The Great Gatsby

Ever since F. Scott Fitzgerald’s magnum opus The Great Gatsby was published, Hollywood has been fascinated with adapting his novel into a film. To date, there have been five official versions, from a silent film made in 1926 to Baz Luhrmann’s postmodern take in 2013. Filmmakers have long been intrigued by the novel’s themes of decadence, excess and its portrait of the Roaring Twenties, making it a haunting critique of the pursuit of the American Dream.

In 1974, a particularly intriguing version of The Great Gatsby was released starring Robert Redford in the titular role and Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan, the object of his affection. It was directed by British filmmaker Jack Clayton and adapted by Francis Ford Coppola. The film received scathing reviews and was nominated for several Academy Awards and Golden Globes – even winning a few of them. It is generally regarded as an uneven adaptation at best and an outright failure at worst but I’ve always found it a fascinating take on Fitzgerald’s novel.

The opening credits play over a montage of Gatsby’s opulent mansion that is oddly devoid of life, coming across more as a sterile museum full of nice things: an expensive car, piano, ornate furnishings, marble floors, and exquisite décor, all the while echoey music plays as if to suggest ghosts of the past haunt this place. While the camera lingers over expensive jewelry, it keeps returning to a newspaper photograph and portraits of Daisy Buchanan (Farrow) – the only thing that Gatsby really cares about.

We meet Nick Carraway (Sam Waterston) arriving in West Egg, Long Island via boat to spend the summer hanging out with his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom (Bruce Dern) who live in the far more fashionable East Egg, “drifting here and there, unrestfully, wherever people played polo and were rich together,” Nick observes via voiceover narration. He’s met by Tom and they head back to his house where he’s reunited with Daisy and meets her friend Jordan Baker (Lois Chiles).

One is immediately struck by Daisy’s flighty condescension and Tom’s smug superiority. These people live in their own rarefied world because they can afford it. She even tries to appear deep by making an observation about a bird on the lawn but it comes across as a half-hearted attempt. The film wastes no time showing what a hypocrite Tom is with his talk of the superiority of the rich, upper class and his polo games but his mistress Myrtle (Karen Black) is the wife of a destitute mechanic (Scott Wilson) living in a garage located among a desolate wasteland of ashes.

Nick arrives home and only catches a fleeting glimpse of his enigmatic neighbor Jay Gatsby (Redford). The film cheekily juxtaposes Nick’s simple existence – eating a modest steak dinner he prepared himself with a glass of beer on the porch of his modest rental house – dwarfed by the army of groundskeepers and caterers that prepare Gatsby’s estate for one of his lavish parties. We only catch a couple of glimpses of him until 35 minutes into the film when Nick is brought up to meet the man one-on-one in the heart of his mansion. It is an impressive introduction as Robert Redford flashes that high wattage movie star smile and one can see why he was the ideal actor to play the enigmatic man with loads of charisma.

Daisy and Gatsby have a doomed love affair. When they first met they couldn’t be together because she was rich and he wasn’t. This violated the rules of the upper class. Gatsby spent years amassing a large personal fortune, buying his way back into Daisy’s world in the hopes of proving himself worthy, only she didn’t wait for him and married another rich man. They reunite for a brief affair, knowing it can’t last but are determined to savor every moment they have together.

Bruce Dern does an exceptional job of portraying an Alpha Male reeking of entitlement. He uses up people with little to no thought of the consequences. Karen Black plays his ideal foil, an equally duplicitous spouse that when she wants something, like a puppy being sold on the side of the street, has Tom pay for it. The actress does a wonderful job conveying Myrtle’s indulgence of excess. These aren’t very nice people and Dern and Black aren’t afraid to portray them as such. And yet for all of her vanity, Black gets a moment to suggest that Myrtle is something of a tragic figure while Dern’s Tom is ultimately nothing more than a wealthy bully. “They’re careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smash things up and then they retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness…leaving other people to clean up the mess,” Nick says of them, which perfectly nails their characters.

