Zaslužila je ova sjajna knjiga puno bolji tretman od onog što je LOM smućkao.

Jedno od sramnijih izdanja koje sam imao prilike da vidim, mali milion tipfelera, hifenacije posle kojih fali poveći deo rečenice, nekonstantna transkripcija imena (Marion Dougherty je čas Daferti čas Doerti, čas je žensko a čas muško), a najviše zabrinjavajuća je poslednja trećina knjige, gde ima baš ozbiljnih propusta. Pravo je čudo kako su ovo smeli da puste u štampu.

Da ne dužim, ako ste planirali da izdvojite 1500 za ovo, slobodno možete da ih preusmerite negde drugde i pametnije...

An incredible book from beginning to end. Peter Biskind turns what could have been a didactic and academic look at cinema of the 1970s into a terrific work of non-fiction that reads like a novel. You get to know all the key players of the era, how that decade had so many great classics, and how everything and everyone was doomed to fail if they didn't embrace the mainstream. It demystifies many of these figures, humanizing actors, directors, and producers in a way that is funny, enlightening, disturbing, and ultimately depressing. One of the finest books about cinema that I have read, about my favorite decade for the art form.

sad book!!!!! would be a momentous document based solely on the amount of absolutely insane gossip it contains.

Very interesting insight on the Hollywood industry. The first half is far more enjoyable from my point of view. In particular, the transition from old (studio dominated) Hollywood to new (director dominanted) Hollywood, is the highlight of the book. I truly enjoyed learning about the historical meaning of films such as Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde, and how directors such as Hopper, Beatty, Coppola, Bogdanovich, Friedkin, etc., took over the industry and made it their own. By the second half, however, I feel that the book becomes too repetetive in terms of infedelity and drugs. Simply said, from my point of view, the book transitions into a neverending tale of gossip rather than the impact of the era it focuses on.

Nevertheless, from the title, this should be expected. Furthermore, Peter Biskind should get his credit for the major research made for this book, and how well-presented it is. The book is in every way an invaluable source of information regarding the revolution of directors in 70’s Hollywood, and a well-worth read.

It stunned me to realise that it’s over twenty years since this was published. I have the original hardback, which means it’s over twenty years since I read it. That makes me feel old. As if I should already be staggering around the garden, entertaining grandchildren with pieces of orange in my mouth.

This charge through the world of New Hollywood of the 1970s remains a compulsive read. Starting with bad behaviour on the set of EASY RIDER (well, actually a bit before that, with the suggestion that WHAT’S UP PUSSYCAT is inadvertently one of the most influential films of the era), before proceeding to coked out gloom by the time we get to RAGING BULL.

The reputations of these men had declined in the years before the book was published – and many of them are has-beens now (only Scorsese and Spielberg still have active careers). The book does it best to puff up the reputations of then still jobbing directors, William Friedken and Francis Ford Coppola. But more importantly, does sterling work in trying to rebuild the reputation of Hal Ashby – director of HAROLD & MAUDE, COMING HOME, SHAMPOO and BEING THERE – who isn’t often referenced in this company – but the book is right, that is one hell of a run of films.

However – if you didn’t know that the author later became his biographer – you’d find it hard to believe that there’s so much Warren Beatty in this. Yes, he helps kick it all off and was winning an Oscar for Best Director at the start of the Eighties, but for him to be such a prominent, uncriticised voice feels somewhat unbalanced. Throughout the author writes about how charming Beatty is, and it does feel like he got charmed.

It’s a very male book (and filled with male sociopaths) and reading it again, in light of Me Too did makes me wonder how it would be written now. To be fair, a lot of male bad behaviour to women – be it adultery or outright abuse – is called out. But written again, one can’t help but feel that the perceived unhinged, aggressive sexuality of Margot Kidder, or the manipulativeness of Amy Irving would have been treated a differently.

Ultimately though, the best tribute I can give to this book is that like a lot of the films it covers, this is epic, frequently brilliant, if flawed, and crammed full of fascinated characters.

This is an engrossing and splendidly written cultural history of Hollywood in the 1960's and 70's and it examines how the film school educated directors like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola came to dominate the US film industry in this period, and swept aside the old Hollywood movie factories by making highly idiosyncratic movies influenced by European "new wave" cinema. The result was fabulous movies like Bonnie and Clyde, Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now, which were gritty, confronting and realistic depictions of their respective social contexts and highly developed character studies in their own right. The subject matter is fascinating because Biskind highlights the extreme and obsessive personalities of these film makers and the book is peppered with incredible anecdotes such as Dennis Hopper and his superhuman daily tote of drug and alcohol and Faye Dunaway throwing a cup of piss at Roman Polanski. The book is well laid out and explains the back story to the making of these iconic movies and explores the cultural impact of this generation of film makers who saved us briefly from the tawdry sentimental bollocks which had been the mainstay of the studio system for the previous four decades. Biskind writes extremely well in a highly engaging way and I found myself entertained for the entire book. If you are picking up that I love this book then you are right! Beautiful work Mr Biskind!

