Easy Rider

Easy Rider was written by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. Easy Rider was filmed on a very low budget of $555,000 and was directed by Dennis Hopper. That did not seem to matter because it took in over $60 million worldwide. The film was rated R and included things like violence, drugs, and sex. The film appealed to a teenage audience. The film used anamorphic images, shots filmed with a hand-held camera, and a hallucinatory dream sequence. Another reason why it was appealing to teens was the soundtrack. Some of the main characters were played by Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson. Music from The Band, The Byrds, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Steppenwolf, and others were used in this film. The heroes in this movie go looking for American and encounter things from hippie communes to small-town communities. They start out in Los Angeles and travel to New Orleans. Their journey turned out to be a failure. They searched and did not find what they were looking for. They idealized their journey and ended up not finding their Holy Grail. It was an anti-establishment type of film. This film showed the industry that films could still be good without having a huge budget to shoot a film.