Tuesday, July 01, 2025
“Everything is permitted”
[“Riding the morons unlimited”]
By RM
sunday, june 29, 2025 at 12:44:00 a.m. edt
“Everything is permitted”
“...a group [sic] of more than 100 motorcyclists were on a ride…”
And why is this allowed?
“Everything is permitted.”
This is the world we’ve been handed.
Remember The Wild One (1953)? The threat wasn’t the bikers, the fear was of the Average Citizen taking the law into his own hands. God forbid people might stand up and DO something.
Easy Rider, from the already-lawless ‘60s, saw the answer. They were dealt with properly at the end of that movie, by people who were no better than they were.
-RM
N.S.: But Dennis Hopper Peter Fonda, and Terry Southern’s Easy Rider (1969) celebrated the drug dealers who got theirs in the end, while depicting the locals who took out the trash as evil.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Well, we don't agree on this one- I didn't think EASY RIDER "celebrated" its protagonists, just depicted them as empty, aimless people, seeking an alternative to traditional society, but going about it all wrong. (Maybe the musical score made it seem like they were being celebrated- "Born To Be Wild," and etc.) There was even a "bad trip" sequence. And the ending was so (realistically) abrupt, I don't think there was any attempt there to characterize the "road rage" people one way or another, except by their actions. It was all very nihilistic- in a compelling way. Interesting that you didn't care for MIDNIGHT COWBOY either, another movie that depicted the dregs of society in a way that was hardly flattering, though there was some pathos at the end.
I've seen plenty of movies that lionized their repugnant characters, but I didn't find that true of either of these. I like both of 'em.
EASY RIDER actually was derived from a movie Roger Corman made 3 years earlier called THE WILD ANGELS, which also starred Fonda and pretty much launched his career. I saw it for the first time recently and expected something exploitive, but it actually went further than EASY RIDER in depicting its "heroes" as the refuse of a faltering society. (It was written by Roger's ace screenwriter, the brilliant Charles B. Griffith.) Very downbeat, and very successful. (I've been meaning to do a "mini-essay" about the only period in movie history when depressing films with unhappy endings were big box-office hits!)
The depiction of the Hell's Angels, who appeared in the film, was so brutal that, as Corman recalled in his droll low-key manner, they threatened to sue him for a million dollars for slander- "And they also threatened to kill me! ...The good news is, they didn't get the million dollars. AND they didn't kill me!" Roger was A-OK in my book (a much better director than he was given credit for).
-RM
Post a Comment