Easy Rider - 1969

Easy Rider Poster
27 in. x 40 in.
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Easy Rider (1969) is the late 1960s "road film" tale of a search for freedom (or the illusion of freedom) in a conformist and corrupt America, in the midst of paranoia, bigotry and violence. Released in the year of the Woodstock concert, and made in a year of two tragic assassinations (Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King), the Vietnam War buildup and Nixon's election, the tone of this 'alternative' film is remarkably downbeat and bleak, reflecting the collapse of the idealistic 60s. Easy Rider, one of the first films of its kind, was a ritualistic experience and viewed (often repeatedly) by youthful audiences in the late 1960s as a reflection of their realistic hopes of liberation and fears of the Establishment.

The iconographic, 'buddy' film, actually minimal in terms of its artistic merit and plot, is both memorialized as an image of the popular and historical culture of the time and a story of a contemporary but apocalyptic journey by two self-righteous, drug-fueled, anti-hero (or outlaw) bikers eastward through the American Southwest. Their trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans takes them through limitless, untouched landscapes (icons such as Monument Valley), various towns, a hippie commune, and a graveyard (with hookers), but also through areas where local residents are increasingly narrow-minded and hateful of their long-haired freedom and use of drugs. The film's title refers to their rootlessness and ride to make "easy" money; it is also slang for a pimp who makes his livelihood off the earnings of a prostitute. However, the film's original title was The Loners.

Chinatown - 1974

Chinatown, Faye Dunaway, Jack Nicholson, 1974 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.
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Chinatown (1974) is a superb mystery thriller detective private and modern film noir. His original screenplay by Robert Towne is winning a survival which honors the best of Hollywood film noir from the pen of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler in the '30s and '40s. The film has refused to provide a slogan, instead of choosing images with words on his poster, which featured in the Art Deco of the 40s, the detective - his back facing the viewer, to smoke a cigarette, the smoke from to form the face of heroin, meaning creation, mood, and symbolism of the film without uttering a single sentence.

The film is a blend of mystery, romance, suspense and hard boiled detective / film noir genre elements - especially embodied in The Maltese Falcon (1941) (by director John Huston acting in this film) and The Big Sleep (1946 ). This revisionist film noir was the first production from the legendary Paramount Studios head (and former actor), Robert Evans, a flamboyant Hollywood figure who later in 1994 published an autobiography, juicy, stays for children in the photo that been made in a documentary film in 2002.

The film marks the return of French Polish director Roman Polanski in Hollywood five years after the gruesome murders Manson 1969 that claimed the life of his wife, actress Sharon Tate. Polanski chose to use a dark end rather than the final with more hope in the original script, probably because of the tragedies of his life. Only a few years later, in 1978 he would be charged and convicted of statutory rape in 1977 (and drugged) of a young girl of 13 years (later identified as Samantha Geimer), while for star / actor Jack Nicholson (absent at the time), and had to flee to Europe as a fugitive. This was the last film Polanski made on site in the United States.

Screenwriter Robert Towne was founded in part on a real scandal Los Angeles in the early 20th century (the story of the infamous 1908 Owens Valley "rape" scandal and Land San Fernando Valley-grab by speculators). The character of the film, Hollis Mulwray was loosely from the Los Angeles real life water engineer William Mulholland (Director General of the Los Angeles Water Works and Supply), which has orchestrated the purchase of water rights and water piping in the Sierra Nevada in Los Angeles by an aqueduct which crosses the north-precious now San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. The character's name was an anagram Hollis Mulwray clever for "Mulholland". The bad character of Noah Cross was a reference to the Bible, Noah.