![]() ![]() Biskind managed to interview many of the original players, and wrote a compelling narrative of the collapse of postwar Hollywood and the retirement of the last of the great moguls who built the industry, and the rise of the young turks who would be, for a time, their successors. The rise of New Hollywood is a story that’s been told countless times, but one of the very best tellings is Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, originally published in 1998, but finally released in a Kindle version this week - entirely coincidentally, the day after Bert Schneider died. Then John Wayne said aw, the Schneider guy was a pain in the ass. Then a furious Shirley MacLaine yelled at Frank that she was a member of the Academy and no one had asked her if she wanted to disassociate herself from the Vietnamese Provisional Revolutionary Government. So Frank came out and said that the Academy wished to disassociate itself from the preceding. Offstage, Bob Hope was mad, and scribbled some lines for his co-host Frank Sinatra. Instead of an acceptance speech, he read out a telegram conveying fraternal greetings to the American people from Dinh Ba Thi of the Vietnamese Provisional Revolutionary Government. On April 8th 1975, Bert Schneider’s film Hearts And Minds won the Oscar for Best Documentary. ![]() Truly, that was the golden age of Academy Awards ceremonies. There followed Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show.īut, as much as I like the latter, I prefer to remember the late Mr Schneider for his contribution to the gaiety of 1970s Oscar nights. ![]() That flopped, but the next film he produced, Easy Rider, cost less than 400 grand and within three years had made $60 million. He started in TV in the mid-Sixties, helped create “The Monkees” and then took them to the big screen in the feature film Head. Bert Schneider was an obscure figure by the time of his death, but back in “New Hollywood” – that interlude between the end of the studio system and the dawn of the Jaws/ Star Wars era – he was briefly a significant figure. ![]()
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