The later 1960s saw the final collapse of the Old Hollywood which had dominated from the 1920s, with its rigid studio systems, production quotas, stars under strict contracts, subject to carefully managed images and appearing in movies with, by and large, squeaky clean subject matter (Doris Day & Rock Hudson) or, if a bit more gritty (gangster movies, Westerns), nonetheless featuring clear heroes, baddies and well-upholstered love interests. Easy ridersĮasy Riders, Raging Bulls is a big, intensely researched and hugely absorbing book, turning in at just over 500 pages of smallish print, including the index and ‘Cast of characters’. What makes this book such an epic read is the awesome amount of detail that Biskind goes into on all these and many other topics, and the amazing eye-witness testimony he appears to have coaxed out of everyone who was there. None of these things are, by themselves, that much of a revelation. Martin Scorsese alone seems to have been a one-man pharmaceuticals factory (p.377).
By 1980 Hollywood was a winter wonderland of white powder. Basically, same old same old.Īnd it turns out that these young New Hollywood types were into awesome amounts of sex, adultery, free love, were ‘pussy addicts’, ‘pussy struck’ (p.212) and ‘pussy hounds’ (p.208), propositioning any girl who walked by, had multiple mistresses, girlfriends, even ordering up partners from modelling catalogues (a technique pioneered by Brian de Palma who recommended it to Steven Spielberg).Īnd that they ingested a whole heap of drugs – at first everyone smoked pot, riskier types took acid, and then in about 1971, the whole town discovered cocaine.
even the most ‘radical’ far-out types in the late ’60s-early ’70s were concerned to make a profit – lots and lots of profit – win prizes, gain respect, engaged in extremely serious, dog-eat-dog competition with their peers and rivals. Turns out lots of the senior people in the ‘New Hollywood’ of the early 1970s were know-nothing scumbags.Īlso turns out the movie business is first and foremost a business i.e. And if I don’t want to fuck her, she shouldn’t be in the movie’ ( Don Simpson, President of Worldwide Production, Paramount Pictures, after seeing a showreel of Shelley Duvall, quoted on page 370)
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