EASY RIDER STAR REMAINS A REBEL

Go ahead -- ask Captain America if pot should be legalized. But get Easy
Rider star Peter Fonda -- who's heading to Calgary -- started on the
subject and there's no guarantee where you'll end up.

"Alcohol's not illegal, and there's no reason for pot to be illegal," Fonda
says in a telephone interview from his Montana ranch when asked about
Canada's proposed move to soften marijuana possession laws.

In just over a week, Fonda will head north to Calgary for a gala showing of
his restored 1971 film, The Hired Hand. A few days later, he'll mount a
Harley to ride in the Calgary Stampede parade.

He talked to the Herald on Wednesday about the film, the trip to Calgary
and . . . well . . . a whole lot else.

The only reason marijuana became illegal in the United States, Fonda says,
is that the chemical companies make more money from the processing of
pulp-based paper than hemp products.

Besides, pot legislation is just one of the "moral laws" the 63-year-old
actor and director thinks are foolish.

"Moral laws dictate things that we should be able to decide for ourselves.
We have stop lights telling us to stop because someone else is coming up to
the intersection. Shouldn't we be able to figure that out for ourselves?"
he asks wryly.

"I think pot should be legal, I think suicide should be legal, and I think
euthanasia should be legal. If I become incapable of taking care of myself,
I think I should be allowed to take myself out. Nobody gets out of this
parking lot alive.

"And I don't think that God wrote a book, either. I don't think there were
ever these actual hands and fingers that wrote things down on paper. And
when you put up walls and a roof and put a name over the door, that's not
about God, that's about money."

He's still a rebel, and damn proud of it.

"I surely am," Fonda says with a booming laugh. "If I ever stop being one,
you need to come down here and hit me!"

That rebellious streak could be blamed partly on the pressure of growing up
in the shadow of his screen legend father, Henry. Another imposing shadow
was later cast by his own creation, Captain America, in 1969's iconic Easy
Rider.

The film's massive success opened the door for Fonda's directorial debut in
The Hired Hand, while simultaneously creating expectations the gentle
western was never meant to meet.

"Everyone wanted to see me on a motorcycle smoking pot," he says.
"Foolishly, I thought, 'This'll do it, this'll break the mould.' "

Universal Studios didn't know how to market the film, Fonda says, so they
advertised it as a rip-roaring Easy Rider on four legs. When a friend saw
the billboard Universal had erected over Sunset Boulevard, he called to
warn him about it.

"I was in Idaho filming," Fonda remembers. "I chartered a jet, my lawyer
picked me up at the airport, and he drove me to see this great, big billboard."

Looming high above was a picture of Fonda, roped to a tree, pistol in his
belt, with guns blazing around him. Aghast, he headed to Universal and
demanded that they take it down, or he'd take it down himself -- with
explosives.

"I called my editor's brother, Richard, from inside this guy's office,"
Fonda says with a chuckle.

"Richard answers, and I say into the phone, 'If you don't hear from me in
15 minutes, blow it.' Richard has no idea what's going on, and he's going,
'What? Blow what?' The Universal guy is getting all upset, he thinks I'm
really getting ready to blow the thing up, and he says, 'OK, OK, we'll take
it down.'

"So I call Richard back, and I say, 'OK, don't do it. Don't blow it up,'
and Richard's like, 'Well, wait a minute. What is it? Maybe I want to blow
it up.' "

The sign came down, replaced by a plain black canvas bearing only the
film's title.

The Hired Hand, which Fonda has said he'd like to be his epitaph, is a
western with an unorthodox view of women.

"It was the finest script I'd ever read," he says. "It's the first, and
maybe the only, western that portrays women as more than an adornment on a
man's arm."

He's deeply proud of it, particularly now that he and partner Frank Mazzola
- -- the film's original editor -- are getting to show people a restored,
re-mastered print. He also has plenty of behind-the-scenes stories he wants
to share at the screening Q and A sessions on June 26 at the Globe Cinema.

Fonda has a letter from his dad that he wants to share, too. It was written
after Peter got the chance to direct his father in the 1979 film, Wanda Nevada.