The seminal 1969 movie Henry Fonda couldn’t stand: “The film is inaccessible”
Like many other ageing holdovers from the ‘Golden Age’, Henry Fonda was unsure of what he was seeing when the industry evolved into its new, daring, and for the old-timers, daunting, ‘New Hollywood’ era.
By the late 1960s, he knew that he’d need to reinvent himself to remain relevant. Cary Grant had retired, his long-time best friend James Stewart had drastically scaled back his workload, and John Wayne was still making westerns and action flicks because he resolutely refused to move with the times.
That led Fonda toward the first villainous role of his career in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, and it was enough to make everyone wonder why he hadn’t turned to the dark side long before then. The actor was incredible as the sadistic Frank, but it was also the last great film he ever made.
Yes, he won a long-awaited Oscar almost a decade and a half later when he starred alongside his daughter Jane and Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond, and he definitely deserved it, but the central trio are so good in their respective roles that the picture is much more of an acting showcase than a classic picture in its own right, but feel free to disagree.
The year after he’d broken bad in Leone’s epic, Hollywood changed forever. The signs were already there, but it wasn’t until Easy Rider arrived in 1969 that it became undeniable. The counterculture classic turned convention on its head by appealing to a massive audience, capturing the mood and feelings of an emerging generation, something that Fonda couldn’t seem to wrap his head around.
You’d think that he’d at least have a better understanding of what Easy Rider was and what it was supposed to be, since he was closer to the project than most 60-something actors, what with his son Peter producing the movie, co-writing it, or not, according to Dennis Hopper, and taking top billing among the cast.
Then again, the father and son pair weren’t especially close, with the younger Fonda lamenting the distance between himself and his old man, although Henry and Jane did manage to get a sense of closure to their relationships with Henry by the time of his death. Still, since they were both in the industry, it made sense that the veteran would get an early glimpse at Easy Rider.
“I had him come down and look at an early cut,” Peter recalled. “My dad watched it, and then I went over the next day to his house. He was very serious. He said, ‘Look, son, I know you have all your eggs in this basket, and I’m worried about it because the film is inaccessible.'” He couldn’t have guessed how wrong he was, and the fact the film recouped its budget more than 150 times over at the box office tells you everything you need to know about how accessible it was.
“We don’t see where you’re going and why,” the elder Fonda tried to insist. “I just don’t think many people will get it.” Again, many people got it, and many people loved it, too. Obviously, Easy Rider wasn’t geared toward his generation, and his first impression wasn’t that of someone who was confident their sprog had just created a generational classic.
