Easy Riders, Raging Bulls Sex. Drugs. Rock and Roll. Three simple words that helped shaped an era that brought some of the greatest movies, such as The Godfather, Jaws, and The Taxi Driver. In the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, by Peter Biskind takes us on a bumpy and wild ride of the era that challenged new ideas to young filmmaker’s that stimulated an edgier movie industry. This book is compelled of hundreds of interviews, with directors, stars, agents, and even one night stands. It tells the up close and personal story in way that celebrities never talked about drugs, sex, and money and the repercussions. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is remarkable in the way that gave us an understanding and behind the scenes of Hollywood’s last golden age.
“The 70s were the first time that a kind of age restriction was lifted. Young people were allowed to come rushing in with all of their naïveté and their wisdom and the privileges of youth. It was just an avalanche of new ideas, which is why the 70s were such a watershed” (Biskind 15). A small low budget biker movie made in 1969 sparked the new era of movies, known as Easy Rider. This movie was a shock but a huge success to Hollywood for the fact it was made with drugs, booze, and violent rivalry. Once Easy Rider was successful a new breed of directors were in demand, such as Francis Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, George Lucas, and Martin Scorsese.
This book contains so much research and extensive interviews of not only the directors, but also the producers, screenwriters, film critics, and actors of the time results in an insider's view of what really happened. He tells the some stories a humorous and sarcastic manner. In example the image of actress Joanne Woodward knitting in a chair during wild Hollywood parties or Jack Nicholson telling stories of snorting cocaine .Also being able to see the personal and professional lives of the directors, in example Dennis Hopper is seen to be a drug-crazed psychopath. While reading I learned the challenges that the directors had to overcome to make their personal films. The details of the events that were taking place at the times in which the films were produced that helped shape the movies. Cultural events like Vietnam, Watergate, and the Manson murders created a lack of trust in the government which affected the films.
During this time period the Charles Manson murders happened and the trail took place shortly after. These murders happened a few years after the Summer of Love and Woodstock, ironically the celebration of the era of 60s. Peace and Love. These murders symbolized the end of the era for the 60s and weirdly a sense of closure. The Manson murders were the beginning of the new era, but everyone was so busy making new movies, doing drugs, sex, and spending all the money to support it. Hollywood was getting ready to “take a fast ride down the cocaine highway” (Biskind 80).
While reading this book I learned a lot about the director Dennis Hopper, and the small production company, BBS. Without Dennis Hopper and BBS Easy Rider would not have made it to the big screen and we would never have had the great movies like Star Wars! Contrariety to the name the effort to getting this movie made was not easy at all. Dennis Hopper was credited for creating the new Hollywood, “where the producers wear love beads instead of diamond stickpins” (Biskind 74).
Dennis Hopper also likes to credit the movie, Easy Rider, for putting cocaine out there for hippies to know about. He stated that before Easy Rider there was no cocaine on the streets, but after Easy Rider it was everywhere. Even though cocaine isn’t the greatest thing to be known for, I learned that many films were inspired to bring drugs into the open and you can find examples of that in other films from the 1970s, like The Godfather. I also learned that Dennis Hopper and his friends wanted to make movies about them. They were a new kind of human being. “In a spiritual way we may be the most creative generation in the last nineteen centuries” (Biskind 75). They wanted to focus more on movies that make “little personal, and honest movies.”
As the 1970’s progressed so did the idea of a production company shifted. The people grew to like the idea that the workers have the means of production. The production company BBS was created for the independent movies. They wanted movies that reflected their lives and feelings. In example the anxiety that was instilled in people from going to war or the cultural changes that were happening in the 1970s.
I learned quite a lot about this era and a lot of fun facts that I never knew before. I got to learn about the person behind the story and the process of it. One fun fact that I learned was in the thought process of making Jaws. It was funny to me that Steven Spielberg thought he was just going to hire a shark wrangler to basically just through hoops. Since it was not ideal to try to get an actual great white to play in the movie that is how the replica shark was made, Bruce.
All in all this book was a real eye opener for me and I learned a lot. I was born in the 90s so most of these movies I have not seen. This book has made me want to go watch the classics like Easy Rider so I can understand how it changed a whole era and created the effect it did. The 70s was an era that changed Hollywood for the better, unlike the famous quote from Easy Rider, “we blew it,” Sex, drugs, and Rock n Roll in Hollywood did not blow it, it made it!

Work Cited
Biskind, Peter. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-drugs-and-rock-'n'-roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1998. Print.