Rating: 
Summary: Gripping
Review: This was a page-turner that shows back-stabbing and egomania at work. Every aspiring screenwriter should read this book, because it shows how writers in Hollywood are treated like GARBAGE. How directors hate acknowledging--to themselves and others--that a writer actually thought up the movie they are directing. Even "nice" guy directors like Steven Spielberg want to take a writing credit that they don't deserve. Someone who worked on JAWS says in here that, "It was sick how many times Spielberg wanted his name to appear on the screen." If a putatively humble guy like Spielberg acts this way, you can get an idea of how the truly egomanical ones act in this book. And for anyone who has failed in Hollywood (which includes 99% of the people there), and are frustrated, it's an interesting lesson to read about the hugely successful directors like Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Coppola and Martion Scorsese; THEY ALL WISH THEY'RE CAREERS HAD GONE DIFFERENT! LY!!! Coppola wishes more of his movies had been written by himself; Lucas wishes he had gone down a more serious road than the STAR WARS movies; Scorsese wishes he'd had a block buster; Spielberg wonders if he would have had a more satisfying career if he hadn't had the JAWS hit. Even these huge successes feel like they've failed in certain ways. This is a fascinating book.
Rating:
Summary: Great dishy reading with some potent observations.
Review: Peter Biskind's book is one of those difficult to peel your eyes away from tomes and like another reader,I had to reread some of it to remember the huge cast of characters that sometimes seems to be hurtling at record speed. Some of the participants in world of 70's moviemaking come off better than others-Spielberg, the former wives of George Lucas,Bob Rafelson,Peter Bogdonavich,Bert Schneider-whom I suspect gave Biskind access to the best dirt he dishes. Although, to his credit, Biskind will tell us when one of the participants denied a particularly scabrous episode. The losers here who come off the worst are people like W. Friedkind,Dennis Hopper and Robert Altman who,according to Biskind not only made a lot of crummy movies but more importantly treated their wives and lovers with contempt bordering on psychopathic torture. For the record, Warren Beatty, Coppola,Pauline Kael(!) don't come off to well either, although, I got the feeling that Biskind kind of likes Copp! ola who at best is a talented director, and at worst a megalomaniac or just a lousy businessman! The saddest story is of Peter Bogdonovich who was so obnoxious that his downfall was desired by, it seems, everyone in the world. Bogdonovich, who had it all, is a pitiable figure because he is smart and sensitive enough to be aware of what he lost. I found his story to be the most human and poignant in the book. It is a must read for movie lovers, social historians and gossip cravers.
Rating:
Summary: Warren Beatty Puckers Up and Dennis Hopper Dumbs Down
Review: I found EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS to be a fantastic inside look into the bowels of the greater Hollywood metropolitan region. The Taos PD's mugshot of Dennis Hopper is worth the price of the tome alone. And if you're home alone, you should be blessed with a copy of ERsRBs. I mean, we are all nineties-nihilists, right? I really wanted to see a polaroid of Warren Beatty kissing Jack Warner's feet (actually, I think it would be a polaroid of Warren kissing Warner's hemaroids), but some Kodak moments don't get released to non-fiction writers. Just picture a nerd like Peter Bogdanovich porking a seventeen-year-old Cybil Sheperd under a continuous loop of THE LAST PICTURE SHOW and you'll know what I mean. The only thing that Peter Biskind didn't get for this book was the Social Security and PIN numbers for the gala-list of Hollywood's elite. I love this book!!
Rating: 
Summary: Read it for dish, not for depth.
Review: I agree that Biskind lays down some pretty thrilling tidbits aabout some pretty famous folks - that stuff will make great conversation starters for awhile, I admit. But the arc that Biskind follows - that movies were great because of the air of independence in the early 70's, but declined because of the box office bonnzas of the Spielbergs and Lucases - seemed predestined, and he selectively chose examples to fit that arc. In essence, he discusses a handful of 5-10 directors and a group of perhaps 30 films. In the larger picture of what was produced in the 70's, that is peanuts. There was as much schlock then as there is now, and that schlock was always popular.His discussion of each of these great films all follow the same freamework as well - a director has a determined vision he pursues; the studios hate the vision (but somehow end up green-lighting the picture); the director suffers bouts of self-doubt and nightmarish productions; the suits HATE the final product! , can't understand the film or its appeal; the picture is hugely successful. Just ONCE I wanted to hear about a film the executives SUPPORTED! I laughed aloud at a paragraph in which Biskind deifies Copolla as the "last chance'" at cinematic greatness - very purple prose. But truth is, I read fast and with interest. Lots of great anecdotes.
Rating: 
Summary: Yipes.
