ferbs54
As of this writing, I have never had the good fortune to visit the city of New Orleans, although I sure do hope to do so one day. But unlike most people who visit the Big Easy, it is not the French Quarter that I most want to see, or even the Mardi Gras celebration. Rather (and I hope I'm not sounding too ghoulish here), it is the burial ground known as St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 that is tops on my list of places to see when I get there. "But why," you may rightfully ask, "would you want to go THERE, of all places?" Well, it was at this famous burial ground, New Orleans' oldest, that one of this viewer's favorite scenes, in one of his Top 10 Favorite Films, was shot. The film was "Easy Rider," and the cemetery was the location where the famous "bad trip" sequence was shot back in 1968...179 years after the cemetery's opening, in 1789. More on this in a moment.First, some personal background history: The summer of 1969 saw two cultural events transpire that were to have long-term seismic significance. We all know of the Woodstock festival that went down in August of that year, but the previous month gave birth to a cinematic event that was almost as far reaching in effect. That event was the premiere of "Easy Rider" on July 14. Now, when July 14 rolled around I was just 15 years old, living with my parents and sister (natch), had never attended a rock concert and had never taken a single puff of the "devil weed." As for those last two items, that would all change a week later in the case of the first, when I saw my first concert on July 21 (Led Zeppelin and B.B. King, if you're interested), and a month later in the case of the second, when I smoked my first joint in mid-August, while watching televised footage of the Woodstock event. But I did hang out with a bunch of guys who were heavily into rock music and were just beginning to dabble with drugs, and when "Easy Rider" opened in mid-July, I went with my best buds Dave, Jeff and Stephen to the Queens Theater (in Queens Village, Queens, NYC), to see this much-ballyhooed event. (Of my personal Top 10 Favorite Films, only "You Only Live Twice" and "Easy Rider" were seen by me theatrically when they first opened.) None of us, as I recall, did any smokeables that day (as I said, I was not into that stuff...yet), but for some reason, Stephen decided that he wanted to drop a hit of acid before watching the movie. Well do I recall how excited he was when he swallowed that teensy orange pill, and how he almost freaked out with glee as the Steppenwolf theme song for the film, "Born To Be Wild," started to blare on the soundtrack. "It's perfect," Stephen shouted over and over with joy. "It's absolutely perfect!" And indeed it was...an absolutely splendid choice of music to kick-start a film that has been a favorite of this viewer for almost half a century since its opening. The film just blew us all away that afternoon in 1969, and for good reason."Easy Rider," as it turned out, was something of a surprise sensation that managed to shake up the establishment Hollywood film community. An independent venture, it was produced (by star Peter Fonda) at a cost of something like $400,000 and went on to bring in a whopping $60 million at the box office; an enormously profitable film, and one that virtually came out of nowhere, jump-starting dozens of other similar youth-oriented film projects. We all know the story line by now, I would imagine: How two bikers named Wyatt (Fonda) and Billy (played by Dennis Hopper, who also directed the film) cash in big after a cocaine-smuggling deal (their connection is played by no less a figure than Phil Spector) and decide to drop out, tour the country on their Harleys, and make it down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. During the course of their journey, the two visit a poor Mexican family on their farm; have a pleasant sojourn at a hippie commune (where they go skinny-dipping with two communers, played by Luana Anders and Sabrina "Miramanee" Scharf); are arrested for "parading without a license" in a small town and are subsequently jailed; befriend alcoholic ACLU lawyer George Hanson (played by Jack Nicholson, in his breakthrough role, and in a part that had originally been meant for Rip Torn); visit a brothel in New Orleans; and take a very bad acid trip at that cemetery, along with two prostitutes, played by Toni Basil and Karen Black. Along the way, the two are witness to both the beauties of the U.S.A. (both its kindly people and its spectacular scenery) and its ugly side, as personified by the rednecks of the Deep South, with their intolerance and violent tendencies. Wyatt and Billy (a reference to Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid, and a nod to the great Western films that Peter's father, Henry Fonda, helped to popularize) manage to have one helluva time as they make their way across the country...before their eventual downfall, that is.For a film that was largely improvised as it was shot, "Easy Rider" offers the viewer so very much to love today. Its script, written by Fonda & Hopper and Terry Southern (although it it likely that Southern was in the main responsible), although put together on the fly, remains a terrific one, with quotable line after quotable line for the ages. Its soundtrack, besides that Steppenwolf opener, is likewise aces, featuring such talents as Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Byrds, The Band, and Roger McGuinn. The cinematography by Laszlo Kovacs is simply gorgeous to look at (America has rarely looked more travelogue lovely), and the picture gives the viewer scene after scene after scene that are guaranteed to stick in the memory. And oh, that "bad trip" sequence! It is a remarkable piece of filmmaking, a bona fide psychedelic freakout segment that turns out to be an infinitely more convincing cinematic depiction of the acid experience than the one given to audiences in the 1967 film "The Trip" (a film that had been written by Nicholson and that starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in their first teaming). Visually and aurally, it is an amazing experience that should go far in scaring any viewer away from ever trying the hallucinogen known as LSD. But one of this viewer's very favorite moments in "Easy Rider" comes early in the film, before the credits even roll. Wyatt and Billy have just made their big coke deal and have stashed their cash in the gas tank of Wyatt's chopper. Wyatt takes off his wristwatch, gives it one final look, and gently places it on the highway. He will never need it again; he has no more time pressures, no need to ever look at a clock again. He has all the time in the world...or so he thinks. The money he has just made will last him the rest of his life...and, ironically and tragically enough, so it does. I have always wondered if I myself will ever reach a moment in my life when I am able to remove my wristwatch and feel that I never need to look at it again. When I retire, perhaps? I somehow doubt it. But if I may add one more reason to love "Easy Rider"--and it was probably the main reason that we all loved it so much back in 1969--it is the absolutely winning performance by Jack Nicholson here. Although he doesn't make his appearance until the film his halfway over, and disappears well before the film is done, he easily steals the picture, and he is the heart and soul of it. His campfire speech, the one in which he tells Wyatt and Billy, while smoking his first joint, that "this used to be one hell of a country," is a wonderful one, and his words resonate even more today, almost 50 years later. Come to think of it, "Easy Rider" is a film that just might be ripe for a modern-day remake, as two free spirits take a ride through Trumpian America. It could be a very eye-opening experience, if done correctly, although I doubt that it will seem as fresh and exciting as this film was for so many of us back in 1969. Although perhaps a tad dated today, "Easy Rider" is a perfect time capsule of its era, and one that this old fan views with a great deal of nostalgic love and admiration. It really is "far out, man!"
