Live Life Team
Genre: Classic American Drama
Director: Dennis Hopper
Starring Cast: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Terry Southern
Peter Fonda was never as iconic as he was in the movie “Easy Rider.” This is for some the definitive road movie; the road movie that launched a hundred more. The film follows the journey of Wyatt (Fonda) and Billy (Hopper) as they rev up their motorbikes and depart LA on the drug fuelled escapade they have gambled all to take. Full of drug references, romanticism of the hippy lifestyle, and a fantastic soundtrack, “Easy Rider” was destined to be a hit with the youth of the late 1960s who were looking to be part of the liberating and simple lifestyle the movie portrayed, existing on the edge of a law abiding population.
It is not only a movie of gratuitous drug use and casual sex. Catastrophe strikes more than once, and the guys often find themselves in difficulty. They soon discover that not every person they meet agrees with their carefree values, and it won’t be such an easy ride after all.
This sees the entry of Hanson (Nicholson), the lawyer who aids them when they find themselves in custody in redneck mid-America. Hanson is fascinated with Wyatt and Billy and soon joins their freewheeling travels. Hanson rapidly becomes hooked on the open road, the opposite of his own ordinary life. Drug highs help him find consciousness of the wider world outside of his own sedate, ordinary lifestyle.
The cinematography is styled to fit the whole ethos of the movie and works brilliantly as a vehicle for displaying the core inspirations of liberty and escapism.