Review: Anyone with a pulse is aware how horrible movie folk can be. Those displaying the symptoms of megalomania, narcissism, greed and fundamental dishonesty seem best suited for success in the Hollywood film industry. Nothing really new there.Biskind's book revels in many of the more wretched excesses of turn of the '70's movie making. Domestic violence, drug abuse, adultery, and various other forms of lying and cheating are described in painful detail. But there was a dark side to these 'artists' as well. Extensive interviews with such as Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese, Fonda and Hopper provide a fascinating glimpse into how these men manuever and manipulate their way to fame and riches. Reading these director's stories told in their own words isn't for the faint hearted. The self-serving monomania of such as Peter Bogdanovich or Warren Beatty is chilling. Where back stabbing is considered proper etiquette and stealing the purest form of flattery, Hollywood is absolute ground zero for an endless list of scroundels and sociopaths. Nonetheless the book is deeply flawed. Incoherence isn't necessarily a bad thing. Dennis Hopper, for example, built a career upon that one facet of his appalling personality. But what works in Hollywood doesn't always work in a book and the sheer volume of material here along with the quick jumps between narratives and the endless recitation of names and dates becomes both numbing and confusing. While this sort of thing is fine over ten or twenty pages in Vanity Fare or the New Yorker, the book's 416 page length is exhausting. So many tales are compressed into the narrative that one wishes for a bit more depth to the descriptions of the characters and their personal histories and motivations. How did these guys manage to become so monstrous? Why are they so ethically challenged? We get the when and where, we need more of the the how and why.
Rating: 
Summary: Thoroughly fascinating...
Review: An engaging journey through Hollywood of the late 60s and early 70s, and into the private lives of those who shaped that time, particularly a group of young, anti-authority, anti-Hollywood-schmaltz directors and those who surrounded them. At times the book goes a little too far into lives that might otherwise have been left more private, and smacks of tabloidism; however, the overall presentation is not seriously compromised. It is unfortunate that the author's view of present-day filmmaking is so bleak, but his having experienced firsthand something akin to a Renaissance in movie-making some thirty years ago explains his cynicism about our current fare, which frequently pales by comparison. Recommended reading for anyone interested in the inside story behind such classic films as The Godfather, Taxi Driver, The Exoricst, and so on. The hilarious "Star Bucks" chapter, which focuses mostly on George Lucas and the making of Star Wars, is worth the price of the book alone ("The cameraman was surly, would say 'Bring the dawg in, put light on the dawg,' talking about Chewbacca.")
Rating:
Summary: Taste great; less filling.
Review: Although the message Biskind wants us to get is quite laudable, the tone he sets, mercifully, is not. At first, I was lost in the mishmash of tales. He jumps from one "young" film-maker to the next, one movie after another, giving us deliciously salacious bits and pieces of their amoral lives as he marches through the 70's. It gets darn confusing! However, over time, I got used to flipping back to pick up a lose thread in order to understand the overall tale. The organization of "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls," is not the best, but perhaps that just reflects the frenetic lives of its "characters". Besides, the stories are like buttered popcorn. You can't put it down and you hate yourself for it. Perhaps I'm too much of a puritan, but my mouth dropped open time and time again as Biskind lets us in on the rivalries, the "friendships", the marriages, the affairs, the addictions, and the insecurities of a group of people amazed to find that they were being given millions of dollars to make movies. Frankly, I was amazed too. If you don't like Hollywood gossip, this isn't your book. However, there *is* a message here about greed, immaturity, and self-centeredness that should make you feel better while schlepping through all the muck. Furthermore, the book also provides a wonderful inside view of the making of some of America's classic cinema during a turbulent time. Oddly enough, by the end of it all, you may be longing for a rerun of those times instead of what we have today, i.e., movies for which selling a product to a demographic is the ultimate goal and for which bigger bangs for bigger bucks is the ultimate measure.
Rating:
Summary: It is full of energy and charge.
Review: This book is so exciting. All of these amazing directors start out so differently but end up together to make some of the foremost films of all time. I caught my breath at times. All of these wonderful and crazy things happened to bring about these films. The directors and producers had more excitement and energy in their lives, than the actors. I'm only 18, so I wasn't even alive when these movies were being made, but I wish that I had been there.
Rating:
Summary: Biskind tells it like it was.
Review: I worked in the thick of the New York independent film scene in the late Sixties and Seventies with many of the creatures who fill this book. BISKIND REALLY IS THE FIRST JOURNALIST TO GET IT RIGHT, TO SET IT DOWN ON THE PAGE, TO TELL IT LIKE IT WAS. I can no longer say, "You had to be there to believe it." Just read "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" and you are the proverbial "fly on the wall" in the offices, at the parties, in the bedrooms of the directors, producers, actors and bit players of that era. What a sensational contribution to film literature!
Rating: 
Summary: Trash masquerading as scholarship
Review: Unfortunately, Amazon.com tends to selectively edit the reviews from publications. Joe McBride's NY Times review of the book was much harsher than the glint you get in the above quote. For a devastating review of the book, see last week's The Nation. Biskind is sloppy, bad writing and bas research.
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