Easy Rider

[kingsknight]

Just watched easy rider and thought it was crap! Maybe I'm far to young for it but dam it was crap.No story line. Crap bikes. Random ending!

If that's the best biker movie of all time then..... well there must be no good movies about bikers!
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TS50 (sold) NS125F (sold) NSR125R-K (write off after 2 crashes) CG125 (nicked) XR125L-3 (Sold )-: ) DR125SM '11 (sold yay) XL125V '12 (In love with this bike) XT600E '04 (fun on the dirt)

[hellkat]

Time has moved on.
It was most likely the best biker movie of its time, which is a slightly different kettle of fish.

I didnt watch it till about 10 years ago, and to be honest even I found it somewhat dated and turgid.
I do admit, I rather enjoyed seeing a very young Jack Nicholson.
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Not nearly as interesting in real life.

[Doovy]

Aw man.

im 21 and i appreciate it.

but then again, i am in media field and written more essays on film than i care to remember.

currently writing dissertation involving easy rider too actually...

see it as art
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Yamaha RXS 100 > Honda CD 250 > Honda Hornet 600 > Honda CBR 600RR > Yamaha RXS 100 > Kawasaki ZX6R J2 > Yamaha FZ1

[hellkat]

Appreciating it is one thing, yeah, sure I appreciate it, for what it is.
I love the bike which is NOT the Captain America bike (I havent even paid enough attention to know what sort of Harley it is, and even if I once did, I've now forgotten, LOL)

But as I was not riding bikes and living the lifestyle in the 60s, I couldnt really say I thought it was MY choice of best biker film EVER.

(Not that I actually have a candidate for that category)

Problem is the old yanks who DID grow up thinking it was the dogs bollocks are the ones who shout(ed) the loudest over the years, and they still think we are listening to them
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Not nearly as interesting in real life.

[Nai]

Awesome film. I still feel the theme of it rings true in America, the distrust of different life styles and cultures. To a large degree in the UK to, it has just changed tone. Which personally I find quite unnerving... *shrugs*

[Walloper]

The bikes were support for the stars in the film.
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W-ireless A-rtificial L-ifeform L-imited to O-bservation P-eacekeeping and E-fficient R-epair

[Teflon-Mike]

