I actually saw "Easy rider" at school when I was 12 or 13 and thought it was pretty cool, got to actually touch the "Captain America" bike at Madam Toussad's in London in 1974, so had some pretty fond memories of the whole thing. A couple of years ago my wife bought me the video so I sat my then 18 year old son down so he could watch it with me and experience this classic, but 33 years had obviously changed my outlook, because I just thought it was rubbish. Fonda and Hopper would be the gayest bikers I've ever seen (not that there's anything wrong with that:) and if I was a "one percenter" I'd be embarrassed to be associated with those turkeys.
There have been bugger-all decent biker movies that really capture the lifestyle and the culture, in Australia "Stone" was probably the best of a bad lot, the dialogue is dated and all the club bikes are near new Kawasaki Z1 900's (young Aussie bikers would have laughed at smokey unreliable Brit and US iron back then) but the stunts are great, as are some of the fight scenes. Sandy Harbutt, the writer/director/lead actor, made it on such a tight budget that he convinced the Sydney chapter of the Hells Angels to work for beer, and said later that it would have been cheaper (and much safer) just to have paid them with cash!
In my humble opinion, if it wasn't for the motorcycles, this movie wouldn't have worked at all, who'd want to see a movie about a trio of unwashed hippy drug dealers driving a VW Beetle across the US and "getting it on" with a couple of banged out slappers in a cemetry? Geez, we'd be cheering on the "good ol' boys" in the truck with the guns! Ha ha, shoot 'em again boys! Cheers, Terry.
