In an interview published in the 20 Jul 1969 NYT, Dennis Hopper recalled his first experience directing a scene in the 1967 picture, The Trip (see entry), in which he and Peter Fonda co-starred. Since director Roger Corman had been unwilling to “take the time or spend the money” to shoot acid-trip sequences in the desert, Hopper and Fonda went by themselves to film the scenes with their own money. Inspired to direct more, Hopper teamed with Fonda, but the two were unable to raise money for their own project. After Hopper’s The Glory Stompers (1967, see entry) was released, he and Fonda realized they both had recently appeared in commercially successful motorcycle pictures – Hopper in The Glory Stompers and Fonda in The Wild Angels (1966, see entry) – and decided that financing would be easier to come by if they made a motorcycle film. Hopper claimed that Fonda was struck by the idea for Easy Rider while smoking marijuana and playing guitar late one night, and the two pitched it to executive producer Bert Schneider and his Raybert Productions co-founder, Bob Rafelson. Schneider and Rafelson agreed to fund Easy Rider with an estimated $340,000, privately financed by Schneider according to the 10 Aug 1969 LAT, and Hopper and Fonda were allowed complete creative control.
       Hopper stated in the 20 Jul 1969 NYT that the project drove a wedge between him and his then wife, Brooke Hayward, who did not support the venture and told Hopper he was “going after ‘fool’s gold.’” Hopper was quoted as saying, “Brooke is groovy, we even have a beautiful little girl, but you don’t say that to me, man, about something I’ve waited 15 years – no, all my life – to do.” The two were officially divorced in 1969. In the settlement, Hopper gave Hayward their house, car, and his art collection in order to keep his share of Easy Rider, which he believed would be successful but had not yet been released.
       Hopper felt it was important that Fonda be the star of the film; thus, Fonda was cast as “Wyatt,” a.k.a. “Captain America,” and Hopper played his sidekick, “Billy.” The two also wrote the screenplay, with the help of novelist Terry Southern. Hopper described the production as scripted but “flexible,” stating, “Except for the Mardi Gras scenes, we just started out on our bikes across the West and shot entirely in sequence, as things happened to us.” He also revealed that the marijuana smoked in the film was real. In the 8 Sep 1968 NYT, Fonda claimed that a “great deal” of the picture was improvised, and Jack Nicholson was quoted in the 28 Aug 1969 LAT as saying, “We’d get up in the morning and not know where we were going to be the next night.” Some scripted scenes Hopper felt adamant about keeping as is, including the nude swimming scene, which Hopper believed would “show the over-40 crowd that it is possible to play like innocent children in the nude without getting into sex.”
       Rip Torn was initially cast in the role of “George Hanson,” according to the 28 Aug 1969 LAT, but Nicholson stated that “something happened” and he was asked to replace him. Torn’s unavailability may have been due to his participation in Norman Mailer’s Maidstone (1971, see entry), shot in Jun 1968, in which Torn notoriously hit Mailer with a hammer in what was alleged to be a surprise, improvised attack before the cameras. When Nicholson was recruited to replace Torn, he went immediately to meet Fonda and Hopper in Taos, NM, and later regretted that he did not have more time to work on his Texan accent. In scenes depicting rural and small-town America, two real-life farmers and other local, non-professional actors were used. One such scene took place at a café near Baton Rouge, LA, where Hopper prepared the diners for their roles as bigots by asking them to assume Wyatt, Billy, and George Hanson were arriving at the café after having raped some “Southern maidens.” In depicting the hostility that these small-town denizens showed the main characters, Hopper and Fonda drew from their own experiences as “longhairs” travelling across rural America.
       An item in the 21 Feb 1968 DV announced that Fonda was travelling to New Orleans, LA, to “launch” the picture. The following week, a 16mm shoot took place on 27 Feb 1968 at the actual Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans. Principal photography began months later, sometime in May or early Jun 1968. Although a production chart in the 12 Jul 1968 DV listed a start date of 6 Jun 1968, a conflicting report in the 5 Jun 1968 Var stated that location shooting in Taos had been completed two days earlier. Likewise, a 7 Jun 1968 LAT brief noted that a parade sequence had been shot the previous week in Las Vegas, NM. Following New Mexico locations, filmmakers moved on to shooting in Texas.
