Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood

Rating:
Summary: A Slice of Life
Review: Six years and 80-some reviews later, there's no need to repeat many of the points made previously. Two important aspects, however, have been generally overlooked. Personalities aside, the book presents an excellent insight into the shifting power relations between film producers, both independent and studio-based, and film directors, craftsmen traditionally subservient to the producers and money end of production. For a brief period, as Biskind's book shows, these relations were totally muddied or in some cases reversed. Thus, a degree of artistic freedom opened up for a number of aspiring auteurs (Hopper, Altman, Friedkin, Coppola, et.al.), beyond the imagination of such illustrious predecessors as Hawks, Welles, Ford, et. al. In that sense, the book should be of special interest to movie historians, especially those interested in the business side of the industry. Moreover, this shift reflects larger dynamics working their way through the culture as a whole from roughly 1966 to 1975, the insurgent period triggered by the Vietnam war. This alone should be of interest to the broader category of cultural historians. Though the cross-cutting between personalities does get confusing, the interplay among producers like Bert Schneider and directors like Dennis Hopper or between Bob Evans and Francis Ford Coppola provides a real feel of what it was like to be part of the shift and of the New Hollywood.

The book also raises the interesting question of how wisdom relates to art. One respected definition of wisdom associates the idea with knowing one's limits and respecting them. Folly occurs when this sense of limits is ignored, resulting in either individual or collective excess and eventual destruction. On the other hand, art often demands that limits be challenged in pursuit of inspiration, personal muse, or some such artistic vision. Drugs, including alcohol, are often looked at as a way of breaking down personal limits. Thus, in simplified form, a basic tension exists between the requirements of wisdom and those of art. Biskind's book offers some pretty clear object lessons on what happens to artistic ambition once all notion of personal limitation is cast aside. Dennis Hopper is merely the clearest, but not the only example. Towne, Bogdanovich, Coppola, and others face a loss of perspective either temporarily or permanently. Egoism takes over, and it becomes no longer possible to separate the demands of vision from those of rampant self-importance. Our culture tends to romanticize the "crazy" artist, but not the "wise" one who is usually much less colorful but understands the value of intelligent restraint. In this respect, "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" presents a cautionary tale to those who would blindly follow the former.

Biskind's book may not be a perfect document of the time, but it does remain a highly suggestive one.

Rating:
Summary: Film History the way it should be written
Review: This isn't one of those dry film school books about cinema movements in the larger context of society. Peter Biskind's EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS is a nonstop race through the lives of the young and prominent 1970s filmmakers. Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Bogdanovich, among others are targeted for the often hilarious and sometimes biting look at their early lives. He spares no one.

It's interesting to see Spielberg portrayed as a self-conscious young filmmaker who got a lot of help on JAWS that he no longer discusses. Biskind says that it's become legend that Spielberg had so much trouble with the shark mechanism that he kept it out of the film until the third act. Biskind reports that Spielberg actually shot a lot of shark footage for the whole movie and it was editor, Verna Fields that left it on the floor because she thought it looked ridiculous. Spielberg didn't have enough power back then to collaborate with an editor and the Studio trusted her and not him to bring the movie together. Spielberg was so sure he had a flop before the release that he was trying to get the job directing "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings."

Jaws is just one example of how the Biskind reminds the reader film is a collaborative medium. Auteur theories and movie reviewers want to heap praise and blame on the director, but so much of what is seen in a movie is the result of someone else.

For example, Today's discussion about the great DeNiro-Scorsese collaborations weren't designed the way people are led to believe. It was Robert DeNiro that brought RAGING BULL to Scorsese and begged him to direct it. Marty couldn't see a movie there and showed no interest. It wasn't until a script was written that Marty came aboard.

Taxi Driver was written by Paul Scharader and didn't much want Marty to direct it, but eventually relented when the studio stepped in. Further, Marty wanted Kietel for the lead not DeNiro, but the studio insisted on Bobby who was becoming a hot property after the GODFATHER Part II.

The book is also full of Warren Beatty's charm with Studio Heads, Peter Bogdanovich's meteoric rise and fall, Coppola's megalomania, Roman Polanski's ego and Jack Nicholson's sudden stardom. In short, the book is a no apologies look at the people we now consider film legends and has beens.

Rating:
Summary: A great decade of filmmaking, or nasty, spiteful gossip?
Review: I'm very puzzled by the purpose and intent of this book. The author seems to have a genuine appreciation for the revolution in extraordinary, personal filmmaking in American film in the 1970s. Yet the book itself is filled with the nastiest, pettiest, disgusting portrayals of the remarkable filmmakers, writers, actors, and cinematographers who made those films. The basis of the entire book appears to be extensive interviews with hundreds of people in the industry -- all of whom have personal vendettas and scores to settle (because they are all ex-husbands, ex-wives, ex-lovers, or bitter competitors). The result is that the portrayal of every director, producer, filmmaker, and actor is that of a loathsome, arrogant, egotistical, infantile monster. Personally, it was no pleasure for me to see Robert Altman, Warren Beatty, Pauline Kael, Francis Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Terry Malick, and dozens of others presented as inhuman, venal, insane, and vicious. Some of the gossip is no doubt true, and I imagine the world of producing and making movies is quite unpleasant. But there is no balance, or insight, to counter the ugly gossip that Biskind exclusively relies upon. Most surprisingly of all, there is no appreciation of the greatness, the sensitivity, the richness of the films that were made. At the very least, the book would have been much more fascinating if Biskind demonstrated how out of all the Hollywood self-indulgence, back-biting, arrogance, and egotism arose the sensitive, powerful, complex, humane, and moving, and often funny works of art, like The Godfather films, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Chinatown, Cabaret, Nashville, Taxi Driver, Days of Heaven, Five Easy Pieces, Bonnie & Clyde, Reds, The Last Picture Show, and The Deer Hunter. There is virtually no discussion about how, despite the ways in which the people who worked on these films appeared to be out of control, half-insane on drugs, climbing over each other's backs, betraying friends, lovers, husbands and wives, the end result was films of great beauty. Nor is there any sense of what any of the subjects of the book brought to the films they made, or what special talents or visions they may have had. The subject matter, and the unrelenting gossip and nasty stories, make for very engaging reading, I'll admit -- but I wanted to take a shower when I had finished the book. This is NOT the book that the filmmakers of the nineteen-seventies deserve.