This film is presented by St. Louis’s long-running cult film series Strange Brew — winner of the 2025 A-List Award for Best Movie Night in St. Louis. Strange Brew programmer Jon Scorfina will provide an introduction.

In Easy Rider, two bikers named Wyatt “Captain America” (Peter Fonda) & Billy (Dennis Hopper) head from California to New Orleansfor the Mardi Gras festival after scoring a large sum of money smuggling cocaine from Mexico. Their cross-country motorcycle quest finds them searching for the true meaning of freedom in the heart of America in the late 1960s. The film was written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern, and directed by Dennis Hopper. Easy Rider co-stars Jack Nicholson who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. Nicholson now credits his standout performance in the film for making him a bona fide movie star. 

Easy Rider is largely responsible for ushering in the New Hollywood movement of the late ’60s through the ’70s in America. Independently produced with a paltry budget of $400,000, the film returned a staggering $60 million at the box office, proving to the major Hollywood studios that low-budget films with young directors and counterculture ideals could yield a major return on investment. Now the film stands as an iconic generational touchstone as well as a snapshot into the late ’60s hippie movement, motorcycle clubs, drug culture and communal lifestyles. In 1998, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

“Easy Rider is the single greatest example of counterculture cinema.” – Quentin Tarantino

Arkadin does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. However, we encourage researching titles to determine if a screening may contain content that could be upsetting to you. Please feel free to contact us for guidance on specific films. Information about content can also be found on Common Sense Media, IMDB and DoesTheDogDie.com, as well as through general internet searches.