Director Dennis Hopper recalls the making of his indie cult classic

If the DGA's Independent Directors Committee (IDC) created its "Under the Influence" series to honor films of independent spirit that have inspired contemporary directors, then on several levels you can't get much more "under the influence" than Easy Rider.

Directed and produced by two Hollywood iconoclasts — Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda — with under a half-million non-studio dollars, Easy Rider shook up a languishing industry when it grossed more than $19 million in 1969. Along with other such landmarks of the late 1960s as Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and 2001, it opened Hollywood's eyes to the power of young audiences and socially relevant films. Indeed, Easy Rider became the definitive counterculture film.

Shot on location by Laszlo Kovacs, Easy Rider rejected old-fashioned polish for rough immediacy, enhanced by improvised dialogue and realistically "stoned" acting. It turned Jack Nicholson, who received an Academy Award nomination for his role as George Hanson, into a star. Hopper, Fonda and Terry Southern were nominated for their screenplay. Hopper also received the Best New Director at Cannes '69.

The Directors Guild acknowledged the impact of this film, which helped lead the way for all low-budget independents, with its screening followed by an acutely spirited discussion between Hopper and David O. Russell (Three Kings) on August 5. The atmosphere of confusion and rage from which the film emerged has come full circle in light of recent events, and those who attended the event would attest that Easy Rider still resonates deeply.

In discussing his groundbreaking film, Hopper put Easy Rider in its context. "You have to remember that at the time I made this movie, blacks and whites were still not allowed to go to the same bathrooms. The Civil Rights movement was happening, Martin Luther King had just been killed. Bobby Kennedy was killed in the middle of our shooting the movie. Cities were burning down; there were riots everywhere. The whole country was ablaze."

Hopper said that the movie's portrayal of Hippie persecution in the South was based on his own observations. "On the trip across the country [location scouting], I found out a lot. Everywhere we went there was somebody wanting to beat me up because I had long hair."

He also gave a colorful account of how he came to direct the movie. "Peter [Fonda] called me from Canada with the idea of making this film. He was having dinner with the owners of American International Pictures (AIP). We were all working at AIP at the time. Jack Nicholson was there writing for Roger Corman. I had directed The Glory Stompers, a motorcycle movie that I was in. Nicholson was doing Hell's Angels on Wheels. So we were all these bike stars.

"And I said, 'Peter, we don't want to become singing cowboys. You know, the Western-singing cowboys? It's looking like that. So whatever we do as a movie, let's not do a motorcycle picture.'

"And Peter said, 'Well, I told [AIP] this story and they said you could direct it, and I could produce it, and we could both act in it, and it goes like this. There's these two guys and they are on dirt bikes, down in Mexico, and they score a bunch of marijuana. They bring the marijuana back and they sell it. Then they get these two big gleaming, beautiful bikes and they go across the United States to Mardi Gras. They have a wonderful time in Mardi Gras and they're going to retire on the money they made. But on their way to Florida, they're killed by a couple of duck hunters. OK? Now, what do you think of that?'

"I said, 'Man, did they tell you they'd give you the money?' Peter said, 'Yes.' And I said, 'Man, that sounds terrific to me.'"

And that was that. Hopper said he and Fonda then "talked and talked and walked and walked, and we talked out the whole screenplay before anybody went anywhere."

About the famously emotional cemetery scene, where Fonda clutches a huge statue, crying the words, "Mother, you're such a fool. I hate you so much." Hopper said he urged Fonda to dive back into something very painful to reach that depth of emotion.

"I actually knew this fact about Peter [his mother committed suicide when he was 10 years old] and I used it in the true Kazan, Strasberg method kind of way. It may seem cruel to others. But I wanted something out of it — the statue he was sitting on represented liberty to me and I wanted him to be talking to liberty. Because he says, 'Were you just a piece of paper, mother? Is that all you were? Were you just a piece of paper? Why did you leave me?' And so it was about freedom to me and it was about the Declaration of Independence. I saw our freedoms as Americans being peeled away. That was where I was coming from."

Hopper acknowledged his seminal role in independent filmmaking. "I'd taken seriously Goddard and Truffaut's statement out of France that the way to beat the system was to just isolate them inside their studios and go out in the world. The whole world was your sound stage, you didn't need them anymore. That was my thinking at the time."

