1969 Begins: EASY RIDER

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Gentle readers,

over the next few days, weeks, or perhaps months, I will be offering here the fruits of my labor on behalf of the Northwest Film Forum as part of their 1969 series, which will take place over the course of 2009. The idea behind this program is not to present a nostalgic look back at a bygone era, so much as to use 1969 as a sociopolitical and aesthetic lens to examine our own time. Naturally, the outcome of this month's election will prove a major distinguishing factor between 1969 and 2009, but the parallels to be drawn are many, nevertheless.

The first wave of material will be essays I am composing on the first fourteen movies to be presented as part of the 1969 program. These essays have been loosely composed, and are rough and associative at best. Please be kind - but do leave comments, as I would like your engagement in the conversation to help spark ideas for new avenues of research and exploration. I begin with my work on EASY RIDER.

-alex b.

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EASY RIDER (Hopper, USA, 1969)


Given a wide United States release in mid-July, 1969, Easy Rider is often named as an exemplary film of its generation. The most problematic part of this statement is that few can agree on that generation’s identity. It was, as we have remarked, a period of transition, of schizophrenic perception and evaluation, of frightening uncertainty and terrifying expectations. Perhaps EASY RIDER is most emblematic of its filmic generation in its very contradictions and ambiguities, which range from the financial to the formal, hitting nearly everything in between.


The most obvious contradiction in the story of EASY RIDER is its critical and financial success in spite of its departure from the traditional Hollywood studio system. Its break with this system is viewed to this day as a forerunner of the Hollywood Renaissance. Produced on a shoestring budget of about $350,000, the film nonetheless netted $19M in the United States, grossing $60M worldwide. Nominated and rejected for two Oscars, EASY RIDER took the First Film Prize (Prix de la premiere oeuvre) at Cannes. Both its financial and (international) critical success seemed to be a slap in the face of the cinematic establishment, which tended to base expectation of return on financial investment. As Stephen Farber writes in the 1969 article “End of the Road,” the summer of 69 marked a turning point in the American film industry, when blockbusters failed and most top grossing films, including EASY RIDER and MIDNIGHT COWBOY, were low-budget independent productions.

Equally ambiguous and contradictory is the story of EASY RIDER’s pop soundtrack (the music also serves to tie the film to its cultural era). Though not the first film to use a pop soundtrack, it was perhaps the first to use it to such great effect. The myth of EASY RIDER is that with no money for an original score, Dennis Hopper played the a rock ‘n’ roll scratch track to accompany the film’s first studio screening. The studio executives allegedly loved it so much that they insisted it be kept on. Given that the rights for the music cost about $1M, or three times the film’s estimated budget, it seems doubtful that it was as spontaneous as all that, but the story exemplifies one of the film era’s defining characteristics, namely a desire to believe in the mythos of film-auteur-as-maverick, even when the “maverick” actions were only made possible by system dollars.

It is possible that the film’s defiant, sometimes naïve railing against “the system” and “the man” stem from its filming dates. Though released in July 1969, EASY RIDER was filmed from March-May 1968, before the assassination of RFK and the Chicago convention, two events commonly named in discussions of the downfall of 1960s optimistic idealism. The film centers on what Roger Ebert called “specific rejection of the establishment (by which is meant everything from rednecks to the Pentagon to hippies on communes)” in his original 1969 review. Perhaps it was the election of Richard Nixon, which distinguishes 1969 from 2009 perhaps more sharply than any other event, but 1969 onwards was a period remarkable for its return to conformity, not rejection of the establishment. In EASY RIDER, we can see the last vestiges of the 1960s’ rebellion. At the same time, the film, edited and released in 1969, ends with the cynicism that would come to characterize the 1970s.

Reviewers who see EASY RIDER today often criticize it as dated; nevertheless, it has proven to be important to American film history. Indeed, in 1998 it found a place on the National Film Registry. This significance stems in part from technical breaks with Hollywood style – the use of location filming, a pop score, lay actors and natural lighting – and in part from its role as a reflection of its era. That role is a dynamic one, as it is not merely a reflection of the events of 1968-69, but also of the mood that took hold of the country. In 1969, Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times that “Hopper, Fonda and their friends went out into America looking for a movie and found instead a small, pious statement (upper case) about our society (upper case), which is sick (upper case).” Canby claims that EASY RIDER is “pretty but lower case cinema”; regardless, the landscape from which it sprang is one that is familiar today, and the product perhaps something from which we can learn.

Writing in 1969 about the year’s films, Roger Corliss made two piquant remarks about EASY RIDER: first, he observed that it was “the most difficult to praise or blame by the old rules”. Facing the collapse of the studio system before the expansion of television, these filmmakers were working outside tradition to make something fresh, at a time when many in their leftist circle still felt optimistic about the immediate future. The result, claims Corliss, is that “the film does convey the direct feeling of an experience. Indeed, it may be in Hopper’s favor that he leaves it up to the viewer to show sympathy or disdain for the characters.” This statement captures more than that of any other reviewer the uncertainty, unpredictability, and new ambiguity of 1969. The transfer of agency to the viewer left the old system of didactic morality behind; we were no longer told what to think, or so it seemed to the movie-going public at that turbulent time.

Perhaps the most significant contradiction in EASY RIDER’s terms was that in spite of its groundbreaking aspects, it was also deeply rooted in the American film tradition. Writing in 1971 of Westerns in his article American Cinematic Form (published in Film Quarterly), Richard Kenney states, “Cowboys made the American romance of freedom and violence. Americans have always been a violent people, and they admire the rugged individualist, pioneer spirit, the loner and the open road…EASY RIDER is a romance of the open road.” This connection between EASY RIDER and the Western is commonly drawn; Roger Ebert, too, uses the Western as a tool to understand EASY RIDER in his original 1969 review. The American obsession with the frontier is still with us, and was certainly characteristic of 1969, with its Westerns and moon landings. EASY RIDER’s juxtaposition with BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, a much more obvious product of the Western genre, may help viewers understand the film through that lens. A glossy, high-budget production, BUTCH CASSIDY will also provide a counterpoint to EASY RIDER’s scrappy production values, as the two films demonstrate the two ends of 1969’s schizoid film continuum.