Corrected entry: In the scene where George Henson talks about the Venusians to Billy and Wyatt, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, and Peter Fonda were actually smoking marijuana on camera, and Nicholson's monologue about the aliens was improvised as a result of his high.
Corrected entry: Before doing this film, Dennis Hopper had never ridden a motorcycle in his life.
Correction: Dennis Hopper rides a motorcycle in The Glory Stompers, released in 1967.
Corrected entry: When Peter Fonda takes off his watch, the band is shown to have a clasp on it, but when he places it on the ground it has turned into a twist-a-flex band.
Correction: I have slow played the watch scene a dozen times and there is no clasp on it. He stretches the watch band off his arm, and a close up before he throws it shows no clasp, not on my DVD.
Corrected entry: At the time the picture was made, there were helmet laws in every state they passed through except California. It seems established that a helmet is the one thing Jack Nicholson needs to join them on the trip. In an environment in which the law was champing at the bit for an excuse to bust them, it seems odd that Dennis Hopper manages to ride his bike from Arizona to Florida without a helmet.
Correction: A lot of people during that era ignored helmet laws, and since it cost more money to administer a ticket than the penalty, many police didn't bother giving a no helmet ticket, unless there was another charge, such as speeding. It's much the same way with seatbelt laws in present day. Unless there is an enforcement focus program, most officers won't issue a seatbelt ticket unless the driver is cited for another infraction. The police were more interested in giving the bikers a ticket for drug possession or something more serious than no helmet.
Corrected entry: In the scene at the hippy camp, where Wyatt and Billy are sitting against a large rock, just before accompanying the girls to the swimming hole, Billy passes a joint to Wyatt who takes a drag on it, gathers up his stuff, and walks away with the joint in his mouth. As Wyatt departs with the joint between his lips, it appears between the fingers of Billy's right hand. Billy glances at it, then stubs it out on the ground as he gets up and departs.
Corrected entry: At the beginning of their ride Wyatt and Billy come to a farm where two men shoe a horse. One guy holds the obviously cold horseshoe with his hand, hammers on it, and then nails it to the hoof. If he'd just refit it because the horse had just lost it he wouldn't hammer on it, and if it were a new one he would have to heat it till it's red hot. (00:13:10)
Correction: Horse shoes are not always heated anymore, I have seen it done several times.
Correction: Nicholson was stoned enough that he forgot what he was supposed to say next in his monologue. It would have ruined the scene because he hadn't yet delivered the line that Hopper was supposed to respond to. He laughs because he figured he did blow it and they'd have to start over, but look at the "don't-stop-there-say-SOMETHING" look that Director Hopper gives him just before he starts back up! To his credit, he then remembered the rest of his lines and picked it up where he had stopped, and they left it in the movie because it looked "natural."