Gods and Monsters: Thirty Years of Writing on Film and Culture from One of America's Most Incisive Writers

by Peter Biskind

Peter Biskind authored two of the most talked about and read books of the last decade—Easy Riders, Raging How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock-'n'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood and its bestselling sequel Down and Dirty Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film. Gods and Monsters chronicles the cause and courses of Hollywood over the last three decades—the super freaks, lowlifes, charlatans and occasional geniuses who have left their bite mark on American culture, as refracted through the trajectory of Peter Biskind's career. The ghosts of McCarthyism and the blacklist haunt Gods and Monsters as do the casualties of the counterculture and the New Hollywood—the story of Sue Menges, the '70s "super-agent" whose career went mysteriously south, is extraordinarily poignant, as is the example of Terence Malick, whose light shone so brightly in the same period but then disappeared until 1997's The Thin Red Line. But at the heart of the book are the likes of Warren Beatty, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, Robert Redford and Quentin Tarantino and uber-producers Don Simpson and Harvey Weinstein and their excess lifestyles, all of whom Biskind portrays in great Dickensian detail, charting how they have had a simultaneously strangulating and liberating effect on the industry.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, History, Cultural

352 pages, Paperback

First published November 8, 2004

About the author

Peter Biskind is an American cultural critic, film historian, and journalist, best known for his tenure as executive editor of Premiere magazine from 1986 to 1996. He attended Swarthmore College and authored several influential books on Hollywood, including Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures, some of which became bestsellers. In 2010, he published a biography of Warren Beatty titled Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America. Biskind is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, with work appearing in major publications like Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He served as editor-in-chief of American Film from 1981 to 1986. His books have been translated into over thirty languages. Despite his acclaim, some critics, including Roger Ebert, have challenged the accuracy of certain anecdotes in his works.

Reviews

[Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is different to Peter Biskind's other books, as it's a collection of his essays and reviews from, as the cover states, over thirty years of writing in Hollywood.

The highlights for me are when he focuses on an individual director, and although they are written from the point of view of a set visit (to plug the latest film at the time) Mr Biskind still takes care not to bore us with the minutiae of the catering that day, instead giving us a succinct overview of that director's work so far.

I doubt you'll be reading this first out of his works, but if you like the others, definitely get this one.

[Adrian Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read "Gods And Monsters" based on my enjoyment of the same author's excellent "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls", but just as a word of warning, this is a collection of Biskind's earlier pieces, many of which are academic in nature, rather lengthy, and correspondingly "dry", though not uninteresting. Your mileage may vary, but I felt on steadier ground in the latter third of the collection, where he returns to his wheelhouse of in-depth personality profiles of film industry movers & shakers.

[Hunter Duesing · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I think most of Biskind's ideas in regards to the movies he analyzes in here are bullshit, pretty much every article in here is compelling and interesting. However, much like Biskind's other work, some of his facts are a bit dodgy (particularly in the article on Terence Malick). You would think Biskind would have a crack team of fact-checkers by now, but I guess he thinks that the myth he spins is more interesting than the reality.

[Harold · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had some really interesting sections (especially a few of the later pieces), but I have to admit that I skimmed quite a few parts. A lot of his early essays are very wordy and academic, and when the topic was a movie I haven't even seen, I just couldn't be bothered (sorry, "On the Waterfront").

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is very dense going, even scholarly and academic at times, but it is worth the effort. The author knows his stuff. The more opinion based pieces are thoughtful, detailed and well supported. Don’t expect to read this quickly.

[Carol Storm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the pieces in this collection were right on the money, and some were absolute crap. The fact is that Peter Biskind is not a nice man. He specializes in nasty put downs, and he's never above the cheap shot and the low blow. Sometimes this works to his advantage, as when he deconstructs the infantile film making of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. His analysis of the racism of Indiana Jones and the eternal childhood of Star Wars hero Luke Skywalker was brutally honest and powerful. He just about pulverizes those movies and the moral cowardice and stupidity of Spielberg and Lucas.

The problem is, his prejudices and resentments sometimes get the better of him. There's a piece here about Vietnam: A Television History (not the Ken Burns special, an earlier one from 1983) that's really over the top. Just about all Peter Biskind does is scream "Baby killer! Baby killer!" over and over.

Biskind is evidently a child of the Sixties, though Wikipedia says he went to Swarthmore College and was born in 1940. No mention of any military service. No mention of how he beat the draft. But we can assume this man is not a military veteran, and that none of his high school buddies ever served. The thing is, many upper class film critics harbor resentment towards Vietnam veterans. I remember David Denby at the New Yorker savaging Mel Gibson's We Were Soldiers on the grounds that the soldiers in the movie were "too heroic, too straight, too virtuous." But Denby's scorn was mild, almost modest. Biskind's soldier-hate is sheer hysteria, like something out of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. ("I saw Henry Kissinger with the devil! I saw Richard Nixon with the devil!") No mention of how he beat the draft. No mention of any Swarthmore College buddies being killed in Vietnam.

Oh, and don't miss his review of the legendary TV mini-series Holocaust, where he literally sneers at the Jews who fought back in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. (Why is it that we only remember the brave Jews? The strong Jews? What about guys like ME?!?!) Yes, it really reads like that. But you have to hand it to Peter Biskind. This guy was into hating Israel before hating Israel was cool!

This review is dedicated to: First Lieutenant George Barker Hamilton, class of 1966, a Swarthmore graduate who was killed in action during the Vietnam War. He was killed on April 17, 1968, when his reconnaissance plane crashed in the Hua Nghia Province.

[Michael Samerdyke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Biskind's "Seeing Is Believing," about the political implications of Fifties movies, is one of my favorite books.

"Gods and Monsters" is a sampling of Biskind's short pieces on film. It is a mixed bag, but, to me, the pluses outweigh the minuses.

Some of the pieces are very political and some are very gossipy. Despite that, they tend to be interesting, both in themselves and showing how Biskind went from being a counterculture writer to being a Vanity Fair writer.

His piece on Scorsese is terrific, as are a number of these, including the essay that eventually grew into "Seeing Is Believing." I wouldn't mind it if a second volume of Biskind's short pieces were published. I'd buy it.

[Stagger Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like any collection, the quality - or my level of interest - varies, but when the writing chimes with the subject, there's some excellent pieces - on Don Simpson, Terence Malick, George Lucas, the Weather Underground.

[Melvin Van t hof · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains a wide collection of articles. The first couple of articles didn't interest me much but the second half of this book is very interesting. A bit of an hit and miss.

[Fishsanwitt]

stamped

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

some nice moments but a lot of tedium

[Josh Folan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads like a lineage of shitty college term papers.