Easy Rider - The first indie film

  When it comes to independent film, only one stands out the most for me as not just movie but a significant statement about discrimination of lifestyle. This movie tells the story of two free living hippies; Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) living a life on the road buying and selling drugs to make money only so they can travel to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, they meet various people on their travels like George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) and try to live make their journey through the south west of America being mocked and persecuted for their lifestyle and eventually attacked and murdered for it.

  There are a lot of the Indie movie aspects in this film, in actual fact Peter Fonda Produced and Dennis Hopper directed the film they were in which very common in Indie films. The budget of the film was $400,000, which isn’t a lot to make a film on especially today let alone in he late sixties. Easy rider was produced by Columbia pictures, which was and still is a branch Company of Columbia Tri-Star Motion Picture group that is a division of Sony pictures. When the film was made Columbia pictures was almost bankrupt and the reputation was damaged and it wasn’t until a joint venture with Warner Bros. Would they become another major player.  Raybert Productions was involved with Easy Rider as well as Columbia Pictures, sadly this company only existed in the 1960’s to the mid 70’s, but after that they seemed to fade away into obscurity, but their strongest claim to fame was that they created a TV show about a current pop band called ‘The Monkees’. The movie was distributed by Columbia Pictures in the seventies but Columbia Tri-Star Home Video released Easy Rider on video in 1993. The movie was directed by the Cannes film award winning Dennis Hopper famous for starring in film like Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, Speed, True Romance and of course Easy Rider. Dennis Hopper only directed seven movies in his life before sadly dying of cancer, the film directed were very dramatic and meaningful which gave a good insight to his genre and directing style, each film he directed had a deep meaning, the movie Colors was about discrimination and race, Easy Rider shows elements of this with the discrimination of hippies in the sixties just like black people in 1980’s America. With the relatively small budget that he had to use Hopper did an amazing job capturing 1960’s America and the attitudes of the American people towards free-living hippies especially due to the effects caused by the Vietnam War and the draft.

  It’s obvious that the movie was targeted towards free-living Americans and also those who were predigest towards that way of life. When the movie came out in theatres many people were shocked by the ending and its symbolism but when it came out on film in the early nineties it didn’t have much of the same effect due to change people opinions and attitudes. The film was filled with drugs, sex, rock music and occasional violence but it also showed people coming together and strangers helping people get to their home, but I think it was end of the movie that shocked most people, the entire movie shows two men having a dream to live free and enjoy life but its then suddenly destroyed by a bunch of self entitled rednecks that believed they were doing the right thing, I think that shock was movies way bringing out the darker side of America and show it the audience. This film was aimed at both small and large audiences; the minority of the audience is the free loving hippie fans who can relate to the film, and then the larger audience who simply wish to see the life of a free biker hipster from their point of view instead of being an outsider looking in.

  Looking at the pictures they used to advertise the movie it shows a lot of the main actors and their motorcycle, they were aiming at gain fans of the actors and motorcycle lovers. There is now a very cult aspect to movie over the years the movie has become somewhat symbolic for free living.