In honor of it being the late Gail Gerber’s birthday month, thought I would share an excerpt on how the classic Easy Rider was created from her 2010 memoir Trippin’ with Terry Southern. It was the most talked about section as she refutes most of the bullshit Peter Fonda and the late Dennis Hopper have been shoveling for decades.
https://youtu.be/UjlxqANj68U
Excerpt from “Uneasy Rider” from Trippin with Terry Southern: What I Think I Remember by Gail Gerber with Tom Lisanti
Peter Fonda showed up at the carriage house on East 36th Street one rainy night in November of 1967. The son of Henry Fonda and sister of Jane, Peter gave an impressive Golden Globe-nominated performance as a solider in The Victors (1963) but the studios tabbed him a new romantic lead pairing him with Sandra Dee in the corny Tammy and the Doctor (1963) and with Sharon Hugueny in The Young Lovers (1964). Fonda was saved from becoming another Troy Donahue when American International Pictures asked him to step in at the last minute as a replacement for actor George Chakiris who balked at doing his own motorcycle riding in Roger Corman’s The Wild Angels (1966). Peter played Heavenly Blues the leader of a local Hell’s Angels motorcycle club chapter. The film was an immediate hit and suddenly a long-haired Peter Fonda was cool in the eyes of the youth culture. Signed to do two more films for AIP, Fonda next starred as a TV commercial director who decides to experiment with LSD in The Trip (1967). He had one more film owed on his contract and that’s when he knocked on our door.
Terry had known Peter Fonda from the time he arrived in Hollywood in 1964 when it was a sleepy town in the doldrums between cinematic highs, and the children of the great stars of another era were trying to develop careers … or not. Terry and I would spend time at the Malibu home of Bobby Walker where we met and became friendly with Peter.
Terry was expecting Peter when he turned up at our doorstep on that chilly autumn night. While Terry was in Rome a few weeks prior he had lunch with Peter who was making a movie for Roger Vadim and where he shared with Terry an idea for a film that came to him in a hotel room in Toronto. Per Terry it was first about two daredevil racecar drivers being exploited by greedy promoters but then morphed into a tale about two bikers who score some dope, go on a road trip, and have a series of “interesting incidences” when Peter realized that he owed American International Pictures one more biker film.
Terry was very enthusiastic about the project but Peter felt he wouldn’t have enough in the budget to pay Terry’s fee to write the script. After I let Peter into our home he reiterated the plot once again to Terry and said he had a title for the movie, something like The Loners. Terry, sitting on our golden couch, raised his hand to indicate a marquee, and said, “Why not call it Easy Rider.” Terry once again expressed great interest in writing the screenplay. As I remember, which differs from Peter’s recollection, the rest of the conversation went something as follows:
Peter: “We can’t afford you Terry. Can you do it on deferment?”
Terry: “I can’t, but I’ll do it for scale and a percentage. Who is going to direct?”
Peter: “Dennis Hopper.”
Terry: “Are you sure!?!”
Dennis had never directed before and had such a bad reputation at this time. Despite his trepidation about Hopper, Terry agreed with the understanding of receiving a percentage of the profits and was to come up with the “interesting incidences.” Fonda was pleased, and rushed out into the night. This was the era of oral agreements and handshake deals, and Terry had no reason to doubt Peter.
Despite the fact that he had co-authored such classic movies as Dr. Strangelove, The Loved One, The Cincinnati Kid, and Barbarella, Terry wasn’t getting any offers in the U.S. at this time. I thought it was a little strange, (soon we would learn that the FBI had a hand in Terry not working) but was not involved in his business. I assumed he had smart New York and Los Angeles people looking after his “best interests,” but it seems that they were looking out for their own welfare, where Terry only thought of the next project. Terry said to me once, “An agent never got me a job, but was always there to take their percentage.”
Peter returned after the holidays and moved into the monk-like half furnished room on the third floor. He and Terry finally got down to business, hired a typist from a typing pool in Washington D.C who came to the house, and started on the series of “interesting incidences.” They worked nonstop all day for about a month, Terry with his yellow pad and pencil, and Peter pacing around the living room—the better to think. The typist would come by about five o’clock in the afternoon and type up the pages, triple spaced, and then Terry would work on the script some more into the wee hours of the night.
One night, very late, Peter had gone out on the town. Terry continued to work with the typist. They finished up and were just talking while I made drinks. The typist mentioned that she had done a lot of typing for the government, and that these classified documents she was working on had to do with how there are alien people from outer space walking around amongst us, and working for the government. They looked just like us, and had infiltrated the highest offices, and had blended right in.
