Word: biskind
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...should find High Concept and Easy Riders, Raging Bulls thoroughly engrossing. Ultimately, though, both also seem as depressing as a Swedish art-house film. Simpson's fate reflects the shame heaped on his whores: his heart failed while he sat on the toilet reading a biography of Oliver Stone. Biskind's book ends with a death too: the 1988 demise of brilliant but burned-out director Hal Ashby, whose Coming Home, The Last Detail and Shampoo were touchstone films of the '70s. Other directors fared only a little better, ushering in the '80s and '90s with divorces, addictions and bankruptcy...
...known as the "New Hollywood," a community of radical directors, snarky executives and gonzo producers who emerged in the 1970s unfettered by the tight controls of the old studio system. Two wild new books by veteran entertainment journalists, Charles Fleming's High Concept (Doubleday; 294 pages; $23.95) and Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (Simon & Schuster; 506 pages; $25), chronicle the decadence surrounding these creative eccentrics, offering a rare glimpse at the grime that covers the tinsel...
...Simpson's infamous life-style serves as an apt metaphor for the overindulgent '80s and '90s, Biskind's book delivers what's known in screenwriting jargon as the backstory--the preamble sparked when Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider caught fire. Those avant-garde youth movies emboldened a whole new pack of hip filmmakers to make their own iconoclastic films during the '70s: M*A*S*H, Taxi Driver, Five Easy Pieces and Paper Moon, among others. Biskind's history lesson also has its fair share of tantalizing dope and sex lore--at times the horrible stories from former spouses...