that's the end

"The cocaine problem in the United States is really because of me.  There was no cocaine before Easy Rider on the street.  After Easy Rider it was everywhere."

"When we were making the movie, we could feel the whole country burning up - Negroes, hippies, students, I meant to work this feeling into the symbols in the movie, like Captain America's Great Chrome Bike - that beautiful machine covered with stars and stripes with all the money in the gas tank is America - and that any moment we can be shot off it - BOOM - explosion - that's the end.  At the start of the movie, Peter and I do a very American thing - we commit a crime, we go for the easy money.  That's one of the big problems with the country right: everybody's going for the easy money.  Not just obvious, simple crimes, but big corporations committing corporate crimes."

"I want to make movies about us.  We're a new kind of of human being.  In a spiritual way, we may be the most creative generation in the last nineteen centuries ... We want to make little, personal, honest movies ... The studio is a thing of the past, and they are very smart if they just concentrate on becoming distributing companies for independent productions."

rest in piece Mr. Hopper, you crazy sum'bitch you.

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criterion counsel: sigh, watched the first twenty minutes of My Girl Friday last night, but alas the film i'm supposed to be viewing seems out of reach ...