Where is it possible to see/obtain the full-length (over four-hour) version of Easy Rider?
The way to start in answering questions like this is to go to the IMDb entry for the film. Here’s the main webpage for Easy Rider:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0064276
As you can see, there isn’t even any “Alternate Versions” webpage for Easy Rider. The only thing you can see is the 94-minute film version of the film.
Who told you that there is a four-hour version of the film? It sounds to me like either someone lied to you or told you a garbled version of a story about Fonda and/or Hopper saying that there was a rough cut of the film in an early part of the editing that was four hours long. Even if that’s true, that doesn’t mean that there’s a four-hour version that you can see. It just means that somewhere in a film vault there’s a roughly edited version of the film that’s considerably longer (unless someone threw out that version at some point).
But now I have a question about Easy Rider. I remember seeing Easy Rider in a revival theater in the late '70’s. I remember it as being a slightly different version than what I’ve seen more recently. Its length was the same, but the cutting between scenes was different. At the end of many scenes, instead of a simple cut to a new scene, there was a strange kind of “flicker cut” (for want of a better term) in which there would be a cutting back and forth half a dozen times for a couple seconds to the new scene. Does this sound familiar to anyone who saw the film back then?
Since this is about a film, I’ll move this thread to Cafe Society.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
I did read once (don’t ask me where) that the first cut took forever. Apparently every time they got on their bikes they would ride around for three or four songs.
Wendell Wagner
I’ve only seen the movie with the flicker cuts, never without them. Of course, the first time I saw the film was in 1992. I’ve seen it about half a dozen times since then, and the cuts have always flickered.
Wow, 4 hr unplugged cut of Easy Rider. that would be a double album.
I remember my career Army dad taking the family to that movie at a theatre in 1969. I didn’t go with cos I was working at a pizza place and did see it at another time. Knowing my dad I wondered if he sat through it and he did! Must have been the soundtrack.
Thanks, plastic conspiracy. Now I am confused. I thought I saw it in the '90’s without the flicker cuts. I also thought I asked some people about seeing it with the flicker cuts and they didn’t know what I was talking about. So it appears that the flicker cuts are part of the standard version of the film.
I have to say that Easy Rider hasn’t aged very well.
Wendell, just because something isn’t on the internet doesn’t mean it doesn’t (didn’t) exist… If I could find it with google, I wouldn’t post a question! The four-hour cut did exist, and was apparently screened in arts cinemas - for the benefit of hardcore potheads - at some point early on in the film’s history (I have read eye-witness accounts by people who claimed to have seen it). It may well be that it no longer exists, the purpose of my question was to find out if anyone (preferably someone who was already a grown-up in the early seventies) knew whether the four-hour cut is still knocking around somewhere, or whether it’s lost for good.
FYI: (from http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/ftvm/202/res_easyrider.html)
The first cut of Easy Rider ran more than four hours. When the deadwood was taken out, the focus shifted. A good part became more than that–it became a star part. Easy Rider became Nicholson’s movie. As the central, martyred figure, he was undeniably appealing, magnetic.
Fonda and Hopper had to surrender screen time, but for the good of the movie everyone went along with it. Fonda’s low-key style meant he especially was in danger of being overshadowed. At times, the group went through contortions to keep the balance between the characters. The Venusian campfire scene had too little of Wyatt/Fonda in it, according to Jaglom, “which meant that we had to find Peter in a similar setting, and I had to flip it over so we would be facing the right direction and he would have a line that would make it seem like he was talking to Jack.”
“From an editor’s point of view,” said Cambern, “you’d cut for Jack. You’d go for him as often as you could. Many, many times, either by virtue of his technique or by the particular line he was going to say, Jack had a way of really putting the button on it.”
The picture was still too long. Watching it wore people out. Schneider was loyal to Hopper, but over time Hopper exceeded the contractual calendar for his director’s cut. He kept wanting to try something else.
Schneider firmly invited Hopper and the others to take a vacation, while he went to work with Cambern, making a lot of changes in the final form and trying to keep in mind the intent of the others. Gone forever–unless there is a “director’s cut” laser disc someday–were the extended, improvised cafe, campfire and travelogue scenes. Gone was an elaborate police and helicopter chase that was to have taken place at the beginning, after the dope deal.
Four weeks later, Hopper returned, saw the film and pronounced himself happy. After that, some tinkering remained, but Easy Rider was essentially done, at 94 minutes.
FTR, everything under that link should be quotes (think massive excerpt).
