The Parallel Lives

Columbia Pictures released “Easy Rider” on July 14, 1969, fifty-five years ago last Sunday.

I missed seeing it that summer, because I was busy on the farm driving a 92 Massey Harris combine in wheat harvest. I missed the film later, because I was busy my sophomore year in high school running here, there and everywhere: cross country, track, and basketball.

I admit. I have never watched Easy Rider. Other things have crowded out my time.

The film was a runaway success, grossing $60 million, but only cost between $360,000 and $400,000 to shoot, plus another million for licensed music tracks that played throughout.

The songs included: “Born to Be Wild,” by Steppenwolf; “Wasn’t Born to Follow,” by the Byrds; “Groovin,” by the Young Rascals; “With a Little Help From My Friends,” by Joe Cocker; and “Nights in White Satin,” by the Moody Blues.

The actor Peter Fonda produced “Easy Rider,” the actor Dennis Hopper directed it, and Terry Southern wrote the screenplay, along with help from Fonda and Hopper. In the movie, Peter Fonda plays the part of Wyatt, aka Captain America, and Dennis Hopper plays Billy.

Astride chopper motorcycles, sporting lots of facial hair, and bedecked in a U.S. flag, Wyatt and Billy leave the southwest part of the country and head east, aiming for the Mardi Gras.

In New Mexico, police throw the pair into jail, until a young attorney named George Hanson bails them out, played by Jack Nicholson. George Hansen is a straight guy with a white shirt and tie, an establishment guy, even though he drinks to excess.

George finds his place on the back of Wyatt’s motorcycle, ditches his tie, and leaves town.

The film stands yet today as the counter-culture film of the age, an anti-establishment statement of the 1960s and 1970s. “When George Hanson left town, the country did likewise.”

“Rotten Tomatoes” said of the film, “Edgy and seminal, Easy Rider encapsulates the dreams, hopes, and hopelessness of 1960’s counterculture.”

The Academy Awards nominated Jack Nicholson for Best Supporting Actor. Fonda, Hopper, and Southern were nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Yet, none earned an Oscar.

Jack Nicholson did earn an Oscar for Best Actor in the 1975 movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” I was then in college, and still busy, now studying, but I did go see that movie.

To the best of my recollection, I have only met one celebrity in my life, one, that is, whom I conversed with person to person, and that was Jack Nicholson.

Three years ago this next week, my wife and I decided to take a quick one-hour flight to Durango, Colorado. On July 17, 2021, on the streets of Durango, surrounded by hundreds of tourists, I opened the door to a shop to allow my wife to enter, looked up, and saw Jack.

I ran after him, caught his attention, and asked, “Is your name Jack?” He nodded his head. I plunged ahead, “Are you Jack Nicholson?” He nodded a second time, as I backed away.

My wife and I saw him and his girlfriend again that day at a pizza shop, where we all ate lunch, but not together, and a third time in the lobby of the Strater Hotel, where my wife and I were staying in downtown Durango.

Jack explained to me that he and his girlfriend were driving to Arizona but veered north to the cooler Colorado mountains.

I took three pictures of Jack Nicholson that day, and in one, he holds his girlfriend’s hand.

Three months later, in October, Jack disappeared from the public’s eye. By then, he was eighty-four years old, and had ceased appearing in movies. It was rumored he could no longer memorize his lines. Jack’s last film, his eightieth, was “How Do You Know,” filmed in 2010.

Dennis Hopper died on May 29, 2010, at 74. Peter Fonda died on August 16, 2019, at 79.

At 87, Jack Nicholson, the Irishman, the ultimate party animal, still an “Easy Rider,” lives on, at 12850 Mulholland Drive, an easy five-mile drive due north of the Beverly Hills Hotel.