Easy Rider (June 27 at the Auto-Rama Twin Drive-In)

[EASY RIDER screens Tueaday June 27th at the Aut-O-Rama Drive-In.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

In his invaluable movie history Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, author Peter Biskind examined the making of 1969’s EASY RIDER, an iconographic picture whose box-office success made it the surprise of 1969, and a milestone that wound up defining the whole decade. Biskind could not conclude who - if anybody – actually directed it.

Dennis Hopper got onscreen credit. Volatile co-star Peter Fonda certainly shaped it. And the co-screenwriter, satirical writer-journalist Terry Southern, was definitely involved. Other sources say editor Donn Cambern scissored down Hopper’s original four-hour cut, and that Henry Jaglom assisted.

But the whole film shoot (on a project that Roger Corman rejected, so it bounced to Columbia Pictures) was a haphazard, drug-disoriented affair, and the film shoot happened concurrent with the national trauma of the RFK assassination. Ultimately, Biskind writes, it's impossible to say who made EASY RIDER. It just kind of...happened. Or God directed it.