I watched Easy Rider for the first time last night, and it was a major effort to sit through it.
It went really slowly, and nothing much seemed to happen. Did this film achieve cult status simply because of all the drug scenes?
So this was the first time you watched the movie?
And how old are you?
This movie was made of and for the time. I don’t think it is able to transcend that time to speak to you as it once did to me. Not to say it is a bad movie, at least not to everyone. It just has lost the social and political climate that surronded it.
Not a movie for the ages or a timeless work of art maybe but I liked it.
I think the makers of the film wanted to place it as a marker in time. Watching it recorded what it was like then. This included the people as well as the land. So it was a little time machine.
Yeah, it’s not a great film to watch.
I’m 24 and I enjoyed it. Being stoned may have helped.
“Nice scenery, man…”
It has some pretty good music. But if you’ve heard most of the music before, the movie will lack some of the punch it had when it came out.
I once watched it with a right-wing biker friend, who diplomatically sat through it, but grumbled under his breath about all the ‘hippie crap’.
I said to him, “Dave you gotta admit, if you take out the hippie crap it’s not a bad movie”.
He replied, “If you take all the hippie crap out it’s a five-minute movie!”
He also opined that any movie where one of Jane Fonda’s relatives gets blown away couldn’t be all bad. (His sentiments, not mine – I laughed though).
I thought the idea of hiding your money in a tube in the gas tank was pretty clever.
I really enjoyed it, and was surprised at how good it was. Before I saw it, I, too, thought it was probably overrated - but no longer.
I found it to be a sad movie that (unknowingly) expressed the hopelessness and joylessness (is that a word) of the hippie lifestyle.
Great movie. Saw it in a real movide theater. Where did you see it? TV? Decent print? Good sound system? Edited version? ???
I didn’t like it at all. And I’m a biker. Oh well to each his/her own I guess.
Huffy or Schwinn?
Admittedly, it doesn’t have them catching bullets with their teeth, jumping 1000 yards of interstate with a bus or fondling a chesty babe leaning from the bow of their Harleys.
Other than that I think it captured the quest for some direction that epitomised the feeling of that time for many.
I’m old enough to remember seeing it in the movie theater when it first came out.
At the time I had shoulder length hair and bellbottom jeans…not a pretty picture.
Despite that, I hated Dennis Hopper in that film and when (oops, don’t mean to spoil it) the ending happened, I cheered.
I was almost attacked by members of the audience.
I recently saw parts of the film on tv and, yes Virginia, it still sucks the big one. A lot of the late 60’s and early 70’s films were experimental in style and plot - and most of them sucked then and still do. However, from those feeble-minded attempts, a few film barriers were broken down and some new filmmakers were able to get funding for non-traditional, but well scripted projects.
If nothing else, these films broke the cycle of Jerry Lewis comedies and Rock Hudson romance schlock.
I saw it in the theatre in 1972. Sucked the big one then, and still does.
I’ve learned to not expect much from movies when the same two guys write, direct, produce and star in them.
Jack rules. . .
Worst acid scene ever . . .
Tragic yet laughable ending . . .
Eh.
I loved it. But I’m an old hippie. I think it was an authentic portrayal of the times.