With Easy Rider, writers and co-stars Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper captured in a popular medium many of the ideals of the youthful "counterculture" circa 1969. Easy Rider presented both the hedonism of drug use and the sober idealism of the hippy commune. The film also used a hip coterie of cutting-edge rock groups to articulate its indictment of conformist American culture. However, Easy Rider's continuing cultural resonance and filmic influence also owes much to its evocation of more traditional myths of American identity.

Dennis Hopper came to prominence for his precocious performance in an earlier film about youthful rebellion, Rebel without a Cause (1955). After appearing again with James Dean in Giant (1956), Hopper became a proto-hippy drop-out from the Hollywood system, smoking pot and eating peyote in preference to making mainstream movies. In 1967, Hopper acted with his friend Peter Fonda, scion of Hollywood icon Henry, in...