On May 3rd, Dennis Hopper’s 1969 counterculture/road movie masterpiece EASY RIDER is riding onto Blu Ray from the Criterion Collection. BUY FROM AMAZON
Captain America (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) are drug dealing hippies who sell a cache of coke to fund a road trip to Mardi Gras. As the two make their way across the highways and bi-ways of the country they encounter a variety of colorful characters, some good, some bad. Jack Nicholson, who was a veteran of B-movies at the time, co-stars as George Hanson, a drunk lawyer who becomes fast friends with Billy and Captain America. His eccentric and lovable personality really is a main highlight of this movie. EASY RIDER marked the end of the 60s peace and love era, but also kicked off what is known as the New Hollywood period that ushered in a whole new group of amazing, daring filmmakers. It is one of the all time greatest road movies and a look at the changing times in which it was made.
SPECIAL FEATURES
• Restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography László Kovács, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Alternate 2.0 and 5.1 surround soundtracks, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray
• Two audio commentaries, one from 2009, featuring actor-director-writer Dennis Hopper, and the other from 1995, featuring Hopper, actor-writer Peter Fonda, and production manager Paul Lewis
• Born to Be Wild (1995) and “Easy Rider”: Shaking the Cage (1999), documentaries about the making and history of the film
• Television excerpts showing Hopper and Fonda at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969
• Interview from 2010 with BBS Productions cofounder Steve Blauner
• Theatrical trailers
• An essay by film critic Matt Zoller Seitz
