The film is famous in one way or another. The story involves two drifters (Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper), who travel across America on their motorcycles, sell cocaine to rich people in order to survive without a "real" home, and, overall, have returned to nature. Along the way (this is a road movie, after all), an assortment of people cross their path, from gentle hippy types who live on the land, to stupid rednecks and other symbols of conformity. One of the more friendly types they come across is an alcoholic lawyer, played by Jack Nicholson in a crucial point in his career, in which he finally escaped the B-movies and the Roger Corman knock-offs and went into the big time.
This is basically the whole story, and yet Easy Rider has become part of the culture. No doubt this is because the hippies and other free spirits of the time could identify with the two main characters, and their quest to live apart from the conformity of the past. Watching this movie now is interesting from an historical standpoint, but not from a major artistic one. The movie is terribly dated in a number of ways; the most obvious being the depiction of drug abuse. Nearly everybody is stoned, and the two main characters sell cocaine to rich people, yet there is no suggestion that any of this activity is dangerous, since, of course, these are the heroes, doing their own thing, including reaching a higher level of being through drugs. Another obvious problem involves women; even though Fonda, Hopper and the others are supposed to represent the new generation, the women, on the other hand, still play second fiddle in pretty much every scene, and the main characters even visit a whorehouse, highly recommended by Nicholson, near the end of the film. The women are still expected to serve the men.
