Dear John, Like a lot of things going on this year, Easy Rider's 50th anniversary commemorates a part of the sound track of many of our lives. The movie was made during a very wild and crazy time in America and has stood the test. It's a long article so Part 2 will be next week. Stay with me.
Looks like our local players are dominating Out & About this week. Saturday is way skimpy but we're getting close to cooler temps so things will surely pick up.
Save the date! Our annual LAbor Day Fundraiser will take place at the RR on Sept. 1. It's a Sunday afternoon affair and promises to rock the joint. Be there!!
And don't forget to hug somebody this week.
Have a great one!!
Sincerely,
Jim Crawford - PBS
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1969 by Garin Pirnia Easy Rider's tagline of "A man went looking for America and couldn't find it anywhere" transcended moviedom. Once called The Loners, Dennis Hopper co-wrote, directed, and starred in the Oscar-nominated biker flick about two men riding motorcycles from Los Angeles to New Orleans to Florida during the tumult of the Vietnam-era '60s. Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson also starred, and Fonda co-wrote the script with Terry Southern and Hopper, and produced it. Shot on a budget of well under $1 million, the 1969 guerilla film went on to gross more than $60 million worldwide; the Criterion Collection referred to the movie as "the definitive counterculture blockbuster." After filming finished in 1968, it took Hopper one year to edit 80 hours of footage-which included scenes of real drug use and a jaw-dropping conclusion-into a 95-minute feature that premiered at Cannes on May 12, 1969. Despite a difficult shoot, it launched the prosperous New Hollywood period of moviemaking, and ignited a revolution in cinema that we haven't recaptured since. 1. Easy Rider was made for the youth of the time. Before Easy Rider, Hollywood was churning out happier films starring the effervescent Doris Day, but Dennis Hopper's film changed that. "They were making films like Pillow Talk and The Glass Bottom Boat. Gidget? That's not a kids' film. Beach Blanket Bingo? C'mon," Fonda told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015. "Those were not really films of the youth that I had grown into and up with, shutting away the establishment, going on their own. We made a movie for these people that didn't have their own movie." Karen Black, who co-starred in the film, agreed with Fonda's sentiment. "When you went to see a movie like Easy Rider and when you saw these guys really smoking grass by the fire, and really the camaraderie was warm, real, and rare, you went, 'What the hell am I looking at? This has value! This has a completely different kind of value than Pillow Talk," she said in the documentary Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. "This is something extraordinary. I want more of that. And then I think it went a bit far, because I kept seeing movie people vomit." 2. The film's original ending involved Bill and Wyatt sailing into the sunset. One of the most shocking things about Easy Rider is its ending, where both of the leads violently perish. "The initial idea had to do with a couple of young guys who are fed up with the system, want to make one big score, and split," Terry Southern told Creative Screenwriting. "Use the money to buy a boat in Key West and sail into the sunset was the general notion, and that was slated to be the film's final poetic sequence. It wasn't until the end that it took on a genuinely artistic dimension-when it suddenly evolved into an indictment of the American redneck, and his hatred and intolerance for anything remotely different from himself-somewhat to the surprise of Den Hopper: 'You mean kill 'em both? Hey, man, are you outta your gourd?!?' I think for a minute he was still hoping they would somehow beat the system and sail into the sunset with a lot of loot and freedom. But of course, he was hip enough to realize, a minute later, that their death was more or less mandatory." 3. It was one of the first films to integrate found music. Instead of hiring a musician to compose a score for the film, Hopper decided to use pre-recorded music from Bob Dylan, The Band, Steppenwolf, and Jimi Hendrix on the soundtrack. "No one had really used found music in a movie before, except to play on radios or when someone was singing in a scene," Hopper told Interview Magazine. "But I wanted Easy Rider to be kind of a time capsule for that period, so while I was editing the film I would listen to the radio. That's where I got 'Born to Be Wild' and 'The Pusher' and all those songs." The filmmakers had to show the movie to the different bands involved in order to get licensing approval, and each band received $1000. They showed it to Dylan, whose song "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" was in two scenes, but Dylan said they couldn't use it. "He said, 'Have [Roger] McGuinn do this first part, but you can't do it after that,'" Fonda told Daily Camera. "I said, 'But, Bob, any good fight's a combination of punches." McGuinn covered Dylan's song, and Dylan and McGuinn wrote the closing credit song, "The Ballad of Easy Rider," which was sung by McGuinn, and didn't have Dylan's name on it. 4. Dennis Hopper claimed Terry Southern's only contribution to the film was the title. "Terry Southern never wrote one f***ing word of Easy Rider. Only the title Easy Rider came from him," Hopper told The Guardian in 2001. "He broke his hip; he couldn't write. I used his office and I dictated the whole f***ing thing in 10 days." But Southern saw it in another way. "Peter