Well, I’ve seen it lots of times but never ‘smoked the weed’ so I don’t have that “before/after” perspective.
It was good biker flick, as far as it goes but all I got from it was a bassackwards morality tale.
Two guys don’t wanna work real jobs so they sell dope.
They make their “big, last sale”, throw away their watches to release them from their remaining artificial constraints of ‘the slavery of responsibility’.
Then they spend an hour riding around stoned and stupid, “looking for America”, p*ss off some locals and ride around some more.
Because he was stupid and stoned too, Jack Nicholson gets his head bashed in.
[shoulda kept that football helmet on when he slept]
The “epiphany moment” comes as they finally wind up totally freaking out on acid in a NOLA cemetery with a couple whores and Fonda sobbing hysterically for his mommy.
[WTF?]
“Capt. America” has one brief, shining flash of lucidity wherein he tells “Billy The Kid” that “we blew it, man.”.
Then they get blown away by the aforementioned p*ssed off locals.
The end.
When they announced the Viet Nam war was “over”, I don’t recall my grandmother yelling “Praise Easy Rider! My sons are coming home!”.
We were talking about the movie the other night, and a friend told me that Fonda's whore in the movie was Toni Basil... who many years later had the one hit wonder song "Mickey". I checked it out and it is true.
So I'm giving myself some points for "useless trivia", and BONUS points for getting that crappy song stuck in your head. LOL!