Easy Rider

Easy Rider (1969) broke the mould of Hollywood studio production, making stars of Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, and launching a new wave of radical and experimental American cinema. One of the key films of the late 60s, Easy Rider enshrined the ideals of the counterculture, but also foresaw their demise in the division and paranoia of a nation rocked by Watergate and the Vietnam War. Few films since have captured its particular blend of innocence and cynicism, hope and despair. In his illuminating study of the film, Lee Hill explores both the circumstances surrounding its making and the social and cultural forces that found expression in it. Hill argues that the role of the film’s primary screenwriter, Terry Southern, has been neglected as the exact circumstances of production, filming and editing have become lost in myth-making. Drawing on archival research and first-person interviews with Southern, Hill questions some of the legends that surround Easy Rider. In his afterword to this new edition, Hill revisits the film from the perspective of a contemporary era of political strife, and traces the subsequent fortunes of its director, producer and stars Hopper, Fonda and Nicholson in a changing Hollywood.