Actor Peter Fonda, widely known for his role in the movie “Easy Rider”, died on August 16th at 79 suffering from lung cancer. Son of the famous actor Henry Fonda and little brother to Jane he was born in New York but moved to Nebraska with his sister after her mother’s suicide. When he was 11 years old he accidentaly shot himself in the stomach and almost died. Years later during an LSD session he told John Lennon about the incident and used the phrase: “I know what it’s like to be dead”, which ended up in the Beatles song “She Said, She Said”. As a result of a night of alcohol and drugs in Toronto Fonda conceived the concept for Easy Rider: “I understood immediately just what kind of motorcycle, sex, and drug movie I should make next.” Together with Dennis Hopper who co-starred in the film and Terry Southern wrote the script and gathered the money to make the movie. This was the first movie Hopper was directing and the first Fonda was producing with a cost of $400,000 and took more than $16m at the box office, which rose to more than $60m worldwide in the next three years. The impact the movie had in pop culture is well known as well as its soundtrack to our favourite music with Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild” becoming the anthem for both bikers and rockers.
Below, you can watch a very interesting documentary about the movie…
