The Easy Rider Road Trip: Retracing the Path of the Iconic Movie on Its 40th Anniversary

(Slate) ... Film enthusiasts my age had warned me to expect a film with long, often dull, experimental patches and stoner vagaries. When I finally got around to watching Easy Rider, I discovered those warnings weren't entirely unfounded. But I also discovered a more complex and sour movie than the one I'd imagined. More an elegy for a generation that never got where it wanted to go than a celebration of that generation's superiority, it pits hopefulness against resignation and sets the battle on a lovingly photographed stretch of the United States. Easy Rider hit theaters with a memorable tag line: "A man who went looking for America. And couldn't find it anywhere." Star, producer, and co-writer Peter Fonda hated that line, and rightly so. It's really the story of two men—Wyatt and Billy, played by Fonda and co-writer and director Dennis Hopper—who went looking for America and found it everywhere. They just didn't find a place for themselves. Continued