Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

This book, written by Peter Biskind, covers the era of filmmaking, roughly from 1967-1980 (or, what is generally referred to as the 70s-style of filmmaking) where the director was given all the power on a movie set, and it shows how the new outlook revived Hollywood, but ultimately signalled its doom.

The primary focus of the book is on directors Peter Bogdanovich (Paper Moon, The Last Picture Show), William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection), Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now), Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull), Steven Spielberg (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind), and George Lucas (American Graffiti, Star Wars), their relationships with people, the drugs, and the egos, that affected their work. The book cites the foreign influences of Truffaut, Godard, and Antonioni, among others, that allowed young American hopefuls to take control of a film and make it their way, without as much interference with the studio, and cites Easy Rider and Bonnie & Clyde as films that set the tone.

The theme you see the most is that these guys would make a film, and have a lot of people around who helped them out, and then they would form huge egos and didn't surround themselves with people who told them, "No." After Bogdanovich and Friedkin made their two huge hits, they went into obscurity, unable to keep their personal lives in check and refused good advice. Shortly after The Godfather changed the way films were distributed around the country, Spielberg came out with Jaws, and suddenly the death-knell was sounded for dark, emotionally complex films, and certainly Star Wars was the final nail.

At least, that's what is argued, but the book seems to stray from the idea that the guys aside from Spielberg and Lucas could just as easily be blamed. Friedkin and Bogdanovich made some films no one wanted to see after their original successes, and they had complete control over those films, so it wasn't a studio coming down and saying, "Hey, we need to make Jaws with these next films, guys." Plus, it's not like those films are considered classics now, either. They, and especially Coppola when he began filming the 1979-released Apocalypse way back in 1976, had become indecisive and squandered studio money on what amounts to their ego. Had they actually come out with the genius films they had made earlier, then there would still be a market today for those type of films, regardless of whether someone wants to sit back and enjoy a Jaws or a Star Wars. Then, you might get someone say, well, Scorsese came out with genius films all the time, but no one wanted to go see them. It's because they were so dark, so violent, people weren't ready for them at the time.

Which leads me to the next point, in that people seem to forget things when they argue in this way. Sure, the 70's came out with some top-notch films that are considered classics or best of all time, but I bet there was a lot of crap back then, too. We can't say, just because some of the best films ever made came out in one decade, that others haven't come out since (or that the decade was pure gold). In 1994 alone, there were several I'd put in a all-time list of some shape, with Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, Ed Wood, and The Shawshank Redemption. There are still these kinds of directors around, Quentin Tarantino, Joel & Ethan Coen, P.T. Anderson, Wes Anderson, David O. Russell, Alexander Payne, among others, who still make movies that have a darker edge and to some degree have found success.

You could also argue that a couple of these directors have made their best films since the 70s. It could be argued that Robert Altman (a significant side-subject of this book) made his best film in 1992 with The Player, and Scorsese with Goodfellas in 1990. Spielberg made what many people considered his best with Schindler's List (1993) or Saving Private Ryan (1998). There is a lot of crap out there, but what the book, and what the people interviewed don't recognize is, there's always been crap. It comes with the territory of just about any business. The megaplexes may be ridiculous in scheduling 5 prints of say, Troy, instead of giving an arthouse film a chance in the same place (I think that there should be room made when certain films are starting to wane at the box office instead of letting them hang around and take up space), but the dollar is always going to win out on this. I can argue and argue that City of God is the best film I've seen this decade, but if I put it in a theatre with Shrek 2 then you'll see what the masses think of my opinion. Plus, just because a movie is technically better in almost every way, doesn't mean it's a better draw. Americans regard film as entertainment, and if the subject matter is supposed to make you feel good, then it's going to be higher on the list of priority.

That's my main beef with Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. There are still people out there who think that everything is worse than it was, and it's not true. It's out-and-out false. It's no harder to make a film you want to make than it was back then. I mean, am I supposed to think that Scorsese, Lucas, Coppola, et al., just walked in and said, "I'm a filmmaker" and suddenly they were given the power to do so? There's still a lot of ass-kissing and money-raising that had to take place. The book seems to lean that way, like studios were willing to give anyone a chance, and if that's true, then the book is not covering the people who made films other than these main 6, Altman, and Hal Ashby, and I wager that it's because the argument would have been watered down.

I do believe that there are very valid points in the middle of all this, and certainly, some of these guys would not have seen the light of day had it not been for the change of perspective that the late-60's ushered in (we also have the system rocked by Vietnam and drug culture). I was just disappointed to see such a narrow view of the way films were then and are now. The book does an incredible job of figuring out the reasons for these filmmakers to flourish, and all of their problems, and it's incredibly in-depth with anecdotes and comments--homework aplenty was done in the preparation of this book. It's just the opinions I had a problem with, because they don't consider everything (that goes for Biskind and the people like Altman who take their jabs at modern cinema).

Now, I did love reading this book. It has some great stories in it, and it's unflinching about these guys' drug use and sexual exploits. My favorite part has to be when someone is talking about Martin Scorsese, how when he got mad, he was mostly a phone-thrower and a wall-hitter, he never hit people. Apparently, someone was yelling at his girlfriend at the time, he picked up the phone, yelled at the guy, threw the phone and it shattered, then he went out of the apartment, went to a phone booth, picked up the phone, and continued yelling at the guy. So, if you ever want to read this book, it's very entertaining to say the least, and your jaw will drop at the balls some of these people have. But my main reason for writing about it was that I got a little frustrated at the far-sightedness of it, and felt compelled to argue.