The Easy Rider Effect
Written by Leslie Coffin
How much influence can one movie have? Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider might have been the most influential film in Hollywood history with the most direct effect on the industry. After the box-office success of Easy Rider, Universal Studio greenlit five films with low budgets (about a million each) and promised almost complete directorial control. Here are the five films which got made because of Easy Rider.
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The Last Movie
Understandably, the first person to experience the residual effects of Easy Rider was Hopper himself, who was able to secure financing for his art-house film The Last Movie. Hopper wrote and directed the movie set and filmed in Peru about a failed filmmaker who becomes obsessed with the town he’s filming and falling in love with the local prostitute. But the film takes an odd turn when the priest informs him that the community doesn’t understand movies and are recreating scenes. The movie barely got a national release and was considered some to show a racist view from Hopper. But it has since become a cult film with many calling it one of the first commercial art films from America.
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The Hired Hand
The second person to benefit from Easy Rider’s success was producer/costar Peter Fonda who was given the chance to direct and star in his own film. One of the first true examples of a modern Western, the counter-culture is placed in the world of western outlaws where an aimless drifter (Peter Fonda) finally returns to his wife. Warren Oates and Verna Bloom (Animal House) are phenomenal as the earthy friend and loyal wife. It was the first of only three movies Fonda directed and first feature film written by Alan Sharp (Night Moves, Rob Roy). Its since been called an overlooked classic in the western genre.
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Taking Off
Milos Foreman’s first American film and a critical hit which earned numerous BAFTA awards and won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes (shared with Johnny Got His Gun). The film is a generational comedy starring Buck Henry, Miles Forman, Georgia Engel, and Paul Benedict about the parents of the hippy children who left home. Suddenly free of their children, the parents decide to experience their own form of counter culture despite being middle age. The film is full of musical performances, including Tina and Ike Turner appearing as themselves and Kathy Bates and Carly Simon have small roles as singers. Three years later Foreman won a best director Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
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Silent Running
Right after he shot John Wayne in The Cowboys, Bruce Dern tried to transition to playing a peace and love type in Douglas Trumboll’s sci-fi movie about environmentalism. Trumboll was a first time filmmaker but learned the craft from the master, Stanley Kubrick, after doing effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Despite finishing the movie in just 32 days, the movie was held up over disputes with the studio which felt the film was too dark, moralistic, and wouldn’t have strong audience appeal. The movie was a failure when released but has a loyal fan-base which includes contemporary filmmakers and influenced Star Wars (which Trumboll worked on), Duncan Jones’s Moon and Wall-E.
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American Graffiti
It took four other films but Universal got exactly the kind of response they wanted after Easy Rider from George Lucas’s ode to teenage-dom, American Graffiti. Not only is it still one of the ultimate teen drama, but it introduced the world to the nostalgic soundtrack, big names (Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfus, Susan Somers, Paul Le Mat, Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips, and adult Ron Howard) and George Lucas. The movie is also the godfather to Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused and all the other one day teen movies to come out over the years.
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