southern worked on a variety of screenplays in the immediate aftermath "easy rider", including "god is love", "dj" (based on a book by norman mailer), "hand-painted hearts" (based on a story by thomas baum), and "drift" with tony goodstone. while fonda and hopper continued to assert that much of "easy rider" had been improvised, southern remained largely silent about his role, although he was prompted to write a letter to the "new york times" to counter a claim that jack nicholson had improvised his speech during the film's campfire scene.