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By PAUL BRENNER
In 1998, Peter Biskind, a former editor for Premiere Magazine who specialized in puff-piece celebrity interviews for the magazine, decided he had had enough and wrote a book showcasing the creative surge of American filmmaking in the 1970s called "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood." The book was the ultimate celebrity puff-piece -- interviewing hundreds of survivors from the American New Wave of the seventies, Biskind rode the wave of gossipy celebrity trash talk. The book was candid, dishy, shocking, and hilarious.
Kenneth Bowser's documentary version of Biskind's book -- released by The Shout! Factory on a two-disc DVD release -- suffers from the success of Biskind's book. Bowser charts the rise and fall of American film in the 1970s from the beginnings of the new wave with "Easy Rider" and "Bonnie and Clyde" through the great successes of "The Godfather," "Midnight Cowboy," and "Taxi Driver" to the fall of the movement with the advent of the blockbuster B movies of Spielberg and Lucas. However, unlike another documentary on the same subject -- "A Decade Under the Influence" -- released at the same time as Bowser's film, "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" (perhaps due to filmmakers' anger at their depiction in Biskind's book) lacks comments from most of the key players from the era. No Altman, no Scorsese, no Spielberg, no Lucas, no Coppola, no Friedkin, no Allen, no Polanski, no De Palma, no Towne, no Evans. Aside from interviews with Dennis Hopper, Paul Schrader, and Peter Bogdanovich (all of whom would probably be willing to sit down and be interviewed in front of an old Fischer-Price toy video camera operated by a five-year-old) Bowser's subjects are for the most part second string players from the '70s, with the key artists of the decade appearing mostly in old promotional films of the time (my favorite is a clip of Roman Polanski, introduced by the announcer as "the elfin, fun-loving Polish Polanski"). Because of this lack of primo talking heads, the film pales in comparison to "A Decade Under the Influence."
"Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" also lacks the clear outline and structure of "A Decade Under the Influence." Bowser's film is structured in a looser, staccato mode but charged up with music video style editing. The form and content hit like buck shot, but the film ultimately plays like hip footnotes to "A Decade Under the Influence."
What deepens the film is a second disc of extended interviews, arranged thematically. With the talking head additions of Andrew Sarris, Gordon Willis, and pater familias Peter Biskind, the bonus interviews fall back upon the film, layering and deepening the original footage.
"Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" does, however, give a strong sense of the desire and passion of the filmmakers in the seventies. In 2004, the great rhetorical question in American film culture is: do movies matter? What is conveyed in "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" is that, in the 1970s, movies did matter. |
