McGinn: Locally shot ‘Easy Rider’ premieres on 9/11

McGinn

Springfield native Phil Pitzer (right) and Jeff Fahey (of "Lost" fame) cruise around on choppers in a scene from "Easy Rider: The Ride Back."

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer 4:56 PM Thursday, September 8, 2011

The original “Easy Rider” wasn’t actually about two dope-smoking hippies on cool motorcycles.

I mean, they were.

And they did ride sweet bikes.

But the iconic 1969 film actually probed a deeper issue — how free are we, really, in the land of the free?

Two of the brave, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, famously set out on their hardtails to find out.

“A man went looking for America,” the old movie poster proclaimed, “and couldn’t find it anywhere.”

So it’s entirely fitting that Springfield native, part-time resident and first-time movie producer Phil Pitzer has chosen the 10th anniversary of 9/11 to hold the first area screenings of his long-promised “Easy Rider” sequel, “Easy Rider: The Ride Back.”

The film will be shown at 3 and 5 p.m. Sunday at the Little Art Theatre in Yellow Springs, with a Q&A to follow each screening.

Admission is a minimum $10 donation to benefit the USO program Operation Enduring Care.

A 9/11 Remembrance Ride will precede the screenings at 2 p.m. Sunday.

The ride departs from Mid-Ohio Harley, 2100 Quality Lane.

Pitzer, a 1962 North High alum-turned-Cincinnati-trial lawyer-turned-independent filmmaker, has been making his movie — kind of a sequel and prequel to the ’69 cult classic rolled into one — for the better part of a decade.

He brought the crew to Springfield in 2007 to shoot scenes locally.

The making of the film has been quite the trip.

But that’s actually putting it mildly.

What Pitzer has gone through in order to make a sequel to a 42-year-old movie in which both main characters were blown clean off their choppers at film’s end — translation: everybody’s dead — is as freakishly crazed as anything you could’ve experienced after dropping acid at the start of the Airplane’s set at Altamont.

He’d heard the remake/sequel rights to “Easy Rider” were technically up for grabs despite claims of ownership.

So, putting his legal expertise to work, Pitzer won those rights by suing Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the producers who’d financed the original film using the profits generated from their earlier creation — some little TV show called “The Monkees.”

I still cannot believe that a guy from Springfield sued the dudes who invented one of the most beloved bands of all time.

Can you?

I mean, it happened, and he won, but it’s just wild to even consider.

Pitzer ain’t nobody’s steppin’ stone.

Distribution for the new movie is still being finalized, said Pitzer, who also ended up starring in it alongside more familiar faces such as Sheree J. Wilson (“Walker, Texas Ranger”) and Rance Howard (Ron Howard’s pa).

“I had a total vision of what I wanted in this movie,” he said. “If it works, good for me. If it doesn’t, it’s my fault.”

On one hand, I want to support this project wholeheartedly.

Pitzer kindly invited me to his condo here in town last year to see an early version of it.

And? It’s beautifully shot.

But I’m also one of those annoying purists.

The original never pretended to be the start of a franchise.

I said it before. I’ll say it again.

It was a statement.

Not surprisingly, then, some of the early feedback online has been about as unforgiving as a hillbilly’s 12-gauge aimed squarely at one of those longhairs.

Responding to the film’s trailer on YouTube, someone posted that, “This makes me want to get on a motorcycle and drive into a tree.”

But here, at long last, is a chance to make up your own mind.

That’s the beautiful thing about living in America.

Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.

How to go

What: “Easy Rider: The Ride Back”

When: 3 and 5 p.m. Sunday

Where: Little Art Theatre, Yellow Springs

Cost: $10 donation to the USO

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