Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Color/B&W; NR (mature themes, language, sexual situations) 119 min., DVD only $24.98

DVD: extended interviews

Street: May 11, Prebook: April 15

First Run: Trio, March 2003

Director: Kenneth Bowser

Inspired by Peter Biskind's best-selling book of the same name, this survey of the legendary filmmakers and landmark films of the late '60s-early '70s is true to its source material, mixing fascinating and sometimes funny incidents with dollops of juicy gossip about its subjects. Actor William H. Macy narrates the anecdotal doc, helmed by British director Bowser, who gets a good number of the era's leading players to speak on-the-record and in front of the camera. Supplementing the pithy talking head interviews with the likes of Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Bogdanovich and Ellen Burstyn are superlative film clips, photos and archival footage of such notably absent figures as Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Steven Spielberg who, reportedly, were angry over Biskind's controversial book. Easy Riders traces the roots of the movement to the influence of the French New Wave and its primary architects, Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, and targets the critical and commercial success of Bonnie & Clyde as the inspiration behind many of the era's filmmakers. It also delves into the affect such issues as the Vietnam War and the woman's and civil rights movements had with the generation's filmmakers and audiences. The bonus material consists of 90 minutes of additional, free-flowing interview footage, in which participants offer more dirt on drugs (Margot Kidder hilariously runs down a laundry list of artificial substances and their famous experimenters) and sex (check out Cybill Shepherd's revelations about who she didn't sleep with). In all, the much-anticipated DVD release of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is a welcome addition to any store with a film buff clientele, especially those which have handled the similar but more academic A Decade Under the Influence and other "inside Hollywood" factual films. --Irv Slifkin

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