Happy 40th Birthday, ‘Easy Rider’

The road trip classic celebrates its 40th anniversary this month, and even though I’ve had my differences with the movie I didn’t want to miss the chance for a birthday shout-out.

“Easy Rider” has a couple of the key ingredients for a great road trip movie (and, for that matter, a great road trip) in spades: delectable scenery for the vicarious traveler, and plenty of contemplative fireside chats between driving sequences—the sorts of conversations that you’d find around a hostel common room, or share with your Couchsurfing host. It’s not a perfect movie, but it helped to define and then spread the idea of finding freedom on the open road. For that, I’m grateful.

Here are a couple of favorite scenes:

First, one of the aforementioned campfire chats, starring a young Jack Nicholson:

And, of course, some serious road trip porn:

Happy birthday, “Easy Rider”!

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