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

I think it's a very interesting topic. Who is really responsible for a collaborative work? The auteur associated by name? I think it can be largely that, but also the context in which they made the art. Not just the budget, but also the collaborators. I recommend reading this book. Great stories about how Lucas and Bogdonovitch collaborated with their wifes, etc, in the early days and then stopped. http://www.amazon.com/Riders-Raging-Bulls-Sex-Drugs---Rock/dp/0684857081/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452545371&sr=8-1&keywords=easy+riders+raging+bulls

I think the only way to test this theory, however, is to give Double Fine tons and tons of money and let us have that problem! :)

I read this book on the New Hollywood era and it gets into how she was one of the best film editors around.

Eh, no. Mainstream Hollywood films in the '70s were markedly darker, more artistic, more mature, and more naturalistic than the kind of things coming out of Hollywood today. Directors were in more control in the '70s, and the new crop of directors were mostly young men from the first generation of American film schools who were greatly influenced by European and Japanese cinema. It's not just nostalgia, American filmmaking was different back then, and whether or not you agree that film was better, what he's talking about is a real difference in the way films were made not just a middle aged guy waxing nostalgic. There've even been books about it.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Aesthetically, I never liked the film. However, it changed Hollywood by shifting power in the direction of the auteur and paved the way for Scorcese, Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg.

Great book if you're interested in reading more.

One of my personal favorites is Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind.

It chronicles the new Hollywood of the 70's and the birth of the modern film as we still know it. It's an all around engrossing and enlightening read.

a less technical but fantastic resource for inspiration + films to watch: easy riders, raging bulls: how the sex-drugs-and-rock 'n' roll generation saved hollywood...

You're view of the current film industry is completely out of whack. The entire financial backbone of low budget or indie film (from the studio side) and high risk films doesn't exist anymore (note: low budget is now considered sub $30 million) - it disappeared in 2007 / 2008 with the collapse of the "completion bond" structure, combined with the collapse of the home video market. This isn't subjective blather, the film industry literally completely changed about 7 years ago. All the "arthouse" subsidiaries of the major film studies were closed - and those were, for about 2 decades, the subsidiaries that produced a majority of the films we now look back on as the greats from the 90s and 00s. They were at one time called the "Oscar machines". See a good article on this here.

This is partially what has motivated so many a-list directors and actors to migrate so much work over to television in the last 8 years (I'm sure everyone has noticed this) - where there is now more support for high risk, controversial, challenging content - and the money to back it.

If you want a good explanation of what happened, here's a great lecture by Steven Sodderbergh on why he retired from film and moved into television with Behind The Candelabra (getting Matt Damon, Michael Douglas) and The Knick (with Clive Owen):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQrFSUwFwUM

You can also read similar sentiments from interviews with Harrelson and McConaughey with True Detective, Martin Scorsese with Boardwalk Empire, David Fincher and Kevin Spacey with House of Cards, Gus Van Sant with Boss, etc. You can also hear the producers behind some of the biggest films of the last 15 years talk about how the change in film and why a lot of great scripts just are no longer being considered for financing - these interviews are on Youtube - there are 6 of them under the title "Producer Round Table". It's 6 hours of interviews, and I can't find the exact ones!

This doesn't mean great or challenging films aren't being made - they are, but they are extremely difficult to finance, are becoming more and more rare. One reason is that a film like Network, if made today would be virtually shut out of theatrical distribution. This is why films like Boyhood and Birdman, etc. which are massive critical hits (critics and audiences) get released in at the most 800 theaters (briefly, at their peak), have pretty much no marketing backing, and disappear very quickly - while a film like Interstellar or Guardians of Galaxy release to 4000 theaters, with gigantic marketing budgets (foreign and domestic), and make their profit back usually within 7 days - 7 -14 days is currently the benchmark for a studio to see if a film is successful or not. It's that bad - and it's why films are focus tested and the altered to such a degree before release. Birdman has been out for a month, is one of the highest rated films of the year, and still hasn't made it's $25 million dollar budget back. But how could it? It has virtually no support - and this doesn't make the audience innocent - the audience is totally complicit in supporting blockbuster shit being crammed into 15 / 16 theaters at the multiplex. The studios are just giving the audience what they want - and luckily, those blockbuster films completely match the film financing model perfectly. And the sad part - the more these lower budget, critically acclaimed films suffer and make little profit, the less and less of them that are made. In the past, the studios could rely on home video deals (and other revenue sources) to make back their money - but this is now...gone.

