Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood

By: Peter Biskind

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 23 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

When the low-budget biker movie Easy Rider shocked Hollywood with its success in 1969, a new Hollywood era was born. This was an age when talented filmmakers such as Scorcese, Coppola, and Spielberg, along with a new breed of actors, including DeNiro, Pacino, and Nicholson, became the powerful figures who would make such modern classics as The Godfather, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, and Jaws.

Easy Rider, Raging Bulls follows the wild ride that was Hollywood in the 70s - an unabashed celebration of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (both on screen and off) and a climate where innovation and experimentation reigned supreme.

©1999 Peter Biskind (P)2008 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Peter Biskind's great, scathing, news-packed history...is one hell of an elixir - salty with flavorsome gossip, sour with the aftertaste of misspent careers, intoxicating with one revelation after another...an 'A.'" ( Entertainment Weekly)

Outstanding, and great narration

I enjoyed this listen and learned a great deal. It's honestly a miracle many of the classics from the '70s got made given the egotism, paranoia, and drug abuse that were all rampant. A lot of these directors came across poorly, and seemed clueless about the quality and appeal of their films. I actually lost some respect for Spielberg and Lucas, the two who had the most success. Both seemed kinda petty, in my opinion. Author wrote very well, and Dick Hill will always be a top three narrator.

Great Dish, Sketchy Analysis

This book is chock full of great inside baseball on the making of many of the great classic movies of the late 1960s and 1970s -- the Godfather series, Bonnie & Clyde, Scorsese's classics, Robert Altman, etc. etc. There is loads of juicy gossip about the directors, actors and other Hollywood figures who made them. That alone is worth the price of admission. (Although to be fair, quite a number of directors, including Coppolla, Spielberg, Altman, and others, have accused the author of everything from skewing these stories, to half-truths, to outright lies, so take it with a grain of salt.)

The analysis from the point of view of film history left me feeling like something was missing -- the audience. So many of these now-classic films were made under protest or fraught with production problems or in some cases just total accidents. By contrast, there were many labors of love, pet projects and can't-miss efforts that failed. Yet the analysis never looks at the vagaries of public tastes, opinions and reactions as the overriding determinant of what works and what doesn't, sometimes in the short term, sometimes in the long run (Raging Bull, for example, was a critical and commercial flop upon its initial release, only to become an enduring classic over the course of time).

In addition to overlooking the impact of audiences and lionizing some questionable characters who often stumbled into their success, the history of 1970s cinema as presented here is myopic. To draw a straight line from the groundbreaking Bonnie and Clyde through the ruinous Heaven's Gate is a mistake, because there is one line that goes up to Jaws and Star Wars and another that emerges from the indelible impact of the commercial success of those two blockbusters -- that impact is not overlooked, but neither is it treated as the watershed it truly was.

But more than that, there is no more than token mention of the groundbreaking Hollywood filmmaking of the post-war era that set the stage for the "New Hollywood" and the independent cinema that emerged from the ashes of Heaven's Gate. Kudos to the author for giving so much attention to the often forgotten Hal Ashby, but others that emerged from the live TV dramas of the 1950s are barely mentioned (e.g. the Sidneys, Lumet and Pollack) or not mentioned at all (most egregiously, George Roy Hill), even though they were responsible for some of the seminal films of the era.

Likewise, the ruination of Hollywood that we are left with at the conclusion of this book is greatly exaggerated. There is no mention that The Secaucus Seven had already launched a new wave of indie film, to be followed by the likes of Jarmusch, the Coens, Spike Lee, Soderbergh, et.al. in the 1980s, that Hollywood still had some tricks up its sleeve (John Hughes, Barry Levinson, Rob Reiner, Ridley Scott, Oliver Stone, James Cameron -- how many remember that The Terminator was an independent film that was a total sleeper when it first came out?), that Miramax was already founded before the end of the 1980s (notwithstanding the ultimate fate of one of its co-founders), that the midnight movie craze had already launched crackpot auteurs like David Lynch and John Waters, that there were still a lot of good imports from other countries (despite this book's assertion that foreign film became irrelevant once Hollywood was allowed to show nudity and sex).

And newsflash for the author: Woody Allen has directed something live fifty movies since the only one of his credits that is mentioned in this book (What's New Pussycat, which he didn't even direct). Many of the most important of those were part of New Hollywood and immediately thereafter.

Essential History

I thought I knew this stuff and knew about half of it. Great pacing and great reading

Good story, flawed men

This story humanizes several men who were lucky enough to achieve success in the film industry during the 70s. For some it was fleeting, for others, enduring to this day. Valuable lessons across ego, misogyny, addiction, failure, discipline. Most of the filmmakers mentioned I now admire less after this listening. But they sure did have some fun and I can’t fault them for that. Not to mention being responsible for creating some core cultural touch points of the last century.

Fascinating insight to a magical and tumultuous time

The brilliant and tragic story of a generation of filmmakers who changed American cinema with all the inspiration and debauchery that came with it.

A modern Hollywood Babylon

A mostly lurid account of the counter-culture generation that took on the old guard of Hollywood. Egomania, paranoia, insecurity, (and lots of cocaine) seemed to be the creative force behind all the great movies of the 1970s. But it was fascinating to learn about the interpersonal relationships between that generation of directors and their friendships and feuds.

LISTENER BEWARE - the narrator has the dubious honor of being one of the top three worst I've encountered in the 100+ Audible books I've listened to. Completely inappropriate for the subject matter. He sounded like a hipster Walter Cronkite, more suited for cornball westerns. I had a difficult time getting through this book because I despised his voice and delivery.

23 Hours of Wading through Sludge

I don't doubt that most, if not all, of this book's revelations about Hollywood's hero directors and producers of the 1970s are true. It's just that after a while, tale after tale of drugs, sex, megalomania, insecurity, outright insanity and more drugs begins to wear one down. No attempt is made to explore or illuminate the creative brilliance and the process behind it that filmmakers like Scorsese, Coppola and Friedkin unleashed in the 1970s; rather, it unloads a triple serving of dirty laundry alone, leaving the reader wondering how timeless films like The Godfather and Taxi Driver actually managed to get completed. If you're looking for a balanced review of Hollywood history, look elsewhere. If you enjoy gawking at car wrecks, you may just love this book!
The book's structure is somewhat frustrating at times, taking an almost purely chronological approach. This means the author frequently jumps between the stories of several different movies in production before finishing any of them, and the large cast of characters can get confusing with so much skipping around.
The narrator does a great job. His tone and reading style perfectly fit the nature of the material.
I found myself wanting to rewatch (or see for the first time) many of the films covered in the book. Film aficionados should probably add it to their reading list, but be forewarned that you're probably going to want to take a shower after you finish!

More please

This books leaves you wanting more. Not because it's lacking something ,it's just because you just want more of these great stories . Sequel please. Completely engaging and fascinating . If you love the true masters of film like Scorsese Coppola Spielberg and countless others this is the book for you . You won't be disappointed .

1970s Cinema... Theres nothing like it.

This book completely alters the way I look at 1970s cinema and the filmmakers who came out of the decade as well.

Tiptoe around the editorials

The information contained in this book is as fascinating as it is scathing. An absolutely indispensable document of American art and history. The author's occasional but extremely slanted editorials on films and their creators are as unexpected and unwanted as a water balloon, but don't let that take away from everything else that is good about this book, which is much.