was to be the actor/producer, Dennis the actor/director, and a certain yours truly, the writer," Southern told Creative Screenwriting. "After they had seen a couple of screenings of it on the coast, I got a call from Peter. He said that he and Dennis liked the film so much they wanted to be in on the screenplay credits. Well, one of them was the producer and other was the director so there was no way the Writers Guild was going to allow them to take a screenplay credit unless I insisted." Not listening to the WGA, Southern allowed them to have their credits on the film, which was largely improvised. However, Fonda had more positive things to say about Southern's contributions: "He gave us dark humor and a literary panache that Dennis and I did not have," Fonda told The A.V. Club. "Having him with us as a writer on the script put it above periscope depth. People would say, 'Wow, Terry Southern co-wrote that. I wonder what that's about?'" All three of them received Oscar nominations for the film's screenplay. 5. Rip Torn sued Hopper over the Jack Nicholson role. As the story goes, in 1967, Rip Torn had dinner with Fonda and Hopper, who were considering casting him in the role of lawyer George Hanson. Hopper went on The Tonight Show in 1994 and recounted how Torn pulled a knife on Hopper during the dinner, thus losing the gig. But Torn said it was the other way around: Hopper pulled the knife on him. (It was supposedly a butter knife.) "Dennis jumped back and knocked Peter on the floor, and I said, 'There goes the job,'" Torn told The New York Times. Fed up with Hopper ruining his career, Torn sued Hopper for defamation and won almost $1 million. Bert Schneider, one of film's executive producers and financiers, then suggested Hopper cast Jack Nicholson as Hanson-as long as he agreed to work for scale, which was $392 per week. "I'll tell you one thing mister, it was the best $392 I ever spent," Fonda said at the AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute To Jack Nicholson banquet. 6. Nicholson knew the movie would be a hit.a In an interview with Film Comment, the interviewer asked Nicholson if he knew the film would be a hit, and he said yes. "Bob [Rafelson] and I were involved in writing Head when Dennis and Peter brought in a 12-page treatment," Nicholson said. "I felt it would be a successful movie right then. Because of my background with Roger Corman, I knew that my last motorcycle movie had done $6 to $8 million from a budget of less than half-a-million. I thought the moment for the biker film had come, especially if the genre was moved one step away from exploitation toward some kind of literary quality." Before Easy Rider, Hopper had starred in a biker movie called The Glory Stompers, Fonda did the Corman movie The Wild Angels, and Nicholson acted in Hells Angels on Wheels.
con't next week
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| Out & About Tuesday, August 20 Carvin Jones, 7:30 p.m., BKD's Backyard Joint, Chandler Wednesday, August 21 Jimmy Thackery, 8 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Hans Olson, 7 p.m., Time Out Lounge, Tempe Chuck Hall, 6 p.m., Corrado's, Carefree Carvin Jones, 7:30 p.m., Skipper's, Phoenix Thursday, August 22 Sugar Thieves Duo, 6 p.m., Culinary Dropout, Gilbert Paris James, 7 p.m., St. Armand Kitchen, Chandler Eric Ramsey Hosts OPEN MIC, 6 p.m., Fatso's Pizza, Phoenix Hans Olson EVERY THURSDAY, 6 p.m., Handlebar, Apache Junction Arizona Blues Project, 8 p.m., Harold's, Cave Creek Carvin Jones, 7 p.m., Old Ellsworth Brewery, Queen Creek Friday, August 23 Big Daddy D & The Dynamites, 8:30 p.m., El Dorado, Scottsdale JC & The Rockers, 7 p.m., Handlebar, Apache Junction Hoodoo Casters, 6 p.m., Desert Eagle Falcon Field, Mesa Mike Eldred, 7 p.m., Bone Haus Brewing, Fountain Hills Tommy Grills Band, 6:30 p.m., West Alley BBQ, Chandler Sugar Thieves Duo, 8 p.m., Irish Hare, Phoenix Tommy Dukes/Roger Smith, 6 p.m., Charly's Pub, Flagstaff Saturday, August 24 Big Daddy D & The Dynamites, 7 p.m., Windsock, Prescott Hoodoo Casters, 6 p.m., Mountain View Pub, Cave Creek Chuck Hall Band, 9 p.m., Cross-Eyed Cricket, Prescott Innocent Joe (solo), 7 p.m., Divided Vine, Gilbert Sunday, August 25 True Flavor Blues, NOON , Copper Star, Phoenix Monday, August 26
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Jams
Sunday
Rocket 88s JAM, 4 p.m., Chopper John's, Phoenix
Bourbon Jack's JAM w/Kody Herring, 6 p.m., Chandler
JAM Hosted by The Scott O'Neal Band. Every other Thursday, Windsock, Prescott
Sir Harrison, JAM every other Sunday, The Windsock, Prescott MONDAY
Bam Bam & Badness Open JAM, 9 p.m., Char's, Phoenix
Weatherford Hotel JAM, 6:30 p.m., Flagstaff
TUESDAY OPEN JAM Hosted by Jilly Bean & The Flipside Blues Band, 7 p.m., Steel Horse Saloon, Phoenix
JAM Sir Harrison, 9 p.m., Char's, Phoenix
Gypsy's Bluesday Night JAM, 7 p.m. Pho Cao, Tempe
Tailgaters JAM, 7 p.m., Glendale
WEDNESDAY Rocket 88s, JAM, 6 p.m., The Last Stop (Old Hideaway West), Phoenix
Tool Shed JAM Party, 6 p.m. Gabby's, Mesa
THURSDAY Tool Shed JAM Party, 7 p.m., Steel Horse Saloon, Phoenix Jolie's Place JAM w/Adrenaline, 9 p.m., Chandler
NEW JAM @ The Bench, Hosted by BluZone, 7 p.m., The Bench, Tempe
Friday
Saturday Bumpin' Bud's JAM 2nd & 4th Saturdays JAM, 6 p.m., Marc's Sports Grill |
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GOT BLUES? If you are a Blues musician, a group, or a club that features Blues music, and would like to be listed, please send your info to info@phoenixblues.org and we'll be happy to list your event in our weekly Out & About section of the newsletter
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