Dan Telfer: When the AV Club travels, we always make time to visit pop culture landmarks. If something memorable happened in the world of film, TV, books, or music we want to go there. We’re not just tourists, we’re Pop Pilgrims. On this episode of Pop Pilgrims we visit the cemetery from Dennis Hoppers and of the hippy era classic “Easy Rider.” The gorgeous haunted grounds hosted an iconic scene in which Hopper, along with Peter Fonda and a couple of prostitutes drop acid and get weird. What do you think made them choose this cemetery? Mike Scott: Well if you look at it it's a unique cemetery. This is not your normal cemetery but this is what cemeteries look like in New Orleans. And really, when you look at what Dennis Hopper was trying to do with the movie, the symbolism there is glaring – it's really sort of a eulogy for the ‘60s and for all the lost optimism. And so here they sort of eulogize their trip, their friend, and the ‘60s at the same time. Dan Telfer: In that scene they got naked and were climbing all over the place. How do you think that was perceived by New Orleans at the time? Mike Scott: Well I can tell you – when they came into town, when they shot in town, it was really – it was just like the rest of the shoot – it was sort of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants aesthetic. They didn’t have a script as much as they just had an outline so there was no dialogue. Then they came here and shot here – people were a little horrified to see what was going on here in the cemetery – this is a Catholic-owned and Catholic-run cemetery and so after that, as I understand it, no feature films have been allowed to shoot here. Hopper, he’s a wild man but he was on to something here, the way he would motivate his actors. He asked peter Fonda to imagine a conversation with his deceased mother who committed suicide when Fonda was a boy. Dan Telfer: In “Easy Rider” during the scene that’s filmed here there’s lots of stutter cuts, a lot of visual editing but there’s also a lot of ambient noise. Was that real or – Mike Scott: Yeah, there was construction going on. There’s an elevated overpass that runs right outside the cemetery here and it was being built at the time. And there were pile drivers going hammering in at the pilings for the overpass and so I guess Hopper just recognized it and worked it all into it. Dan Telfer: Has people’s perception of “Easy Rider” changed in New Orleans since it originally came out? Mike Scott: Yeah. In New Orleans there’s a distinct and deep running pride in the city and what the city means and I think the people now sort of understand what Hopper was doing and they don’t take affront really at the use of the cemetery the way they originally did and they see the movie for what it was. End.