After she left, Terry got right to work on it and incorporated this into a scene he wrote with his good friend Rip Torn in mind. The part was that of the “Faulkner-like” country lawyer eventually played by Jack Nicholson in the movie. As Wyatt and Billy sit around a campfire with the lawyer getting stoned, he regales the bikers with this conspiracy theory about the government covering up the existence of aliens. Terry showed the scene to Rip and asked if he would do it. Rip was busy with rehearsals for his new play called The Cuban Thing, which coincidentally was the same play I had auditioned for but didn’t get. Rip said he would try to do the movie if his schedule worked out.
Eventually Dennis Hopper, who was to direct Easy Rider, arrived. Early in his career Hopper was being compared to James Dean. A confrontation with legendary director Henry Hathaway on the set of From Hell to Texas in 1958 pretty much blackballed him from the film industry though he remained active on television. Terry had met Dennis in 1965 when he was hired by Vogue to do a magazine piece on Hopper’s then-wife Brooke Hayward, daughter of the Broadway producer Leland Hayward. Dennis was not working as an actor at the time, but as a photographer. They had a house in the Hollywood Hills, and Dennis had quite a collection of contemporary art. Terry entitled his article, “The Loved House of the Dennis Hopper’s.”
We stayed friendly with Brooke and Dennis (Terry, always with the nicknames, called him “Den”), and we’d go to the house for dinner. Brooke would serve something wonderful and wisely go to bed. Dennis and Terry would retire, with drinks in hand, to the living room, which had a disconcerting dentist’s chair. I would find a cozy sofa and watch Dennis and Terry talk. Dennis would expound on his idea of how Shakespeare should be spoken, and rant on about a film he wanted to direct called The Last Movie, which he eventually managed to make. Terry loved madness and people behaving badly (and you couldn’t get any madder or badder than Hopper). Terry would draw this behavior out, and then go home and write “fiction.”
When Dennis showed up at our house in New York we let him stay in Nile’s room, which he complained about and rudely called “a closet.” I tried to stay out of the way as best I could. Dennis was there for about two weeks, and at night he and Peter would be pacing around my living room, gesturing, and throwing out ideas between passing joints between the three of them. Though Terry was a martini man he would just hold the joint and pass it along most times. Somebody had to stay straight to do the writing so Terry sat with his pencil and a long yellow pad on our golden couch, scribbling away. He would hand the pages to the typist and she would type them up immediately. Dennis would rant and rave, using a lot of four-letter words, and the typist would break into tears, and run sobbing out into the night. Terry would have to call the typing pool the next day, and get another typist. Terry suggested that they change the “drug of choice” from marijuana to cocaine, which was not in fashion yet, because pot was too bulky to be carrying on the motorcycles. Dennis thought that running the credits upside down might be interesting, and he also whined about why the two characters had to die.
Terry loved collaborating with other people. He always felt that two heads were better than one when creating a story or screenplay. Terry was really in his element sharing concepts with Peter and Dennis. He just loved to work in this free-for-all fashion with people yelling out story ideas while nestled on the sofa he jotted down the better ones in pencil on his yellow legal pad. Peter once remarked that Terry agreed to work on Easy Rider on a handshake “just for the sake of having the freedom to play with an idea that appealed to his individual nature.” This statement is oh-so-true.
Terry had the scripts neatly bound and held on to the original. He handed copies to Peter and Dennis, and off they went back to Hollywood. Terry also gave a script to Rip Torn who retained his copy after all these years.
Peter, who owed American International Pictures one more movie, took the script to studio heads James Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff. Peter and Dennis were trying to use this biker movie to make a more interesting statement about the current state of affairs in the U.S. but also as a springboard to launch Dennis’ directing career. But due to the proposed budget and the rampant drug use, AIP turned it down to Sam Arkoff’s forever regrets. Fonda then made an agreement with Bert Schneider who, along with director Bob Rafelson, brought The Monkees to television and produced their movie Head in 1968. Bert had a production deal with Columbia Pictures, which wound up distributing the movie. However, there was a stipulation as the studio gave Dennis and Peter about $40,000 to go to New Orleans Mardi Gras to shoot some test footage, which was eventually used in the film, to see if they could really pull off making a movie.
This shoot was scheduled to commence in March. At the last minute someone was bright enough to check and discovered Mardi Gras that year was in February so the rush was on to get to New Orleans for the parade, where one of the last scenes was to be shot in a graveyard. It was Peter’s soliloquy, and a photo exists of Terry and Peter discussing it, with Fonda clutching the script.
