Grab your bike and wail "Born to Be Wild" today we're discussing why Easy Rider is considered a classic.
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If you hear "Born to Be Wild" and picture outlaw bikers on the open highway, you can thank Easy Rider. And in 1969 it was the peak of cool thanks to its iconic looks, rock soundtrack, and journey through the American counterculture drugs and all. It's also a languidly paced road movie that ends up in much darker places than a modern audience would expect. Let's dig into why Easy Rider is considered a classic.
The Setup
Easy Rider is a 1969 independent film directed by Dennis Hopper and starring Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson. Hopper and Fonda also wrote the script for the film with Terry Southern. The film follows two drug-dealing bikers Wyatt and Billy (Fonda and Hopper respectively), who hit the open road with a pack full of cash to get to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Along the way they do drugs, make friends, and encounter resistance from the locals for being different. But will their journey end with fulfillment or tragedy? It's a simple road movie with a dark counter-culture angle.
The Initial Reception
The initial reaction to Easy Rider is interesting because it was initially mixed. Some critics praised the performances, soundtrack, and visuals, while noting that the movie never lived up to its high-minded premise. Others said the film was a perfect encapsulation of American tensions at the time. Still, the general response seemed to be positive and the film was nominated for two Oscars, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, and made a killing at the box office with a $60 million haul on a....$400,000 budget. So 150 times its budget. That could make it iconic all by itself. But that's not what critics and audiences gravitated towards.
The Basics
Easy Rider's base-level appeal is the outsider/outlaw perspective. You've got the iconic images of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on their hogs seemingly jamming to "Born to Be Wild" by Steppenwolf as they enjoy their freedom and living outside of a society they don't fit into. But the film is darker than expected. Because Wyatt and Billy's freedom isn't free. Locals view them with suspicion everywhere they go, if not outright violence, and their journey is in essence a failure. Even when they've done their best to live outside of a society they don't want to be a part of, it re-establishes control. The free images are undone by the oppressive reality. There's twinges of a lot of modern movies in this including the 2021 Oscar-contender Nomadland.
The film also peppers in some more avant-garde and experimental visual elements for the drug sequences to simulate the character's experiences having bad trips. The outfits are immediately memorable. And the film is well shot with plenty of beautiful looks at the American landscape. But that's not enough to make a movie a classic. So what made this stand out?
The Wildcards: Jack Nicholson, Counter-Culture, Independent Film, and New Hollywood
This was the movie that made Jack Nicholson. It might be hard to imagine but there was a time when Jack Nicholson wasn't an iconic movie star. In fact he was something of a B-movie actor thanks to extensive work with Roger Corman. But those B-movie connections and starring roles in films like The Trip likely gave Nicholson the connections to land his supporting role as George Hanson.
As laid back as Fonda and Hopper's performances are, the same can't be said of Nicholson, who arrives in the movie like a man on fire and takes over the screen with his manic energy. And critics and audiences took note. This is the role that spring-boarded Nicholson from an actor on the fringes into a mainstream talent paired with another Academy Award nominated turn a year later for Five Easy Pieces.
The film is also the most mainstream representation and commentary on the "counterculture" of the sixties which was a loose collection of movements that attempt to reject mainstream society. Hence why our characters are drug-dealers without homes who live on their bikes, visit communes, and take LSD. But while many films have used these breaks from traditional society as joke fodder, Easy Rider offers a cynical but accurate assessment. The counter-culture didn't win. Drugs may have expanded our minds but it didn't change the world. People still hate anyone who's different and this supposedly life-changing journey is actually a life-ending journey. Jack Nicholson's character is murdered by angry locals for a tiny slight with no reprisal by authorities. He didn't die free. He died because society bucked back. And Wyatt and Billy are killed by a nameless character in a truck in a road rage incident in an antiblaze of glory.
And that cynical view probably hit home for folks protesting the Vietnam war with little to no result or who encountered racism and police brutality despite new national laws and reform. We were supposed to be better now, but we aren't.
From the movie-making side, Easy Rider was further proof that cheap, independent films inspired by things like French New Wave films could succeed. Not only that but it seemed that audiences were really for things like frank portrayals of violence, people using drugs, and stories about non-traditional people and lives without moral posturing. This movie was grittier and more cynical than major American dramas at the time. It's like an anti-western.
And the insane aforementioned profit-margin didn't hurt either. You could argue that independent filmmaking planted its foot in the door with this movie. Not every movie had to come from a major studio to be successful and it might behoove bigger studios to cultivate and finance smaller experimental films with new talent. While a lot of studios piled money into big projects with big names, often not making back their budget, this was confirmation that smaller investments with unproven talents could pay off.
Which of course, as it always seems to with these movies, leads us to New Hollywood. If the Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde proved that you could buck the Hays Code and Hollywood tradition, Easy Rider's success proved you could go ever further. B-level talent could make A-level success for a lot less money. And of course you bring in new actors like Jack Nicholson, confirm the appeal of rock soundtracks, and tackle feelings that the Baby Boomers have been trying to express. In an era when protests and movements were becoming more volatile and disillusionment was so strong, films like Easy Rider felt like a great way for Hollywood to move forward. That's not to say the film is made for a modern audience though.
The Pitfalls
While it may have popularized the genre, Easy Rider is a straight-forward road movie. Our two leads go to a place, encounter people, and then move on to the next place. Maybe they make friends, maybe they encounter resistance, but they'll be leaving soon. Every is extremely episodic and slow by modern standards. It also lacks the narrative or character thrust that other road movies have.
Most modern road movies involve two elements that this movie doesn't have: character development and high stakes. In most road movies, our characters have a major foible to get over by the film's end and the episodic adventure will help them get over the hump by directly challenging it. If it's two characters who hate each other they'll become friends or fall in love. If it's a group of people they'll all find some kind of personal fulfillment. But Easy Rider isn't interested in growth and fulfillment. In fact, you could argue that's the movie's point, that nothing is/has changed including our leads, but it doesn't lead to a satisfying narrative.
Likewise the end goal of "getting to NOLA before Mardi Gras" lacks the ticking clock element a lot of road movies have. The goal in this movie is just that, a goal. It kinda doesn't matter if they make it or not. Their lives won't be changed one way or another, it's just something they want to do. In almost every other road movie, there's a distinctive reason why the trip is happening. There's a window of opportunity that will close or a disaster that has to be averted. Not the case here. Seems like these guys will journey on regardless of whether or not they make it to Mardi Gras. Again, probably the point but not terribly engaging.
Combine that with some very slow segments, seemingly inexplicable shifts to violence, and the trippy drug sequences, and you've got a movie that is tailor-made for its time, but not modern sensibilities.
Conclusion
Easy Rider's meant a lot to its intended youthful audience and the movie business in 1969, but years later after repeated viewings of its formula, it's hard to say it hits the same, even if you always think of motorcycles when you hear "Born to Be Wild."
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