Easy Rider

Though inescapably cemented in the hippie zeitgeist of 1969, Easy Rider remains a powerful expression of the open highway’s iconic appeal, and perhaps the quintessential American road movie. Peter Fonda and director Dennis Hopper star as Wyatt and Billy, two longhaired motorcycle dudes who try and use the profit from a cocaine deal to “find America,” but find mostly disappointment. The film led Jack Nicholson (who steals the show as an attorney the duo encounters) out of the ghetto of cheap Roger Corman films and set him on the road to major stardom, which he definitively achieved with the following year’s Five Easy Pieces.