DOWN AND DIRTY PICTURES

DOWN AND DIRTY PICTURES: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film. Peter Biskind. Simon and Schuster. 2004.

This mostly absorbing book looks at how the business of making independent films grew from small change operations to multi-million dollar deal-making mostly because of the efforts of Miramax, headed by the brother team of Bob and Harvey Weinstein. [Biskind recounts how Nathan Lane joked that he thought the film Monsters Inc. was about the Weinsteins.] Pulp Fiction was the indie that changed the way the world viewed independent films, which once were small and personal and grainy and now became slick, huge, star-driven items with budgets almost as big as a film from the major studios. Biskind also looks at the other independent distributors and producers as well as the independent arms of the big studios, but mostly he focuses on the Sundance Festival, which presented many of these movies and became their first port of call, and on Harvey Weinstein, a colorful, horrible character who seems determined to make people see him like Harry Cohen or Daryl Zanuck or one of the other famous movie moguls of times gone by. The book goes behind the scenes to show how deals are made and discarded, lies are told, fortunes won, careers destroyed, and movies chopped up and ruined by careless distributors and Harvey “Scissorhands” Weinstein. Robert Redford is portrayed as being too busy with his own concerns to make an effective manager of the Sundance Institute and all of its divisions, but most of the quotes about him come from disgruntled ex-employees. Another important part of this book is that it really explains why so many unworthy films and actors are nominated for Oscars, as it's all part of the pressure and wheeling and dealing (and wining and dining) that goes on inside the studios and distribution companies, all of whom use all of their clout to make sure their people better win. Most people watching the Academy Awards couldn't care less which company produced which picture and are unaware that some Oscar nights are merely battles between two or three giant companies trying not to boost art but only to increase their coffers.

Verdict: Quite an eyeful! ***1/2.

EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS

EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. Peter Biskind. Simon and Schuster; 1998.

To the sub-title of this book could have been added the words “and destroyed themselves in the process.” This excellent book studies the lives and works of the major directors who came into their own in the seventies and afterward, when directors and not the studios seemed to become the prime power in Hollywood. The directors – Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, William Friedkin, Martin Scorsese, Hal Ashby, Bob Rafelson, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Altman and others – are depicted as being just as egomaniacal and domineering as any movie star – in fact, they come off as a bunch of major assholes. Biskind chronicles how Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider began a youthquake in Hollywood that tried to capture the waning audience by making films that were hip and irreverent, full of sex, drugs and violence, and once in a while achieved quality. It also documents how many of the decade's most famous directors imploded on their own egos and self-destructed on drugs and alcohol. [In one of the book's funniest anecdotes we learn how Dennis Hopper stopped mixing his gallon of rum a day -- he also imbibed several beers and consumed drugs daily -- with coca cola and switched to rum and cranberry juice because he thought it would be healthier for his liver!] Directors such as Friedkin and Bogdanovich became so successful so soon that they believed their own publicity and thought there was no production that was beyond them, no idea they couldn't turn into a money-making Oscar contender [boy, were they wrong!]. Some of the people give very frank interviews to Biskind, and – surprisingly – put the blame squarely where it belongs – on themselves. Just about everybody agrees that most of today's movies – sequels, prequels, remakes, and big-screen adaptations of awful old TV shows -- stink.

Verdict: A riveting read. ***1/2.