Peter Biskind
Peter Biskind is a cultural critic and film historian. He was the editor-in-chief of American Film magazine from 1981 to 1986, and the executive editor of Premiere from 1986 to 1996. His writing has appeared in scores of national publications, including Rolling Stone, Paris Match, the Nation, The New York Times, the Times of London, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as film journals such as Sight and Sound and Film Quarterly. He is now a contributing editor for Vanity Fair. He has published six books: Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties (1983); The Godfather Companion (1990); Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (1998); Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film (1998); Gods and Monsters: Thirty Years of Writing on Film and Culture from One of America's Most Incisive Writers (2004); and Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America (2010).
“In order to get [Mean Streets] made I had to learn how to make a movie," says Scorsese. "I didn't learn how to make a movie in film school. What you learned in film school was to express yourself with pictures and sound. But learning to make a movie is totally different.”