So I can't agree that things are better now then they were - especially the 70s - speaking exclusively about movies. Popular and successful films of that time were reflective of the way the films were financed and made. They were not only challenging but somehow balanced it with entertainment. It was one of the only decades in film history where directors, writers and actors had unprecedented freedom and studios took major risks. (Here's a good book on what happened in the late 60s that allowed this.) It's that decade that gave rise to most of the directors who are even today still dominating the film industry - and have created most of the films that we now place on "best films of the last 50 years" lists. In other words, guys like Scorsese, Spielberg, de Palma, Coppola, Polanski, Allen, Altman, Lumet, Lucas, Cassavetes, etc. would never have been given the opportunities today that they had then. The average age of directors in the 70s was 25 - 40. Today is 40 - 60. What studio today would give a young kid like Coppolla the resources to make The Godfather today? Or Lucas the resources to make Star Wars? Nobody. It would either not get made, made on a REALLY small scale with limited financial support, moved to television - OR - given to a bankable / safe director, with a bankable cast, bankable composer, focus tested out the yin yang, until it was about as watered down and superficial as 12 Years a Slave. (Ya, I think Star Wars is an excellent example of the 70s model of making some very risky stuff - even when it comes to blockbuster type movies.) But that's not how it's done today - and it's why the multiplexes are filled with non-risk, completely bankable products that will almost to a statistical certainty make a profit. Absolutely noone is surprised that The Avengers made a profit - everybody was surprised that Star Wars did. And, yes, there are exceptions in todays model, but the balance is way off and getting worse.

This is a really bad thing for movies in my opinion - at least a certain type of movie. And the fact that audiences are totally complicit in this is also kind of disturbing - and why I don't blame the studios at all. I kind of feel bad for this generation - and the films that will eventually be shown as representative of what was popular and supported at the time - considered the fairly crazy shit that's going on all around us. The 80s are kind of forgiven, because it was a fairly optimistic and a boom time for America (and the studios were also high on making more money off stuff like Star Wars, Indiana Jones than ever though possible in the industry) - but it's difficult to understand why America has gone through so much crazy shit in the last 15 years, and yet there are very few popular, honest and candid, films to reflect it. This is a crazy volatile time for America, so perhaps people are just trying to escape into fantasy and action, mindless comedy, etc. - and television is now the place where the challenging shit can survive. I mean, in the 70s, you could regularly walk into the theater and be confronted with many many successful / popular films dealing with Vietnam, political / police / media corruption, dysfunctional families, drugs, racism, civil rights, mental illness, justice system (even reflected in the fantasy / action films of the day). Whereas today, it seems the most popular and successful films are trying as hard as possible to ignore anything of substance - at least for the most part.

So I agree - great films are still being made - they are often hard to find (usually crammed briefly into the Oscar season rush, and as /u/swan_pr pointed out, the festival circuit) but it is definitely a shallow / superficial time in American movies. And the audience is totally complicit - but I think television is slowly taking the reins, so maybe not all bad. Perhaps in the future, we'll go to the movies for escape only (kind of like Broadway is now compared to many decades ago), and get our hard shit via other mediums.

EDIT: Thanks for the gold stranger! I could have worded that a bit better, but it's a complicated issue that's tough to summarize.

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind

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

Well If you can't tell The General apart from Keatons earlier work, and you don't recognize Leone's influence, I don't think anything I say may convince you. So as far as Easy Rider goes, I suggest you read this (a jolly good read):http://www.amazon.com/Riders-Raging-Bulls-Sex-Drugs-Rock/dp/0684857081/ref=cm_lmf_tit_5

The Kid Stays in the Picture Saw the documentary and liked it. Haven't read the book.
The Man Who Heard Voices If you're a fan of Shyamalan, you may like it.
If you saw Natural Born Killers then read Killer Instinct. A great book by the producer Jane Hamsher.
While obtaining Amazon links I came across these titles, which I haven't read. You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again and Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.

If you want fiction with a 'behind the scenes feel' I rec Time on My Hands and Wild Horses

edit: putting John Cater on my goodreads To Read list, thanks.

I was approaching them more from a "Which space is better space?" angle. I remember the first time I watched "2001" in 2007 and was horrified with how much "A New Hope" borrowed (or stole) from it. I think that's when the first cracks in the foundation of a galaxy far, far away started for me. Then I started heavily researching the history of cinema and... well, no one points to "2001" as the film that destroyed intelligent films.

