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Loading... Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (original 1998; edition 1999)by Peter Biskind
Work InformationEasy riders, raging bulls : how the sex-drugs-and-rock 'n' roll generation saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind (1998)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Great book I read for Film class. Totally forgot about it. ( ) This is a must read for lovers of cinema. It's a mixture of gossip which may/may not be true and realities. It reveals the inspirations and motivations of the likes of the likes of Spielberg, Beatty, Hal Ashby, Coppola and Scorcese. Many of these were troubled geniuses who invented a new brand of Hollywood in the process destroyed them. It doesn't sugarcoat them and many of them are revealed as frankly awful. I think Spielberg and Lucas are the only ones who didn't really live destructive lives. It's a great read for it's blatant honesty and I'd highly recommend although I would take many of the stories with a grain of salt. But they're fascinating nonetheless. Closer to 1.5 stars. Some mildly interesting anecdotes, but I couldn't tell you exactly how Biskind develops his thesis in the total mishmash of industry tall tales that make up this book (if it wasn't spelled out in the last chapter, I don't think I could tell you it at all). So much inside baseball it ought to be printed on cork. You can say Peter Biskind is being a jerk to the generation of filmmakers who revolutionized Hollywood in the 1970s with this gossipy, mean yet thorough retelling of the rise and crash of "The New Hollywood" or you could argue that this group of boy geniuses pretty much got what they deserved as a group of young artists given too much too fast who lost it and ruined others in the process through their own greed and arrogance. Doesn't mean it couldn't have been a better book (there are times when you sense Biskind lost access to someone and simply stopped telling their story without explanation) but it tells a sad soulful story nonetheless. no reviews | add a review
"Easy Riders, Raging Bulls vividly chronicles the exuberance and excess of the times: the startling success of Easy Rider and the equally alarming circumstances under which it was made, with drugs, booze, and violent rivalry between costars Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda dominating the set; how a small production company named BBS became the guiding spirit of the youth rebellion in Hollywood and how, along the way, some of its executives helped smuggle Huey Newton out of the country; how director Hal Ashby was busted for drugs and thrown in jail in Toronto; why Martin Scorsese attended the Academy Awards with an FBI escort when Taxi Driver was nominated; how George Lucas, gripped by anxiety, compulsively cut off his own hair while writing Star Wars; how a modest house on Nicholas Beach occupied by actresses Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt became the unofficial headquarters for the New Hollywood; how Billy Friedkin tried to humiliate Paramount boss Barry Diller; and how screenwriter/director Paul Schrader played Russian roulette in his hot tub. It was a time when an "anything goes" experimentation prevailed both on the screen and off."--Jacket. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)791.4302330973The arts Recreational and performing arts Public performances Film, Radio, and Television Film Techniques, procedures, apparatus... Supervision Film direction History, geographic treatment, biographyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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