Not only is Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls the best book in recent memory on turn-of-the-'70s film, it is beyond question the best book we'll ever get on the subject. Why? Because once the big names who spilled the beans to Biskind find out that other people spilled an equally piquant quantity of beans, nobody will dare speak to another writer with such candor, humor, and venom again. Biskind did hundreds of
interviews with people who make the president look accessible: Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola, Geffen, Beatty, Kael, Towne, Altman. He also spoke with countless spurned spouses and burned partners,
alleged victims of assault by knife, pistol, and bodily fluids. Rather
Peter Biskind's EASY RIDERS RAGING BULLS is destined to become a classic, of a problematic sort for sure, but a classic still.Biskind's research is formidable - the current academic revival of
Firstly - I don't think that this book should be mistaken for a spiteful Paul-Johnson-type of takedown of Great Men...Biskind's not a curmudgeon, and I see no evidence of a Grand Thesis in this book