­u­al permissiveness.

Secur­ing a bud­get of $400,000, Fon­da decid­ed to pro­duce a new type of road movie. ​“Easy Rid­er is a term for a whore’s old man; not a pimp, but a dude who lives with a chick,” he explained. ​“Well, that’s what hap­pened to Amer­i­ca – Lib­er­ty became a whore and the whole coun­try took an easy ride.”

Adopt­ing the style of a John Ford west­ern, Easy Rid­er charts the (mis)adventures of two out­laws rid­ing roughshod across the vast tracks and ter­rain of the US in their quest for a quick prof­it and spir­i­tu­al enlight­en­ment. Fonda’s Wyatt, is the mel­low ​‘Cap­tain Amer­i­ca’, resplen­dent in tight black leather with the Amer­i­can flag embla­zoned upon his jack­et, hel­met and Harley David­son. Rid­ing in tan­dem is Den­nis Hop­per, (his co-star from The Trip), as the buck­skinned Bil­ly (The Kid); a para­noid, long-haired cowboy.

Intro­duced to the strains of Steppenwolf’s psy­che­del­ic rock anthem ​‘Born to Be Wild’, the two rene­gades mount chop­per bikes, speed­ing over the wind­ing bridges and high­ways of Mex­i­co en route to scor­ing drugs. Hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly acquired their con­tra­band, they trav­el to LA and sell their stash for a hefty prof­it, then, head out West for adven­ture towards the East Coast.

On the way to Mia­mi they encounter the cul­ture clash of a divid­ed Amer­i­ca. First they stum­ble upon a ​‘Switch-off, Tune-in and Drop-out’ hip­pie com­mune, then a native Amer­i­can reser­va­tion, before gate­crash­ing the annu­al Mar­di Gras parade. Arrest­ed and jailed for parad­ing with­out a per­mit, they fes­ter behind bars of the coun­ty jail­house, where they meet alco­holic ACLU lawyer & UFO nerd George Han­son (Jack Nichol­son), whom they recog­nise as a fel­low bohemi­an drop-out and some­one who can secure their bail.

Now a trio, they vis­it a small-town din­er where the local red­necks take an instant dis­like to these rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the coun­ter­cul­ture. Resent­ed, abused and insult­ed for their appar­ent defi­ance as ​‘non-con­formists’ and there­fore, the ene­my, the three beat a hasty retreat, only to be pur­sued and attacked where Han­son is beat­en to death. Hook­ing up with two pros­ti­tutes Karen (Karen Black) and Mary (Toni Basil) in a whore­house in the French Quar­ter of New Orleans, they revis­it the mar­di gras parade, expe­ri­enc­ing a hal­lu­cino­genic break­down under the influ­ence of LSD.

Fon­da, as pro­duc­er and co-writer, picked Hop­per to direc­tor the project because, ​“He had the pas­sion… the abil­i­ty to see form and sub­stance much bet­ter than I. He under­stood fram­ing.” Shoot­ing com­menced on 23 Feb­ru­ary, 1968, with Ter­ry South­ern assigned to write the treat­ments. Pre­fer­ring to work with nat­ur­al light, Hop­per was grant­ed $20,000 to shoot parts of New Orleans with 16mm Bolex cam­eras, hid­den in Fonda’s bags.

The cast ad libbed and impro­vised at length using mar­i­jua­na and LSD, with Hop­per forc­ing a reluc­tant (and stoned) Fon­da to chan­nel his grief about the loss of his moth­er (to sui­cide) at the age of 10 at the stat­ue of Madon­na dur­ing their psy­che­del­ic trip. Hop­per also insist­ed in using locals over actors to build ten­sion and authen­tic­i­ty to the scenes in the deep south din­er where the doomed men’s attempt­ed humour and friend­ly ban­ter with the local girls back­fire, lead­ing to Bil­ly and Wyatt’s untime­ly death, bru­tal­ly blown away and dis­card­ed on a lone­ly stretch of high­way by two ran­dom rednecks.

Actor Rip Torn, had been ear­marked by South­ern instead of Nichol­son for the part of Han­son. Hop­per claimed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that Torn pulled a knife out on him dur­ing a heat­ed argu­ment at a din­ner par­ty, which result­ed in his ear­ly dis­missal. Torn coun­ter­sued, argu­ing that it was Hop­per that pulled a knife out on him, mak­ing racist gen­er­al­i­sa­tions about Tex­ans. Torn won almost $1 mil­lion in dam­ages for defama­tion of char­ac­ter and loss of earnings.

The film was released on 14 July, 1969, after Hop­per took a year to edit some 80 hours of footage. He was sub­se­quent­ly award­ed the First Film Award at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val for his efforts. Easy Rider’s sub­lim­i­nal mes­sage is that humanity’s only sal­va­tion and release is through death. Amer­i­ca is self destruc­t­ing, and any attempts to find free­dom, truth, uni­ty and democ­ra­cy are futile under the burn­ing Amer­i­can flag and the ghost­ly spec­tre of the Viet­nam War.