Hopper, Fonda, Nicholson: Easy Rider Is 40 Years Old

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Cultural trendsetter, or dated, hippie-dippy artifact?

"Easy Rider" will be 40 years old this summer, and when it screens twice tonight at Huntington's Cinema Arts Centre, viewers will be able to determine for themselves whether this Dennis Hopper-

directed flick is still shocking and raw, or a reminder of how crazy, sick and self-absorbed the '60s could be.

A road movie about two hippie drug dealers, Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Hopper), who decide to ride across America on their Harleys, the film was produced on the cheap and grossed an astonishing $19 million (more than $90 million in contemporary currency). It provided Jack Nicholson with a role that turned him into a star, and it pointed the way to the new, more independent filmmaking of the 1970s.

Seen today, "Easy Rider" seems filled with the excesses of youth and is a perfect reflection of the sex, drugs and rock and roll spirit of the age. Whether it's actually any good, however, probably depends on your political convictions and the number of joints you smoked back in the day.

The scene in which Fonda, Hopper and Nicholson smoke dope? That was real marijuana they were inhaling.

YouTube - Easy Rider Marijuana and UFO's

YouTube - Easy Rider - Opening Credits - FULL