Easy Rider

Easy Rider is a 1969 road movie starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson, about a motorcycle ride from Los Angeles to New Orleans. The film is a canonical work of the postwar biker and hippie cultures, and revived the Harley-Davidson motorcycle as an icon of freedom.

Understand

Easy Rider is an image of Sixties counterculture at both its best and worst. The story of "A man went looking for America. And couldn't find it anywhere..." is an archetypal roadtrip film and an emblem of motorcycle culture. Travellers go far and wide to journey the same routes as its protagonists, but hopefully not meet the same fates.

Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Hopper) are freewheeling motorcyclists who smuggle cocaine from Tijuana to Los Angeles. With the cash stuffed in Wyatt's chopper, they aim to reach New Orleans for the Mardi Gras festival. They pick up a hippie hitchhiker who takes them to their commune, with free love and drugs.

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Tijuana, Mexico, 32.525°, -117.033°.
Los Angeles, California, 34.0541°, -118.2417°.
Ballarat, California, 36.0464112,°, -117.2442476°. A ghost town where the bikers stay to hide the cash inside Wyatt's fuel tank.
Needles, California. Seen in the title sequence as the bikers travel along the legendary Route 66.
Bellemont, Arizona. As Billy and Wyatt drive up to a motel, the "No vacancy" sign is turned on. The first clear sign that the bikers will be unwelcome to most places they go.
Flagstaff, Arizona, 35.199167°, -111.631111°.
Wupatki Pueblo. The bikers camp here overnight.
Painted Desert. Seen in a road montage.
Monument Valley, Arizona, 36.9833°, -110.1000°. Just as in many other American films, the montage with the Monument Valley represents the passage between West and East.
Las Vegas (New Mexico). The bikers are jailed for parading without a permit.
Franklin (Louisiana). Texas is omitted from the plot, and we see the riders again as they have reached Lousiana.
New Orleans, Louisiana, 29.95374°, -90.07776°.

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See also