tradepeja
Starter
Well, I got 4 of my silliest movie picks out of the way because I sort of felt the draft going that way. And lo, and behold, most of my list is intact. I guess no one here likes in their movies a little bit of motorcycles, recreational drug use, and MARDIS GRAAAS. Oh, and probably one of the best stories ever. That too.
Easy Rider - 1969
Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson. I could stop there. But of course, I won't.
I'm not going to say much about the movie itself here, other than it was a movie we spent a lot of time on in my first Film Appreciation class in college, so I can pretty much lay out every tiny little reference or symbol or action or word that relates to any of the big themes or motifs of the movie. The main one being one's ability to find a place for themselves in their society. In that case, this movie is still very relevant today. There might be a lot less hippies around, but there's plenty of people here trying to identify themselves somehow as a part of America, just like our main character Wyatt and Billy try to do in this film.
What I will say, is how hilarious (or scary, depending on which way you look at it) some of the behind-the-scenes facts of this movie are. First of all, every drug used in the movie (that includes weed, coke, and acid) is represented by its real form, not a fake prop. And much of it, especially the weed and the coke, was actually used by actors in the scenes. If you add in the real alcohol used in scenes, for a better part of the movie every main actor is either drunk or high or both. How the actors, especially Nicholson, continue to deliver these amazing performances I guess will never be known. Heh, I dunno if Hopper did anything good after this or not, so maybe he should've acted high from here on out.
To top it off, several of the speaking-extras in the scenes and all of the non-speaking extras were just selected through the scientific casting process of "let's choose whatever people are nearby where we are shooting." The locals who harass Wyatt and Bill near the end of the movie were selected after they actually had harassed Hopper and Fonda during shooting of a different scene.
Also, most of the crew was acquired through Hopper's many real life hippie connections and the script was made up as they went along. IMDb has this to say:
In addition, most of the effects that showed up in the now famous cemetery acid trip scenes were produced by accident when someone (probably high or drunk) removed the film from the camera too early and exposed some of the slides wrong.
You could say this movie could have invented the phrase "It's better to be lucky than good," but I think that just from one viewing of the movie, you can realize that they were both. Very lucky of course, it could have been a train wreck, but very good too.
Easy Rider - 1969
Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson. I could stop there. But of course, I won't.
I'm not going to say much about the movie itself here, other than it was a movie we spent a lot of time on in my first Film Appreciation class in college, so I can pretty much lay out every tiny little reference or symbol or action or word that relates to any of the big themes or motifs of the movie. The main one being one's ability to find a place for themselves in their society. In that case, this movie is still very relevant today. There might be a lot less hippies around, but there's plenty of people here trying to identify themselves somehow as a part of America, just like our main character Wyatt and Billy try to do in this film.
What I will say, is how hilarious (or scary, depending on which way you look at it) some of the behind-the-scenes facts of this movie are. First of all, every drug used in the movie (that includes weed, coke, and acid) is represented by its real form, not a fake prop. And much of it, especially the weed and the coke, was actually used by actors in the scenes. If you add in the real alcohol used in scenes, for a better part of the movie every main actor is either drunk or high or both. How the actors, especially Nicholson, continue to deliver these amazing performances I guess will never be known. Heh, I dunno if Hopper did anything good after this or not, so maybe he should've acted high from here on out.
To top it off, several of the speaking-extras in the scenes and all of the non-speaking extras were just selected through the scientific casting process of "let's choose whatever people are nearby where we are shooting." The locals who harass Wyatt and Bill near the end of the movie were selected after they actually had harassed Hopper and Fonda during shooting of a different scene.
Also, most of the crew was acquired through Hopper's many real life hippie connections and the script was made up as they went along. IMDb has this to say:
IMDb said:
In addition, most of the effects that showed up in the now famous cemetery acid trip scenes were produced by accident when someone (probably high or drunk) removed the film from the camera too early and exposed some of the slides wrong.
You could say this movie could have invented the phrase "It's better to be lucky than good," but I think that just from one viewing of the movie, you can realize that they were both. Very lucky of course, it could have been a train wreck, but very good too.
