At the time that the film was shot, Nicholson was on the verge of retiring from acting so he could concentrate on directing and writing. Meanwhile, George Hanson is an alcoholic lawyer and he’s played by Jack Nicholson. We never learn his name but he does play a key role in the film when he gives Wyatt the tab of acid that will eventually ruin Mardi Gras. None of them really seem like people that you would want to spend too much time around.Īlong the way, Wyatt and Billy temporarily travel with two others. (I’m enough of a country girl to know that Billy’s right when he scornfully says that nothing that they’re planting is going to actually grow.) The rednecks are ignorant. The hippies try to grow crops in the desert.
The rednecks throw Wyatt and Billy in jail for “parading without a permit.” The hippies have a mime troupe. The rednecks are menacing while the hippies are annoying. They stop off at a hippie commune and then later, they get harassed by a bunch of rednecks in a diner. If anything, they’re beatniks who were born a year or two too late.Īs they ride from California to New Mexico, Billy and Wyatt meet plenty of people along the way. They’re outsiders and they like to smoke weed but they’re also largely apolitical.
Easy Rider is often referred to as being a hippie film but neither Billy nor Wyatt is really a hippie. Wyatt is cool and stoic and always seems to be thinking about something. Billy and Wyatt are heading to New Orleans to celebrate and visit a famous brothel. Billy (Dennis Hopper) and Wyatt (Peter Fonda) are two motorcycle-riding drug dealers who have just made a small fortune off of selling cocaine to Phil Spector. The majority of the film deals with the journey to New Orleans. Of course, the whole Mardi Gras sequence doesn’t occur until the very end of the film. It seems a fitting conclusion to a film that celebrates the beauty of the American landscape while, at the same time, suggesting that almost everyone who lives there is a complete and total prick. The next morning, Fonda and Hopper leave New Orleans on their motorcycles and promptly get blown away by two shotgun-toting rednecks in a pickup truck. Of the four of them, only Dennis Hopper appears to not be having a bad trip but then again, Hopper is so naturally spacey in Easy Rider that it’s kind of hard to tell. The next thing you know, they’re in a cemetery and Peter Fonda’s sobbing and talking about his mother’s suicide while Toni Basil and Karen Black are freaking out.
One minute, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Karen Black, and Toni Basil are walking down the streets of New Orleans and having what appears to be a good time.
PHIL SPECTOR EASY RIDER FULL
As with almost everything else in Easy Rider, Mardi Gras starts out as something exciting and full of promise but it ends as something dark and full of death. If you want to know what Mardi Gras was like in the late 60s, this is the film to watch.Īt the same time, after watching Easy Rider, you may be find yourself happy to not be in New Orleans today. Those were people who were actually in the French Quarter for Mardi Gras and who just happened to end up getting included in one of the biggest cult films of all time.
PHIL SPECTOR EASY RIDER PROFESSIONAL
Those weren’t just professional extras pretending to get drunk and glaring at Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.
PHIL SPECTOR EASY RIDER MOVIE
It reminds you that you’re watching a movie but, at the same time, it also reminds you that you’re seeing something authentic.
If you watch the Mardi Gras sequence carefully, you’ll notice that several people on the streets of the French Quarter actually stop and stare directly at the camera. You can always just watch 1969 counterculture classic, Easy Rider.Įasy Rider features one of the most famous Mardi Gras scenes of all time and adding to the scene’s authenticity is the fact that it was actually shot in New Orleans during the celebration. If you are among those who wanted to celebrate Mardi Gras today but couldn’t make it down to New Orleans, fear not! There is a solution to your problem.
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