Blasphemy! To 'diss' the Easy-Rider! Lol

Actually, I know exactly what you mean. Think the film was released the same year I was born, & it was one of those 'cult' legends when I was a kid. When older bikers mentioned it, I always felt I was missing something. Think I first got to see it when I was about forteen, when cheap tiwanese TV's & becoming a teen-ager meant I could have a portable in my bedroom & watch the late-night film review on the then 'new' channel 4! Or perhaps I err.... borrowed the Video Recorder we got the christmas I was 14... as I was the only one that knew how to work it!
Either way.... in my teens I was COMPLETELY non-plussed by the film, and just couldn't understand HOW such a load of complete tripe could warrant such hype.....
As you say, there seems to be absolutely NO story, even less acting, virtually no humour, and an ending that just seems like.... some-one said..... "OK, we've run out of money, getting bored of this now. How do we wrap it up?" And some-one else said "Yeah, my arse is so sore & my arms so numb from riding that heap of junk I could happily blow the fucker up!"
"Good Idea..... lets shoot it" says the director...... queue ending sequence!
Its only recently, after living a little, that I 'sort' of apreciate where it was coming from and what it was trying to say..... it wasn't MUCH I have to confess, BUT, the underlying bit is the idea of 'Free' america, and how, in the '60's it was far from it, & the pressure to conform and be 'square' was so strong, AND middle America was actually SO SCARED of anything or any-one that bucked convention.
On that level it was simply a road trip, a couple of guys, with no responsibilities, a bit of cash in thier pocket, heading to Mardi-Gras, showing the attitudes and predjudices they faced from 'the squares' along the way.
If you DO try and look deeper, though the underlying theme is 'social responsibility', while messrs Fonda & Hoppa, set out, with the IDEA that they have no commitments or responsibilities and are 'free' to do as they please, they ACTUALLY aren't. Segway with them at the hippy commune supposedly shows how even when you have completely shunned 'conventional' society, you are still a part of one, and have responsibilities to others. The Nicholson scenario was another take on that. The rest was an exploration of where the boundries of etiquete were, should be, or ought to be, with rather more than a big dollop of red-neck anti-predjudice chucked in. There IS more to the film.... not a LOT, but there is.... and it IS all about the time it was made.
One that I found hileriouse as a kid, was Kevin Bacon's 'Foot-Loose'. Story seems bizarre. Kid comes to live in a mid-west 'hick' town from california, and finds that Rock & Roll and dancing is illegal! Typical teen movie, picked on by the high school bully, falls for the most glamourouse girl in school... that sort of stuff, arrested for playing music in his car.... it SEEMED utterly rediculouse..... until I visited the mid-west, and IN the mid-80's discovered that there WERE towns like that! Sort of put a lot of what Easy-Rider was trying to convey into better perspective.
But, with that in mind, re-visiting Marlon's 'Rebel Without a Cause' and having read the history of the Gypsy tour riots of Hollister California, July 1947, that really put the whoile 'Biker Movement' into the headlines, shows THAT film to be the more significant 'Biker Movie', with far more credability..... works as a piece of entertainment better, too.
BUT, goes back to a book, I THINK called 'The Road', by an author whose name I cant remember, that I keep meaning to track down and read in more detail.... (any pointers any-one?) tracing the 'start' of the modern 'Biker-Rebel'.
I mean, my Grandad rode bikes, My Great Grandad rode bikes, and both were more than mere enthusiasts, but they were a far cry from the 'Hells-Angel'.... which really came out of a whole truck load of changes imedietly post World-War Two.
At the time, there was an awful lot of 'revisionist' thinking going on, and new pasifistic philosophies being bandied about. Europe had been devistated by the war, and was in the process of rebuilding itself, and a lot of people were questioning the 'new' society they were rebuilding and looking for opportunity to re-adjust old injustices, particularly in the class systems that had perpetuated.
But in the USA, MOST of the populus had been spared the first hand horrors of war. It was 'kids' returning from service that had seen the worst of it with thier own eyes, and THEY came home with a lot of new ideas, if not post-traumatic-stress-dissorder!
And in ecconomically bouyant USA, with full employement and mass consumerism being heavily promoted, the young had money, and things to spend it on, and we saw the emmergence of 'youth culture', kids spurning the Jazz thier parents listened to and the formal tea dances, and listening to blues and this new fangled 'Rock & Roll'.
But it REALLY bit home in America with the Vietnam war, and the introduction of conscription, even MORE young servicemen returning, keeping the ball rolling, and with the civil rights movement in full swing, the hippy-movement, with a new generation of youths, took over where the beatnicks of the 40's & 50's left off.
I cant remember who wrote 'the road' if thats what it was even called, but its author was a returned serviceman, who was influenced by the Exostentialist JPSatre, and I THINK had been involved in the French Under-ground movement during WWII. He returned to the USA, and couldn't settle, so bought an old motorbike, and decided to take a road-trip accross the continent, to just 'get away' from it all. As he went, he kept a diary, and noted a lot of things he felt were wrong with the country, and peoples attitudes, and concluded how a 'new way of thinking' needed to cleans the mids of america. It became a Beatnick bible, and many followed his example, getting bikes and riding..... if they didn't already.
It influenced a lot of bikers, and the biker movement, with nomadic biker 'gangs' foring along the way, became a focus for the more rebeliouse elements of the whole youth movement, and the more 'anti-social' amongst them.
And its legacy is an awful lot of the biker movies, road trip movies and rebel iconography of the latter 20th century.
Charlie Boreman & Uwen McGreggors 'Long-Way-Round' series was inspired b a book called 'Jupiters Travels' by Ted Simon, itself inspired by 'the Road'..... the legacy lives on.
Probably one of the MORE inspiring of recent times, despite its poor reviews was 'Wild Hogs'..... which camped up, and over played for a popularist audience, and made pretty much as pure popular entertainment, (which it provides) actually pays homage to the original 'Rebel Biker Ethos' of the road-trip, and the journey of self discovery, even when undertaken by a bunch of 'Yuppie' bikers.
Anyway, if you were un-inspired by Easy-Rider, you might like to check out the Australian take on the idea in the film 'stone', made five years afer Easy-Rider, and set in Sydney, I think, and featuring a lot of Kawasaki Z1's and a Norton Comando! There IS more of a story to it; The Grave-Diggers are a pagan biker gang, and at an enviromentalist rally, one of the gang, on an acid trip, witnesses the assasination of the political speaker. The assassin spotted him, but only saw the gang-back patch on his cut-offs, so decides to kill ALL the gang to cover his tracks, and Grave-Diggers start dying. Stone, is a Cop, who is reluctantly allowed to join the gang, to try and find out who'se trying to bump them off, and in doing so discovers the 'society' within an anti-social outlaw society..... which probably explains ALL about the paradox in question here!
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[calyx]

