Easy Riders, Raging Bulls - Softcover

Biskind, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747544212 ISBN 13: 9780747544210

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1999

Synopsis

Based on hundreds of interviews with directors such as Coppola, Scorsese, Hopper and Spielberg, as well as producers, stars, studio executives, writers, spouses, ex-spouses, and girlfriends, this is the story of the crazy world that the directors ruled.

About this title

Review

Not only is Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls the best book in recent memory on turn-of-the-70s film, it is beyond question the best book there'll ever be on the subject. Why? Because once the big names who spilled the beans to Biskind find out that other people spilled an equally piquant quantity of beans, nobody will dare speak to another writer with such candor, humour and venom again.

Biskind did 100s of interviews with people who make the President look accessible: Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola, Geffen, Beatty, Kael, Towne, Altman. He also spoke with countless spurned spouses and burned partners, alleged victims of assault by knife, pistol and bodily fluids. Rather more responsible than some of his sources, Biskind always carefully notes the denials as well as the astounding stories he has compiled. He tells you about Scorsese running naked down Mulholland Drive after his girlfriend, crying, "Don't leave me!"; grave robbing on the set of Apocalypse Now; Faye Dunaway apparently flinging urine in Roman Polanski's face while filming Chinatown; Michael O'Donoghue's LSD-fueled swan dive onto a patio; Coppola's mad plan for a 10-hour film of Goethe's Elective Affinities in 3-D; the ocean suicide attempt Hal "Captain Wacky" Ashby gave up when he couldn't find a swimsuit that pleased him; countless dalliances with porn stars; Russian roulette games and psychotherapy sessions in hot tubs. But he also soberly gives both sides ample chance to testify.

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is also more than a fistful of dazzling anecdotes. Methodically, as thrillingly as a movie attorney, Biskind builds the case that Hollywood was revived by wild ones who then betrayed their own dreams, slit their own throats and destroyed an art form by producing that mindless, inhuman modern behemoth, the blockbuster.

When Spielberg was making the first true blockbuster, Jaws, he sneaked Lucas in one day when nobody was around, got him to put his head in the shark's mechanical mouth and closed the shark's mouth on him. The gizmo broke and got stuck but the two young men somehow extricated Lucas's head and hightailed it like Tom and Huck. As Peter Biskind's scathing, funny, wise book demonstrates, they only thought they had escaped. --Tim Appelo, Amazon.com

Review

Dennis Drabelle"The Washington Post Book World" Biskind's devourable book is that rarity, a Hollywood expose that you can read mouth agape, slurping up scandal and titillation so fast you're in danger of choking -- without feeling ashamed of yourself. Mark Harris"Entertainment Weekly" 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." Brian Gunn"San Francisco Chronicle" Biskind is a magician at prying revealing yarns and juicy quotes out of his subjects. And the resulting scenarios are deliciously tawdry...moments of real intelligence and grace.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747544212
• ISBN 13: 9780747544210
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512