RECKLESS SAVIORS; AUTHOR REVEALS HOW DIRECTORS RESCUED HOLLWOOD IN WILD '70S.

Byline: Fred Shuster Daily News Staff Writer

Peter Biskind's currently hot book about the largely self-destructive filmmakers of the '70s isn't just beach reading - it's red light reading.

It might be the most compulsively perused book in Hollywood at the moment.

``Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock-'n'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood'' (Simon & Schuster; $25) by Biskind, the former executive editor of Premiere, tells of the dozen or so years after ``Bonnie and Clyde'' (1967) - the so-called director's era.

It was a time when young directors like Martin Scorsese, Hal Ashby, Peter Bogdanovich, Paul Schrader, Robert Altman, William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas revolutionized the studio system with films like ``Chinatown,'' ``The Last Picture Show,'' ``Raging Bull,'' ``Easy Rider,'' ``Taxi Driver,'' ``The Graduate,'' ``Five Easy Pieces,'' ``Jaws'' and ``Star Wars.''

Biskind documents how many of the once-rebellious moviemakers either destroyed themselves or their careers in a blizzard of drugs, ego and money. It's an often jaw-dropping tale of Hollywood filmmaking, sex and cocaine, although not necessarily in that order.

``Drugs and sex were a big part of that era,'' Biskind, 57, said. ``The '70s was a decade of personal filmmaking, and you can't understand the decade without understanding people's personal lives. For example, `The Godfather' was a genre picture, but at the same time Coppola connected with Don Corleone. `Mean Streets' and `Raging Bull' grew out of people's personal lives.''

According to the book, which Biskind spent five years researching and writing, Spielberg and Lucas did less drugs and were least consumed by the easy sexual mores of the decade than anyone else. He says it's no accident they are the most successful filmmakers of modern times.

``At the end of the decade when a lot of these people auto-destructed and went down in flames, it was the end of this movement, the directors' decade,'' Biskind said.

Another nail in the coffin, of course, was ``Heaven's Gate'' (1980), Michael Cimino's $44 million debacle. Biskind says it may not be fair to put too much blame on that movie because the film that caused the crisis could just as easily have been ``Sorcerer,'' ``Apocalypse Now,'' ``1941'' or ``Reds,'' other pictures fueled by out-of-control egos and budgets.

`` `Heaven's Gate' is a symbol,'' the author said. ``It could have been many movies that symbolized the end of the decade. `Heaven's Gate' was more of a symptom of ever-escalating budgets. Then, when `Jaws' and `Star Wars' came along, the studios made so much money they wanted every movie to be `Jaws' and `Star Wars.' In addition, costs were going up rapidly, which created a conservatism among movie people.''

The book also reports many colorful or frightening scenes from the personal lives of some of the era's biggest names. For example, Biskind describes a dangerous Dennis Hopper attacking then-wife Brooke Hayward, Coppola rubbing his wife's nose in a series of very public affairs, Scorsese becoming nearly fatally ensnared by cocaine, Spielberg being coached by pal Margot Kidder on how to win a girlfriend, and the tale of how some of Hollywood's best-known '70s executives successfully smuggled Black Panther Huey Newton out of the country.

Biskind makes especially smart use of the discarded wives and girlfriends of many of these people.

``The way they treated women, it was a very sexist area,'' Biskind said. ``I mean, Schrader proposed marriage to two women at the same time, Friedkin left a woman pregnant - they all treated women badly. It was a whole different attitude. These people felt they were geniuses and enormously powerful at an early age and the usual rules didn't apply to them. The book's not just about movies, but people's lives.

``I got a lot of this stuff from the women who were treated so badly. They were smart people but the decade was so sexist. They sat on the sidelines and watched, then got discarded. They were good caustic observers.''

Biskind is blessed with a narrative gift in ``Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,'' but it's the vignettes that are irresistible. His subtitle - ``How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock-'n'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood'' - could use some revision, though.

As some wags have pointed out, if every multiplex in the country is playing the same six movies and you can't find a foreign film with even a stethoscope, what exactly has been saved?

Biskind writes that without a counterculture to nourish young filmmakers, without a set of ``oppositional values,'' today's independent moviemakers are independent in name only, always at risk of being consumed by the studios.

``You get tired painting your pictures and going down to the street corner and selling them for a dollar,'' says ``Nashville'' director Altman in the book. ``You get the occasional `Fargo,' but you've still got to make them for nothing, and you get nothing back. It's disastrous for the film industry, disastrous for film art. I have no optimism whatsoever.''

Biskind, too, doesn't expect another era with so many celluloid flowers blossoming.

``There will never be another director's decade because the studios have gotten so powerful and monolithic,'' the author said. ``Unless you're Spielberg or James Cameron, the young director doesn't have a prayer to enforce their own agenda.''

Biskind says the loose, colorful talk in the book came easily because many of the principle characters don't have anything to lose at this point.

``A lot of these guys were very eloquent talkers and got to be very powerful at a very early age and never learned the habits of caution,'' Biskind said. ``These guys are used to saying what they think because that's how they came up. It was surprisingly easy getting this stuff. The book is filled with outrageous stories about outrageous people.''

The book, already on the best-sellers lists, is one of two currently hot tell-all Hollywood tomes. The other is ``High Concept: Don Simpson and the Culture of Excess'' by Charles Fleming (Doubleday; $23.95), the story of the self-destructive '80s co-producer of ``Flashdance,'' ``Top Gun'' and ``Days of Thunder.''

Biskind said he knew ``High Concept'' was being prepared while he worked on his book, which deals with a different era.

``I hope (the book) appeals to anybody that goes to the movies,'' Biskind said. ``I hope it has a broad audience.''

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4 Photos

Photo: (1--2) The '70s was a decade of personal filmmaking, and you can't understand the decade without understanding people's personal lives.'

Peter Biskind

author of ``Easy Riders,

Raging Bulls''

(3--4) Martin Scorcese turned out the testosterone-laced ``Raging Bull,'' above, and Francis Ford Coppola his surreal ``Apocalypse Now,'' right, in the late 1970s, an era of brash, young directors.