Space Odyssey 1969

When you read about Mark Twain's Mississippi raftsmen and pilots, or Bret Harte's Western gold miners, they seem more remote than the cannibals of the Stone Age. The reason is simply that they are free human beings.

--George Orwell

The two men straddle motorcycles instead of horses, and they smoke marijuana instead of tobacco. But the central characters in Easy Rider are as remote as the freedom they are seeking. Wyatt (Peter Fonda) is a vague, unshaven pothead who likes to refer to himself as "Captain America." His manic sidekick Billy (Dennis Hopper) has a droopy Stephen Crane mustache and shiny eyes fixed on some wild interior vision. Flush from the profits of dope selling, the cyclists symbolically cast off their wristwatches and head for that persistent American symbol of adventure, The Road.

In the course of this alternately acute and naive odyssey, Wyatt and Billy carom from ranch to hippie commune to jail to the New Orleans Mardi Gras. En route, they pick up a Civil Liberties lawyer named George Hanson. As it emerges in the film, the lawyer's part is only a mug shot of a wry, wistful boozer. But in his first major role, Jack Nicholson proves that he knows far more about acting than either of his costars. His elegies for a vanished life are melancholy without being bathetic; his marijuana-flavored description of a UFO takeover of the U.S. is a perfect comedy within a flawed tragedy.

Bedeviled Minds. With the single exception of Nicholson, Easy Rider's authentic force resides not in its professional but its amateur performances. Filming throughout the Southwest, first-time Director Hopper let the townspeople "rap" as they pleased, then caught them on camera. The result is a harrowing gallery of American primitives, from mindless high-school girls to the redneck truck drivers who case the cyclists' long hair and ad-lib: "Looks like refugees from some gorilla love-in . . . We ought to mate 'em up with . . . black wenches. That's as low as you can git."

Ironically, the film has less to say when the stars step forward. Their visit with the hippies is sticky and overlong; only the owner of a motorcycle or a gasoline company could remain entranced by the endless sequences of Wyatt and Billy throttling down endless roads. Moreover, the riders often lack perspective on themselves. Their "search for America" is rather like eyes looking for a face; they are part of what they seek.

Still, these are minor lapses in a major movie. In terms of contemporary mores and methods, Easy Rider has told its story from the far side of the generation gap. For once the aura of evil that clings to drug-and-motorcycle movies is gone. Like other films directed to--and by--youth, Easy Rider could have settled for catcalls and rebellion. Instead the film has refurbished the classic romantic gospel of the outcast wanderer. Walt Whitman might not have recognized the bikes--but he would have understood the message.

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America and author of the movies' new rating system, may be astonished to learn that he is the father of Easy Rider (rated R). In a speech before the M.P.A.A. in 1967, Valenti said he was weary, weary, weary of the excesses in drug and motorcycle films. He wished for theaters full of Doctor Dolittles. Waiting in the wings, the next speaker made a perverse resolution: to make a good movie about drugs and motorcycles.

Like most of Peter Fonda's fantasies, it should have faded with the morning. For Fonda is a loser by every Hollywood definition. He is not only known as Henry's son but as Jane's brother. At 20, he was admittedly "paranoic"; at 24, he escaped the Army when his draft board found him too unstable for military service. His vanilla screen-acting style was best expressed in such films as Tammy and the Doctor. Offscreen, Fonda began a new vocation--as an alcoholic who ended at least one motorcycle ride in a Hollywood hospital. When he was discharged, he gave up vodka and took up marijuana. "That changed my whole mind," recalls Fonda. "My conscience began to show. I was no longer competitive. I grew my hair and sometimes a beard." Getting busted for possessing pot simply confirmed his new convictions. "I began to get less offers from Hollywood. I developed the reputation of being a difficult person."

Ultimate Sacrifice. If Fonda was difficult, his close friend and fellow Easy Rider was impossible. A compatriot of James Dean, Director Dennis Hopper has become the caricature of the surly, inarticulate "man, like I mean" Method actor. He had once announced to Fonda that "the first movie I make will have to win at Cannes." But his appearances in films belied the boast. The mad stare, the simian stance could have been reproduced, everyone thought, by a dozen actors. Everyone but Peter Fonda. He persuaded Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove) to collaborate on the Easy Rider script, and talked American International Pictures, creators of the beach and motorcycle placebos, into producing a film starring nobodies and directed by a weirdo. When A.I.P. refused to put up enough money to launch the project, Fonda made the ultimate rich boy's sacrifice: he took a loan on his trust fund.

Ranging around the Southwest, Director Hopper abruptly changed into a budget-watching craftsman. He avoided expensive featherbedding by hiring personnel outside the regular Hollywood trade unions, and used friends who worked for scale. He surrounded them with ordinary passersby whose faces no Central Casting agent could reproduce.

When he told the high school girls "I want one of you to ask us if you can go for a ride on our bikes," the girls were way ahead of him. "Don't tell us any more," said one. "We know how to flirt." The drugstore loafers needed no instructions in hostility. "Are you a Commie? You on welfare? You got V.D.? Or hepatitis?" The questions followed the movie makers as they filmed onlookers from Arizona to Baton Rouge. On film, they retain the sting of spontaneity and conviction. The only query that could have hurt--Can you make a movie?--was never asked.

There was, however, a kind of answer. Dr. Dolittle, starring Rex Harrison and 1,000 animals, has gone on to become one of the screen's biggest losers. There is no guarantee that the Fonda-Hopper movie, starring no one of consequence, will be any more profitable. But this spring, at the Cannes Film Festival, first prize for a new director went to Dennis Hopper for his work on Easy Rider. If such a rakehell film can get international approbation, there are only two courses open to the Motion Picture Association: prohibition of drug-and-motorcycle movies--or of speeches by Jack Valenti.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.