Short answers, pulled from the story.
Peter Biskind, born in 1940, is an American cultural critic, film historian, journalist, and former executive editor of Premiere magazine. He is best known for his books on Hollywood, including Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures, which examined the film industry from a critically adversarial perspective. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages.
Biskind is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and has published work in Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Paris Match, The Nation, The New York Times, The Times of London, the Los Angeles Times, Sight and Sound, and Film Quarterly. He also served as editor-in-chief of American Film from 1981 to 1986 and executive editor of Premiere magazine from 1986 to 1996.
Roger Ebert accused Biskind of shaping his accounts to fit a predetermined argument, saying that Biskind has a way of massaging his stories to suit his agenda. Ebert specifically denied an anecdote in Biskind's work claiming Ebert had dismissively asked "Who the hell is Todd Haynes?" at a film festival. Christine Vachon, named by Biskind as his source for the story, also denied the incident occurred.
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, published by Simon and Schuster in 1998, chronicles the generation of filmmakers who transformed American cinema, framing their story as a sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll rescue of Hollywood. The book became a bestseller and drew both acclaim and controversy.
Yes. Biskind published Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America in 2010 through Simon and Schuster. It is a full-length biography of actor and director Warren Beatty.
Biskind's most recent book is Pandora's Box: How Guts, Guile, and Greed Upended TV, published in 2023 by William Morrow. It examines the transformation of the television industry.