‘Easy Rider,’ hippies and the Dennis Hopper legacy
The era was the late 1960s and a lot of things were happening in Taos back then
Taos is not your average small New Mexican community. It’s full of character and loads of characters, not to mention a history of violent revolts and unforgettable scenery beloved by artists. It is also wellconnected to the wider world. Filmmaker, artist and actor Dennis Hopper was one example of how that world collided with Taos in the late 1960s.
The denizens who rubbed elbows in Taos Plaza watering holes could be a farmer on one side, a famous writer on the other and across the way might be a member of motion picture royalty hiding out from the prying eyes of the press or crafty creditors. In some ways, Taos was famous for hiding the famous, or at least leaving the famous alone because no one really knew who they were in the first place.
It also was a place where myths grew like chamisa along the highways, as evidenced by those surrounding frontiersman Kit Carson, sightings of La Llorona, the Taos Hum, and the shady Arthur R. Manby, noted by writer Frank Waters as “the most hated man in Taos.”
So, the “hippie problem,” extensively covered in the Taos News was, in part, a result of this fame, but it also had to do with a kind of inevitability. Taos was a place bound to be discovered as the best, most groovy place for hippies to gather far from the judgmental gaze of straight people. Perhaps ironically, the state of New Mexico was itself beginning what would become a long affair with a different kind of myth-making as motion picture production began to rise in the late 1960s.
Columnist Fred Buckles wrote in the June 20, 1968 issue of the Taos News that film production was seeing an uptick in the state. From the use of the narrow gauge railroad running between Durango and Chama for western movies to various big-budget motion pictures set in the picturesque sagebrushdotted landscape, Hollywood was taking notice. Some would say it also had to do with then-Gov. Dave
Cargo’s push to attract movies for the PR value and clean industry dollars.
It was also in June of 1968 that Hopper was shooting a super low budget little road picture in Taos. They had just filmed some footage at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which they would use to help raise funds. The movie started out untitled, had a basic outline instead of a script and included a kilo of marijuana as part of the budget to keep the stars and crew happy. It would end up a phenomenal success called “Easy Rider.”
Taos photographer Dick Spas was drinking coffee in his Ledoux Street apartment when a friend dropped in and said, “They’re shooting a movie on the pueblo,” wrote local freelancer Tamra Testerman for a May 14, 2019 article in Tempo magazine.
Testerman writes that Spas then grabbed his 35mm Exakta camera “with a Schneider lens and lefthand film crank” (he is right-handed) and jumped into his Karmann Ghia convertible to “go make some pictures.”
Spas related that the film’s stars, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, were standing around at the village with “no security or bodyguards. I thought nothing about it, I didn’t know who Hopper was and recognized Peter only because of his famous father, Henry. Jack had not filmed ‘Five Easy Pieces,’ so he was an unknown. It wasn’t until after the film was out that he [Hopper] came back to Taos and bought the Mabel Dodge [Luhan] House (in 1970). The average person in Taos didn’t know who they were. It was a small town in those days, everyone knew each other.”
When the movie came out in June of 1969, there was no mention of its release in the paper.
What preceded it, however, was a lot of coverage about what the influx of hippies were doing to Taos.
In March 1969, writer Keith Green did a story for the Taos News with the headline “Hippie’ Problem Stirs More Local Groups to Investigate.” The story led with mention of a meeting of the Taos Chamber of Commerce after the Taos Ministerial Alliance, an “organization of Catholic and Protestant ministers” set up a task force to “determine how best the Christian community can respond to the influx.”
The hippies in question — generally, long-haired young people into psychedelic rock music, antiestablishment and anti-war politics, free love, and hallucinogenic drugs — discovered Taos largely through the communes that began popping up all over Northern New Mexico, where adherents believed in re-inventing society through true freedom. Many also found out about Taos via a mention of the Hog Farm by Wavy Gravy at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.
In 1969, this “influx” had grown, and with it were a number of problems, not the least of which were sociological. One clergyman mentioned in the Green article said he was “concerned about some of the ‘frightened, uninformed’ remarks he had heard from townspeople.” In that same issue, the editorial mentioned that someone had called the editor to say “you really shouldn’t put stories about the hippies on the front page … you’ll drive away the tourists.”
In the editorial, it was also mentioned that hippies were often characterized as “a long-haired, dirty-skinned lapper at the trough of public welfare. He also probably uses drugs and is out to seduce children to his way of thinking.” The editorial writer tacitly agreed with that assessment based on the description, adding that Taos County had been “invaded,” and that for locals living in poverty their “rejection of material things” was “anathema to the goals of the vast majority of Taoseños.”
The following week, someone threw a molotov cocktail at a coffeehouse frequented by hippies.
By April 3, 1969, more meetings took place, one that brought Minor Van Arsdale of Santa Fe who said he had been employed by the state Department of Health and Social Services under its federally financed community services program. Van Arsdale apparently came to Taos armed with a set of his own preconceptions, saying “hippies represent a threat to our established way of life.”
In that meeting, a list of offenses was presented, noting incidents of drug use among Taos High School students (Superintendent Joe L. Otero, for whom Taos High’s gymnasium is named, said about 14 students had “literally joined the hippies”), plus public nudity at local hot springs, health hazards, overcrowded dwellings and food stamp abuse. The following week, there was a reiteration of locals wanting someone to do something about the hippies. Some suggested using laws in place that could be used to curb the “problem,” but time after time, attorneys said selective enforcement was the wrong tactic.
Then, in May, the Taos fiestas were canceled. Negative publicity about hippies was to blame, according to Mayor Rumaldo Garcia, but fiesta organizer Natalie Cherry Baca was quoted saying there were “groups assigned to particular jobs had not followed through in 1968” so she decided not to take on the job of organizing another one. On May 22, the paper reported on a string of violent attacks by individuals and gangs against hippies. “There were more fights than we could cover,” said Levi Esquibel of the Taos Police.
The movie, “Easy Rider,” did include scenes of protagonists Wyatt and Billy (as in the famous outlaws) obtaining a kilo of cocaine which they sold to a rich guy played by Phil Spector. From there, they wanted to use that money to party at Mardi Gras. Along the way, they encounter hippies at a commune and meet alcoholic lawyer George Hanson, played by Jack Nicholson, in a jail. But, there was also an effort to show what it was like to live the counterculture lifestyle of the times. They run into racist rednecks, get beat up for looking different and find themselves led farther away from the vision of America seen on the 5 o’clock news.
Hopper wound up falling in love with Taos. He stayed, and in 1970 he bought the Mabel Dodge Luhan House where he edited “The Last Movie,” and where he married singer Michelle Phillips. The marriage lasted only a week. This was a bad time for Hopper. Drugs and wild parties, hangers-on and bad vibes nearly drove him into the ground. He left for a while, but he never really left. In 2010, he died of prostate cancer and was buried in Ranchos de Taos.