Sam Waterston plays Nick as a blank slate audience surrogate, acting as our guide among the rich and powerful. The character’s purpose is to react to the behavior and actions of the colorful people he encounters throughout the film. The actor does a decent job portraying the wide-eyed outsider in a world he is familiar with but can never truly be a part of because he’s not rich. As the film progresses, a friendship forms between Nick and Gatsby and this gives Waterston something to do other than being an observer. Nick is a true friend to Gatsby as he doesn’t like him because of his money but because he truly admires him.

Robert Redford always struck me as an actor that kept his cards close to the vest, never letting audiences inside and showing a vulnerable side. It always feels like he keeps audiences at arm’s length and in the process maintaining an air of mystery, which is ideally suited for playing Gatsby. The actor portrays him as an elusive figure that only interacts with people on his own terms.

If Redford is ideally cast as Gatsby then Mia Farrow is very much miscast as Daisy. Her fickle, bird-trapped-in-a-gilded-cage take on the character is grating at times and makes us wonder why Gatsby is so taken with her. That being said, the scene where Daisy and Gatsby meet for the first time in eight years demonstrates incredible on-screen chemistry between the two actors. In particular, Redford’s reaction to seeing her is quite powerful as we see Gatsby, a man always in control, caught up in the moment – a rare thing that sees him letting his guard down.

The Great Gatsby features beautiful cinematography courtesy of Douglas Slocombe (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and features memorable shots like that of Nick leaving the Buchanan’s at the end of the day with the sky and water bathed in the warm orange, pink and yellow hues of the sunset. The soft focus approach gives everything an almost hazy look, making all the metal of the expensive silverware, glassware and jewelry sparkle and shimmer.

For years, the likes of Sam Spiegel, Ray Stark and Sydney Pollack had wanted to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby into a film. Actress Ali MacGraw dreamed of playing the much-coveted role of Daisy Buchanan, which prompted then-husband and head of production at Paramount Studios Robert Evans to buy the film rights as a gift to her. He partnered with Broadway producer David Merrick who was friends with Fitzgerald’s daughter Scottie. At the time Merrick approached her there were other interested parties and it took him a year before he closed the deal for $350,000.

Potential directors circled the project, including Peter Bogdanovich, Arthur Penn and Mike Nichols, but none of them wanted MacGraw to play Daisy. British director Jack Clayton was hired to helm the film. He had actually tried to acquire the rights to The Great Gatsby himself in the 1940s and was obsessed with the novel for 30 years. To this end, he not only consulted with Fitzgerald estate curator Matthew J. Bruccoli but also with Scottie and literary experts.

Evans hired Truman Capote to write the screenplay. Clayton felt that the first draft had “far too much dialogue and exposition.” Evans was also unhappy with the script, which included confusing dream sequences and flashbacks. He asked Francis Ford Coppola to write a more straight-forward adaptation. The filmmaker was looking for a change of pace from working on The Godfather (1972) and wrote the script in five weeks. Clayton loved Coppola’s script and removed some passages he felt were unnecessary and inserted material from the book that the filmmaker had not included. It was these additions that upset Coppola, including an ending that he felt was anti-climactic.

Evans wanted either Warren Beatty or Jack Nicholson to play Gatsby with the former agreeing but only if MacGraw played Jordan Baker, and the latter only if she was not cast as Daisy. Evans was determined to have his wife play the role. He approached Marlon Brando but couldn’t afford him, especially after The Godfather. They were two months away from the start of principal photography and still hadn’t found their Gatsby. When Robert Redford heard about the project he approached Evans who turned the actor down. Redford met with Clayton who was interested in Nicholson as Gatsby but after talking with Redford for 90 minutes wanted him to play the part. Clayton said of the actor, “You can see the possibility of danger beneath the romantic WASP image.”

Evans still wasn’t convinced and felt that Redford didn’t look the part, which drove the actor crazy: “I began to think Evans never read the book. Sure, he liked the idea of doing Fitzgerald, but he didn’t know the text.” He had first read the novel in college and found it “florid,” but revisited it for the film and “I saw it was something extraordinary, the depiction of human obsessions, and I felt some great screen work could come from it.” The studio also backed Redford and he was cast as Gatsby.

