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Summary: the personalities behind the movies
Review: This is a fun book, full of lots of interesting gossip about movie life in the 1970s. It's cruel, but interesting and every once in a while you learn something about the making of movies. Mostly, however, it's about the destructive culture of Hollywood of the 70s and how drugs, infidelity, radical chic, and fame destroyed just about every director of the era. Biskind is a great writer and the book is hard to put down, full of priceless scenes and stories. Worth reading.
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Summary: Entertaining alright, but somewhat ugly
Review: This book doesn't know whether it wants to be the best book ever written on 1970s filmmaking, or just the nastiest, so it winds up being both.Biskind knows this territory so well, and his behind the scenes looks at "Easy Rider," "Bonnie and Clyde," "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "Jaws" are simply invaluable; the picture of a paranoid, coked-out Dennis Hopper trying to keep his first film afloat will stay with me forever. It is unfortunate, then, that Biskind's very obvious insider knowledge is compromised by his sheer lack of discretion. There are brutally nasty personal details here that I would gladly trade for more insight about the movies themselves. Biskind's attention to the minutiae of sex lives is strange; it goes past good reportage into downright hatefulness.
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Summary: A great account of the schemeing behind the scenes.
Review: Biskind captures the air of hollywood like no one i have ever read before. THe loose morals and people's uncanny ability to forget who they are and what their loyalties were is incredible. The lure of the blockbuster and the doom of over blown egos is well demonstrated with plenty of first hand accounts and examples from sources. The author was able to get these people to speak like no one I have seen before, maybe he should have been interogating Clinton.
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Summary: great anecdotes about Scorcese, Speilberg and Coppola
Review: A fascinating look at the business behind some of the biggest movies of all time, as well as lots of stories, both funny and sad, about the people involved in making them. From Bonny and Clyde and The Godfather, to Jaws and Taxi Driver, to Star Wars and Heaven's Gate, "Raging Bulls" is full of behind the scenes info on the 70s up and comers who are 90s legends. Particularily interesting is how the auther takes us through the transition of Hollywood, from the studio system of "Old Hollywood" to the auteur sensibilities of "New Hollywood", as the world's views and values changed, and the movie industry tried to keep up.
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Summary: fun but annoying
Review: It's hard not to enjoy a book chock full of nasty gossip about famous people, but by the time you reach the end of Biskind's book, you may be as tired of the author as you are of the self-indulgent directors he profiles. The book is undeniably fun to read -- after all, who doesn't enjoy watching smug hippies with more pretension than talent self-destruct? But Biskind's writing is slap-dash at best. He often changes from last to first names even when referring to minor figures, causing the reader to return to earlier paragraphs to figure out exactly who is taking drugs with whom. Or who is sleeping with whom. Or backstabbing. Or stealing writing credits. Or attending Ho Chi Minh rallies. Etc. Biskind is almost as bad a film critic as he is a writer. He can't seem to tell the difference between truly dreadful films like Easy Rider and Shampoo (which deserve to be remembered, if at all, as cultural artifacts) from genuine achievements like The Last Picture Show or McCabe and Mrs. Miller. He simply loves them all. All except Star Wars and Jaws, that is. In fact, Spielberg and Lucas come in for lots of gratuitous criticism simply for being more interested in telling stories than deconstructing genre -- or experimenting with drugs or smuggling Huey Newton into Cuba. In the end, Biskind never does resolve his fervor for the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll generation's work and politics from the undeniable evidence that their self-indulgence was ultimately ruinous. But there are so few books about film and the film industry that make for good popular reading, you simply have to make the best of what you get. We'll just have to wait for a book where the skill of the author is up to the fascinating subject.
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Summary: This is an excellent book dealing with the 2nd Golden Age
Review: Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is a frank telling of the events that shaped the 2nd Golden Age of Hollywood. Starting with the 1967 film "Bonnie and Clyde" and ending with 1983's "Heaven's Gate", the book details all the major projects and backroom dealings of the stars, producers, directors and hanger-ons that produced some of the greatest films ever made.
