The movie scene Jack Nicholson got stoned out of his mind for
The 1969 psychedelic road film Easy Rider is in itself an iconic artefact of the counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern, with Fonda and Hopper both starring alongside Jack Nicholson. Hopper took control of the direction of the movie too.
Easy Rider tells the story of two bikers who travel from Los Angeles through the American Southwest and South on their motorcycles after smuggling and selling cocaine from Mexico. The film charts the American cultural milieu of the time, from the hippies of California to the excess of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana, with the two men, Wyatt and Billy, invariably off their rockers on a range of psychoactive drugs.
The drug use in the film was not entirely fictional, though, and cinematographer László Kovács once admitted (via Best Life Online) that “There were a lot of drugs around the set. There’s no secret about that.” Peter Fonda then backed up the claim, adding, “Everyone had their drug of choice on Easy Rider.”
Fonda went on to explain he and Hopper’s drug of choice was alcohol, although he “smoked a little”. The problem was that smoking weed tended to make Fonda a little paranoid and did not put him in the best shape for actually having to act. The same could not be said, however, for Jack Nicholson.
In the film, Nicholson’s character George tries smoking weed for the first time at the suggestion of Wyatt and Billy. Nicholson, known for his admiration for method acting, wanted to get into George’s headspace as closely as possible. For him, that meant, of course, lighting a real joint as often as he could find the time.
In 1970, Nicholson discussed his on-set smoking in an interview with Time magazine, saying of the film’s famous campfire scene, “I smoked about 155 joints [during shooting]. Keeping it all in mind stoned, and playing the scene straight and then becoming stoned—it was fantastic.”
Kovács later admitted how impressed he was with Nicholson’s ability to ask so well despite being stoned out of his mind. “It was so amazing when we were shooting that campfire scene how much Jack was in control,” he said. “He was so stoned, but he was so great. He remembered every word.”
Check out the famous scene with Nicholson stoned out of his mind in the classic 1969 film Easy Rider below.
