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sycasey 2.0

Easy Rider

Should Easy Rider remain on the list?  

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  1. 1. Should Easy Rider remain on the list?

    • Very groovy. Very groovy.
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    • We blew it.
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  • Poll closed on 04/17/20 at 07:00 AM

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Amy & Paul hit the road for 1969’s counter-cultural tone piece Easy Rider! They learn what Spiro Agnew thought of this film, compare its drug trip moments to the films it inspired, and ask what the controversial ending is really trying to say. Plus: listeners dig deeper into Sullivan’s Travels’ take on poverty.

For Cabaret week, sing us a bit of “Wilkommen”! Call the Unspooled voicemail line at 747-666-5824 with your contribution. Follow us on Twitter @Unspooled, get more info at unspooledpod.com and don’t forget to rate, review & subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts.

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Honestly, this is probably my least favorite movie on the AFI list so I vote it down. As my snarky Letterboxd post indicates, I basically find it the reason for the "OK Boomer" meme made into a film. Every time I watch it, with the exception of the musical interludes and the Jack Nicholson character, I find so much of it just plainly ridiculous, a movie entirely concerned with two self-involved guys who cruise around without much purpose other than their own hedonism.

If this were a movie like The Graduate, where the lead character's self-involvement is often brought up for criticism or mockery (especially in the critical final scene), that would be one thing, but Easy Rider feels to me like it entirely lacks that self-awareness. The ending plays as pure martyrdom to me; it feels "easy" as Amy says. If these two are martyrs, what was their cause? Riding around, selling drugs, and sleeping with prostitutes? Nicholson's character did seem to have more of a purpose than Fonda and Hopper, but as was noted in the podcast episode the movie seems to just kind of ride past his death without really dwelling on what it meant.

I acknowledge that there is historical and cultural importance to this film for what it meant at the time, but I don't think it holds up well as a piece of filmmaking or storytelling unto itself.

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Yea, I scanned briefly some reactions in the FB group and I saw a lot that were like 'I don't like it, but I get it's very important and should be on the list' conclusions.

I'm sort of the opposite. I do really enjoy it, but I don't think it should be on the list. I agree with @sycasey 2.0 that it maybe lacks in filmmaking/storytelling. But I still really enjoy taking that ride with them and I think it did land on something, even if it's restrained to just a very specific moment in time. 

That's just my personal reaction, I haven't listened to the ep yet so will hold on to more thoughts until I do.

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I agree with the negative review they read in the podcast and Sycasey. I didn't rewatch this movie but I remember finding it very boring. I didn't find it have anything interesting to say and I'm not sure what it might be trying to say other than "fuck the old way" in a general sense. While I can get behind that (generally speaking), this felt meandering without purpose or artistry or skill.

The only thing I can see that I might appreciate in this is encapsulating a feeling/time. But I think I just don't feel that kind of call that this movie seems to invoke in its fans. Maybe I'm just not connected with 1969 enough to get it.

I think what really turns me off is the idea of Wild Hogs (which I haven't seen) or the type of people who just interpret the movie as...I don't know... freedom of the open road, rebellion, whatever. Since the movie is so muddled and the main characters don't seem admirable to me, the movie's influence seems to be people either ignoring its flaws or bringing their own interpretation to it. So, real hard pass on this one.

If we must have a movie about what the 60s was like, I'd rather have Woodstock or Gimme Shelter but the AFI doesn't count documentaries.

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I'm with @AlmostAGhost.  I like this film quite a bit (though perhaps not as much), but I'm voting no.  While I agree with @sycasey 2.0 and @grudlian. overall about the defects in storytelling, I actually think this is beautifully shot, particularly considering the budget.  And the way it used its score was extremely influential, and I think still great today.  Although the points it tries to make don't really work for me, I guess I admire it more than I decry it for trying to process that era.  And the theme/vibe of "what the fuck is wrong with this country and is it even possible to fix it" is certainly something that resonates with me at this time.

But in trying to make points about the clashing of vastly different subcultures in that era, this film fails, I think, mostly from oversimplification.  There is little nuance in the way that the film presents extremely nuanced things.  As I mentioned in my Letterboxd review, you learn more about this late 60s clash of cultures in something like the show Mad Men, because there's plenty of room to breathe with these complicated ideas.  But even in a more condensed timeframe, I found Gimme Shelter much more compelling as well, as grudlian also mentioned.

So I'm a pretty soft no on this.  I could take it or leave it, but I suppose I'd rather see something else, something greater, on this list.

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2 hours ago, bleary said:

I'm with @AlmostAGhost.  I like this film quite a bit (though perhaps not as much), but I'm voting no.  While I agree with @sycasey 2.0 and @grudlian. overall about the defects in storytelling, I actually think this is beautifully shot, particularly considering the budget.  And the way it used its score was extremely influential, and I think still great today.  Although the points it tries to make don't really work for me, I guess I admire it more than I decry it for trying to process that era.  And the theme/vibe of "what the fuck is wrong with this country and is it even possible to fix it" is certainly something that resonates with me at this time.

But in trying to make points about the clashing of vastly different subcultures in that era, this film fails, I think, mostly from oversimplification.  There is little nuance in the way that the film presents extremely nuanced things.  As I mentioned in my Letterboxd review, you learn more about this late 60s clash of cultures in something like the show Mad Men, because there's plenty of room to breathe with these complicated ideas.  But even in a more condensed timeframe, I found Gimme Shelter much more compelling as well, as grudlian also mentioned.

