Peter Fonda, the Oscar-nominated ‘Easy Rider’ actor who became a counterculture hero, has died at age 79 https://t.co/vly2LF1NnI pic.twitter.com/71DUY3hxSC
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) August 16, 2019
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Brachiator
A repost from earlier
Fonda was 79 years old. Somehow seems too young. I associate him with the 60s and rebellion.
A little tidbit from his biography
Lot of discussion recently about Woodstock, the Dylan concert at the Isle of Wight in 1969. Fonda and Easy Rider, definitely part of the times.
And it’s funny. It feels as though we are going to need a new spirit of rebellion, that we are at another cultural and social turning point.
?BillinGlendaleCA
The “she” in The Beatles song “She Said, She Said” was Peter Fonda. He and Lennon were tripping on acid and Fonda kept on on saying “I know what it’s like to be dead”.
NotMax
The average of the ages of the three big names in Easy Rider at the time of its release was over 31, a decade or more older than most of its prime audience. Pre-boomers, the lot of them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: The ’60s were 50 years ago.
@NotMax:
Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin, I could go on and on….
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@NotMax:
Jack Nicholson was in Easy Rider. Other than that, I’ve never watched it. I’ve seen parodies of the “Born to be Wild” segment with the motorcycle.
So many people want to blame Boomers for the ills of the world, and many of them are, but more often than not, the real culprits are the wealthy of several of generations
J R in WV
Quite a movie, Easy Rider. I’m sure I was high when the ending happened riht in front of me. Terrible ending!
Easy Rider, indeed. !!! ; – /
lol chikinburd
Will always remember him for his turn on one of the best ever episodes of Space Ghost: Coast To Coast. Buzz Aldrin was on that one as well.
dsc
Easy Rider was written and produced by Peter Fonda as well
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s funny. Many of the progressive and important people we associate with the 60s were often from older generations than the Boomers. Most of the Boomer-Hippies sold out later on, going from Yippies to Yuppies. In fact, a pretty famous hippie became a Nixon fan fairly early on in the early 70s and then became a stock trader. I can’t remember his name atm and can’t find it via Google
rikyrah
RIP ??
BlueDWarrior
It is interesting to watch the icons of youth age up, out, and eventually shuffle off this mortal coil.
I don’t know how I honestly feel, when it is time for the icons of the 1990s and the early 2000s to hit ages 40, 60, and beyond.
Omnes Omnibus
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: If you are referring to Jerry Rubin, I am not sure that he ever became a Republican or a Nixon fan, He certainly did become a successful business man in the ’80’s though.
You may want to find a brush that is a bit narrower.
BlueDWarrior
@Omnes Omnibus: yeah I take it the amount of true hippies and amount of people who eventually became yuppies were about the same.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, Jerry Rubin. And yeah, I was probably being too general. Some did and some didn’t. Life marches on, after all. Most Boomers were not hippies either, despite the popular perception of later years.
smike
@BlueDWarrior:
True enough. Perceptions and reality vary. In the late sixties I was considered a hippie (Texas) because I was bearded with shoulder length hair. When I went to California I was viewed as somewhat less than that, and rightfully so. I also realized that many, if not most, college undergrad long-hairs were headed to business school. Fun times.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Omnes Omnibus:
There you go again with that British style understatement.
ola azul
@Brachiator:
And these children that FoxNews spits on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to FoxNews’consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going thru
Omnes Omnibus
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Off the top of my head, there aren’t a lot of musical icons who are really of the generation they are associated with. Kurt Cobain fits. Eddie Vedder doesn’t. Dre, Tupac, and Biggie do, but not Chuck D. Dre is right on the edge. Just examples – I am sure that people can dig up others going each way.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
I mention it only because so many people pigeonhole or think of the movie as being about disaffected youths somewhat yoounger than that.
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
At the time it was groundbreaking in being a release from a major studio (Columbia) with a story reflecting the ongoing movements against narrow conformity. Plus it showed drug use (and dealing) in a non-negative light. Also at the time, great soundtrack but mediocre film overall. I expect it hasn’t aged well.
And where was the place Fonda and Hopper’s characters had plans to eventually end up and settle? Florida, hardly a seething center of the counterculture. ;)
Brachiator
Peter Fonda was talented but, like Michael Douglas and Frank Sinatra Jr, was overshadowed by an immensely famous and talented parent. Michael Douglas found fame as a tv actor and Oscar winning producer of the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest before his own film acting career took off. Fonda also finally won accolades for his acting later in his career.
I think it was easier for Jane Fonda to be successful early on because she was not being compared to a parent who was the same gender. She didn’t have to compete with a famous mother.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Bowie was a boomer.
Steeplejack (phone)
The Byrds, “Ballad of Easy Rider.”
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Yeah, other than unity in opposing the war, the counterculture was anything but monolithic.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Actually, I think most of the glam associated bands of the 70s were of their generation. I am categorizing loosely here, but I would say that the only people coming out of that genre who could be seen as iconic were Bowie, Bryan Ferry, and Marc Bolan.
