In an interview with director Dennis Hopper shortly before the film’s 1969 release, the BBC discovered an actor as quirky as his film.
In a hazy daze, Easy Rider exploded onto movie screens on October 17, 1969. This low-budget, free-wheeling road movie, which was infused with rock music, free love, and drug usage, brilliantly portrayed the counterculture mood of the late 1960s and the escalating social tensions in the US.
Director Dennis Hopper’s moustachioed hippy Billy and producer Peter Fonda’s leather-clad Wyatt are two free-spirited bikers who are the focus of the movie. Billy and Wyatt begin Easy Rider by smuggling cocaine from Mexico to a Los Angeles buyer.
Spector (whose 2009 murder conviction makes his acting appear much more evil). Now that they have plenty of money, the two decide to bike across the United States to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras.
They meet people who represent some of the opposing worldviews that were common in the US at the time, from a corrupt sheriff to an alcoholic civil rights lawyer (played by Jack Nicholson), from a hippie commune to small-town bigots, as they set out on their journey through the vast American landscape to the strains of Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild. The filmmakers depict a nation undergoing change. “A man went looking for America” was the poster’s slogan. I was unable to locate it anyplace…
