Today, a lot of people have traveled to New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras. Here’s hoping that they have a better time in the city than Billy (Dennis Hopper) and Wyatt (Peter Fonda) had in the 1969 film, Easy Rider.
The scenes below, featuring Hopper, Fonda, Karen Black, and the legendary Toni Basil were actually filmed at Mardi Gras in 1968. These were among the first scenes that Hopper (making his directorial debut) shot for the film and reportedly, filming was so chaotic that they were also nearly the last scenes to be filmed. As those who have seen Easy Rider know, Billy and Wyatt spend the entire movie trying to get to New Orleans so that they can visit a famous brothel. Once they get there, they discover that absolutely nothing lives up to the legend. The brothel is a sleazy mess. Mardi Gras is full of bad vibes. Wyatt has an amazingly bad LSD trip. (Hopper convinced Fonda to really drop acid before filming the scene, which led some harrowing footage.) After they leave New Orleans, Fonda and Hopper cross the border into Texas and promptly end up getting blown away by two rednecks in a pickup truck.
Welcome to the sixties!
In the scene below, we get actual footage of 1968’s Mardi Gras. Just watch all the celebrants who stop to stare at the camera.
And here is the infamous cemetery scene. Fonda resisted doing it and the end result is not easy to watch but it’s also one of the most powerful moments in the entire film:
Through the Shattered Lens 
Nice write-up, but your geography is off. Wyatt and Billy spent the entire film moving eastward, from their drug deal in California to their eventual goal of retirement in Florida. They were arrested in East Texas, and jailed with the alcoholic lawyer played by Jack Nicholson. Once the lawyer was killed Wyatt and Billy took his card for the brothel and went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and their bad LSD trip. Fonda later wrote that he had used his mother’s suicide as ‘inspiration’ for the weeping scenes in the cemetery. He said mixing his grief with LSD was a horrific experience, and yes, it is a difficult scene to watch.
Anyway, when Wyatt and Billy left Louisiana they headed EAST into Florida, and their murders take place on a two-lane road in the Florida panhandle.
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