Stephanie's review
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind
Stephanie's review
rating:
bookshelves: hollyrock
recommended for: anyone wondering what it was like when Hollywood made good movies
rating:
bookshelves: hollyrock
recommended for: anyone wondering what it was like when Hollywood made good movies
This book is alternately fabulous and frustrating. In the fabulous column, Biskind is to be commended for his incredibly thorough research. How he got an interview with producer Bert Schneider is beyond my comprehension -- the guy is a total recluse, and one of the most fascinating figures in Hollywood history. I love the way he puts across the story-telling abilities of his interviewees...instead of distilling the information in cold, analytical prose, he lets everybody from Bruce Dern to Warren Beatty to Margot Kidder speak for themselves in compelling, salty language. There's plenty of dirt dished in this book, and I was ready for second and third helpings by the time I finished it.
On the minus side, Biskind comes across as an embittered would-be filmmaker in this book. He takes people to task for some pretty dumb things. For instance, I find it difficult to buy his argument that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas ruined 70s Hollywood by cranking out enormously popular films. I m...more
On the minus side, Biskind comes across as an embittered would-be filmmaker in this book. He takes people to task for some pretty dumb things. For instance, I find it difficult to buy his argument that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas ruined 70s Hollywood by cranking out enormously popular films. I m...more
I couldn't agree more with your assessment. The book is loaded with great anecdotes and detailed information on what was an audacious and remarkable period in American movie history. But Biskind's bitterness and even puritannical qualities are annoying and he seems determined to end the story of each individual director on a downbeat note, as if to close the book on all those directors in 1980 and suggest that they never did any good work again. This of course is not true. Scorsese, DePalma, and Altman, for example, have done a lot of good work since the 70's, and if anything Spielberg has only grown and gotten better, while someone like Lucas, commercially minded though he is, has continually expanded the technical boundaries of film. And I'm not even mentioning Warren Beatty who as a director, with films like Reds and Bulworth, did his best work after the seventies. Easy Riders, Raging Bull is a very compelling and entertaining read, but it seems all too determined to prove a thesis that hardly stands up to close scrutiny.
Scott
Reader, Filmwatcher in NYC
Stephanie/Scott - have you seen the documentary "a decade under the influence"? you would both love it!
Hell, yeah!!! It's great! I was mesmerized from beginning to end!
I loved that doc also. Bruce Dern in particular was great. Very funny telling stories from those times.
Dernsie has such a great voice. His stories about Hal Ashby are wonderful. Only in the 70s could a rat-faced freak like Dern could have become a movie star!!!
