I finally finished reading “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood” (written by Peter Biskind in 1998). For those of you who don’t know, it tells the sumptuous story of the rise and fall of New Hollywood: Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola, Scorsese – and how they one-upped the studio system only to swallow the same seeds they worked to spew out. It’s a fascinating tale – not just for cineastes – and I practically ate through the 512 pages (including the helpful who’s who appendix at the end). Here are a couple of notes I scribbled:

1. JAWS, and later STAR WARS, ruined many a dream of the non-blockbuster independent.
2. Francis Ford Coppola was a megalomaniac gangster reminiscent of Jabba the Hutt.
3. George Lucas was a softspoken tyrant - with a vision.
4. Amy Irving was a cold clairvoyant who thought Spielberg was a low-brow loser, even after she married him.
5. Spielberg was an overgrown kid, a whitebread soul beyond wonderbread, a square, a trapezoid wannabe…
6. No one knew that a single day consists of 24 hours, not a decade. For the 70s Hollywood set, there was no tomorrow.
7. Warren Beatty actually had an important role in the shaping of American cinema.
8. People only have faith in you when you make them rich.
9. Margot Kidder used to be coherent.
10. No one really noticed Fassbinder back then either.
11. Without drugs there would be no Dennis Hopper - a borderline psychotic who terrorized his wife and kids.
12. When greedy studio types have too much power, murderous satanic hippies spring from the earth to kill their pregnant wives.
13. Lucas, Coppola, Scorsese and Spielberg were all friends at one point, and they used to think they could change the world…but what happened to their dream?

In short, the slaying of the corporate dragon gave birth to the many-headed hydra of pride and greed. Luke became Darth Vader after all. But the saga continues….