Existing comment:
Easy Rider
Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda's low-budget counterculture film Easy Rider was a sensation when it was released in 1969. It also helped make B-movie actor Jack Nicholson (born 1937) into a star. Nicholson plays a small-town Louisiana lawyer who gets the main characters out of jail and then rides away with them in pursuit of the quintessential American dream -- the freedom of the open road. He is killed in a savage beating when the trio is attacked by hostile locals. An unlikely hit, Easy Rider introduced Nicholson, and his trademark wise-guy smirk, to a national audience. Hollywood took notice, too: he caught the attention of directors like Stanley Kubrick and a year later received a Best Actor nomination for his role in Five Easy Pieces (1970).
Unidentified artist, 1969 |