       After filming was completed, Columbia Pictures purchased worldwide distribution rights for $350,000, as announced in the 8 Sep 1968 NYT and 31 Oct 1968 DV. The picture debuted on 13 May 1969 at the Cannes Film Festival, where it played in competition. Other festival appearances followed at the Taormina Film Festival in Italy, and the Edinburg Film Festival in Scotland, the 27 Aug 1969 Var noted. Following the Cannes screening, the 14 May 1969 Var review called Easy Rider a “perceptive film” with a “literate and incisive” script. Hopper received the Cannes award for a director’s first film, although, as pointed out in the 15 Jul 1969 NYT, only one other picture was in competition in that category. Despite mostly positive reception at the festival, Easy Rider was initially banned from theatrical release by French censors, according to the 18 Jun 1969 Var. A follow-up in the 26 Jun 1969 DV noted that edits had been made and the decision had been reversed. Meanwhile, it received an “X” certificate from the British Film Censors, whereas Fonda and Hopper’s previous film, The Trip, had been banned altogether in England due to its depiction of drug use.
       Reviews were generally positive, although Vincent Canby’s critique in the 15 Jul 1969 NYT lambasted the script and performances, with the exception of Jack Nicholson, whom Canby deemed “so good, in fact, that ‘Easy Rider’ never recovers from his loss.” The 18 Jun 1968 Var stated that the picture had received some backlash at Cannes, from people who believed it “gave a distorted view of the U.S. and could be used as anti-American propaganda.” Fonda maintained that Easy Rider had no political slant, having previously described it in the 21 Feb 1968 DV as “a story about today, about today – and America.” High praise for the film was expressed the 1 Aug 1969 Vogue review, and the 10 Aug 1969 LAT review, which called Hopper’s directorial debut “an astonishing work of art” and stated, “If there is an American New Wave, film historians may well one day cite ‘Easy Rider’ as early evidence of it.”
       The movie became an overwhelming box-office success, taking in $7.2 million in film rentals in its first year of release, according to the 7 Jan 1970 Var. As of mid-Sep 1970, Bert Schneider claimed in a 16 Sep 1970 Var interview that gross earnings had reached $20 million. The soundtrack album, released by Dunhill Records, also sold well, as noted in a 13 May 1970 Var chart, which listed it in twelfth position on the best-selling albums chart after thirty weeks in release.
       Academy Award nominations went to Jack Nicholson for Actor in a Supporting Role, and to Fonda, Hopper, and Southern for Writing (Story and Screenplay—based on material not previously published or produced). Nicholson received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture, and the film was chosen as “picture of the year” by the Show-A-Rama XII exhibitors’ convention, to be held in Kansas City, MO, in Mar 1970, as stated in the 25 Feb 1970 Var. At the event, Fonda and Schneider were also to receive “producers of the year” honors, while Nicholson was named “new male discovery of the year.”
       On 18 Nov 1970, a news brief in DV announced that Peter Fonda had been sued by his talent agent at Creative Management Associates (CMA), who accused the actor of breaking his three-year contract with CMA by diverting funds and would-be commission to his production entity, The Pando Company. CMA demanded ten percent of Fonda’s earnings on Easy Rider and requested a full accounting of the film.
       In 2010, a digital restoration of Easy Rider was released on Blu-Ray and DVD as part of a Criterion Collection seven-film box set titled “America Lost and Found: The BBS Story,” a compendium of pictures produced by Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner, who was their partner in BBS Productions. The 21 Nov 2010 NYP listed the following six films as the others included in the box set: Five Easy Pieces (1970, see entry); The Last Picture Show, Drive, He Said, and A Safe Place (1971, see entries); Head (1968, see entry); and The King of Marvin Gardens (1972, see entry).
       Easy Rider was ranked 84th on AFI's 2007 100 Years...100 Movies--10th Anniversary Edition list of the greatest American films, up from the 88th position on AFI's 1997 list.