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Summary: Five stars for sheer entertainment value
Review: Aside from the fact that it rather glosses over some key films (Woody Allen's output almost altogether - a curious ommision in light of the fact that he proclaims Allen to be one of the few genuine auteurs of the period, and has Coppola saying as much in the conclusion) this is a great anecdotal history. Great stories culled from an impressive list of author interviews. It's a shame that he lets his disdain for the consequences of Star Wars and Jaws for the movie industry sully his opinions of those fabulous films. Infact, the one let down in the book is his resentful attitude to those two film makers.
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Summary: Epic book for epic story
Review: Reading this book is like being caught up in a surging crowd of people on their way to a cup final. You can't stop, you can't look back, the crowd dictates the speed, you submit. Biskind's successful idea is to structure the book like some of the films he talks about. It's uncontrolably epic like Apocolypse Now, and manicly crazed like Taxi Driver. A cast of characters is laid out, Rafelson, Beatty, Coppola, Hopper etc. Their stories develop and they disappear only to resurface a hundred pages later ready to unleash their particular madness on an unsuspecting studio. Biskind is expert at leaving you hanging, yet satisfying you by starting a new storyline or continuing an old one It's the story of how the studio system, horribly out of touch with audiences and structurally elitist, simply had to let in the mavericks or die. They had to take a chance on complete unknowns who they neither liked nor undersood. The pages are filled with stories of how horrified executives, sat uncomprehendingly through movie after movie, unable to make sense of chaotic dailies (Easy Rider) or hear any dialogue (McCabe and Mrs Miller) or even see a discernable image through the black (The Godfather). Each new director mentioned appears to be more mad and driven than the next; Coppola, Bogdanovich, Friedkin, Scorcese. Virtually the entire cast are monsters, sacrificing everything for the next film. Relationships, money, friends and sanity are all expendable. But Biskind loves these many of these films and ultimately you feel his portrayal of these people is almost affectionate. These people are monsters, but they had to be, and they all paid for it later. Finally, it's a great tragedy; for within the ranks of the new generation came their destroyers in the shape of Spielberg and Lucas, with films that killed the auteur spirit of a generation that had only a decade to make their best work. It's a book which beautifully echos its material in the manner of its creation. Somebody should make a movie of this book.
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Summary: THE WRITHING DEATH OF QUALITY CINEMA
Review: EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS, for all it's jaw-dropping celebrity vivisection, seventies deconstructionism and general butt trashing, is most useful as a Zapruder film for the American movie industry. In it, you see the way that the auteurs brought Hollywood to the zenith of greatness before passing out from sheer pleasure overload only to wake up and find out that pandering, focus-group driven dorks like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were driving the bus. Where did they take us? Into a creepy suburan wasteland in which every film costs the GNP of Lichtenstein and is as consumer safe as a nerf football. Biskind similtaneously exalts the New Hollywood brats for their genius and ambition, and condemns them for their hubris and decadence. Fascinating, if morbid, reading. (Dennis Hopper is the face of the earth)
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Summary: Scathing look at the people behind some 70's classic films.
Review: While the book is a very entertaining and gossipy read, the author has a point to make and sometimes leaves out facts that get in his way. After reading you can't help but agree with his initial point that the last great period of filmmaking was the 1970's. He proves in fact and theory how the blockbusters of that period moved us towards todays plethora of action films. Films made because they sell well to a non-English speaking audience. An audience now more important than American. George Lucas is fascinating when he explains how he is more responsible for the resurgence of independent filmmaking than the dumbing down of current cinema.Dennis Hopper is repulsive as he drugs and beats his way through the period, yet inexplicably survives and becomes an elder statesmenof Hollywood.The "radical chic" Schneider brothers and director Bob Rafelson provide comic relief as the biggest a**holes in Hollywood until you meet Paul Schrader and Robert Evans. The author criticizes his group for their excessiveness(drugs,booze,sex,abuse of power, etc.)and blames it for the tragedy that befalls many of them.Yet at the same time he throws equal amounts of ridicule at the sober Spielberg. Characterizing him as a square, cuckold, and backstabber. All in all the collective stories are terrific, even if they don't come together in a point.
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