I think what frustrates me most about Easy Rider is that I want to like it. Or, when I hear what people like about it, I like all that stuff as well. It's truly independent cinema made in the moment (both in the moment of the scenes and as time capsule of culture). You mention being unable to fix what's wrong with this country as a theme and that resonates with me as well. I guess I could talk a lot about what others see in the movie as great. On paper, it's a great movie but the final product leaves me kind of cold. I don't have a lot of concrete thoughts on the movie (partly because it's been years since I watched it) other than I didn't think much of it. I think my ideas are all over the place because the movie is all over the place.

I guess a perfect critique of this movie, or at least my take away from it, is that I see them riding down the road on a motorcycle, Born To Be Wild blaring and I absolutely want to do the same thing. I don't even particularly like motorcycles, but this primal area of my brain wants to ride a motorcycle during that scene. It seems so thrilling and and free. But I feel the exact same urge listening to Born To Be Wild on the radio without the movie playing. All the stuff around this movie (soundtrack, politics, culture of the time) seems to be doing the heavy lifting for this movie.

There's probably some 80s/90s movie that is the equivalent to Easy Rider that was just right place/right time that I was the right age for and I'll love it forever in spite of any logical criticism of it. But I can't think of what that is.

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17 minutes ago, grudlian. said:

There's probably some 80s/90s movie that is the equivalent to Easy Rider that was just right place/right time that I was the right age for and I'll love it forever in spite of any logical criticism of it. But I can't think of what that is.

For the 90s, I dunno, maybe something like Reality Bites or Empire Records? But on the other hand, those movies were never super well-received critically.

For the 80s it tends to be stuff people saw as kids and loved for that reason, like The Goonies or Hook or The Lost Boys. But again, I think adults during that time never held those movies up as being particularly good.

There really does seem to be something very specific to the young-adult era of the Boomer generation that doesn't totally translate elsewhere.

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1 hour ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

For the 90s, I dunno, maybe something like Reality Bites or Empire Records? But on the other hand, those movies were never super well-received critically.

For the 80s it tends to be stuff people saw as kids and loved for that reason, like The Goonies or Hook or The Lost Boys. But again, I think adults during that time never held those movies up as being particularly good.

There really does seem to be something very specific to the young-adult era of the Boomer generation that doesn't totally translate elsewhere.

I'm not sure I even know entirely what I mean by Easy Rider for the 80s or 90s. I guess I look at Easy Rider as a movie that defined a specific moment in culture that sparks a lot of peoples imaginations, but really wasn't of the culture at all. How many people actually went and lived like Wyatt and Captain America? Or even attempted it? Or even kind of seriously thought about it beyond "man, that would be sooo cool"? And yet it seems like a lot of people treat Easy Rider as a "YOU HAD TO BE THERE, MAN!" kind of movie despite never being there themselves. If that makes any sense?

I haven't seen Reality Bites but my perception of what I think it is kind of fits it. Empire Records kind of does to an extent.

The closest I can think of would be Wall Street but I'm not sure if that's quite right either. People use it as a definition of the 80s. It didn't necessarily create yuppie culture, but I think it popularized it the way Easy Rider did. But I think very few people left Wall Street dreaming of being Gordon Gecko and everything he stood for (though some audience members certainly did).

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Well, well, well, look what the lockdown dragged in (s'been a while).

Just a couple of things, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was mentioned but I for sure thought of Easy Rider in that scene where the camera is with the young women of the Manson Family playing around and the audio was clearly recorded separately, creating a certain dissonance in how you take it in. It seemed very much to be mimicking the Mardi Gras/acid trip scene.

Also, and I don't remember where I read this but I, years ago, saw a theory that they doomed themselves right from the beginning by getting into selling cocaine. The counter culture as represented by the hippies were originally about rejecting consumerism and greed, using psychedelics and weed for liberation of the mind. By the time this was being made, the altruism was starting to lose its veneer. By profiting from a different kind of drug (recreational, aggressive, non-introspective), they were in fact being hypocrites whether they understood it or not and planted the seed crystal which locked them into a pattern that they ultimately could never escape.

Something like that.

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I'm definitely on record as never having liked the movie, although my stance has softened a bit recently. There's a fine line between being personally expressive through art and being self-indulgent. I called these films "student film-ish" and, yes, that was even when I was a film student. I suppose I had my own self-indulgences at the time, admittedly. 

That being said, there is something inherently counterculture and subversive with this movie. Now that I'm a film teacher, I recognize its power, and that it still resonates with many young people, particularly those on the cusp of transitioning into the "adult world." It's like a glimpse into something that is almost taboo in a way because adults would never share this stuff except amongst themselves. For some young people, there's a secret thrill, like it might be the first time someone showed you how to smoke a joint. When was the first time you saw you parents do something that shattered your childhood notions that they were perfect? If there is a word for that, that's what the tone of this film is. 

But I would still vote it off the list and rank it near the bottom on my personal version of the 100.    

 

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On 4/10/2020 at 9:11 AM, grudlian. said:

The closest I can think of would be Wall Street but I'm not sure if that's quite right either. People use it as a definition of the 80s. It didn't necessarily create yuppie culture, but I think it popularized it the way Easy Rider did. But I think very few people left Wall Street dreaming of being Gordon Gecko and everything he stood for (though some audience members certainly did).

How about Ferris Bueller's Day Off? It probably doesn't win by being a comedy, but it has the themes of dissafectedness and it quite existential in its own way.  

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