This film screened 14th & 15th February 2010.

Bob Rafelson was one of the producers of the late Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, which became a film industry milestone and a statement of the Zeitgeist of ‘going to look for America’ and finding only moral waste and redneck repression. With its soundtrack composed of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Robbie Robertson, Carole King and others, and its fairly constant pot-smoking, Easy Rider became the pop event of its time, its despair and alienation from America merely a reflex gesture. In fact, simple though it might be, its message about the American Dream that had lost its way is both sharply pointed and, literally and metaphorically, takes in a lot of ground. Hopper and fellow biker Peter Fonda play the leads, but in terms of performances, Easy Rider is best remembered as the lift to stardom of Jack Nicholson, who was to become the Outside Man of 1970s American cinema.

This screening is dedicated to the late Dennis Hopper. Peter Walsh, who interviewed him at the IFI in 1996, will introduce it.