Steeplejack (phone)
Steppenwolf, “The Pusher.”
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Nobody was going to give a 20 year old money to make a movie. Also, most studio executives were much older than Fonda.
But there is overlap between the up and coming generation and their heroes. Scott McKenzie, who sang the counter culture anthem San Francisco, was 28 in 1967. John Phillips, who wrote the song, was 32.
By comparison, Frank Sinatra was 52 in 1967.
ola azul
@Omnes Omnibus:
Lived experience is ever resistant to rigid codification. Thankfully. One a the reasons I loves me some aphoristical philosophers but eschew — ESCHEW, goddammit! — systemic philosophers who wanna gimme a grand unified theory of any-fucking-thing.
It’s like the differnce betwixt a priori (“God exists, therefore [my hobbyhorse can ride]”) vs. a posteriori (from empirical observation, one can derive thus) thinking.
One way a looking at the world lives by the faulty predicate syndrome, n t’other strives to determine truths by assimilating facts and relationships and extrapolating.
A priori (conservative): “Trump ain’t guilty. Let’s make a case to conform to that premise!”
A posteriori (liberal): “Trump is been demonstrably guilty in every-single-fucking-instance in which he has been scrutinized, not by partisan rancor, but indicted by his own actions. Apparently he’s guilty as fuck!”
NotMax
@Brachiator
She was the better actor, IMHO. Even so, took her a long time to break out of the hairsprayed to the max, push-up bra-ed manchasing roles she was stuck with.
mrmoshpotato
@lol chikinburd: Oh Space Ghost! Woo hoo!
“I found my toothbrush marinating in the toilet this morning.”
NotMax
@Brachiator
Scott McKenzie stalked me (as far as I was ever able to determine, non-sexually – want to be upfront about that) for years while and after he was trying a comeback tour during the 70s. Middle of the night phone calls from him were a thing for a time, not to mention the occasions when I ran into him professionally.
NotMax
@NotMax
Cross-country middle of the night phone calls, BTW, which back then were expensive.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Jane Fonda’s raw talent was recognized fairly early.
She was 23.
She was wild and funny and not hairsprayed to the max in Cat Ballou (1965) and received her first Oscar nomination for her non glamorous role in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969).
ola azul
@NotMax:
If it were non-sexual stalkment, expect there’sa inneresting 6th degree a sep tale that ain’t yet been told.
Your cue, if willing.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
1. Buy stock in phone company.
2. Pick up phone.
3. Muffle receiver speaker.
4. PROFIT!
frosty
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Boomer here, wannabe hippie (thanks for spelling it right!). I had the longish hair and bell bottom jeans though. And tie-dye!! Did not have the nerve to drop out — my parents were paying my tuition after all*.
* which I am fortunate enough to do for my kids, too.
frosty
@Omnes Omnibus:
Chuck Berry doesn’t fit. The Beatles were all (except maybe George) 5 to 10 years older than their fans. I could go on, but it’s late. :-)
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Holy shit! We’re you in the music industry?
Omnes Omnibus
@frosty: I actually started this with ’60s groups including the Beatles.
frosty
@Brachiator:
Yes she was, and Lee Marvin was great as both characters. I need to watch this one again.
frosty
@Omnes Omnibus: Duh. I’ll have to read closer before commenting. (Unless that’s a FYWP thing and I go into moderation LOL)
Jack Canuck
Have to say, my favourite turn by Peter Fonda was playing Van Helsing in the extremely weird but very fun 1994 vampire flick Nadja. Went to see it at the Vancouver Film Festival that year and spend five minutes with my friends trying to figure out if it was meaning to be serious or not. Then a line came that made it clear they were having a great time sending up the whole genre, and we spent the rest of the film being almost the only people in the theatre laughing our heads off.
frosty
@lol chikinburd: OK, Space Ghost, That was weird!!!
ola azul
Off topic, but what the hell.
Second king opener only lasted a coupla days (quota), got nearly 1,400 pounds a big bumptious kings, fat n beautiful, fishing deep (72 fathoms, which made me purty anxious, will confess freely, as a lotta current swirling can produce a tangle of wire at 72 fathoms, which can be expensive and possibly dangerous; only hadda mend two wires on the fly with splices, which is allus an act off faith when you cut the wire with a 70-pound lead onnit and assume the snap is gonna hold till it’s mended).
Anyways, left Cape Edgecumbe to deliver to a tender in West Crawfish, ’bout 4 1/2 hours away. Pullt gear at dark and started run. Whilst whistling along in the dark atta safe and sane 7 knots per, heard the explosive rises of what I reckoned to be Dahl porpoises. One of my fave sightings in the world are Dahl porpoises (barrel-chested black-n-white mini-orca looking critters that, like sea otters, seemingly just loves to have fun). Generally, I runs at night with the lights off (easier to see; turn ’em on to be *seen*, mostly), but I turned ’em on to see if it’d bring the hoped-for sighting round to the bow. It did.