Why don't you write a book?
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Boris - London

[Polarbear]

I quite enjoyed it, but I'm an old fart However it was certainly a film that has got a much bigger reputation than it really deserves.

Better films of that genre were sadly not bike based although the naked girl on the Honda in 'Vanishing Point' enhanced a pretty good road film!

In reality most of the 'road' films of that era had very little story - 'Two Lane Blacktop', had a bit of one, as did the said 'Vanishing Point' but other than those, I can't off the top of my head think of a road movie of that era that sticks out as special.
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Triumph Trophy Launch Edition

[Nexus Icon]

It's alright but it's no "Wild Hogs".

[kestrel]

[Doovy]

"we gotta get to mardi gras, man.. mardi gras!!!"


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Yamaha RXS 100 > Honda CD 250 > Honda Hornet 600 > Honda CBR 600RR > Yamaha RXS 100 > Kawasaki ZX6R J2 > Yamaha FZ1

[steveh]

best film ever, i have an original cinema poster when it first came out, rolled up in a tube under my bed.

dont know why, but i simply love the film, and thats all that matters.
Its dated, poorly written, but still love it.


steve.
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Current : 06 Zx10r, 07 Wr450f SM, 74 850 norton commando, 63 bsa b40, 1962 Triton 650, 67 Triumph Tr6r, 1955 Triton 750, 1978 TY250E.

[Zenarchy]

[Teflon-Mike]

[pinkyfloyd]

[doggone]

There's a lot of hippy style films from the 60s and 70s seem horribly dated now.
For some reason I remembered a couple were often on TV late 70s called 'Two Lane Blacktop' and 'Little Fauss and Big Halsy'
Got them on torrents and they were painful to watch.
Never managed it in fact...

With hindsight they are more about presenting a dream of alternative *free* life-styles to repressed youth of middle-Americans.
The classic scene is at the start of Easy Rider, where on starting the road trip he takes off his watch and throws it away.

The modern equivalent is sling mobile phone in the bin.

[dibbster]

It is the first "Road trip" movie and I think that is where it gets its reputation from as it has spawned a whole genre of film.

I have watched it and enjoyed it. The other half's response after an hour and a half watching it was "Is that it? What actually happened?"
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[Kris]

There's plenty 60's and 70's road movies which at first glance appear to make no sense, have no plot and be full of randomness.

Vanishing point is a good example. Fucking nuts.

I do love them though.
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[Walloper]

[hellkat]

[Dr. DaveJPS]

[Walloper]

[hellkat]

I knew that was a Dirty Harry quote, punk*.

No, "we" did not.
Anita was only 9 at the time, after all.
It would have been unseemly.

He was first class redneck trailer-trash though (complete with the obligatory bad teeth).
Obviously an absolute necessity for any road movie.

You all have him to thank (or not) for getting me back on bikes.



*Its one of my favourites, too.
I like this bit " ... in all this excitement, I kind of lost track myself..."
excellent classic Clint Eastwood understatement
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Not nearly as interesting in real life.

[The Shaggy D.A.]