On the seventeenth of October 1969, Naked in the saddle (Easy Rider) exploded onto movie screens through a psychedelic haze.
Filled with rock music, free love, and drug use, this low-budget, improvisational "road movie" vividly captured the spirit of the counterculture of the late sixties, as well as the simmering tension in American society.
The film is about two free-spirited motorcyclists, the mustachioed hippie Billy, played by the film's director Denis Hopper, and the leather-clad Wyatt, played by the film's producer Peter Fonda.
Naked in the saddle begins with Billy and Wyatt smuggling cocaine from Mexico to sell to a dealer in Los Angeles, played by famed music producer Phil Spector (whose interpretation seems even more ominous in light of his 2009 murder conviction).
The two, now full of money, then decide to drive across the US to New Orleans during the Mardi Gras festival.
And as they embark on this odyssey through the vast American landscapes to the sounds of "Born to Be Wild" by Steppenwolf, they meet characters who embody some of the conflicting attitudes dominant in the US at the time, from an alcoholic civil rights lawyer (played by Jack Nicholson) to a corrupt sheriffs, from hippie communities to provincial chauvinists.
Filmmakers paint a picture of a country in turmoil.
The slogan on the posters was: "A man went in search of America. And he couldn't find her anywhere..."
Months before the premiere Naked in the saddle In 1969, Hopper sat down with BBC journalist Philip Jenkins for Line Up.
Dressed in an outfit similar to that of his character Billy, Hopper gave an intriguing, chaotic and occasionally confusing interview, just like the cult film he had just made.
He explained to the BBC that he wanted to "practically make a film about what was happening in America at that moment".
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The 1960s were a tumultuous period for the USA, while the country was going through turbulent and significant cultural changes.
The decade had already seen the civil rights movement's initiative for equality, growing anti-war protests as the Vietnam War escalated, and a series of shocking assassinations of political figures such as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
The generational self seemed to be expanding.
Many baby boomers embraced new music and culture, experimenting with drugs and sex, and often outright rejected the more traditional values and materialism of their parents.
Hopper felt that there was nothing in the cinema that spoke directly to these young people.
There was nothing to show their hopes and fears, how they wanted to live, and how those aspirations opened divisions in American society.
He told the BBC in 1969 that he had not seen many films "that had a social commentary on what was really going on".
"Yes, studios make movies about the American Civil War, they make them about slavery, or they make them about the Korean War, but I don't think they make them about something that is really happening at that moment. Very few people dare to make a movie about it, especially in Hollywood."
Megalomaniac
Naked in the saddle was unorthodox not only in its choice of subject matter, but also in its wildly chaotic shooting style.
With a limited budget of just $400.000 from Columbia Pictures – which meant that Fonda had to occasionally pay the crew out of his own pocket – the production adopted a do-it-yourself approach.
Key to the film's narrative style was the idea of the road as a symbol of freedom and opportunity, so Hopper wanted to film Billy and Wyatt as they drive down a seemingly endless highway.
This type of filming was usually done by hiring a truck with a camera and radio.
Instead, the filmmakers purchased a 1968 Chevy Impala convertible, with the goal of selling the car at the end of filming to recoup some of the money.
Director of Photography Laszlo Kovač then set up the camera in the back on plywood and sandbags, and sat in the back seat filming Fonda and Hopper riding their Harley Davidsons on the open road, giving them hand signals to convey exactly what to do. they work.
The production also saved money by shooting on location instead of building expensive studio sets and shooting scenes in natural light with hand-held cameras, which gave Naked in the saddle an atmosphere of unfiltered authenticity.
But the shooting of the film was far from smooth, especially since Hopper was an extremely unstable personality.
He admitted to the BBC in 1969 that he was blacklisted by Hollywood because of his tendency to quarrel with directors.
"I listened to what was said to me when I respected the man," he said.
"If I didn't respect the man, and most of the time I didn't, then I didn't listen to what I was told."
Now, for the first time, he was the director himself, and eventually had to fight for control over every aspect of the filmmaking process.
At one point, he got into a physical fight with a cameraman who did not want to hand over the footage he had taken.
