Specify About Books Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And-Rock-'N'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
| Title | : | Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And-Rock-'N'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood |
| Author | : | Peter Biskind |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 506 pages |
| Published | : | December 10th 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (first published September 27th 1998) |
| Categories | : | Culture. Film. Nonfiction. History. Media Tie In. Biography. Pop Culture. Cultural |
Peter Biskind
Paperback | Pages: 506 pages Rating: 4.12 | 6444 Users | 430 Reviews
Rendition In Pursuance Of Books Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And-Rock-'N'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
AcknowledgmentsHollywood is a town of fabulators. The people who dwell there create fictions for a living, fictions that refuse tidily to confine themselves to the screen, but spill over into the daily lives of the men and women who regard themselves as stars in the movies of their own lives. Although this book tells readers altogether more than they may wish to know about the Hollywood of the '70s, I do not flatter myself that I have arrived at "the truth." At the end of this long, twisted road I am once again struck with the force of the old maxim, the more you know, the more you know what you don't know. This is particularly true in the case of Hollywood, where despite the reams of memos and contracts that now gather dust on the shelves of university libraries, very little of what really matters is committed to paper, so that an endeavor of this sort is dependent on memory -- in this case of an era twenty or thirty years in the past. Not only is the terrain distant, but in this period memory has been enfeebled by booze and drugs.In a town where credit grabbing is an art form, to say that memory is self-serving is to say that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Moreover, defect of memory is a shield that enables people to go to work in the morning, protecting them from the unspeakable behavior that is taken for granted there. As director Paul Schrader puts it, "In this business, you've got to have a selective memory. Otherwise, it's too painful." Kurosawa's "Rashomon" remains one of the truest movies about the movies and the people who make them.
In this maze of mirrors, lucky is the chronicler who does not lose his or her way in the infini, Alice Mayhew gave ither blessing, and Bob Bender, along with his assistant, Johanna Li, helped it to see the light of day. My agent, Kris Dahl, guided me through the shoals of writing and editing.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Elizabeth Hess, and daughter, Kate, for their unfailing patience and support.
Copyright © 1998 by Peter Biskind
Particularize Books In Favor Of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And-Rock-'N'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
| Original Title: | Easy Riders, Raging Bulls |
| ISBN: | 0747544212 (ISBN13: 9780747544210) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Rating About Books Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And-Rock-'N'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
Ratings: 4.12 From 6444 Users | 430 ReviewsNotice About Books Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And-Rock-'N'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
If you're a filmmaker, I highly recommend this book, Interesting and entertaining look at directors and producers from the 70's like Francis Ford Coppola, Denis Hopper, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Warren Beatty and many more. Goes through the transition of directors before and what they've become. Taking you through classic pictures and how they were made.Unfortunately this is less of the untold story of the birth of the Auteur directors of 70's (you know the ones...Coppola, Scorsese, DE Palma, ect.) and more a gossipy, vindictive, and mean spirited expose of how terrible all those people where at all times...the whole book seems petty and dishonest. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I believe that these people are saints that should be above all criticism, it's that the writing and the editing of this book is so focused on telling you how drug
An interesting read, however it was different book than I was expecting. It has been a few years since I have read "Down & Dirty Pictures," by Biskind, and forgot about my gripes with that book, which is really all my fault.The worst parts of the book read like TMZ from the seventies, in which you find out who banged who, who did what drug, and why this person is an asshole. I understand the fascination of that, but I was hoping to read more about the actual films that were created. When
A handful of mavericks dream of breaking the studios' stranglehold, of making Art that will be screened across the world, but they are beguiled by mountains of cash and their own megalomania and by the time Star Wars hits, they're finished. Roll credits.It's hard to warm to anyone in this book - the hubris of Coppola, the wife-beating Hopper, Lucas the nerdy bore, Scorsese the paranoid brat, or Spielberg the money-grabbing sellout. You'd think such decadence would be an interesting read but for
However much is true, however much really happened that way, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How The Sex 'N' Drugs 'N' Rock 'N' Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind remains one of my favorite non-fiction reads. For those who hear "film history" and think Titanic, in 1967, the major American film studios were in such disarray and the counterculture seemed to be overturning conventions with such speed that a new generation of filmmakers, by and large under the age of 30, (and universally white
One of the more curious quotes in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls comes from Terry Southern, the principal screenwriter of Easy Rider: In my mind, the ending (of Easy Rider) was to be an indictment of blue-collar America, the people I thought were responsible for the Vietnam War.* O.K.hold on. Thats a nutty thing to say, Terry. It wasnt blue-collar America that was running the military-industrial Cold War economy, conspiring to invade and destroy Vietnam and injure Americans in body and soul. Terry,
It stunned me to realise that its over twenty years since this was published. I have the original hardback, which means its over twenty years since I read it. That makes me feel old. As if I should already be staggering around the garden, entertaining grandchildren with pieces of orange in my mouth.This charge through the world of New Hollywood of the 1970s remains a compulsive read. Starting with bad behaviour on the set of EASY RIDER (well, actually a bit before that, with the suggestion that
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