Merrick wanted MacGraw to play Daisy and McQueen to play Gatsby. At the time, Evans and MacGraw were getting divorced after he discovered she was having an affair with her co-star on The Getaway (1972), Steve McQueen. Evans, understandably, disagreed with Merrick and had Paramount executives meet with him and Merrick to decide on potential actresses to play Daisy: Mia Farrow, Katharine Ross, Candice Bergen or Faye Dunaway. Merrick continued to insist on MacGraw while Clayton wanted Farrow and Evans agreed. The studio executives concurred and she was cast in the role. After being cast she discovered that she was pregnant. The shooting schedule was moved up a week and her dresses were altered to hide her pregnancy.

Most people assume that the media blitzkrieg and merchandising of a movie started with Star Wars (1977) but forget that The Great Gatsby predated it with a then-unprecedented amount of hype as typified by Evans hubristically saying, “The making of a blockbuster is the newest art form of the 20th century.” Oh, how prescient that statement was when one considers the rise of the mass marketed studio blockbuster in the 1980s. Paramount spent $200,000 on publicity and promotion with product tie-ins valued at $6 million. The film was made for $6.4 million and made $18.6 million on advance bookings making it a financial success before it was even released in theaters!

Film critics savaged The Great Gatsby when it was released. Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “But we can’t penetrate the mystery of Gatsby. Nor, to be honest, can we quite understand what’s so special about Daisy Buchanan. Not as she’s played by Mia Farrow, all squeaks and narcissism and empty sophistication.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Nothing that Mr. Clayton does with the actors or with the camera comes close to catching the spirit of Fitzgerald’s impatient brilliance…The plot has been dismantled like an antique engine and photographed, piece by piece, preserved in lots of pretty, glistening images that bath the film in nostalgia as thick as axle grease.” Time magazine’s Jay Cocks wrote, “A great deal of time, money and promotion have been concentrated here, but Gatsby’s sad and curious history has resulted in a dull, dreadful movie.” Finally, in his review for The New Republic, Stanley Kauffmann wrote, “In sum this picture is a total failure of every requisite sensibility. A long, slow, sickening bore.”

Redford said of the film, “The truth is, Hollywood wanted to make The Great Gatsby because it was a literary success, not because it was great literature. Enough time may not have been taken to work that one out.” Coppola hated the film and felt that Clayton had ruined his faithful script. Farrow felt that it “was a victim of overhype.”

The Great Gatsby takes a fascinating look at the idle rich and their decadent lives as typified by the people that populate Gatsby’s parties. They are filled with people that want to see and be seen, lose their inhibitions and indulge in all kinds of excesses – this was the Roaring Twenties where the United States was prospering after World War I. And yet, the film ultimately shows these parties as empty affairs that its host Gatsby rarely attends. Why should we care about these people? When it comes to the likes of Tom and Myrtle, we don’t and neither does Nick who becomes disgusted by them and their phoniness, turning his back on their way of life.

As Nick observes early on, Gatsby is a tragic and romantic figure: “For Gatsby turned out alright in the end. It was what preyed on him, what foul dust that floated in the wake of his dreams.” He’s a self-made man that built himself up to impress a woman he loved years ago and never forgot. Unfortunately, he thought that money could buy happiness and return things to the way they were once years ago, but this proves to be his undoing. For its faults, this version of The Great Gatsby is remarkably faithful to its source material and a strong indictment of the vanity of the rich and the dangers of achieving the American Dream.

SOURCES

Callan, Michael Feeney. Robert Redford: The Biography. Vintage. 2012.

Phillips, Gene D. Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola. University Press of Kentucky. 2004.

“Ready Or Not, Here Comes Gatsby.” Time. March 18, 1974.

Sinyard, Neil. Jack Clayton. Manchester University Press. 2013.

Five Easy Pieces

Jack Nicholson had one of the best runs of any actor during the 1970s and that’s saying a lot when you consider it was at a time when the likes of Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, among others, were doing some of their very best work. Nicholson actually made a big splash with his scene-stealing supporting role in Easy Rider (1969), which kickstarted a fantastic run of films, beginning with Five Easy Pieces (1970) and continuing with notable efforts like The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), The Last Detail (1973), and Chinatown (1974) – and this is before the halfway point of the decade! Perhaps his most fruitful collaborator during this period was filmmaker Bob Rafelson whom he co-wrote The Monkees movie Head (1968) with and went on to direct Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens. Five Easy Pieces is one of those complex character studies that typified some of the best American films from the ‘70s.

