Dirty Real: Exile on Hollywood and Vine with the Gin Mill Cowboys

The story of how the movies assumed a gritty facade in the name of authenticity, with working actors transforming into artists, poets, painters, troubadours, and filmmakers—both on- and off-screen.

This is the tale of how Hollywood, inspired by the success of Easy Rider, sold a cycle of films as the new dirty real. Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Monte Hellman, Jack Nicholson, Kris Kristofferson, and Sam Peckinpah, among others, parlayed a nostalgia for the gutter and donned bohemian personae,...