hollywood swingers______

Remembering the feverish moviemaking days of the 1970s, writer-director John Milius said, "The stuff that brought it all to an end came from within. Diller, Eisner and Katzenberg -- they ruined the movies." And here's what producer Don Simpson said about the end of his own go-go years, the 1980s: "The failing of the present-day system is quite simply based on the fact that the studio executives are by and large ex-lawyers, agents, business-oriented people who are fantastic executives and managers who don't have a clue about telling stories." Different decade, same message: The movies are dead, business killed 'em, and things are only getting worse.

A consensus exists among some of the more serious, informed movie journalists and critics that all American moviemaking passion is spent. This judgment is the inevitable consequence of a widely shared interpretation of recent movie history, which goes like this: The spirit of the '60s came to Hollywood with "Easy Rider" and "Bonnie and Clyde." The public responded to a new mood; the studios, in confusion, opened their doors; for once, talent poured through the system on its own terms. Then the mood of the country turned again, a reaction set in and -- here come the '80s! -- the producers took over, delivering vacuous if shiny blasts of energy. In the '90s, we have ...

Well, not much of anything. Some nice performances. A nice movie here, a nice movie there. Video game-style action comedies and tedious indie flicks made by kids who think movie history began with "Pulp Fiction." So the serious film critics write essays about the end of the era of the cinéaste and odes to the glories of the Iranian cinema. The reporters content themselves with tales of executives and deals.

Peter Biskind and Charles Fleming both write under the spell of this view. Both have new books out (the quotes above are taken from them). Of the two, Biskind's "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" is by far the more substantial. An attempt to sum up what was important in '70s American moviemaking, it's cast in the form of an anecdotal history of, as the subtitle puts it, "how the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll generation saved Hollywood."

In some ways it's a helpful work. Biskind provides some essential historical information -- reminding us, for example, how very, very old the people at the top of the studios were by the late '60s (many of them had begun their careers in the silent days). He emphasizes the roles played not just by the young directors but by such producers and executives as John Calley, Bert Schneider and Robert Evans. And he's convincing (as well as original) when he explains the importance of spouses, collaborators, lovers and friends in the careers and successes of his chosen directors -- Ashby, Scorsese, Coppola, Lucas, Altman, Schrader, Bogdanovich, Spielberg and Friedkin.

The glory days of the '70s, he shows, were the creation of a larger community of people, working in more capacities, than we tend to imagine. There was a shared excitement about movie art. Filmmakers swapped ideas with writers; resourceful casting directors found new faces in the New York theater world. Friendships were formed on the basis of talent and respect as well as ambition. Francis Coppola plays ringleader; Paul Schrader is the most brazen hustler; Martin Scorsese the purest artist; Steven Spielberg the eager beaver who just wants to please and succeed. At times, Biskind's book reads like an account of a '60s commune, with moments of heartbreaking harmony achieved before the inevitable breakdown.

Some of Biskind's judgments are questionable. Brian De Palma plays only a minor role in his account, while Robert Altman plays a large one -- yet surely De Palma is more representative of Biskind's "rock 'n' roll generation" than Altman, who is a Korean War-era figure. The book's major failing, however, is Biskind's cynical insistence on interpreting his subjects as exclusively driven by money, power and image. He is (in part) celebrating the era, but he seems determined to be tough on everyone (except for Hal Ashby, his martyr-saint figure).

Biskind's get-the-goods approach ensures that nearly everyone in his book comes across as scum. It leaves him at a loss to account for talent and generosity and incapable of discussing whatever nonscummy side of these people their sometimes wonderful work emerged from. His excessively jazzed-up writing style doesn't help. In an all-too typical passage, he allows an observer to conclude that, in winning Spielberg from Amy Irving, Kate Capshaw "outmanipulated the most manipulative woman who ever lived." Bitchily amusing and "smart," yes. But it doesn't speak well for Biskind that he didn't add a sentence of his own to allow for the possibility that Capshaw and Spielberg might have actually liked each other.

Biskind's most important contribution is to demonstrate that what used to be known as the "movie brats" (Scorsese/Coppola/Schrader, etc.) were responsible for bringing about their own fall from grace. High on their defiant vision of movies as personal expression and determined to take over a system they professed to despise, they consumed too many drugs, allowed their heads to be turned by money, betrayed their friends and helped themselves to too many women. Finally, they lost their audience. They danced on the edge of the abyss, and then they fell right in.

The end of the moviemaking era known as "the '70s" arrived with the overwhelming successes of "Jaws" and "Star Wars." Sayonara art, hello action scenes and happy endings. Charles Fleming's "High Concept" concerns this post-"Star Wars" period. His book is a guilty pleasure, a garishly written, slapped-together piece of work delivered in punchy Varietese. (Fleming was once a reporter for Variety.)

His subject, Don Simpson, was an emblem of the '80s. Credited with inventing the high-concept movie -- imagine that on your tombstone! -- Simpson hit his stride with the immortal "Flashdance," and went on, with his partner Jerry Bruckheimer, to produce the likes of "Beverly Hills Cop" and "Top Gun" -- the kind of movie that Biskind in his book, and in his overwrought way, calls "the smarmy, feel-good pap of the coming cultural counterrevolution."

Simpson created an infamous persona -- he'd have hookers flown to his film sets, for example -- and eventually established a reputation as "the town's most notorious bad boy." He also had, for a few years, a nearly perfect instinct for what the public could be sold and a peerless story sense, manifested in cocaine-fueled, 40-page faxed memos. Still, as tuned in as he was, "Simpson was never the audience. He dominated," as one source said to Fleming.

Once successful, Simpson repeatedly revised the story of his beginnings in Alaska, feeding credulous journalists accounts of religious-fanatic parents, beatings and jail time, even going so far as to tell a reporter that he'd "hunted moose for dinner" when he was 7. In fact, Fleming establishes, Simpson came from a well-liked lower-middle-class family and was a quiet, foppish nerd -- "a nice boy," as one classmate remembers.

It's hard to tell where Simpson's narcissism ended and his insecurities began. He subjected his chunky, 5-7 frame to epic quantities of drugs and booze, to late-night binges on peanut butter and hamburgers, to crash diets and workouts, to testosterone implants and to at least 10 procedures by plastic surgeons, including a butt lift and a penis enlargement. When Simpson died in 1996 at the age of 52, the coroner found 27 prescription drugs in his blood, plus cocaine, heroin and booze.

A quickie movie bio to its core, Fleming's book is short on insight, full of padding and rich in unnamed sources and careless copy editing. It's also zesty and likable. Fleming has an endearing taste (and even some talent) for one of my favorite hard-boiled tropes, the two-sentence cliffhanger chapter kicker. "The year to come was to be the best in Simpson's entire career," he writes. "It would also be his last."

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