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Posted: |
Jul 13, 2021 - 7:34 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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It's an old book now, from 1998, but I dipped into it again the other day and remembered how compellingly, fascinatingly horrid it is! Actually, it's only the first four chapters of the book (I got it for about 50p in a charity shop, not knowing that it was only a taster, originally issued with Esquire).
I see that the author has been accused by some of those covered in the book (Coppola, Altman, Spielberg) as being a fabricator of lies and exaggeratons, who twisted people's words to suit his own agenda. Whatever, it's pretty damn readable. I also discovered a few documentaries on YouTube which cover the same ground as the book, so it's good to have the chance to see the real people being interviewed.
A couple of things strike me. In the first place it has made me reassess how the counterculture movement affected Hollywood, in many cases for the better, in some for the worse. It has ignited my curiosity, which is a good thing at my age. I even want to see HEAD now. There's a good upload of that on YT. It has also made me see that so many of the people covered in the book were absolutely despicable human beings. Perhaps we can forgive them now because everybody in that crowd was into destroying their lives, and that of others, by using unbelievable cocktails of drugs and then going off to fuck anything that moved. I suppose that in most cases the fucked and the fucker had an unspoken agreement, but not always. Some in the book come off particularly badly when (apparently) expressing the fear of being caught by dozens of husbands/ boyfriends of wives/ girlfriends who had been shagged as a symbol of the "revolution".
On the purely nutty and dangerous side of things, Bob Rafelson is signalled as having destroyed many lives through the pushing of drugs. Dennis Hopper comes off as one dangerously crazy muthafucka, a violent, drugs-crazed animal, a wife beater. The story of the shambolic making of EASY RIDER, involving Hopper, Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson (and Rip Torn) is ulmost unbelievable.
One truly amazing thing is just how long the majority of the people portrayed in the book lived. Both Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper got to their 70s. Rafelson and a long list of etceteras are still around. Did they all just live hard for about three or four years and then calm down and become part of the establishment?
Thoughts on the book, the counterculture movement and the movies it spawned? Is Peter Biskind's view of events to be trusted?
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This one's been on my radar for some time, and now I'm thinking I definitely need to seek it out...
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Posted: |
Jul 18, 2021 - 3:20 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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Well, I got through the "abridged" book. I can see where the criticisms of it lie. So many anecdotes begin with, "According to a source..." Having said that, it is pretty compelling, but I kept wondering how much of it is gossip.
The two documentaries based on the book, and which were made in 2003, are well worth a watch. It's actually only one documentary but there's a lengthy "Part 2" consisting of discarded material which didn't make it into the original cut, much of it more interesting than the stuff that did make it. Peter Biskind himself appears in the last part, addressing the criticisms of the book. Jack Nicholson, when asked if he had read it, replied "I don't read fiction".
A couple of random thoughts - Richard Dreyfuss has a great moment when talking about the outrage caused by Julia Phillips' "You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again". Although (or because) Phillips actively took part in the excesses, she came down heavily on the people involved. Dreyfuss mentions that all his former colleagues were calling her a bitch for calling them shits, and then he says that at that he moment knew that they all actually WERE a bunch of shits.
There is a lot of that in the interviews with the likes of Peter Bogdanovich, talking in retrospect about how their egos and their excesses ultimately became their undoing. I must also say that, although Dennis Hopper was a fucking dangerous madman, breaking his wife's nose in a fight, threatening people with knives when things didn't go his way, absolutely zonked out his head on cocaine and wine (I hope he gave it a good stir), he was incredibly lucid and dapper in the interviews. He had been on the wagon for twenty years ("I still smoke a little marihuana now and again") and come out of it really healthy looking, and amiable company. I wonder if his ex-wife forgave him for the broken nose.
Oh, and what a lot of GREAT films these people made during the period covered.
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