There were parts of the woman's body that were completely off limits in America. 'There were all these movies about this, but they were all fake,' she says, 'Everything that's in that book, the taking off of the bra, hanging it on the car mirror, the hands that were cold and the girl who would only let him touch her tits, just barely getting your hand up this girl's leg, were experiences I'd had as a young woman. He was a New York boy, what did he know from small town Texas? Polly liked the book because it spoke to her experience growing up in the Midwest. Now that The Last Picture Show was happening, Bogdanovich finally got around to reading the book. I'd nail a producer in a corner and demand to know, 'Why am I not directing? Why am I not acting?' Who wants to deal with a maniac like that?' They smirked, moved away. He kept saying, 'Heads are going to roll, the old order is going to fall, all you dinosaurs are going to die.' He argued that Hollywood had to be run on socialist principles, that what was needed was an infusion of money channeled to young people like himself. He was in the habit of buttonholing studio types at parties and hectoring them about the industry-it was rotting from within, it was dead-the Ancient Mariner on acid.

A wild and disheveled sometime actor, talented photographer, and pioneering collector of Pop Art, a former pal and acolyte of James Dean, whom he had met on the set of Rebel Without a Cause, Hopper had been blackballed for crossing swords with director Henry Hathaway. Fonda's call couldn't have come at a better moment for Hopper.

Biskind, the former executive editor of Premiere magazine goes behind the scenes of each film and others to explore the creative hubris that resulted in these ever being made and the personal hubris that destroyed the careers of many involved, as well as ultimately turning control from the artisans back over to the financiers. This director-driven era of American film lasted ten years and generated such groundbreaking pictures as:Įasy Rider, M*A*S*H, The Last Picture Show, The Godfather, American Graffiti, The Exorcist, Mean Streets, Chinatown, Jaws, Shampoo, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Apocalypse Now and Raging Bull. For those who hear 'film history' and think Titanic, in 1967, the major American film studios were in such disarray and the counterculture seemed to be overturning conventions with such speed that a new generation of filmmakers, by and large under the age of 30, (and universally white males), briefly seized the controls. However much is true, however much really happened that way, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How The Sex 'N' Drugs 'N' Rock 'N' Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind remains one of my favorite non-fiction reads.

Easy riders and raging bulls