We meet Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson) working on an oil field somewhere in California to the strains of “Stand by Your Man” By Tammy Wynette, which, in retrospect, seems ironic because he could care less about his girlfriend’s loyalty. It is playing on a record player when he comes home and Nicholson gives it a brief look of disdain. When Bobby rebuffs his girlfriend Rayette’s (Karen Black) suggestion to play the song again she tells him to play the B-side, he snarkily replies, as only Nicholson can, “It’s not a question of sides, it’s a question of musical integrity.” The last bit is delivered with the actor’s trademark shit-eating grin. It seems like Ray doesn’t exactly understand what he means but does know that he’s making a joke at her expense.

Bobby and Ray go bowling with his co-worker Elton (Billy “Green” Bush) and his wife Stoney (Fannie Flagg) and then proceeds to belittle her in front of them for her lack of athletic prowess. He’s cruel to Ray and looks down on her, which begs the question, why is he with her and why does she put up with him? Bobby is someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, which makes one wonder why he lives with Ray, a nice enough person but clearly not his intellectual equal. He barely tolerates her needy behavior and one gets the feeling that he is punishing himself.

The early scenes of Bobby and Elton working on the oil fields are beautifully realized as we actually see these guys hard at work and then joking with each other during breaks. These moments have a naturalistic vibe as Nicholson and Billy “Green” Bush play so well off each other that they are completely believable as good friends.

It’s the first indication of what Bill Murray would later say in Stripes (1981), that Bobby is “part of a lost and restless generation.” He doesn’t have time for people that can’t keep up with him. He cheats on Ray and then lies to her about it. She knows he is and even cries about it but stays with him anyway. Even Elton rubs Bobby the wrong way, provoking him to say, “Keep on telling me about the good life, Elton, because it makes me puke!”

Five Easy Pieces is a slice-of-life film whose story doesn’t begin properly until 30 minutes in when Bobby quits his job and Elton is arrested – all on the same day. To make matters worse, Bobby’s sister Partita (Lois Smith) tells him that their father is very ill, having barely survived two strokes. We also find out that Bobby is a classically trained pianist and comes from an affluent family. He soon heads out to be with them, Ray in tow and the film shifts gears into road movie territory before finally settling into a family drama.

Nicholson plays Bobby like a man at war with himself. He is a misanthrope trying to act like he cares about other people. He tries to make it work with Ray but can’t help but be cruel to her. It’s in his nature to condescend to those that can’t keep up with him or piss him off. This usually manifests itself in treating Ray like shit most of the time but it is also funny and deserving, like the famous diner scene where he gives a surly waitress a piece of his mind in trademark Nicholson fashion.

His relationship with Ray is the first of several contradictions about the man. Rafelson sometimes conveys these contradictions visually, like when Bobby and Elton are stuck in a traffic jam on a freeway and the former hops up on the back of a truck and begins playing the piano strapped to it. He starts playing a classical piece really well and gets so engrossed in it that he doesn’t realize (or care) that the truck is taking the off ramp while Elton continues on. It’s quite the image: Bobby in his oil rigging work clothes playing piano. His contradictory nature is what makes him such a fascinating character. He’s Holden Caulfield all grown up and like J.D. Salinger’s most famous protagonist, he can’t stand phonies, dishing out scathing put-downs to people that upset him, like the aforementioned waitress.

The scenes where Bobby interacts with his family are when we get the most fascinating insights into his character and the closest to understanding him. His family is a bunch of eccentric intellectuals that delight in taking digs at each other and it is easy to see why Bobby hasn’t visited them in years. Most interestingly, we see how he acts around a woman named Catherine (Susan Anspach) who is his intellectual equal. She doesn’t put up with any of his shit and accuses him of having no inner feeling, but they have a brief fling anyway. She ends up offering a very accurate assessment of Bobby’s personality in a quietly powerful scene that Susan Anspach delivers in direct and eloquent fashion.