Even so, the film did have some connections to mainstream Hollywood. Hopper had been acting in Hollywood films since the 1950s, and co-producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson had produced the 1960s series The Monkees. Terry Southern, who collaborated with Fonda and Hopper on the script, had also co-written the classic film Dr. Strangelove. Not to mention the fact that Easy Rider was released by Columbia Pictures, a studio about as 'Establishment' there was.

Hopper said Columbia distributed the film "because producer Burt Schneider's dad was Chairman of the Board at Columbia and his brother, Stanley, was head of production." He still speaks highly of Schneider. "Burt was sensational because you made a deal with him and then he didn't want to see you until you had your first cut. It took me a year to show him my first cut, which was two hours and ten minutes long."

Actually there were many cuts. "I couldn't see any of my dailies because we went across country, and I shot it in 5½ weeks. So I didn't see anything, but I shot a lot of film."

Before Columbia got involved, however, it was Fonda who fronted the money. "Peter, God bless him, it started out with Peter and his credit card. Paul Lewis and I went across country on Peter's credit card while Peter was in New York with Terry [Southern]."

It's hard to believe that Easy Rider cost $360,000 and made about $20 million. Peter Fonda, Russell said, was quoted as saying that when the movie started to gross those numbers, "Columbia executives stopped shaking their heads in non-comprehension and started nodding their heads in non-comprehension."

Hopper chuckled; it still impresses him, too. "We made back our money in one theater in New York in two weeks. And that's incredible because it was like 85 cents and $1.25 to go to the movies then."

Regarding the music, comprised mostly of popular tracks by artists of the 1960s, Hopper said he didn't have to pay a dime. "I got all those songs by just going to the artists and asking. Those were the good old days. Nobody would ever put found music in a film; they'd always written a score. So I merely needed the artist's permission to use the music.

"As I was driving to work, I'd listen to the radio and I'd hear, 'Goddamn the Pusher Man' or 'Born to Be Wild' and I applied them to scenes, and it was amazing that they worked... At times there are great mysteries involved in all of this. But I find that if you allow yourself to get in the space where you're really creating, it seems like you're just manipulating or floor managing something that's coming in to you. And you lay it down and it just fits; it goes together, and there's not really a lot that can stop you."

And what about Nicholson's George Hanson, whose line, "people who are threatened by freedom, they'll kill you to prove that they're free," cuts to the very core of the film? Well, it was a breakthrough role in the truest sense of the term, but Hopper said Nicholson wasn't his first choice. "I thought he was going to ruin the picture. I love Jack, but I couldn't see a guy from New Jersey playing this Texas guy. I thought he was a wonderful actor, but I just couldn't see it."

Obviously he's since changed his mind. "What a great talent [Nicholson] is, and what a great contribution he is to our business."

As the film approaches its conclusion, Wyatt [Fonda] confesses to Billy [Hopper] that they "blew it." Just in case you, like many, were wondering what this line really means, Hopper explained his version.

"'We blew it' means that they'd made their money in a criminal way and that they'd gone against their heritage, which was at stake because they were doing criminal things. And the guy with the American flag on his back [Fonda] thought that they'd blown it because they'd made their money in a criminal way."

Hopper noted that the film was received in a wide variety of ways, depending on where it screened. "In Los Angeles, at the end of the movie people got up and screamed, 'Kill the pigs! Kill the pigs!' And in New Orleans, they applauded when we were shot at the end. And when I showed it in Yugoslavia the Russians thought it was incredible that the criminals were killed at the end and yelled, 'Yes! Up for the workers!' I went crazy in Yugoslavia. 'There are more communists in the university in the United States than there are in Moscow!' I screamed. The American ambassador fell off his chair. But ... people see what they want to see, I'm afraid."

Throughout the making of Easy Rider, Hopper said he knew that he was part of something big. "I didn't think it was going to be able to be stopped. I felt that from the beginning, man, I never had any question about it. I mean, I was crazed. I was crazed. It was a one-way conversation with me directing this movie."

Finally, Hopper was asked whether he thought in light of the film's violent ending, that freedom died when the main characters died. Is freedom dead in America or was it just a myth all along?

Hopper responded vigorously. "I think freedom's here, man. We are free, and we've got to always remain free. I could never have made this movie if we weren't free ... Our only prisons we make for ourselves, I'm afraid. That's what I was making the movie about."