Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-drugs-and Rock 'n' Roll Generation Changed Hollywood (Paperback)

This is, quite simply, the best, most interesting book about film ever written. The book provides a (largely) chronological account of film making in the 1970s – a wonderfully fertile period where ‘New Hollywood’ attempted, and for a while succeeded, in making the director king.

The book is an amazing concoction of sharp analysis about film and filmmaking mixed with scurrilous gossip and titbits about the major players. Quite how he persuaded all these film legends to speak to him with such candour remains a mystery; I suspect few will do so again. Amongst the cast of characters are directors Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola, William Friedkin, George Lucas and his wife Marcia Lucas, John Milius, Paul Schrader, Martin Scorcese, Steven Spielberg and Robert Towne; actors Warren Beatty, Dennis Hopper, Cybill Shepherd and Jack Nicholson covering landmark films such as The Godfather I & II, Taxi Driver, Jaws, Star Wars, The Exorcist and The Last Picture Show.

Biskind writes beautifully, handling a huge topic with an enormous cast of characters deftly. He is assisted by the fact that many of the players and the films are already well-known to the reader but he has a wonderful talent for the one-line character profile (often a one-line character assassination) and he chooses his quotes well. If you are interested in film, and particularly if you share Biskind’s view that the 1970s was a golden era of film, then you will probably enjoy this book. There are a couple of caveats: he plays a little fast and loose with the facts and he loves gossip. He is hard on his subjects: few escape unscathed and some are characterised as positively evil.

An excellent book, worth reading if you can tolerate some of your heroes being tarnished.

The book is like a hundred mini case studies of careers which went up, down, right and wrong and careers which seemed to go right but the final analysis may have gone the most horribly wrong of all (paging:George Lucas).

Not only does Biskind give us a taste of the period but also provide insight into the personal dramas that resulted in some of the best Hollywood films ever.

In the late 60s the big studios lost their way. Baby boomers were in their late 20s, the counter-culture was in full swing, music was far more relevant than film, and Hollywood didn't have a clue. In this void a hip production company looking to give directors more freedom (BBS) and a drug-crazed visionary (Dennis Hopper) converged and birthed Easy Rider.

Easy Rider's success made Columbia executives stop shaking their heads in incomprehension and start nodding their heads in incomprehension. Easy Rider created a sensibility - it legitimised BBS's idea of freeing filmmakers from the overbearing hand of their financiers and letting them express their personal voice.

What filmmaker's did with this freedom is the substance of "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls". The cast is varied and Biskind is funny insightful and obviously passionate about cinema. As a filmmaker I found the trials and triumphs chronicled here both an inspiration and an object lesson.

The ride ended with Star Wars - or so seems to be the consensus of filmmakers who never survived into the 80s. Jaws took the first few bites out of filmmaker's ability to make ironic, self-conscious aesthetic critiques but with the flick of a light saber Star Wars delivered the coup de grace. Friedkin likened Star War's effect on the culture of film to that of McDonalds on eating out.

Today as we enter another period of disruption this book is incredibly pertinent and so I have to let the last quote belong to the giant of that era, Francis Ford Coppola: "We had the naive notion that it was the equipment which would give us the means of production. Of course we learned later that it wasn't the equipment it was the money."

Whilst it is an easy book to get into towards the middle it does tend to become a bit samey and repetetive. Albeit with different anecdotes and different people they generally have the same outcome. Focussing on a handful of directors (Copploa, Lucas, Freidkin, Bogdaovich and more) the book sets out to show the pain, doublecrossing, greed and oppulance of 70,s Holly wood.

I found the book to be very entertaining with some great stories, in fact the sheer number of anecdotes maybe it one fall from grace as you can get some of the main players confused at times (it also focusses on the big producers of the day) One minute you maybe reading about how Warren Beatty fought to get Bonnie and Clyde made and just as you get to a main development it would cut to another director's life and childhood. Only for it to cut back to the Bonnie and Clyde story by which time you could have lost interest in the story. Although to be fair to the author it is written in total chronological order. So an anecdote on B&C may start at one point and not end until other stories about pother films and people had ended. I did find it a little bit confusing and would have preferred the story of each movie and director to be told in a devoted chapter.
None the less it is still a fantastic read and persivere because some of your favourite movies star, directors or moguls are not what they appear to be. Reccomended if you don't mind skipping back and forth.