Karen Black has the tough job of playing a sweet woman who may not be the smartest person but she doesn’t deserve Bobby’s condescension. Ray is a target for much of his scorn. It’s not that she’s dumb per se; it’s just that she’s not as smart as Bobby. She doesn’t always understand what he says or gets things he references but then few people do outside of his family. Ray is not blessed with the kind of self-awareness that curses Bobby. After the first time he lays into her verbally we feel sympathy towards Ray. Sure, she’s annoying at times and talks a lot about nothing in particular, but she’s a nice person – an innocent of sorts. Black does a good job of refusing to reduce Ray to a silly caricature.

Jack Nicholson first met Carole Eastman in 1957 at an acting class taught by veteran character actor Jeff Corey. They became friends and would work on The Shooting (1967) with her writing the screenplay and him acting in it. Bob Rafelson met Nicholson at a film society in Hollywood and they bonded over foreign films and John Cassavetes. They ended up writing the script for the Monkees movie Head. At the time, Nicholson had given up acting and told Rafelson, “I’m tired of it. I always get to play the shitty B-part not the A-part, and it’s always in conventional movies.” The director responded, ‘Well, not the next one.’ The next one I want you to star in it.”

Rafelson had written some scripts in the 1960s based on friends he had in college and afterwards, some of whom were dead: “So I was writing about self-destruction.” He envisioned the protagonist of what would become Five Easy Pieces as a concert pianist, originally coming up with a vision of “Jack, out in the middle of a highway, the wind blowing through his hair, sitting on a truck and playing the piano.” He wasn’t happy with the scripts he had written and showed one of his scripts to Eastman. He knew of her work on The Shooting and Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970). He said of the writer: “I don’t think I ever met anybody – male or female – with such audacious and bold imagination.”

He asked her to work on it and she came back with Five Easy Pieces. Rafelson recalled, “The only scene of mine she kept was the one in the diner.” The character of Bobby was a composite of Nicholson, her brothers who “drifted almost mysteriously from place to place, and whose behavior remained finally inexplicable to her,” Ted Kennedy, “whose position as the youngest in his own celebrated family suggested the kinds of competitive feelings and fears” she wanted for Bobby, and her “own deep personal beliefs.” Rafelson said of Eastman, “Here she was, this rather thin and kind of fragile-looking woman and she could easily write about the most obscure things like waitresses, Tammy Wynette, bowling alleys, oil fields…”

Rafelson ended up tweaking Eastman’s script in several ways, most significantly the ending, which as originally written, had Bobby die when his car veered off a bridge – an allusion to Kennedy and Chappaquiddick. Nicholson and Rafelson did not like this ending with the former wanting Bobby to walk down a street alone, but the latter ultimately went with the one in the film. Eastman was quite upset at the changes Rafelson made and felt betrayed.

Five Easy Pieces was shot over 41 days, starting in early winter 1969 and going into January on a budget of $876,000 on location around Bakersfield, California, Eugene, Oregon, and Victoria, British Columbia. When it came to the climactic scene between Bobby and his father, Nicholson and Rafelson disagreed on how the character should act. The director wanted Bobby to break down and cry and the actor felt that he would be doing it out of self-pity. Nicholson ended up rewriting the scene himself, waiting until the day of, on location, to write it. While writing and then acting the scene, he drew on his own relationship with his actual father.

Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and called it a “masterpiece of heartbreaking intensity.” In his review for the Village Voice, Nick Pinkerton wrote, “director Bob Rafelson and screenwriter Carole Eastman’s film is totally human, trading [Easy] Riders’ counterculture mytho-poetics for a study in the charisma of disdain (which Nicholson personifies) and how rebellion and loutishness are often indistinguishable (ditto), never excusing the pain Bobby causes.” However, The New York Time’s Roger Greenspun felt that it was a film “that takes small risks and provides small rewards.”

