I've been totally engrossed in reading Easy Riders, Raging Bulls for the past few days. Regardless of how much of these events are totally substantiated, it's really interesting to contextualize that era in film and the characters that populated it, without a bias towards or against anyone in particular. Sure, guys like Schrader and Friedkin villify Spielberg and Lucas, but Friedkin's no angel himself. The Spielberg/Lucas duo did their part to put a focus back to simpler, blockbuster-oriented films, but it was guys like Friedkin, Bogdanovich, and to a lesser extent Scorsese who dropped the ball. Hubris, man. It's a killer. Hearing about how Bogdanovich made his way out to L.A. and started hanging out with Hawks, Ford, and Welles like it was nothing is badass. It just makes me wonder what it would be like to chill with Scorsese, Coppola, and De Palma like it was nothing.
I've just got to the part discussing Apocalypse Now, which I'm already kind of familiar with, but the strongest portion of the book was with Dennis Hopper and Easy Rider, only reminding me how much I need to see it.