That wasn't the only "heated disagreement" the director had on set.
Actor Rip Torn was originally hired to play Nicholson, but left the set a few weeks into filming after falling out with Hopper.
The actor successfully sued Hopper for defamation in 1994 when the director claimed that Thorne pulled a knife on him during the fight - saying that, in fact, the truth was quite the opposite.
In an interview with Jenkins, the director did admit that he was "difficult to work with".
Fonda put it much more bluntly when he spoke to the BBC's Will Gompec in 2014: "Hopper was a bit of a megalomaniac to you."
But Hopper took his craft seriously and stayed true to his own vision.
He told the BBC that he was "taught method acting" and that he "shouldn't have preconceived ideas" about what a scene should look like.
When he worked with James Dean as a young actor in A rebel without a cause (1955) and Two (1956), Din told him: "Don't pretend to smoke a cigarette, just smoke it."
Hopper took his advice seriously.
To lend realism and free spontaneity to this counterculture story, he – along with Fonda and Nicholson – took copious amounts of drugs and alcohol during the making of the film.
The scenes were filmed in a documentary style, with – often stunted or staged – actors improvising scenes and dialogues.
Nicholson told Time magazine in 1970 that he "smoked about 155 joints" during numerous versions of the scene in which the two bikers introduce his character George to marijuana.
The real challenge for him, it turned out, was remembering, after all those joints, to play George sober at the very beginning of the scene.
"Remembering all that in a standard, then playing the scene straight, and then becoming a standard - it was fantastic," he said.
Filmmakers took full advantage of the abandonment of the Hayes Code in 1968.
Hollywood's self-imposed guidelines forbade profanity, nudity, realistic violence and drug use, among other things.
When the Codex was replaced by the MPAA rating system, Naked in the saddle made the most of this freedom, and its candid depiction of drug use without conviction helped it become controversial upon publication.
Hopper defended the drug use to the BBC, saying it would be "unrealistic if these two young men in America weren't smoking weed", and argued that their cocaine smuggling was no more immoral than other capitalist ways of making money.
"We're probably all involved in some criminal activity of one kind or another," he said.
And it is important to note that Naked in the saddle they don't want to portray motorcyclists as heroes or even necessarily good people, but only as a reflection of America.
"You know what, I think they're only as good as their leaders, right? I think people are only as good as their leaders," said Hopper.
The film, at times, presents a deeply disturbing picture of the America in which the protagonists live.
It clearly shows the open hostility and brutal violence that can be faced by individuals who are perceived as outsiders.
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New Age
But the way Billy and Wyatt dress, their disillusionment with establishment values, and their search for identity and meaning struck a chord with many young Americans.
Same as the soundtrack Naked in the saddle like a rock and roll jukebox, which managed to evoke the restless spirit of the times.
The songs of Jimi Hendrix, groups such as The Byrds, The Band and others were at first only music that was liked by the film authors.
They were just meant to fill in while Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young worked on a proper soundtrack.
Forwards Naked in the saddle were eventually edited to those songs, meaning that a huge chunk of the film's budget had to end up being spent on licensing their use.
Despite the fact that at first they were shown in only one New York cinema, American youth quickly recognized themselves in Naked in the saddle, which quickly became a critical and commercial hit as a result.
Hopper won the award for best debut film at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969, and Nicholson also won the screenplay for Naked in the saddle they were nominated for an Oscar.
The film earned more than 60 million dollars worldwide.
Hollywood was taken aback by the sudden popularity of the stick-and-string film outside the studio system.
Success Naked in the saddle at the box office helped usher in an era in which studios gave young directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg much more creative control and freedom to experiment.
These directors would later define American cinema in the seventies.
Hopper himself seemed confused by this newfound acceptance in Hollywood, which had previously heartily rejected him.
"It's like being on a rubber band. "Run so far that they put you right back in the middle and suddenly you're in the center surrounded by the establishment," he said.
But he remained cynical about his own status.
"They pat you on the back, love you and hug you to their chests. Until they don't need you anymore, and then they reject you again."
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