There are some really amazing stories of some of the best films made in the seventies and the people that made them. Of course I expected sex and drugs to be a big part of the book, its on the cover. And if everything in this book is to be believed then filmmakers are some of the worst people there are and they are all lucky to have lived past the age of 40. They are extremely lucky AIDS wasn't much of a thing until the 80's. But I honestly got a little bored with the sex/drugs/gossip TMZ-of-the-70's like aspects of this book. I think thats the reason I thought it was altogether too long.

I found it interesting that the two guys featured here who were the squeaky clean family oriented ones (Lucas and Spielberg) who the author berated for ruining Hollywood, ended up making the more commercially successful films.

When you get passed all the stories of tipping waitresses with lines of cocaine, there are a lot of really great inside stories of great films. Every movie discussed (Bonnie & Clyde, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, Star Wars, Shampoo to name a few) is fascinating and fun to read about how those came to be, changed, were financed, kept people up at night, and were received by those who made them. That was worth it, I just wished the author would've cut the fat a little.

So good! Packed with material, most pages with something that could make you squeal. Author gathered wonderful interview quotes and for the most part is able to let that content tell the story.

Unfreaking believable...

I always wonder how this book ever got published, because I don't think there's anything good in it about any of the directors and actors highlighted therein. Not Coppola, not Bogdanovich, not Ashby or Lucas or Spielberg or Scorse. To a man, they are portrayed as selfish, ruthless, megalomaniacal, self-destructive. I almost wonder just how accurate this book - surely they can't all be this nuts?

Leaving aside the salacious details, and boy, are there some, this is a quite fascinating look at how the 'New Hollywood' directors set out to overturn the old studio system, to bring back power to the independents, to create their own system; and how they almost all self-destructed or ended up only reinforcing that which they aimed to destroy, largely as a result of their own over-the-top, out-of-control behaviours and attitudes.

The studios are even more powerful now than they ever were; there's precious little space in the cinemas these days for indie, independent or arthouse films - and the movies that make big-bucks are all pre-fab, much of a muchness: explosions and sex and violence and plots that can be summed up in ten words or less. Only George Lucas ended up with the financial clout to create his own movie empire, and even he is enslaved to Star Wars.

An insider look at Hollywood and film-making in the 1970's, with a particular emphasis on the major directors and producers of the era, it's a vicious and nasty piece of work. The major players are directors like Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas, Spielberg, Altman, Friedkin, Ashby, Rafelson, and more. Warren Beatty, Hopper, Nicholson, Bob Evans, Bert Schneider are also major players and the books spares none of them.

It's particularly interesting to follow the reactions of these guys as they claw their way out of the old school studio systems of Hollywood to get to make their own pictures their own way and produce what they felt were great works of art and tried to collect critical raves. With success came greater power and control and was met with a raging indulgence in excess, resulting in the destruction of much of what they fought for.

Drugs and sex are strewn all over this book, along with raging paranoia, mental illness, massive egotism, and incredibly bad behavior by some pretty crappy people. Some of them seem to have realized their failures and flaws, others not so much. The stench of arrogance and egotism still reeks off a lot of these guys (it's almost entirely a book about men; there were almost no female directors, writers or producers back then), especially when they talk about film today.

It's a fascinating book. I'm not sure Biskind really understood just exactly what his book uncovered here; he seems too comfortable accepting the belief that the studios seized power back from the directors and "artists" after seeing the money available from blockbusters in a natural reaction to the opportunity and pushing them out to put control back at the top. It's not wrong exactly, but after illustrating how the raging egotism, drug abuse, paranoia, etc. from some of these guys crashed movie after movie with cost overruns and inability to overcome their personal demons to complete the work, it seems clear that the studios also took control back from the directors because most of these guys couldn't handle the responsibility of having that level of power and control.

These guys destroyed themselves for the most part, leaving behind a legacy of occasionally brilliant film-making and wasted opportunities and talent.

Unfortunately this is less of the untold story of the birth of the Auteur directors of 70's (you know the ones...Coppola, Scorsese, DE Palma, ect.) and more a gossipy, vindictive, and mean spirited expose of how terrible all those people where at all times...the whole book seems petty and dishonest. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I believe that these people are saints that should be above all criticism, it's that the writing and the editing of this book is so focused on telling you how drug addicted and crazy and two faced everyone was that it barely has time to make the case for any of the classic movies they produced, let alone say at least one nice thing about them.

It's funny that the documentary that was produced based on this book managed to do such a better job in at least trying to find a balance between the very real dirt and the passion that drove them all to create art. Watch the doc, skip the book.