Had Dahls riding bow-wake like inverted surfers and zipping how they do all round the bow. Purplish phosphorescence in the water, so they’s purple streaks of brilliance in the gloaming light. Saw ’bout a dozen, frolicking. Put onna show for 10 minnits, then gone.
Goddamn, but I feel privileged to a seen that.
NotMax
@Brachiator
When they come around on TCM, watch either Tall Story (1960), Period of Adjustment (1962) or Sunday in New York (1963) as examples. Shall gently ignore Barbarella (1968).
Probably would name Klute (1971) as her break out of stereotype movie.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Yes, for a short period during the early 70s. Not a full-time gig but did go around emceeing concerts (among other things including dealing with talent when they were on the road and promoting the company’s records to college radio stations within a specific geographic zone). Still keep some sheets of letterhead and scratch pads with the company logo and my moniker on them.
@ola azul
A tale better told in person after copious lubrication. Nothing scandalous, just passing weird. Really never mentioned it much at all until after he had died.
NotMax
@ola azul – @NotMax
Will add not nearly as strange as the story of Gene Rodenberry following me around to chat while repeatedly running his fingers through my hair. Or the later brush with John Forsythe during a party at Tavern on the Green in Manhattan when was working at an ad agency.
ola azul
@NotMax:
Fair enough.
Your discretion is commendable, but the nosey fucker in me (he’s deader’n Julius Caesar, after all) couldn’t help but ask.
(You *did* put it out there like a hanging curve!)
ola azul
@NotMax:
Well, who *ain’t* had Gene Roddenberry can’t get shed like a booger on your finger running his hands thru yer hair?
opiejeanne
@NotMax: Those sound like some good stories.
NotMax
@opiejeanne
May as well throw in the time I was hounded by a group of young women for an autograph during intermission at the Metropolitan Opera, whom I could not disabuse of the conviction I was a favorite soap opera star of theirs (someone whose name I had never before heard and couldn’t come up with today if you put a howitzer to my noggin).
frosty
@ola azul: Video or it didn’t happen. No seriously, if it ever happens again, shoot the vid and send it to Alain.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
passes away on the 50th anniversary of Woodstock
Amir Khalid
@ola azul:
Could you translate that into English?
NotoriousJRT
He said, “I know what it’s like to be dead.” Sorry. This is the first thing that came into my mind.
Raven
@Amir Khalid: King Salmon season opened and he wen fishin!
Amir Khalid
@Raven:
Is that all he said? Over that many paragraphs? He sure is long-winded.
Bobby Thomson
@Omnes Omnibus:
Slicing the cheese very thin. They are less than three years apart, and Vedder misses the 1965 cutoff by less than a month.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Amir Khalid: To be fair, he also described seeing a group of of Dall’s porpoises, which are the biggest and fastest of that group. They’re known for enjoying riding the bow wake of boats and playing zig zag games in their group while they do it.
I’ve never seen it live but videos are great. My dad told me about it when I was a teen – he’d seen it. I caught a little 6 foot blue shark off Hilton Head when I was 16. This is the fish story part of the thread, right?
Miss Bianca
@NotMax: You were a promoter?
@Brachiator: “Cat Ballou” was filmed in my valley. We still show the movie at the theater every now and again.
ola azul
@Amir Khalid: @Amir Khalid:
Hadda gathering a fisherfolk, waylaid by life. Revisit thread and see gotta coupla lil chestnuts from Amir Khalid. Oh, joy!
Will say: The par excellance nudzh (claims, disingenuously, he) wants an explanation. So very choice. Rather than just, you know, wants to fecklessly, ineffectually complain.
About what, I ain’t sure.
You might, if you’re of a charitable mind, contemplate the bad fucking manners of imposing your narrow-minded blinkered passive-aggressive aesthetic upon another person’s posts. Or not.
You do you, Amir.
Will say: I don’t follow you around ridiculing you b/c you fail to get an obvious joke (which you very often do, with comical denouments). Nor do I critique your pedantries or your futbol. I can ignore you into eternity with equable equinimity.
It’d be nice, will confess, if you could refrain from being a passive-aggressive dick.
You think you can manage that?
JDM
“They’re doing their own thing in their own time.” I always liked that.
opiejeanne
@ola azul: I see it differently. Your cutesy posts are difficult to read, so difficult that I have a lot of trouble wading through them, and sometimes skip them and miss the nub of your stories, some of which are interesting.
I just wrote a 100,000 word historical novel where half the characters speak in an Ozark hillbilly accent/dialect and had to tone it down because it was too much for the beta readers, who are not dummies. I still need to adjust it a bit for more accuracy in the way I heard these people talk.
And Amir is the soul of politeness. He is not a dick nor is he passive-aggressive.