Product Description
When the low-budget biker movie Easy Rider shocked Hollywood with its success in 1969, a new Hollywood era was born. This was an age when talented young filmmakers such as Scorsese, Coppola, and Spielberg, along with a … More >>
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
They say they sent it to my address, but i never recieved it. I called them. they told me they sent it, and did not offer further help.
Rating: 1 / 5
I hate this book with a passion. Haven’t we had enough ‘intellectuals’ whose only area of expertise seems to be the history of the entertainment industry of the last 50 years? I would venture to say that this is not a very difficult subject to become a ‘scholar’ in. Couldn’t these people study, like… The American Revolution? or the Ottoman Empire? I mean, what is their area of study? Woodstock and it’s effects on today’s world? There is nothing inherently wrong with nostalgia or a few documentaries on the 60′s, 70′s, and 80′s, but doesn’t everyone else agree that many of these programs and books overestimate the importance of say, Janis Joplin? or The Monkees? or the directors and actors so shamelessly gossiped about in this stupid book? I was watching a goddamn documentary on the show Growing Pains the other day… GROWING PAINS!?
What does this all have to do with this book? Well, a good portion of this book vastly exaggerates the importance and amount of risk taken in it’s subject. At one point he compares the movie Easy Rider as the first shot in a Civil War with the supposed ‘pigs’. I mean… the Civil War? They are just movies… It reminds me of when Hollywood studios shut down during the Gulf War for a few days. As if the studios are a strategic target for a deranged leader bent on world domination. OH NO! Hussein bombed Paramount! Now I’ll NEVER see another Bond movie! Understand my point?
The book is entertaining sometimes, but it’s largely a piece of drivel concerning itself mainly with the minute details, bowel movements included, of a few directors who’ve made some decent pictures. But really, the entertainment industry needs to get over itself, and so do a lot of people who make this their only area of expertise. If you want to read something that might actually enrich your understanding of the world, check out the new book about John Adams by David McCullough. Trust me… it’s nowhere near as pretentious as this…
Rating: 1 / 5
This has to be the worst book I have read in years, do not beleive the cover reviewers as they have clearly not read the whole book.
Rating: 1 / 5
I only watch foreign films because I feel it is below me to watch an american made film. I insist on sofistication in my cinema and will always have a devout belief in the positives of intellectual pursuits. This novella undercores in an effective, yet effeminate manner, the decline of modern Hollywood and the subsequent rise of neo-realism in the disguise of pop culture. A subtle retelling of a not so subtle story. We see a landscape of mediocrity superimposed on a screen of perceived greatness. One must wonder what our forefathers are thinking when they witness this degradation in the name of “fine arts.” Still this is a book that is worth reading, in part, because it underscores all that is wrong in today’s Hollywood, only it is talking about yesterday’s Hollywood. This ironic vision makes for some startling revelations yet the overall effect is somewhat tepid. With many extreme antedotes rehashed, only a Fruedianist would not be somewhat intrigued, yet for all it’s pompasity, the book ultimately fails in it’s primary objective: To educate us.
Rating: 3 / 5
I found it really hard to follow who the heck the author was talking about and who he was quoting. The way it was written, it just didn’t flow, seemed choppy.
Rating: 2 / 5