Easy rider magazine past issues movie#
Easy rider magazine past issues free#

'Easy Rider' was playing in theaters at about the time Woodstock Nation was gathering in upstate New York. 'Hell's Angels on Wheels' is a great-looking movie, but it took 'Easy Rider' to link two symbols of rebellion - motorcycles and the hippie counterculture - and catch the spirit of the time. Directed by Richard Rush (' The Stunt Man'), it was a largely overlooked precursor to 'Easy Rider,' sharing the same cinematographer, Laszlo Kovacs, and even the same little-known actor in a colorful supporting role: Jack Nicholson, who played a gas station attendant named Poet.

Easy rider magazine past issues free#

Motorcycle movies were not fashionable in 1969, although ' Hell's Angels on Wheels' made an attempt in 1967 to break free of the booze-and-violence cliches.

The executives loved the sound and insisted the songs be left in, and 'Easy Rider' begat countless later movies that were scored with oldies. The budget was so limited, there was no money for an original score, so Hopper, the director, slapped on a scratch track of rock 'n' roll standards for the first studio screening. But Sam Arkoff turned them down, and they finally found funding at Columbia.

Fonda and Hopper took their screenplay (co-written with Terry Southern) to the traditional home of motorcycle movies, American-International Pictures.

Easy rider magazine past issues movie#

The making of the movie became a Hollywood legend. (It would be a year later, after the release of 'Joe,' that flag decals were co-opted by the right.) Captain America, who could handle it better, is cool, quiet, remote, a Christ figure who flies the American flag on his gas tank, his helmet and the back of his leather jacket. Billy gets the giggles around the campfire at night. The drug is cocaine (sold to a dealer played by rock producer Phil Spector), but their drug of choice is marijuana. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper play Captain America and Billy, journeying cross-country on their motorcycles, using a drug deal in Los Angeles to finance a trip to Mardi Gras. It provides little shocks of recognition, as when you realize they aren't playing 'Don't Bogart That Joint' for laughs. Seeing the movie years later is like opening a time capsule. It did a lot of repeat business while the sweet smell of pot drifted through theaters. It became one of the rallying-points of the late '60s, a road picture and a buddy picture, celebrating sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and the freedom of the open road. Nobody went to see 'Easy Rider' (1969) only once.