VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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    • Blow Up
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    • Hurry Sundown
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      • Notorious
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      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
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    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
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    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
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    • Sometimes They Come Back
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    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
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FIVE EASY PIECES
Directed by Bob Rafelson
Written by Carole Eastman and Bob Rafelson
Starring Jack Nicholson and Karen Black
Released in 1970
Picture
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. 
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links