Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (1998) - Peter Biskind

Since it's inception, the movie business has captured the imagination of the masses all over the world. Hollywood, at least it's in heyday, was the epitome of glamour itself. A place where all you had to have was a dollar and a dream and you too could one day find yourself under the bright lights. However, by the late 1960s, Hollywood's glory days seemed to be hanging by a thread and a new wave of revolutionary filmmakers were coming forth, influenced by the counter-culture of the day and determined to destroy the studio system as they knew it. 

Peter Biskind's book focuses specifically on this time period and the characters around the movement we now know as 'New Hollywood'. Beginning with 'Bonnie & Clyde' (1967), this book takes us on a wild and wonderful journey through a series of films, all the way up to Michael Cimino's 'Heaven's Gate' (1980) - which widely signaled the end of this golden period of filmmaking. As Robert Altman puts it "There was a time where want we wanted to make was what they wanted to make. It all lined up." 

Indeed this was a time when a crop of young directors barnstormed the movie industry and completely changed what film-making became as an art form. This was both inspiring and somewhat crushing, on a personal level so it would seem, to all involved. These brilliant artistic minds were battling each other on who could make the most compelling, the most provocative and eventually the most profit-laden, piece of work. The winners were, by and large, us - the public. The losers, judging by the contents of this book, just may well have been the artists themselves. 

The cast is primarily made up of the likes of Scorcese, Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg, Arthur Penn, Altman, Hal Ashby, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Towne, William Friedkin and the lunatic that was Dennis Hopper. Of course there are actors who you will recognise and studio bigwigs aplenty, in fact there are almost too many characters to keep abreast of. But if you ignore the specifics of who said what about who, it is quite the ride.

Throughout there are fascinating insights into how some of the greatest films ever made came to pass and, spoiler alert, by Biskind's reckoning, not a single one of them was easy. If you're at all interested in film, you may have heard about the difficulties surrounding the production of The Godfather, with the studio betting the bank on a largely unproven director, and having to deal with threats from the actual Mafia etc etc. In fact such was the drama surrounding the production that Paramount managed to create an entire mini-series about it (2022's 'The Offer'). However, that production turned out to be a walk in the park compared to some of the tales that followed. As these directors started churning out hits like 'The Last Picture Show' (1971), 'The Exorcist' (1973), 'Jaws' (1975), even 'Taxi Driver' (1976), the power seemed to shift away from the executives and into the hands of the creatives themselves. And with great power came great, if completely insane, productions. 

As such, the highlight of the book is probably the story of Francis Ford Coppola in all of this. If there was a leader to this movement, he was it, and this was a position that seemingly went straight to his head, leading him down a path to utter brilliance in his artistic life and abject chaos in his personal life. All of which culminated in 'Apocalypse Now' (1979), wherein Francis dragged his family, friends, colleagues, and just about everyone he came into contact with, through hell for a monster 289-day shoot in the jungle during monsoon season with barely a script in hand. How any sort of film came out of this process I'm not sure, let alone one that went on to become a classic. However, Coppola himself was never the same after this process. In his words, "The man who made The Godfather films died in the jungle". Based on his track record since, it's hard to argue. 

Stories like this are both fascinating and endless in this book. It's to the point where everything is written in such detail and conversations laid out with such accuracy that you start to think that this is either the most well-researched book ever made, or some creative liberties may have been taken. I suspect the latter but either way it does make for a fascinating, if slightly gossip-driven, read. In fact the tabloid, salacious, element to this story is hard to ignore. There are many times where there will be a wild anecdote of someone having sex with someone else's wife, or someone doing a mountain of cocaine and then skinny dipping in the LA reservoir, only to have a disclaimer in brackets say something like (So and So denies this claim). If all of these claims are being denied then we have to question the journalistic integrity of publishing these stories as fact, especially when the purpose of the writing is essentially to biographise a certain time in history. There seems to be more interest in mythology than accuracy. 

Furthermore, there is a certain cynicism on display throughout that makes the book something of a downer when experienced in totality. For one, every single actor, studio exec, producer, and particularly, director comes across as abominable. Not a soul escapes this wrath. George Lucas is emotionally stunted and shallow, Steven Spielberg is a weak, manipulative, nerd. Coppola suffers some sort of god complex, Bogdanovich is an absolute snide, Friedkin is abjectly awful to any and all who cross his path. Scorcese, probably the greatest filmmaker of all time, is depicted as little more than a junkie and it is somewhat false to declare classics such as 'Raging Bull' (1980) and 'The King of Comedy' (1982) as 'flops' just because they weren't Star Wars. In this regard, Biskind seems to have at least low-level contempt for just about everyone save Hal Ashby, who's untimely passing ends the book - and probably tells you all you need to know about Biskind's personal leanings. Now, while all of these stories might be true and Hollywood is indeed filled with narcissistic, drug-addled, despots (in fact, saying that out loud, it probably is true), there is a tone in the writing that belies a certain bitterness around the whole thing. The truth of the matter is that, despite their personal misgivings, these people really did revolutionise an artform, creating some of the greatest films ever made in the process, almost certainly opening the doors for generations of film-makers to come and inspiring millions to try and do the same. That fact is not necessarily celebrated here at all. It delves more into the personal cost that this movement cost it's key players and the book ends with all of our stars either broke, destitute, marginalized, embittered, or dead. He included Lucas, Spielberg, Coppola and Scorcese in this summation and I think it's fair to say that was simply not the case. Scorcese, in particular, is still making culturally relevant and exciting films well into his 80s. Spielberg is not far behind him. 

Thus one can't help but suspect that there is some sort of failed filmmaker somewhere in Biskind's heart. I don't know if this is true as I know nothing of his background. We can only judge by the art in front of us and the tone of the book certainly veers towards the darker side of the whole thing. I suspect that, for all the stories of psychosis, promiscuity, drug abuse and general terrible behaviour, you could find just as many stories for each character where the opposite is true. And, in true New Hollywood fashion, the downer ending of this book is a difficult one to get past. Basically, the studios won, all the arthouse punks had their day and everything is shit so why bother starting in the first place? I can't think of many endings truer to the spirit of this time-period covered in this book, but for a factual, historical, non-fiction novel, is it fair to add this slant? 

That said, despite the overwhelming amount of negativity, if you're at all interested in films of a certain era and the machinations behind the scenes of some of the classics of the day, this book is well worth the effort. If it is all true, it makes for a truly unique insight into the underbelly of the glamour industry and should probably be a must-read for anyone interested in embarking on a film career. Then again you might not get started at all if everything here is taken at face-value. So maybe, in this case, ignorance is bliss.  

★★★☆☆

JB.