Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood

Don't think the point of the book/movie was that the people mentioned have disappeared off the face of the earth -- just that they have never achieved the critical AND commerical heights they achieved in the '70's. Spielberg and Lucas have survived and flourished, but they never had any intentions of CHANGING Hollywood, their films basically fit within an established Hollywood tradition. They were squares, in other words.

This documentary spans a period from about 1960 to 1980. The traditional Hollywood system was quickly crumbling--brought on by some incredibly expensive flops, such as "Cleopatra". And, because television had taken away from the film business so much, profits were way, way down. In reaction against the past and to help them out of financial meltdown, the studios turned their eyes to a whole new breed of filmmakers--folks who were making films that were little like the films of old. Now the new auteurs were the boss-- and in many cases they were wildly successful and in a few others they became the victims of their own egos and lifestyles. The film features tons of interviews with various Hollywood experts and craftsmen.

While I agree with some of the folks who have reviewed this documentary that many of the films mentioned in the documentary are way overrated, I cannot help but admire the overall quality of the film. It is slickly made, has exceptional graphics and is clearly a work of love. Well worth seeing--particularly if you consider yourself a film buff or expert on the medium.

The last golden age of Hollywood film-making is captured in this two hour documentary, based on Peter Biskind's bestselling book of the same name. Director Kenneth Bowser does a commendable job of corralling many of the key names of the period in this light but passable introduction to the topic.

Bowser's treatise of 1970s Hollywood is essentially a potted history of the time – many of the key developments and vital films that were made during this period are passed over or given nothing more than a cursory glance. The documentary suffers as a result and added to this, historical inaccuracies are also evident.

Film fans will most enjoy the scenes of archival footage – a desperately nerdy George Lucas being introduced as Francis Ford Coppola's 'assistant'; Jack Nicholson, Bob Rafelson, Dennis Hopper and Peter Tork on the set of The Monkees vehicle 'Head'; and the piece de resistance, a home movie with Messrs Spielberg, Lucas, Milius, Coppola, de Palma, Schrader and Scorsese all in the same room. To be a fly on the wall at that party!

There are also current interviews with the likes of Peter Bogdanovich, Dennis Hopper, Peter Bart, John Milius, Michael Phillips, Paul Schrader, Peter Fonda, Albert S. Ruddy and many more figures of the time.

Bowser's documentary serves as a snapshot of the time – Biskind's novel is a veritable diary. The book is packed with amazing stories that even a 13-part series couldn't document. Watch this documentary, get a taste of the time and then buy the book to immerse yourself in a fantastic period of American filmic creativity.

This docu makes the misguided error of comparing the careers of Hal Ashby and Steven Spielberg. More different film-makers there have never been. However, by sheer virtue of sharing artistic or commercial success in Hollywood in the same decade, these two anomylous inclusions are lumped in together. Peter Bogdanovich regales us simpletons with his self-encyclopedia, as if he were ever more than a journey-man director. It's intriguing to see the commercial success of The Exorcist and the critical success of Mean Streets sharing the same five minute discussion with various Hollywood talking heads all of whom are past their prime.

One of the rare gems of the film is the sequence recalling how Martin Scorcese, Paul Schrader, George Lucas, Spielberg and many other prominent male film-makers would hang out in the same beach houses in Malibu, but it's only ten minutes long. This is a film obsessed with the tangential perks of that divine spark that was the 70's renaissance of American movies. Presumably this film is based on a best-selling book of the same name, but all this film can sum up is that a bunch of cool movies came out in the 70's, and that, YES, the men who made those movies hung out from time to time. Honestly, you'd be better off just watching every film by the directors that this film interviews and save yourself the thankless task of listening to too many Hollywood has-beens pine for yesteryear. What really happened to these people's careers? Drugs for some, ego for others. Spotty at best, this film just isn't all it could be. 3/10

A documentary like Easy Riders, Raging Bulls should be the kind of documentary I should like more. It is chock full of interviews and choice information about the time period (60's-70's) in American cinema that changed everything, for a lot better and some for not. But there are a couple of problems that become inherent. If you have read the book which spurred on the documentary by Peter Biskind (also author of Down and Dirty Pictures, a book about the 90's independent film movement), it's kind of like reading a masterpiece in the trashiest sense. There is a lot more in-depth information in the book, however much of it at the personal expense of the filmmakers, writers, producers, and others that are written about (a good deal with gossip, interestingly enough on the special features of the DVD some of the interviewees speak out against the falsities in the book, Paul Schrader being one of them). The other problem is that the same year this documentary was released on Spike TV (then later to DVD, which is where I saw it), there was the great documentary in the similar, more satisfying vein, A Decade Under the Influence. It might be unfair to compare the two, however if one were wanting in the first place to get a video history- by way of movie clips and interviews- about the years that changed movies a generation before, I would go for 'Decade' due to it's more obscure film clips, and a few more revealing and insightful interviews.

In fact, over half of the people in one documentary are also in the other, like Dennis Hopper, Paul Schrader, Peter Bogdanovich, Ellen Burstyn, Roger Corman, and Monte Hellman among others. It's not that this documentary in and of itself is not insubstantial. On a base level you get the lowdown, about how as Hollywood's studio system was on the decline, filmmakers who were coming up in Corman's enclave (Coppola, Hopper, Bogdanovich, even Scorsese), along with some other key outsiders, infused European ideals into their personal statements, making great art and some money in the process. On the level of just giving forth the information, it's not a bad telling of tales, and has a couple of interviews I wasn't expecting. But, again, my sense of proportion was out of place; I could sense that the doc, much like the book, was more interested in some of the more 'seedy' details (i.e. the stuff about Julia Phillips, or Bogdanovich, which is practically a quarter of the book) than in the actual cinema-contexts of the work. You also don't hear as much about the power of the influence on the filmmakers, which was an appeal of 'Decade'. It's not too tough a call to make, and if you've seen 'Decade' before 'Easy Riders Raging Bulls' you may agree. I liked it, but it's not saying much when the book, which itself was readable mostly for the sake of history (some worthwhile, some not), was better.