Star Wars is both a product of the Hollywood of the 1970s, and the cause of the era's demise. Made in an era when a young director could propose a film with an incomprehensible science fiction plot (rebels and princesses in spaceships trying to blow up a huge space station?), and get it bankrolled by one of the most important studios in Hollywood, Star Wars grossed 400 million dollars in its initial release alone. Because 20th Century Fox thought the film would lucky if it were profitable, they cared little about its merchandising and sequel rights, and happily signed them away to its director. To this day, a big chunk of the revenue of Hasbro Toys comes from the deal that Kenner Toys (purchased by Hasbro in the mid-1990s) originally made with George Lucas.

Of course, it helped that Star Wars worked in contrast to the films of Lucas's peers. Both films contained in Biskind's title are dark, cynical movies the bookended lots of other dark, cynical movies: The afore mentioned Godfather flicks, as well as Chinatown, The Conversation, Taxi Driver, and Apocalypse Now. Those are all excellent films, of course, but of a kind. No wonder Robert Phillip Kolker encapsulated the era with a book titled A Cinema of Loneliness. And no wonder Star Wars practically printed money--it really was a breath of fresh air during that period.

The triple punch of Star Wars, combined with Steven Spielberg's Jaws and Close Encounters, sealed the fate of "the new Hollywood". The studios had a new formula to run on, one that exists to this day: the summer blockbuster, opening nationally simultaneously in hundreds of movie theaters (something that hadn't been done prior to the first Godfather movie, as Biskind and the documentary each note), basically a Republic Serial or Roger Corman movie, but slickly done by Hollywood's best craftsmen and actors working on an enormous budget. Add to the mix ancillary revenues from DVDs, videotapes, and merchandising, and Hollywood's current formula looks secure for at least this decade. (And I'll be more than happy to be proven wrong about that!)

Rating The Documentary

Kenneth Bowser's documentary of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls generally follows the structure of Peter Biskind's's book and contains new interviews with most of the main participants who are still kicking (two survivors, Margot Kidder and John Milius, have particularly sharp comments). Lacking of course, are new interviews with The Big Four of 1970s Hollywood (Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and Scorsese), but it's understandable that they're not the easiest fellows to get a hold of. The film falters in its history in a major way only once, when it claims in 1974 that America's involvement in Vietnam was escalating (we were of course pulling out at the time). Near the end of the film, it talks about Close Encounters before Star Wars, but in a way that's understandable-Star Wars is really the close of that era, with Raging Bull almost a coda.