The legendary screen star passed away on Friday (August 16) after suffering respiratory failure due to lung cancer, Same day as Elvis Presley
Confirming his death in a statement, Fonda’s family said: “In one of the saddest moments of our lives, we are not able to find the appropriate words to express the pain in our hearts. As we grieve, we ask that you respect our privacy. And, while we mourn the loss of this sweet and gracious man, we also wish for all to celebrate his indomitable spirit and love of life.”
Tributes gallery and Twits here
Excerpt from The New York Post - Original article by Hannah Frishberg.- Full soundtrack below
“Easy Rider,” the beloved buddy pic that starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as a Harley-riding hippie duo who meet a boozy lawyer, played by Jack Nicholson, in prison.
It’s been 50 years since the movie first hit the big screen, and, in the decades since its release, the movie has become a classic of American cinema.
Here, five facts that even film geeks might not know about it.
In 2009, Peter Fonda confirmed the longstanding rumor that he, Nicholson and Hopper really did inhale during the film’s pot-smoking campfire scene. “Man that stuff burned,” he told ExtraTV. The acid the actors drop in a New Orleans cemetery, however, was faked. “We did not take LSD, no matter what the rumors say,” said Fonda, “You can’t make a movie when you’re ripped like that.”
The ending was supposed to be happy
The final shots of “Easy Rider” were initially conceived to be a poetic sequence showing Wyatt and Billy enjoying the loot from a big score and making off. Maybe they’d “use the money to buy a boat in Key West and sail into
the sunset was the general notion,” Southern told The Paris Review. But, the actual ending is much bleaker: Wyatt and Billy are shot and killed by a passing trucker. “I think for a minute he was still hoping they would somehow beat the system and sail into the sunset with a lot of loot and freedom,” said Southern of Hopper, “But of course, he was hip enough to realize, a minute later, that their death was more or less mandatory.”