Terry and I flew down to New Orleans and found the cast and crew settled in a crummy motel at the airport. We caught the end of the parade and then went to the graveyard for Peter’s scene. When night came there was no crew to light the set. In the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind, a crew member said that there was so much chaos someone’s girlfriend had to hold the Sun Gun. I was that person. I had no idea what a Sun Gun was when I volunteered to help while standing late at night in a boggy, soggy New Orleans cemetery. Some guy’s voice came out of the dark, and said, “We have no one to hold the Sun Gun.” Trying to be helpful, I chirped, “I’ll do it!” Before I knew what was happening, a couple of burly guys strapped this giant, heavy battery pack around my waist, which caused me to sink further into the bog. I was to hold this pole the size of a broomstick with a bright light on the end and keep it steady on Peter’s face while he did his monologue. This was a lengthy speech and it took all night to shoot. I tried so hard to keep the pole steady, while I continued to sink further and further into the misty marsh. Peter was emoting like mad, and the crew was concentrating, knowing this was going to be a one-take shot that they only had one chance to get. Luckily, we got it. If not, I’m afraid that I might have disappeared completely into the bog never to be heard from again.
Everyone slept all the next day, which is odd for people who are supposed to be shooting a movie. In the morning I went wandering, and found a classic New Orleans funeral. I saw the Dirge and later the joyful exit, and the Second Line with umbrellas in the light drizzle of rain. Later that afternoon, we gathered in someone’s room in the motel. It had been raining all day, and Dennis insisted he needed the camera to film the neon lights reflected in the puddles. No one was about to give Dennis a camera. I went back to our room and didn’t see the camera go through the motel’s plate glass window.
The next day I told Terry that I was going back to New York. I returned home to East 36th Street, and a few days later Terry showed up. He looked perturbed but was tight-lipped about it. When I asked him what went on down there after I left, all he would manage to bark out was a “Hrrrmph.” Actress Karen Black, who played a New Orleans prostitute in the film, said Dennis’ behavior became so unruly that Terry turned to him and said, “The cacophony of your verbiage is driving me insane.” There was nothing more to shoot in New Orleans that I know of, and I guess they all de-camped. The filming was finished for the moment. Peter and Dennis returned to Hollywood with the screenplay to raise the rest of the money. Everyone in the film business knows you can’t get financing without a script.
Later, in the early summer after Columbia agreed to release Easy Rider, there was a meeting in a restaurant on the Upper East Side to discuss shooting the rest of the movie with Peter, Dennis, Terry, Rip Torn, myself, and a director whose name I can’t remember. Dennis was late so we went ahead and ordered drinks and appetizers. Terry was sitting on my left and Dennis’ place was on my right. I was the only woman at the table. Rip was on the other side of the round table, and so was Peter, who was talking to a couple of pretty girls sitting nearby. Dennis soon showed up in full Easy Rider regalia—long hair, bushy mustache, and fringed buckskin jacket. He didn’t sit down but continued to stand on my right at his place at the table. Agitated, he exclaimed, “Man, I’ve been lookin’ for shootin’ locations in Texas and man, I’m lucky I’m still alive—those mother-fuckin’, redneck bastards!” He then spotted Rip across the table and said, “Hey Rip, you’re from fuckin’ Texas, aren’t you?” Rip replied, “Yes, but don’t judge all bastards by me.” Dennis continued his ranting and, still standing, picked up the knife at his place setting and leaned across the table, brandishing the knife at Rip. Rip, who had been in the army and was a tough Texan, didn’t even get up, but leaned over the table, grabbed Dennis’ wrist, and twisted. The knife clanked to the table. Peter, who had been leaning back in his chair and balancing on two legs so he could flirt with the girls, fell over backwards. Rip, controlling his temper, offered to meet Dennis outside to finish the fight, and left the restaurant. Dennis sat down, acting as if nothing had happened, and continued to dominate the conversation all through dinner.
Needless to say, Rip refused to work with Dennis Hopper and backed out of the movie. He not only lost out on a memorable movie role but unfortunately for Rip the controversial play he was starring in The Cuban Thing about a Cuban family during Fidel Castro’s revolution closed after opening night. During previews a Cuban resistance group bombed the theatre in protest of the play.
Scrambling to find a replacement for Rip, Peter purportedly talked with William Wellman, Jr. about a role but when Wellman learned that Dennis was co-starring and directing he opted to work in a Bob Hope comedy instead. Finally, they found someone who would work with Dennis—Jack Nicholson who was recommended by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider. It was a star-making role for Jack, which was not surprising as Terry wrote wonderful dialogue for the character and Jack brilliantly brought to life this straight laconic Southern lawyer who smokes marijuana for the first time. At this point Terry had moved onto his next endeavor while Peter and Dennis traveled the country filming Easy Rider from Terry’s script…