‘Easy Rider’ reunion

Press, 21 July 1989, Page 23

‘Easy Rider’ reunion

NZPA-AP Santa Fe, New Mexico The “easy riders,” Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, joined 900 others for a twentieth anniversary reunion and retrospective showing of the classic biker film. About SO motor-cycles were parked outside the Sweeney Convention Centre, in Santa Fe, and Fonda called “Easy Rider” “the best motor-cycle film ever made.” He also called it “one of the greatest westerns of all times.” The SUS2S ($43) a ticket gala drew fans in attire ranging from bell-bottom jeans, black T-shirts, leather vests and chains to Santa Fe chic. Asked how things had changed since 1969, when the movie was released, Fonda said: “Things have got ... worse.”

> Hopper disagreed. I “We’re not at war ... We can all i drink from the same water fountains. I Women have more rights. Blacks and : minorities have more rights. Basically, today, most people have become in- ! volved. But there are still lots of problems, especially inside urban cities. So it’s the same old stuff,” said Hopper. The times may have changed, but Fonda said his values had not, although they were “broader in their base, more articulate in their exposition and fortified by what I see around me. 1 “The attitudes we put together when we wrote and shot ‘Easy Rider’ have been fortified, not rectified,” he said. He said also that he may have lost his idealism, but “I’m much stronger today than I was then.”