‘Easy Rider’: How Jack Nicholson got involved with the “highlight of his life”
Characterised in the film industry by his eccentricity, raw magnetism and untouchable talent, actor Jack Nicholson is a gift to watch on screen every time he graces it. The star has overseen a 50-year career that includes 40 award nominations and 14 wins, with some of his screen appearances appearing in some of cinema’s most significant contributions. Nicholson’s most known work includes The Shining, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Easy Rider.
His acting debut, The Cry Baby Killer, was an exploitative film directed by Roger Corman and released in 1958. The film went under the radar after going out of print, becoming a challenge to find until 2006. Nicholson plays Jimmy Wallace, a seventeen-year-old who believes he has committed manslaughter, leading to a hostage situation and stand-off with the police. The Cry Baby Killer did not manage to turn a profit, and Corman has stated the project was changed dramatically from the initial script he wrote; however, it marked the entry of one of cinema’s most praised actors.
However, it was not until a decade later that Nicholson would work on the film he told TheTalks was the movie highlight of his life. “The first screening of Easy Rider in Cannes, because I had been there before sneaking around. When I was sitting in the screening, I realised that I was actually going to be a movie star.”
A love letter to the hippie movement, Easy Rider is a 1969 film by Dennis Hopper. The story is a component of the counterculture narrative encompassing the Hippie Movement, as our protagonists, Wyatt and Billy, engage in a journey across the country in search of universal and spiritual truth. A classic tale of subversion and iconoclasm. Peter Fonda and Hopper himself star in the film, introducing audiences to a carefree environment that cares little for social norms as established in the immediate drug use. As our review states: “Easy Rider chronicles a modern American Odyssey perpetuated by drugs and the ideals of hippie culture.”
The star shared with Sight and Sound that it was during his time working behind the scenes on the satirical comedy adventure Head, which he wrote and produced alongside Bob Rafelson’s direction, that he heard about this project. “I became involved in that primarily through production. At that time, I was co-producing Head with Bob Rafelson at BBS. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda brought the property in,” Nicholson explains. “They showed it to Bob and myself first. We ushered it through the financing, bringing a deal in and so forth.”
Nicholson appears in the film as George Hanson, a lawyer the protagonists befriend during his overnight jail time for overdoing it on the drink. Hanson accompanies the pair after breaking them out of jail, and it does not take long for him to neglect his rejection of drugs and experiment with substances.
“Then they started shooting in New Orleans, had production problems and had to change crews. And I got in my crew, that I had been working with independently, to make up the nucleus of Dennis’s crew for Easy Rider,” the actor adds. “I don’t know what happened between Dennis and Rip Torn, who was originally supposed to be playing my role, but I was approached by Bert Schneider, I always assumed, as much to oversee the production as to play the part.”
The actor recieved an Academy Award nomination for his role in the film, symbolising a societal shift that releases restrictive attitudes towards substance use. Easy Rider reads as a landmark in counterculture filmmaking that exercises authentic drug use in its dissection of the ’60s societal landscape. The film narrates a developing adolescence as influenced by the hippie movement rising in popularity, tying in with Nicholson’s later trademark of playing figures rebelling against restrictive societal structures.
Nicholson adds that he then went back to working behind the camera on Hopper’s film, expanding his cinematic inputs and testing the waters with many critical areas of filmmaking. “When they were shooting, I didn’t do anything on the production side; I was just there, and mainly paid attention to my acting job,” the star shared. “Afterwards, at everyone’s request, I had a go-through of the editing of the film, from where my character entered to the end. Henry Jaglom had a similar job with the first half of it at the same time. That was the next-to-last stage of editing. It was just a very close collaboration of a lot of people.”
Watch Nicholson’s performance in Easy Rider below.
