About the Book:

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, is considered the definitive account of the 1970s-era filmmakers that transformed American culture forever.

When the low-budget biker movie Easy Rider shocked Hollywood with its success in 1969, a new Hollywood era was born. This was the golden age of 1970s that nurtured such directing talents as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin, Peter Bogdanovich, Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby and Warren Beatty, along with a new breed of actors, including Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Jack Nicholson. This is the full, candid story which covers the making of such seminal films as The Godfather, Taxi Driver, The Last Picture Show, The French Connection, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait, Chinatown, Jaws and Star Wars.

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls follows the wild ride that was Hollywood in the 1970s – an unabashed celebration of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (both onscreen and off) and a climate where innovation and experimentation reigned supreme. Based on more than 400 interviews by veteran entertainment journalist Peter Biskind with the directors themselves, producers, stars, agents, writers, studio executives, spouses, and ex-spouses, this juicy warts-and-all account pulled back the curtain on a wild-and-woolly decade whose repercussions are still felt today. It remains a must-read for the industry.

What people say:

"This book is so goddamn well written, I was like, I don't want to know these things about these people, my heroes, but then I made the mistake of leaving it by my bedside table, and it was like a bag of pot, with me saying I'm not gonna smoke. But I was insatiable." — Quentin Tarantino, director

"Biskind… knows where the bodies are buried… and his eye for telling detail turns up enough fresh insights to keep the book engrossing." — The New York Times Book Review

"[Biskind's] research is so scrupulous and instructive and his passion for movies so unquestionable that his clear contempt for the excesses of the men he writes about makes sense – after all, they trashed their own gifts. But the signal achievement of this archaeological dig of a book is that Biskind also cares about what went right — the movies." — Entertainment Weekly

"[A] calm, encyclopedic and compulsively readable dish on Hollywood heroes…. This book plays like a bestseller, a perfect, gruesome sitcom in which Hollywood figures sit and ponder their reputations. If anything, I dare say that nervous libel lawyers have made Biskind take a moderate line…. [I]t is essential dish, and Biskind has done his job well." — The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review

"Mr. Biskind's book is like the best of Robert Altman: His central narrative is pretty incoherent, but the ensemble cast and colorful vignettes are irresistible." — The Wall Street Journal

"Thoughtful, gossipy, and altogether mesmerizing." — The New York Times

About the Author:

Peter Biskind is a respected American cultural critic and film historian. He is now a contributing editor for Vanity Fair. He was formerly the editor-in-chief of the Hollywood-insider magazine American Film, and the executive editor of the gone-but-not-forgotten Premiere magazine for a decade starting in 1986. His writing has appeared in scores of publications, including Rolling Stone, Paris Match, the Nation, The New York Times, the Times of London, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as film journals such as Sight and Sound and Film Quarterly. He has published six books, including Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which was the basis of a documentary film of the same name.