Easy Rider Flashcards
Easy Rider date
Easy Rider (1969)
Peter Fonda (1940-2019) Dennis Hopper (1936- 2010)
Terry Southern (1924-1995)
Hollywood era
Along with Bonnie and Clyde,
Easy Rider helped kick-start the New Hollywood era during the late 1960s and 1970s.
plot
Two bikers travel through the American Southwest.
THE PUSHER
Hoyt Wayne Axton (1938 – 1999)
You know I’ve smoked a lot of grassO’ lord, I’ve popped a lot of pillsbut I’ve never touched nothin’that my spirit could killyou know, I’ve seen a lot of people walkin’ ‘roundwith tombstones in their eyesbut the pusher don’t careah, if you live or if you die
God damn, the pushergod damn, I say the pusherI said god damn, god damn the pusher man
You know the dealer, the dealer is a manwith the love grass in his handoh but the pusher is a monstergood god, he’s not a natural manthe dealer for a nickellord, he’ll sell you lots of sweet dreamsah, but the pusher ruin your bodylord, he’ll leave your, he’ll leave your mind to scream
God damn, the pushergod damn, god damn the pusherI said god damn, god, god damn the pusher man
Well, now if I were the president of this landyou know, I’d declare total war on the pusher mani’d cut him if he stands, and I’d shoot him if he’d runyes I’d kill him with my bible and my razor and my gun
God damn the pushergod damn the pusherI said god damn, god damn the pusher man
Songs
Born to Be Wild
Chanson de Steppenwolf
Get your motor runnin’Head out on the highwayLooking for adventureIn whatever comes our way
Yeah, darlin’Gonna make it happenTake the world in a love embraceFire all of your guns at onceAnd explode into space
I like smoke and lightnin’Heavy metal thunderRacing in the windAnd the feeling that I’m under
Yeah, darlin’Gonna make it happenTake the world in a love embraceFire all of your guns at onceAnd explode into space
Like a true nature childWe were bornBorn to be wildWe can climb so highI never wanna dieBorn to be wild
Heavy metal
The expression “Heavy metal” was used
by William Burroughs in
The Soft Machine
The beat generation def
a movement of young people in the 1950s and early 1960s who rejected conventional society, valuing free self-expression and favouring modern jazz. Among writers associated with the movement were Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.
inspiring figure of beat generations
there were inspiring figures, though they sometimes resisted classification:
“Beat Generation” or hippies?
Not to mention their will not to enter any category.
Burroughs for example never recognized being part of anything. Three figures clearly emerged.
→Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), On the Road (1957)
→ Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), Howl and other poems (1956)
→ William Burroughs (1914-1997), The Naked Lunch (1959)
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), On the Road (1957)
Quote
“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), Howl and other poems (1956)
Quote
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”.“I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd”.
William Burroughs (1914-1997)The Naked Lunch (1959)
Quote
“The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods.
Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets”.
William S. Burroughs, from
The Ticket That Exploded,
1962
“Language is a virus”
“The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. MODERN MAN HAS LOST THE OPTION OF SILENCE. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word”
Theodore Roszac on Ginsberg and Kerouac
Of Howl, Ginsberg says,
“I’d had a beatific illumination years before during which I’d heard Blake’s ancient voice and saw the universe unfold in my brain,” and this served as the inspiration for the later outburst. In a similarly IMPROVISATORY manner, Jack Kerouac was to come to the point of typing off his novels nonstop onto ENORMOUS ROLLS of paper-six feet per day-with never a revision.
The “freedom” speech in Easy Rider
→ They’re not scared of you. They’re scared of what you represent to ‘em.What you represent to them is freedom.What the hell is wrong with freedom? That’s what it’s all about.
Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s what’s it’s all about, all right. BUT TALKIN’ ABOUT IT AND BEIN’ IT, THAT’S TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace.
Of course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, ‘cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are.
Oh, yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ‘em.
Center of hippie movement=
Haight Ashbury, SF
