Easy Rider: 50 Years Looking for America

EASY RIDER                                             STEVEN BINGEN

In 1969 a man walked upon the moon, the Woodstock music festival was held in upstate New York, Richard Nixon was sworn in as the president of the United States, the Beatles made their last public appearance, as did, after a fashion, Judy Garland, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Boris Karloff, Joseph P. Kennedy, and Jack Kerouac, all of whom passed away that year. Something else passed away that year as well. In early July, just days before the moon landing, a low-budget exploitation movie, EasyRider, was released. It’s astonishing and wholly unexpected success almost single-handedly destroyed the Hollywood studio system which had been controlling the entertainment industry for half a century. Its success would ultimately change the way movies would be made, and who made them, as well as how those movies looked and sounded, and which audiences those movies would be made for. Additionally, the film’s innovative techniques; including extensive location shooting, unexplained editing juxtapositions, improvised dialogue, and innovative use of popular music, would change the vocabulary and language of cinema forever. Easy Rider: 50 Years of Looking for America will tell the story of Easy Rider on the fiftieth anniversary of its explosive release. Through published interviews, previously undiscovered archival materials, and new reflections by the participants, the whole story of Hollywood’s first true counterculture movie will be revealed for the first time ever.

PAT'S REVIEW

A look back at a movie that I am sure meant different things for different people. When the movie came out I don’t remember it being such a rebel movie, maybe because my father did not make it out to be like that. At the time it was the soundtrack that I was interested in and when I got older and saw the movie again numerous times it began to have a different meaning for me at different points in my life. I will saw growing up what was once called the mother road route 66 was different in the 60s and 70s. When I drove cross country in the early 2000s I could get a feel for what they were talking about looking back. The second half of the book about the different people’s life’s with the disagreements especially from Hooper was interesting as was that Nicholson was thinking about not acting but because of this movie and being nominated for an Oscar led him to more major roles. Not a bad book just dragged at times. I received this book from Netgalley.com Follow us at www.1rad-readerreviews.com