Though Paramount executives initially protested that the film “glorified” violence, Robert Evans got it made, and secured his post- Love Story reputation as well as Coppola’s. Among these was Coppola’s film of Mario Puzo’s novel, The Godfather. Bleak films reflected such current events, and viewers were drawn increasingly to dark underworlds. The general public was also dealing with paradigm-shifting tragedies like the Robert Kennedy assassination and the Manson Family murders. It wasn’t just Hollywood where changes were going on. Their films - including Easy Rider and Boxcar Bertha - featured fast cars, brutal streets, and anti-establishment ideals. Along with Penn, the vanguard included Hopper, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola (some were trained by B-movie mogul Roger Corman). Penn’s jaunty style and stunning, slow-motion finale revealed that the changing of the guard was underway. Sitting poolside with wife Sharon Tate, he holds forth: “The kids of today” demand that directors “Make it new! Make it different!” This difference had already been established overseas, where the nouvelle vague was winning over new audiences.ĭirector Arthur Penn showed his influence by the New Wave in his Bonnie and Clyde (1967), a Warren Beatty vehicle passed over by both François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. To underline the point, the film includes a rare interview with youthful Roman Polanski. Young filmmakers slipped in as aging studio heads were increasingly bewildered as to what to do. Macy, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls follows a timeline from the late ’60s to the mid-’70s, interspersing footage of films with both old and new interviews with stars like Dennis Hopper and Margot Kidder.Īs the film reports, the studio system in the ’50s was quite unprepared for television. Unlike the occasionally racy book, however, the documentary is rather clinical. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, based on Peter Biskind’s controversial 1998 book, succinctly captures the revolution that saved Hollywood and changed it forever. Long past its “Golden Era,” when Gone With the Wind or The Wizard of Oz captivated the masses, the industry was producing bombs like Cleopatra and Hello Dolly!, at once overpromoted and threatened by television.
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