Guns, guts and gearheads: The rowdy men who remade Hollywood

But how significant was this change, really? The commonly held belief is that the Hollywood films of the 1960s and 70s were revitalized by a new wave of directors. Films like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Easy Rider” are often credited with shaking up the studio system and fundamentally changing American cinema. And there’s a lot of validity to that idea. For example, Francis Ford Coppola went from directing standard musicals like “Finian’s Rainbow” to creating a masterpiece like “Apocalypse Now” within just ten years – a truly impressive feat of that era.