That's not to say that I live on a high-brow diet. I bounce around all sorts a films, and very excitedly bought "Corman's World" yesterday. Along with "A Dangerous Method". But Roger Corman's films, and all exploitation films, managed to exist equally amongst the intelligentsia. There were even X-rated films that were accepted with open arms. Then the one-two punch of "Jaws" and "A New Hope" happened. Films became more about money than content, and now cinema's become an Ouroboros that's choking on itself.

For a great, unbiased look at filmmaking of the 60s and 70s, I highly recommend Peter Biskind's "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls". And if you wanna know where the 90s went wrong, I also highly recommend "Down and Dirty Pictures", also by Peter Biskind.

No problem at all! In this case, I mostly learned it by reading a lot of essays and interviews and books, in this case especially ones on Kubrick and on cinematography. I don't remember specifically what stuff in particular, unfortunately. The best advice for watching EWS (or any film) in its intended format is to find a screening of it that's in 35mm--depending on where you're located, good bets are museums like MOMA in NYC, a local university, or arthouses and repertory theatres that might have a Kubrick retrospective or something.

As far as becoming well-versed in film, the first step is to watch everything you can get your hands on, even if you think it will be awful, and pay as much attention to the choices that are being made, how a camera is moving, what is in the frame and what isn't, lighting, color, dialogue, etc., even if you have no idea really what to be paying attention for. Anything you can think of or see onscreen, think about why that choice is being made and what the purpose of that choice is. And then after viewing something, look up some reviews of it (to find good critics, a good start is to go to Rotten Tomatoes, narrow down a movie's reviews to Top Critics, and then read the full reviews from there), positive and negative, and try to match what they're talking about to what you just saw and see if you can recognize what they're mentioning. And if you can't, just store the type of thing they're talking about and remember to think about it during the next movie you watch, and the next, and so on. Practicing this will build up your knowledge quite quickly, and it will become second nature to pick up on all kinds of things, and once that becomes habit and you don't have to pay as much attention consciously, you'll pick up on more and more subtle nuances. (If you want to have a starting point for films, you can go with a list like this, a list of 1000 movies that are "the best of all time" as a result of aggregating several different polls. Obviously, you never want to put too much stock in other people's opinions of what the best is, and it seems intimidatingly long, but like I said, it's just if you want a reference point. And they link to the polls they use, so if you want a smaller list to work with you, you can try one of those. This is helpful because again you'll discover what you like, so you might find one movie on that list by a director you love and then go off and watch everything else she ever did. And then you come back to the list. So it's not really about completing the list, just using it as another starting point for discovery.) Also, I recommend you keep at least a brief log of everything you watch, along with some notes about it--this will help you keep track of directors/screenwriters/cinematographers you like, as well as help you understand what you like and don't like about films better.

Once you start to feel comfortable with some of the basics, you can start seeking out books that discuss the film-making experience. With both movies and books, you'll discover your tastes as you go along, so it's best to start casting a broad net and reading books that cover a lot of topics, and then you might find that cinematography interests you most and then start reading books that are more specifically about that, and subscribing to specialty magazines like American Cinematographer, or you might find it all appealing and want to read books on all aspects of filmmaking.

That probably seems like a ton of info and fairly intimidating, but I basically started from nothing and basically just taught myself whatever I know by this method, no film school or anything certainly. Not saying I'm an expert on this stuff by any stretch of the imagination, but I've been able to become knowledgeable enough.

Some specific recommendations that I found immensely helpful that hopefully might be helpful to you too:

Current film critics: Dana Stevens (Slate), Stephanie Zacharek (Village Voice), Karina Longworth (freelance), Manohla Dargis (NYT), Wesley Morris (Grantland), A.O. Scott (NYT)


Kubrick:
The Stanley Kubrick Archives - A great book that also features Kubrick's drawings, personal notes, continuity photos, and interviews with him

Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made - A book on SK's uncompleted Napoleon film

The Kubrick Site - A really amazing online resource with a lot of links to essays and articles


Film magazines: Sight and Sound, Film Comment, American Cinematographer, Filmmaker, Little White Lies, Screen International


Books (if you only ever read one book on film, I'd make it Hitchcock/Truffaut--I learned more from it than from any other single source):
Hitchcock/Truffaut

What is Cinema?

Pictures at a Revolution

Negative Space

A Cinema of Loneliness

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

The Age of Movies

Making Movies

Read this book and watch all of the movies that are mentioned.