As for the article, there’s no mention of that four-hour version ever having a public or preview screening. In fact, a family & friends screening was of the 94-minute version. That means it was probably an ever-evolving post-production effort that never saw the light of day outside the vault & editing room (assorted potheads’ testimonies notwithstanding–think “bragging rights” & “dubious memories”). That means the answer to the OP,
is, for all practical purposes, Nowhere.
Yes, should be quotes, sorry.
No, there’s no mention in that article about public screenings. I read about them years ago in a biking magazine which I have since lost. An internet search turned up very little, but the author of another article on the internet about films in general listed “seeing the four-hour cut of Easy Rider” as one of his life ambitions. The magazine article as I remember it was quite specific, but so far nobody else who uses this board seems to have heard of them - maybe everyone who went to these alleged screenings is now dead/vegatative from taking so many drugs), so the conclusion reached at the end of your posting stands until proven otherwise.
However, there remains a strong likelihood that this version still exists in some cutting room archive, and - notwithstanding the fact that it is probably unwatchable - it would be interesting if it were released on DVD for the sake of posterity and for the benefit of diehard fans.
If it were available, it would have been bootlegged and sold to countless people by now, hence, easily available.
For example: the 5 and a half hour workprint version of “Apocalypse Now”, which has been in circulation for decades and can be found with a simple Yahoo search. It’s unwatchable in terms of quality and padded with so much extraneous footage (shots of the boat traveling up river that go on for minutes) that it’s only for die-hard fans. The “Easy Rider” 4-hour cut is no doubt the same.
It’s possible it’s languishing in a vault someplace. Don May of Synapse Entertainment mentioned running across a workprint of David Lynch’s “Wild At Heart” in a film vault while he was looking for something else, and by doing a rough estimate of the length of the reels, figured it to be about 30 mins. longer than the released version.
trabi writes:
> If I could find it with google, I wouldn’t post a question!
Then you’re more industrious than most people who post here, since we get questions all the time from people who can’t be bothered to Google on the questions that they ask. But Google isn’t the first place that one should start when asking questions about a film. In general, if there are any alternate versions of a film, it will be listed in the IMDb entry for the film.
I note that it appears that both possibilities that I listed are true:
> . . . either someone lied to you or told you a garbled version of
> a story about Fonda and/or Hopper saying that there was a
> rough cut of the film in an early part of the editing that was four
> hours long.
Apparently the rough cut of Easy Rider was four hours long, and apparently there was never a public showing of that version of the film (and someone lied to you about seeing such a version).
Speaking as a professional film archivist, I have to say that I appreciate your optimism, but “strong likelihood” is being uncommonly generous to the large studios’ collection practices, which have been known to include periodic purgings of “valueless” material. Heck, original negative from some 60s classics are officially considered MIA, so the assumption that this four-hour version (which did presumably exist at one time) is just sitting around extant (and did not itself receive some generous pruning to reach its final form) is, I’m afraid, probably wishful thinking.
Thanks Wendell, for your continued interest in the topic. Yes, I agree that there is no ‘alternative version,’ but still do not rule out the possibility of it’s having been screened at some point somewhere.
As I perhaps failed to make clear earlier: No, the story did not come from a (garbled or otherwise) account by Fonda and/or Hopper, and was not ‘told to me’ in a pub or wherever, which is what you seem to suggest. I read about such screenings in a biking magazine which I have since lost. While I - obviously - take such things with a pinch of salt, I’m not ruling out the possibility that it’s true either.
So there!
Everyone who writes for or edits biking magazines is probably drunk or on drugs most of the time, so it’s the equivalent of hearing a story in a pub.
That statement just discredited you completely Wendell - only in this thread I must say - because that is based on no factoid what so ever.
Having grown up in the 70’s I can safely say that Trabi is not wholly mis-informed. I have seen bits and pieces of a film said to be more than double the length of Easy Rider. Showing scenes similar to those described above.
Though I won’t say this was Nicholson’s movie, the scenes in the Long version include lone biking scenes played to complete songs. Look at The Graduate, it was quite depressing watching Dustin Hoffman sit and ponder for seeming hours about his teen girlfriend, and Mrs. Robinson…
The scenes in the uncut version mimick those in the graduate as being just cuts with too much music. So the uncut long version does infact exist, but it would not be like watching a movie full of Robert Fonda and Denis Hopper jibber jabbing about how much pot they can smoke, but more of a VERY long Concert of tunes from the day, inlayed with some sweet biking…