The excitement of Easy Rider came from within: it was Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda's elegy for their own generation of outlaw rebels, a lyrical fantasy of what America might have been and a grim vision of what it is. Hopper, who directed, and Fonda, who produced, star as two motorcycling hippies who, with the proceeds of a monstrous dope sale, take off on an odyssey across America. They discover a land of immense beauty, and towns where a guy can be jailed for parading without a permit and killed for less. Jack Nicholson made himself a star with the supporting part of George Hanson, the alcoholic civil rights lawyer with a memorable tic. With a now classic rock soundtrack and owing a great deal to the editing, Easy Rider is a time capsule evoking the spirit and pace of an era, with its marijuana ups and acid downs. A low-budget sleeper, it caught fire with a generation of Vietnam-era outcasts and would-be outcasts, and spawned a myriad of lesser imitations.