Simply Perfect

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent adaptation.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (2003) **** (out of 4) I've often been criticized for overly bashing movies made the past twenty years but perhaps deep down I'm just wishing for a return to the 1970's, which was following a decade for a horrid studio films that were being made for millions, yet couldn't find an audience. The studios were one by one pretty much shutting down yet on the outside there was an up and coming ground that was ready to rebuild Hollywood with their sex, drugs and rock and roll.Easy Riders, Raging Bulls starts off showing the decline of the 1960's yet quickly flashes to the one success story that is B-Movie legend Roger Corman who turned out low budget films that brought back millions by going the drive-in route and causing the teens to line up at the doors. While Corman wasn't the greatest director, he certainly knew how to spot talent and by this he helped discover talents such as Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Borgdanovich and many others.The defined genre in Hollywood started with Easy Rider, which was a low budget film that was made my stoned hippies yet it hit a nerve with people and became a huge hit. Although there had been many biker films produced before this one, this film had sex and drugs, which was speaking to a new generation and soon these young talents were going to Hollywood wanting to make their own films. Hollywood had burned itself for over a decade so they slowly started to listen to these teens who in return were making modern classics. Films such as Midnight Cowboy, Targets, Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces and Mean Streets are just a few titles that this crowd brought in.However, this new crowd also brought a lot of drugs to Hollywood and their ultra-egos slowly started to destroy their lives. The documentary talks about the wild parties, the sex and how this had an impact on the director's careers. Once considered something great they were slowly dying on their own success. Towards the end of the documentary the film flashes back to Corman who pretty much saw the end of this period when Jaws was released. In Corman's own words, the studios finally realized how he was making so much money. Corman was simply making B movies that would attract all sorts of teens. The studios then started to deliver the summer blockbuster with films like Jaws and Star Wars, which were nothing more than B movies with a budget. In 1980, Scorsese fought back with Raging Bull, which was the last "director's" film to come out of Hollywood.Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is a candid, revealing and downright fascinating look at the greatest era in Hollywood where the studios were the small guys and the small guys, the directors, were running things and turning some very small movies into films that are now looked at as classics. The documentary does a brilliant job at showing what type of crowd these guys were with interesting interviews with the likes of Peter Bark, Peter Bogdanovich, Ellen Burstyn, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Cybil Shepherd, Laszlo Kovacs and many more. These people tell stories from behind the scenes of the production of these movies as well as stories of all the sex and drugs going across the town.Considering the horrid movies that are being made today, one can only wish this period of Hollywood would return. Watching the film it makes it seem so clear at what it took to make these classics. It wasn't a budget or a star but a director who had the courage to be daring and not worry about pleasing the audience. Instead of playing to the crowd these director's played the crowd. There's some wonderful home movie footage of the Easy Rider hippies taking over Cannes plus wonderful stories about Alfred Hitchcock's AFI Lifetime Achievement Award where most of the young crowd was in the bathroom snorting coke while the legendary director was speaking.Easy Riders, Raging Bull at most is very entertaining but I'm sure many new viewers will also find this to be an incredibly learning experience. Being only 23 years old, I know many my age who simply don't "get" older films yet I'm sure after watching this they would see how much daring films used to be before the likes of Spielberg and Lucas turned them into a cash cow. The film talks very openly about the good old days and they also talk candidly about why they ended. Those interviewed give a wonderful vision of those days and director Kenneth Bowser has a terrific time telling these stories. The worst thing about the movie is that it just runs two hours because this is the type of entertainment that could have gone on for fifty-hours and not once become boring. Anyone interested in the 1970's filmmaking or want to learn about it should certainly check this out.

A documentary like Easy Riders, Raging Bulls should be the kind of documentary I should like more. It is chock full of interviews and choice information about the time period (60's-70's) in American cinema that changed everything, for a lot better and some for not. But there are a couple of problems that become inherent. If you have read the book which spurred on the documentary by Peter Biskind (also author of Down and Dirty Pictures, a book about the 90's independent film movement), it's kind of like reading a masterpiece in the trashiest sense. There is a lot more in-depth information in the book, however much of it at the personal expense of the filmmakers, writers, producers, and others that are written about (a good deal with gossip, interestingly enough on the special features of the DVD some of the interviewees speak out against the falsities in the book, Paul Schrader being one of them). The other problem is that the same year this documentary was released on Spike TV (then later to DVD, which is where I saw it), there was the great documentary in the similar, more satisfying vein, A Decade Under the Influence. It might be unfair to compare the two, however if one were wanting in the first place to get a video history- by way of movie clips and interviews- about the years that changed movies a generation before, I would go for 'Decade' due to it's more obscure film clips, and a few more revealing and insightful interviews.In fact, over half of the people in one documentary are also in the other, like Dennis Hopper, Paul Schrader, Peter Bogdanovich, Ellen Burstyn, Roger Corman, and Monte Hellman among others. It's not that this documentary in and of itself is not insubstantial. On a base level you get the lowdown, about how as Hollywood's studio system was on the decline, filmmakers who were coming up in Corman's enclave (Coppola, Hopper, Bogdanovich, even Scorsese), along with some other key outsiders, infused European ideals into their personal statements, making great art and some money in the process. On the level of just giving forth the information, it's not a bad telling of tales, and has a couple of interviews I wasn't expecting. But, again, my sense of proportion was out of place; I could sense that the doc, much like the book, was more interested in some of the more 'seedy' details (i.e. the stuff about Julia Phillips, or Bogdanovich, which is practically a quarter of the book) than in the actual cinema-contexts of the work. You also don't hear as much about the power of the influence on the filmmakers, which was an appeal of 'Decade'. It's not too tough a call to make, and if you've seen 'Decade' before 'Easy Riders Raging Bulls' you may agree. I liked it, but it's not saying much when the book, which itself was readable mostly for the sake of history (some worthwhile, some not), was better.

Don't think the point of the book/movie was that the people mentioned have disappeared off the face of the earth -- just that they have never achieved the critical AND commerical heights they achieved in the '70's. Spielberg and Lucas have survived and flourished, but they never had any intentions of CHANGING Hollywood, their films basically fit within an established Hollywood tradition. They were squares, in other words.

I read and enjoyed the book, too, but it and the movie make several points I disagree with: _ Almost all of the people mentioned in this film are still around, if you don't count cancer victim Hal Ashby, one-hit wonder Sam Peckinpah and the inconsequential Julia Phillips. The idea that most of them crashed and burned, never to return, is a bit of a stretch, unless you include those whose careers have tanked over the past 20 years, e.g., Coppola. _ The film neglects to mention that the architect of the auteur-smothering blockbuster was/is Steven Spielberg, who never seems to have had a nasty moment with anybody ... not the Easy Riders/Raging Bulls, and not the studios. There was some good dish, though, and on the whole it was worthwhile viewing.