Synopsis
Two young "hippie" bikers, Wyatt and Billy sell some dope in Southern California, stash their money away in their gas-tank and set off for a trip across America, on their own personal odyssey looking for a way to lead their lives. On the journey they encounter bigotry and hatred from small-town communities who despise and fear their non-conformism. However Wyatt and Billy also discover people attempting 'alternative lifestyles' who are resisting this narrow-mindedness, there is always a question mark over the future survival of these drop-out groups. The gentle hippie community who thank God for 'a place to stand' are living their own unreal dream. The rancher they encounter and his Mexican wife are hard-pushed to make ends meet. Even LSD turns sour when the trip is a bad one. Death comes to seem the only freedom. When they arrive at a diner in a small town, they are insulted by the local rednecks as weirdo degenerates. They are arrested on some minor pretext by the local sheriff and ...
Sections & Films
EASY RIDER
| Original Title | Easy Rider |
| Italian Title | Easy Rider |
| Category | Out of competition |
| Section | Review "Youth Problems in Contemporary World" |
| Tipology | Feature Film |
| Duration | 95' |
| Production Year | 1969 |
| Nationality | USA |
| Directed by | Dennis Hopper |
| Screenplay | Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Terry Southern |
| Music | Steppenwolf, The Byrds, Roger McGuinn |
| Main cast | Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson |
DENNIS HOPPER
Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936) is an American actor, filmmaker, photographer and artist. He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared alongside James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). In the next ten years he made a name in television, and by the end of the 1960s had appeared in several films. Hopper also began a prolific and acclaimed photography career in the 1960s.
Hopper made his directorial film debut with Easy Rider (1969), which he and co-star Peter Fonda wrote with Terry Southern. The film earned Hopper a Cannes Film Festival Award for "Best First Work" and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (shared with Fonda and Southern). Journalist Ann Hornaday wrote: "With its portrait of counterculture heroes raising their middle fingers to the uptight middle-class hypocrisies, Easy Rider became the cinematic symbol of the 1960s, a celluloid anthem to freedom, macho bravado and anti-establishment rebellion". Film critic Matthew Hays notes that, "no other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the 1960s than that of Dennis Hopper".
He worked on various small projects until he found new fame for his role as the American photojournalist in Apocalypse Now (1979). He went on to helm his third directorial work Out of the Blue (1980), for which he was again honored at Cannes.