Editing Easy Rider (section)

===Significance===
[[File:Photography by Victor Albert Grigas (1919-2017) CHICAGO 1250 img 002 (39291637225).jpg|thumb|right|200px|Posters of Peter Fonda on his motorcycle from Easy Rider for sale in a store in [[Old Town, Chicago|Chicago]] circa 1970.]]
Along with ''[[Bonnie and Clyde (film)|Bonnie and Clyde]]'' and ''[[The Graduate]]'', ''Easy Rider'' helped kick-start the [[New Hollywood]] era during the late 1960s and 1970s.<ref name="nytimes">{{cite news | title = Easy Rider (1969) | url = https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/15197/Easy-Rider/overview | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071103010136/http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/15197/Easy-Rider/overview | url-status = dead | archive-date = 2007-11-03 | access-date = 2008-10-18| first=Vincent| department = Movies & TV Dept. | work = [[The New York Times]] | author-link = Vincent Canby | date = 2007 | last=Canby}}</ref> The major studios realized that money could be made from low-budget films made by [[avant-garde]] directors. Heavily influenced by the [[French New Wave]], the films of the so-called "post-classical Hollywood" came to represent a counterculture generation increasingly disillusioned with its government as well as the government's effects on the world at large and the establishment in general.<ref name="nytimes"/> Although [[Jack Nicholson]] appears only as a supporting actor and in the last half of the film, the standout performance signaled his arrival as a movie star,<ref name="nytimes"/> along with his subsequent film ''[[Five Easy Pieces]]'' in which he had the lead role. [[Vice President of the United States|Vice President]] [[Spiro Agnew]] criticized ''Easy Rider'', along with the band [[Jefferson Airplane]], as examples of the permissiveness of the 1960s counterculture.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 |first=James T. |last= Patterson |author-link= James T. Patterson (historian) |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year= 1996 |isbn= 9780195076806 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-bE23kRusDkC&pg=PP780 |access-date= January 15, 2015 }}</ref>

The film's success, and the new era of Hollywood which it helped usher in, gave Hopper the chance to direct again with complete artistic control. The result was 1971's ''[[The Last Movie]]'', which was a notable box office and critical failure, effectively ending Hopper's career as a director for well over a decade.{{citation needed|date=March 2017}}

It also gave Fonda the chance to direct with ''[[The Hired Hand]]'', although he rarely produced again.<ref>{{cite magazine|magazine=Filmink|first=Stephen|last=Vagg|url=https://www.filmink.com.au/peter-fonda-10-phases-acting/|title=Peter Fonda – 10 Phases of Acting|date=October 26, 2019 }}</ref>