Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Steven Spielberg

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind is a casual, perceptive and wonderfully pungent history of the cadre of filmmakers that flourished in that brief interval between the flaming collapse of the tattered remnants of 'old' Hollywood and the sheer gray monolith of today's Corporate Hollywood.
The book is fantastic, and highly recommended if you have anything more than a passing interest in the eclectic, electric cinema of the early to late 70's. It's ground zero history at its finest, scouring the backlot for firsthand sources and pulling no punches on any of its various subjects.

I was chatting with my friend Bob Whiteford (proprietor of Insomniac Video {check the Employee Picks and you'll see an old shot of the little lady, an Insomniac alumnus} and host of Take Two, the movie show on our local public radio station) and we got onto the subject of the splashy blockbuster 'War of the Worlds'.
There's a passage from Easy Riders that summed up the gist of our discussion. I thought I'd share it with you...and I'm actually typing it, so you know my love is true.

Spielberg...got into a contretemps with the novel's author, Peter Benchley, who took a swipe at him in the Los Angeles Times, saying, Spielberg "has no knowledge of reality but the movies. He is B-movie literate...[He] will one day be known as the greatest second-unit director in America." In one obvious way, Benchley was completely wrong, Spielberg having become the most celebrated director in America. But in another way, he was right; Spielberg is the greatest second unit director in America. What he could not have foreseen, however, was that such was Spielberg (and Lucas's) influence, that every studio movie became a B movie, and at least for the big action blockbusters that dominate the studios' slates, second unit has replaced first unit

Spielberg is a man, wealthy beyond the dreams of Midas, part owner of his own film studio, with the entire galaxy of cinema open to his exploration...and what he chooses is to re-make a 1953 potboiler with prettier special effects.

But he's just being true to himself.
Peter Benchley mapped out his career for him in 1974.
And really, who's to say he's wrong?
All the really great directors covered by the book are burned out their talent or ended their lives with the many vices available to the young, wealthy and connected. The best run any of them had was Scorcese, and you only have to check his last few films to see what the director of Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and the eponymous Raging Bull has been reduced to
But Spielberg and Lucas, two outsiders, two guys who never wanted to be artists, who just wanted to play the game and get their movies made and get rich, are still hale, hearty and on top of the world.


Oh well.
Who said life is fair?