At the end of Five Easy Pieces, Bobby comes to terms with who he is and makes peace with his father in a moving scene that demonstrates his capacity for inner feeling – he just keeps it buried deep inside, only allowing it to surface during rare occasions. He says to his father, “I move around a lot, not because I’m looking for anything really but because I’m getting away from things that get bad if I stay.” This is as close as Bobby gets to a confession of sorts, or an explanation of his behavior. Rafelson has said that he saw Five Easy Pieces about a man “condemned to search for the meaning of his life.” Bobby spends the entire film discontented, looking for something he can never find, doomed to spend his life searching for the meaning of it all. Rafelson and Nicholson would work together again several times, but this maybe their best collaboration to date.

SOURCES

Biskind, Peter. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Simon and Schuster. 1998.

Knepperges, Rainer. “The Monologist and the Fighter: An Interview with Bob Rafelson.” Senses of Cinema. April 2009.

McGilligan, Patrick. Jack’s Life: A Biography of Jack Nicholson. W.W. Norton and Company. 1995.

McLellan, Dennis. “Carole Eastman, 69; Wrote Screenplay for Five Easy Pieces.” Los Angeles Times. February 27, 2004.

Pinkerton, Nick. “Bombast: Carole Eastman.” Film Comment. November 21, 2014.

Thomson, David. “One for the Road: Bob Rafelson and Five Easy Pieces.” Sight and Sound. September 2010.

DVD of the Week: America Lost & Found: The BBS Story

In the 1960s, film producer Bert Schneider and film director Bob Rafelson expressed an interest in movie production but both men lacked experience so they use their connections in Hollywood to produce a pilot episode for a potential television series. The end result would The Monkees, an irreverent show done in the style of The Beatles film, A Hard Day’s Night (1964). The show was green-lit and became a pop culture sensation. While developing The Monkees, Schneider and Rafelson met Stephen Blauner who worked for the studio developing the show. They decided to take the money they made from The Monkees and finance a film that Dennis Hopper wanted to direct and star in with his friend Peter Fonda. That film would be Easy Rider (1969) and this counter-culture film became a huge hit both commercially and critically, sending shockwaves through Hollywood.

The Criterion Collection have released an incredible box set sampling some of the most intriguing, experimental, and just plain fascinating examples of BBS Production’s output. Two films that are included have never been released on home video before. This set is quite simply a must-have for any lover of American cinema during the 1970s.

To say Head (1968) is a cinematic oddity is an understatement. Intent at topping The Beatles at their own game, The Monkees appeared in a film that Bob Rafelson directed and co-wrote with none other than Jack Nicholson and that was even more experimental and avant garde than anything the Fab Four had done. The result was a strange, yet playful concert film fused with a trippy pop culture satire. It was a resounding commercial flop when fans realized that the film was not a rehash of The Monkees’ silly, conventional television show.

The opening track, “Porpoise Song,” with its psychedelic imagery, anticipates the British acid house movement by many years and quickly establishes that this isn’t going to be a traditional film by any stretch of the imagination. Gone is the bubblegum pop and in is the Sgt. Pepper’s-esque experimentation. At one point, the band members appear as dandruff in Victor Mature’s hair only to be swept up by a giant vacuum cleaner. Hell, Frank Zappa even shows up with a talking cow to give some sage advice. The Monkees, with Rafelson’s help, gleefully bit the hand that fed them and proceeded to deconstruct their image in a way that no pop group at their level of success had done before or since. Imagine if Justin Bieber decided to star in a film directed Darren Aronofsky.

The critical and commercial success of Easy Rider (1969) scared the hell out of the Hollywood studios at the time of its release. Executives thought that they knew what the public wanted to see: safe comedies like Pillow Talk (1959) or the Frankie and Annette beach party movies. Along came this counter-culture film that featured contemporary rock ‘n’ roll music, two hippie protagonists and a nihilistic ending. And audiences loved it. Easy Rider ushered in the last great decade of American movies in the ‘70s.

After selling their stash of cocaine, Billy (Hopper) and Wyatt (Fonda) decide to ride their motorcycles from California to Florida (by way of the South) where they plan to live off the money. They travel the back roads of American and encounter all sorts of people: suspicious small-townsfolk, an oppressive sheriff and a rancher and his large family who invite them to a meal. The deeper they go into the South, the more resistance they meet because of how they look.

