There’s a scene in Easy Rider, the 1969 film that launched a generation of Harley riders, where Jack Nicholson’s character, an alcoholic country lawyer, sits by a campfire with a pair of bikers played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper.Hopper, who has just been run out of a Louisiana diner, slurred for his shoulder-length hair, tells Nicholson that the problem with the country is that “everybody got scared,” that people “think we’re gunna cut their throat or something.” Nicholson disagrees. “Oh, they’re not scared of you,” he says.
“They’re scared of what you represent to ’em.” And what the bikers represent, Nicholson says, “is freedom.”
“What the hell’s wrong with freedom, man?” Hopper says, exhaling smoke from a joint. “That’s what it’s all about.”
“That’s what it’s all about all right,” Nicholson replies. “But talking about it and being it—that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the market place. ’Course don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, ’cause then they’re gunna get real busy killing and maiming to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah they’re gunna talk to you and talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gunna scare ’em.”
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04.29.2025