Easy Rider - Dennis Hopper (1969)

This was a movie that I had wanted to see for a while. I knew a little bit about it - who was in it (Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson). I knew it was a movie that involved motorcycles. I also knew that somehow it was an influential movie (even before I saw the list) but I wasn't sure why.

Two random things I noticed about this movie: 

1. In the opening credits the name Toni Basil came up and I wondered if it was THE Toni Basil, and indeed it was. 
   
2. I never knew that anvils were for anything except trying to foil passing roadrunners by wylie coyotes. There is a scene where an anvil is actually being put to proper use...who knew.
   

Anyway...this was a really good movie. Apparently it was the first (or one of) to use music from the time and not a scored soundtrack. If you know anything about this movie - one of the most famous things about it (or that I was aware of) is the scene of Hopper and Fonda riding down the road to the song 'Born to Be Wild' by Steppenwolf. (There is also another amazing scene to the song 'The Weight' by the Band. But you will have to watch it yourself.) 

I found this movie a bit paradoxical (oooohhh fancy word alert). It is definitely a 'slice of life' movie (as a friend put it) but somehow (at least for me) it echoes some of the things we are trying to accomplish today. Or maybe it's not so much that, as there are certain human truths and they are timeless. So no matter when they are portrayed they are always going to seem...relevant. Take Shakespeare for example (am I allowed to compare Shakespeare to 'Easy Rider'???), his plays are still 'relevant' today, even though they were written hundreds of years ago. Why? (Which was the question I kept asking my grade 12 English teacher.) Because he talks about basic human emotions - jealousy, love, hatred and so on. And 'Easy Rider' is kind of like that. You strip away all the 60s stuff and the motorcycles - and you have two guys on a journey to find happiness. Simple.

One word to describe 'Easy Rider': Dope*

*I would be using it in both ways