The book 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls' by Peter Biskind is a highly entertaining and informative account of the period between the late 60's and the early 80's when the big American film studios released a series of quirky, challenging and controversial films made by an assortment of auteurs. This era has since become known as the time of the New Hollywood. It was a glorious epoch for motion picture art; a time when directs such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Sam Peckinpah and Roman Polanski – amongst many others – were producing an unprecedented body of personal films. The book details the emergence of the movement from key early films such as Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider to the fall of New Hollywood by way of the emergence of the blockbuster movie typified by Jaws and Star Wars and epic failures like Heaven's Gate. It's a book highly recommended to anyone with a love for American movies from this period.
This documentary is an attempt to capture this story, to detail some of the key films and interview a few of the film-makers involved. Of course it can never cover the scope of the book. Nevertheless it remains a useful guide to the films, and it does cover the basic key points that Biskind made about the trajectory of New Hollywood and why it happened in the first place and why it ultimately died. It suffers a little from the people it doesn't speak to such as Scorsese, Coppola, Friedkin and Polanski. And it could maybe have done with more actual clips from these films. But any documentary that covers this golden era of film-making has something going for it straight away. Therefore it comes recommended to IMDb users. Also worth noting is that the DVD contains over an hour and a half of extra material that is just as fascinating and should definitely be viewed. For another view on this subject – and for my money an even better documentary – try A Decade Under the Influence, also released in 2003.
This documentary is an attempt to capture this story, to detail some of the key films and interview a few of the film-makers involved. Of course it can never cover the scope of the book. Nevertheless it remains a useful guide to the films, and it does cover the basic key points that Biskind made about the trajectory of New Hollywood and why it happened in the first place and why it ultimately died. It suffers a little from the people it doesn't speak to such as Scorsese, Coppola, Friedkin and Polanski. And it could maybe have done with more actual clips from these films. But any documentary that covers this golden era of film-making has something going for it straight away. Therefore it comes recommended to IMDb users. Also worth noting is that the DVD contains over an hour and a half of extra material that is just as fascinating and should definitely be viewed. For another view on this subject – and for my money an even better documentary – try A Decade Under the Influence, also released in 2003.