Easy Rider

Tossing wristwatches away, two bikers hit the road to find America in Dennis Hopper’s anti-establishment classic. After a major cocaine sale to an L.A. connection (Phil Spector), free-wheeling potheads Billy (Hopper) and Wyatt, aka Captain America (Peter Fonda, who also produced), motor eastward to party at Mardi Gras before ‘retiring’ to Florida with the riches concealed in Wyatt’s stars-and-stripes gas tank.

As they ride through the Southwest, they take a hitchhiker (Luke Askew) to a struggling hippie commune before they get thrown in a small-town jail for ‘parading without a permit.’ Their cellmate, drunken ACLU lawyer George Hanson (Jack Nicholson), does them a ‘groovy’ favor by getting them out of jail and then decides to join them. Babbling about Venusians, George discovers the joys of smoking grass, but an encounter with Southern rednecks soon proves how right he is about the danger posed by Billy’s and Wyatt’s unfettered life in a country that has lost its ideals.

With the straight world closing in, Wyatt and Billy try to revel in New Orleans with some LSD and hookers, but the acid trip is shot through with morbidity. Once they reach Florida, Billy raves about attaining the American dream; Wyatt, however, knows the truth: ‘We blew it.’

    – Lucia Bozzola, Rovi