easy riders and raging bulls documentary

De Niro and Scorsese on Raging BullĮven as someone with an idea about the period I was often shocked by how some of these still legendary figures apparently behaved - from Dennis Hopper’s total collapse after Easy Rider or Francis Ford Coppola with both his own studio American Zoetrope and then the chaos that was Apocalypse Now to even two of the most commercially successful filmmakers to ever come out of Hollywood Steven Spielberg and George Lucas who despite the likes of Jaws and Star Wars almost rode themselves off the rails.

In some ways it’s commendable how Biskind doesn’t shy away from the darker side of the story of the era as, much with music and many other forms of entertainment, the time after the 60s counter culture took a turn for the worse as hard drugs got added into the mix, however this does present a few problems.įor the most part he paints a startlingly honest picture of men (and 99% of the time it is men) destroying themselves with a spectacular mix of ego and drugs, mostly cocaine of course, and this is honestly amazing. While each chapter has a main focus the stories of not just other films but writers, directors, producers and studios are weaved through expanding to paint an exhaustively detailed picture of Hollywood at the time.Īt the back of the book there’s even a cast list of characters and it really is needed to keep track of who everyone is, especially when Biskind moves away from the ‘celebrities’ and focuses on the producers or the studio executives who are as much a part of this story as anyone. If you’ve read many of my movie reviews on here you’ve probably seen me use the phrase ‘ New Hollywood,‘ meaning a period and style of filmmaking that existed from roughly 1969 to 1980 and typified a change in how American mainstream cinema was made - or so was the intention.Įasy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind (subtitled How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood) has become, since it was first published in 1998, the seminal chronicle of that era taking an in depth look at what drove the New Hollywood movement and charting its troubled rise and spectacular fall in what certainly feels like exhaustive detail.Īcross 500 pages Biskind, after setting the scene with the counter culture of the 1960s that spearheaded the movement with the likes of Warren Beaty and Arthur Penn’s Bonnie And Clyde, divides the decade roughly by year focussing on a major film and director for each year starting with Dennis Hopper and Easy Rider in 1969 and culminating in 1979-80 with Martin Scorsese and Raging Bull – providing the book with its title.

Easy riders and raging bulls documentary