Movie-A-Day #137: Easy Rider (1969).

Today’s birthday boy is the recently departed Dennis Hopper. In 1969 he teamed up with Peter Fonda to make “Easy Rider,” a work of mad genius made by a genius who eventually went a bit mad. It was a work of countercultural rebellion that stuck it to the man, shocked the squares, kick started the first independent film movement and shook up Hollywood. It was the perfect movie at the perfect moment in time, a portrait of America in a state of cultural upheaval. It’s hard to overstate its cultural impact, but even divorced from that, it stands up as a good movie today.