Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Easy Rider became a surprise hit, and the film was made in chaos: drugs and drink ran through the set, and costars Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda fought violently. That success opens a history of Hollywood in the years when young directors, writers and actors took over the studios' business and treated experiment as a rule, on screen and off.

The book is non-fiction, a work of film history told through incidents and personalities. It follows a small production company, BBS, which became the guiding spirit of the youth rebellion in Hollywood. Some of its executives helped smuggle Huey Newton out of the country.

The cast of people is large. Hal Ashby is busted for drugs and jailed in Toronto. Martin Scorsese attends the Academy Awards with an FBI escort when Taxi Driver is nominated. George Lucas, anxious while writing Star Wars, compulsively cuts off his own hair. Billy Friedkin tries to humiliate Paramount boss Barry Diller, and Paul Schrader plays Russian roulette in his hot tub.

Actresses Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt live in a modest house on Nicholas Beach, which becomes the unofficial headquarters for the New Hollywood. Reading it is like hearing backstage gossip with a historian's eye: anecdotal, fast, and openly about excess. It suits readers curious about how these films came to exist and what the people behind them were doing.