Yes but it was conservative Hollywood that made the disaster movies. Remember how incredibly moralistic they were. They were like the Aaron Spelling TV shows of the time providing gigs for washed up movie stars.
What happenned in Hollywood was simple. The educated baby boom generation had European tastes. It replicated Monty Python in Saturday Night Live. It replicated the European art house auteurs like Bergman or Truffaut in Scorsese, Bogdanovich, or Coppola. It replicated "The Forsyte Saga" and the heyday of Mahsterpiece Theatre with the miniseries of the 70's and 80's.
And Truffaut and the French New Wave guys worshipped the old Hollywood directors like John Ford and Howard Hawks and reinterpreted the old american genres in their own way. And Coppola, Scorsese and the rest were responding to that re-inteppertation. It can be very confusing. :-)