Dez Reviews: 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls' (book) by Peter Biskind

I recently finished reading ‘Easy Riders, Raging Bulls’ by Peter Biskind, and would highly recommend it for anyone interested in moviemaking. It is a rather salacious account of Hollywood in the late 60’s and 70’s, the time of the “New Hollywood.” For many film buffs, this was a golden age of personal and daring filmmaking. The book chronicles the rises and falls, the sex, violence, excesses and genius of such figures as Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, William Friedkin, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Robert Evans, Robert Altman, Jack Nicholson, Peter Bogdonovich and a host of other movers and shakers in 70’s Hollywood. Not only does it tell many juicy tales, such as Dennis Hopper threatening the lives of virtually everyone involved in the making of Easy Rider, but the book also offers an in depth analysis of the effect of these films on popular culture and on Hollywood, as well as of what went right and what went horribly wrong in this period.

I was particularly interested in this theme that Biskind follows throughout, how the old Hollywood studio system was dying, so these young guns came along and started this revolution from within that thrived for about eight years, and then it was undermined from within by the likes of Lucas and Spielberg, who (perhaps unwittingly) re-established the power of the studio system. Naturally a book that celebrates the personal filmmaking of Scorsese and Hal Ashby would not look kindly on blockbusters like Jaws or Star Wars. According to Biskind, the runaway success of those two films conspired with other factors and excesses to put an end to the exciting 70’s era of filmmaking.

Biskind declares: “When all was said and done, Lucas and Spielberg returned the ‘70s audience, grown sophisticated on a diet of European and New Hollywood films, to the simplicities of the pre-60’s Golden Age of movies…They were, as [Pauline] Kael first pointed out, infantilizing the audience, reconstituting the spectator as child, then overwhelming him and her with sound and spectacle, obliterating irony, aesthetic self-consciousness, and critical reflection…We are the children of Lucas, not Coppola.”

Lucas himself has a cynical view of it all. Biskind quotes Lucas as saying “Star Wars didn’t kill the film industry…Popcorn pictures have always ruled. Why do these people go see these popcorn pictures when they’re no good? Why is the public so stupid? That’s not my fault. I just understood what people liked to go see, and Steven [Spielberg] has too, and we go for that.” Lucas then rather defensively (and unconvincingly) argues that Star Wars brought in so much money, that it caused the increase in multiplexes and screens, and those screens had to be filled with something; therefore the money from the Star Wars-type films helped to subsidize the smaller, more personal films that now had room to thrive in the multiplexes. Martin Scorsese fires back “They’re not subsidizing everything else…Star Wars was in. Spielberg was in. We were finished.” William Friedkin (director of The Exorcist and The French Connection) complains that “Star Wars was like when McDonald’s got a foothold, the taste for good food just disappeared. Now we’re in a period of devolution.” And Robert Altman stated a few years back that going to the movie theater these days is “one big amusement park ride. It’s the death of film.” Both sides make valid arguments. I mean, it is undeniable that Jaws and Star Wars are both great entertainment. In a certain sense, can you really get angry at filmmakers for doing nothing other than making great entertainment that the masses enjoy?

There is more than a little bit of jealousy in some of these statements; as the Biskind book makes clear, these directors all knew each other, hung out, and were fiercely competitive. They wanted to make “films” (as opposed to mere movies), yet they also wanted financial success and acclaim. In fact, Lucas first tried to make art films that were decidedly noncommercial. He was so embittered by how he was treated by the studios, that he made American Graffiti and Star Wars almost in retaliation, in part to prove to the studios that he could make a commercial movie if he felt like it. Lucas scoffs at how easy it is to make a commercial film, saying “emotionally involving the audience is easy: anybody can do it blindfolded. Get a little kitten and have some guy wring its neck.”


ABOVE: George Lucas (the one on the left), killer of both (symbolic) kittens and (actual) good filmmaking, oversees his Star Wars empire

The above back and forth is from about three pages in the 439 page book, so as you can imagine, it is full of fascinating discussions and arguments about the push and pull between art and commerce. And Dennis Hopper threatening to kill people. A good read.

**** out of *****