![]() ![]() ![]() It only lasted for a decade, but what a ride it was. After Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, almost anyone who looked like he - they were mostly all male - had slept in his clothes, wore a bandana around his head, had a joint jammed between his lips, and a three day growth of beard, could walk into the office of a studio head and get a deal. This book explores the cultural and political context - the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam War Movement, Watergate - which spawned them, and describes the sorry state of the studios in the late-1960’s that made them vulnerable to the so-called movie brat generation that successfully stormed the gates. ![]() ![]() How did this happen? What was going on in America, and Hollywood in particular to prepare the soil from which sprang such a remarkable group of films? Mostly, Biskind wants to tell some wild stories. This was the era of movies like The Godfathers, Chinatown, Shampoo, Nashville, The French Connection, The Last Detail, Annie Hall, Jaws, The Last Picture Show, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, and so on, a group of pictures that towers over the product Hollywood is releasing today. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls follows the wild ride that was Hollywood in the 70s - an unabashed celebration of sex, drugs, and rock n roll (both onscreen and off) and a climate where innovation and experimentation reigned supreme. In Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (Simon & Schuster, 506 pp.), Peter Biskind wants to tell us exactly how it all went down, how these movies managed to get made in Hollywood, and then how the dream died. The 1970s was the last Golden Age of Hollywood film. ![]()
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