FIVE EASY PIECES
Directed by Bob Rafelson
Written by Carole Eastman and Bob Rafelson
Starring Jack Nicholson and Karen Black
Released in 1970
Directed by Bob Rafelson
Written by Carole Eastman and Bob Rafelson
Starring Jack Nicholson and Karen Black
Released in 1970
Bob Rafelson's beautiful Five Easy Pieces holds up as well as any picture released in 1970. What there is of a story is timeless, I suppose, but again we find that the new breed had a way of doing things that simply shattered previous preconceptions about how the world works. This movie was not Liz and Dick with Paul thrown into the mix just to complicate matters. On the contrary, this was Jack Nicholson as Bobby Dupea, a gifted pianist who rejects the ultimately insubstantial upper-class life that afforded him the means to become aware enough to shun that very lifestyle. Instead, he takes up with a waitress--we always love a waitress, don't we, guys?--named Rayette, played famously by Karen Black, one of the most self-aware actors of the Seventies. Bobby wanders from oil rig to oil rig, bowling alley to bedroom, swagger to swoon, all in search of the nothingness that refused to elude him back home. Informed that his father is fading fast, he returns home, first without bringing Rayette into the main house and along the way encountering some folks who are so human it hurts. Helena Kallianiotes and Toni Basil (later of "Mickey" fame) are a pair of coupled lesbians looking to move to Alaska where things are clean. Along the way, Bobby, Rayette and these two stop into a restaurant.
Bobby Dupea's predicament rings true, not just to folks who have had trouble getting what they want in a truck stop diner, but with a country too stupid to make things easy on itself.
President: What is it you want, son?
Student: I want us the hell out of Vietnam.
President: Sorry, son. I can't do that.
Student: Why not?
President: It would make us look weak. Then every tyrant in the world would try to invade us.
Student: Okay. Here's what you do. You pull out all the troops and you tell the rest of the world that the reason you're doing that is so you can drop a nuclear bomb on the country without endangering any Americans.
President: I like your thinking, but--
Student: Then you just never quite get around to dropping it.
A young Carole Eastman, writing under the name Adrien Joyce, worked with Rafelson on the screenplay. This was an excellent pairing and has as much to do with the artistic success as the acting. Eastman wrote the script in such a way as to liberate the actors rather than tie them down. With so much talent around her, she understood--as did Rafelson, who knew Nicholson from Head--that the best thing to do was to focus on behavior rather than story. Putting people ahead of plot is risky unless the people are exceptionally interesting and played by actors who understand how to free themselves up inside so as to capture the essence of the character without worrying too much about nuance. Nicholson and Black dance through this film as if they instinctively understand that their gifts have been liberated by a benevolent system and the interaction between the two slaps at the heart again and again.
But let's not kid ourselves. This is Jack Nicholson's show from start to finish. Stuck in traffic, barking back at a dog, banging Sally Struthers, besting Ralph Waite at ping pong, being taken in by Catherine (Susan Anspach), or defending Rayette against the aggression of intellectualism--Wouldn't you love to hear Pat Benatar sing "Stop using your brain as a weapon"?--Nicholson mesmerizes even as we sense his final descent, a scene you will not like but which you will recognize as entirely appropriate.
Bobby Dupea's predicament rings true, not just to folks who have had trouble getting what they want in a truck stop diner, but with a country too stupid to make things easy on itself.
President: What is it you want, son?
Student: I want us the hell out of Vietnam.
President: Sorry, son. I can't do that.
Student: Why not?
President: It would make us look weak. Then every tyrant in the world would try to invade us.
Student: Okay. Here's what you do. You pull out all the troops and you tell the rest of the world that the reason you're doing that is so you can drop a nuclear bomb on the country without endangering any Americans.
President: I like your thinking, but--
Student: Then you just never quite get around to dropping it.
A young Carole Eastman, writing under the name Adrien Joyce, worked with Rafelson on the screenplay. This was an excellent pairing and has as much to do with the artistic success as the acting. Eastman wrote the script in such a way as to liberate the actors rather than tie them down. With so much talent around her, she understood--as did Rafelson, who knew Nicholson from Head--that the best thing to do was to focus on behavior rather than story. Putting people ahead of plot is risky unless the people are exceptionally interesting and played by actors who understand how to free themselves up inside so as to capture the essence of the character without worrying too much about nuance. Nicholson and Black dance through this film as if they instinctively understand that their gifts have been liberated by a benevolent system and the interaction between the two slaps at the heart again and again.
But let's not kid ourselves. This is Jack Nicholson's show from start to finish. Stuck in traffic, barking back at a dog, banging Sally Struthers, besting Ralph Waite at ping pong, being taken in by Catherine (Susan Anspach), or defending Rayette against the aggression of intellectualism--Wouldn't you love to hear Pat Benatar sing "Stop using your brain as a weapon"?--Nicholson mesmerizes even as we sense his final descent, a scene you will not like but which you will recognize as entirely appropriate.