Easy Rider is a fantastic snapshot of the times. It signaled the end of the not-so idyllic ‘60s, where having long hair could deny you a room in a motel because the manager didn’t like the way you look. Time running out is a constant theme throughout Easy Rider. When Billy and Wyatt start their journey, Wyatt throws away his watch. Later on, he finds a discarded pocket watch just before they leave the commune. Also, as they are leaving, the hitchhiker they picked up warns Wyatt that time is running out. It eerily foreshadows the film’s disturbing finale and gives a feeling of impending doom that hangs over the entire film.

Five Easy Pieces (1970) is one of those complex character studies that typified some of the best American films from the 1970s. Bobby Dupea (Nicholson) is a former piano prodigy who spends his days working on an oilrig with his best friend Elton (Bush). As Bill Murray would later say in Stripes (1981), he’s “part of a lost and restless generation.” He’s someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly which makes one wonder why he lives with Rayette (Black), a nice enough person but clearly not Bobby’s intellectual equal and he barely tolerates her needy behavior. One gets the feeling that Bobby is punishing himself.

He is a restless soul as evident in a fascinating scene where, frustrated at being stuck in a traffic jam on the interstate, he gets out of his car and starts playing the piano on a back of a nearby truck. Bobby wants to fit in – hence the blue-collar employment – but he keeps sabotaging his jobs and relationships with an acute self-awareness and his rejection of familial responsibilities. This is a slice of life film whose story doesn’t begin properly until 30 minutes in when Bobby finds out that his estranged father is ill and decides to take road trip to see him. Nicholson delivers a brilliant, gritty performance that would typify a lot of his work in the ‘70s. He’s not afraid to play an unlikable guy who treats those around him poorly. Bobby is full of anger – at the world, at others and at himself.

Drive, He Said (1970) marked the directorial debut of Jack Nicholson. By this point in his career, he had already tried his hand at screenwriting and, of course, acting, so directing seemed like the next logical step. The film concerns the relationship between Hector Bloom (Tepper), a talented college basketball player, and his increasingly radical roommate Gabriel (Margotta). The first thing that strikes one about this film is how topical it is as it deals frankly with sex and nudity (both male and female) – something that was being explored explicitly at the time and how politicized college campuses had become because of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and so on.

In A Safe Place (1971), Tuesday Weld plays a beautiful free spirit in this whimsical experimental film. Scenes often cut abruptly to others and the film lacks a concrete story but is anchored by a strong performance by Weld. Along for the ride is Orson Welles as a mysterious magician who performs several tricks. The lack of a linear narrative can make this a frustrating experiment for some. In some respects, it’s a snapshot of its time and could never be made now.

Made in the early ‘70s, The Last Picture Show (1971) firmly established director Peter Bogdanovich as one of the premiere American filmmakers of that decade. It is also his undisputed masterpiece in a wildly uneven career. Based on the novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry, the film is a lament for the absence of simpler times and a simpler way of life. It’s set in a dusty Texas town in the early 1950s with the focus on three aimless teenagers: Sonny (Bottoms), Duane (Bridges) and Jacy (Shepherd). Sonny and Duane play for the local high school football team and endure constant criticism from their elders for their poor play. Social life for the teens revolves around the small town’s lone movie theater. Our three teen protagonists are bored and can’t wait to get out of their town where nothing ever happens.

Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd were all young, up-and-coming actors at the time and are excellent in their respective roles. It is easy to see why an actor like Bridges went on to become such a versatile thespian. Even this early on in his career he displays an uncanny knack for embodying a character. Bogdanovich does a good job with this material and the rich, textured black and white cinematography, coupled with the run-down Texas town, feels like it could exist in the same world as the characters in Hud (1963), another film based on a McMurtry novel.

Bob Rafelson reunited with Jack Nicholson for another tale about disillusioned and disaffected Americans with The King of Marvin Gardens (1972). Like their best collaborations, it’s a character study, exploring the relationship between two estranged brothers. David (Nicholson) is a depressed radio show host in Philadelphia. One day, he receives a phone call from his scam artist brother Jason (Dern) who is stuck in a jail in Atlantic City. Once he gets out, Jason ropes David in on a real estate scam. The gregarious older sibling makes it out to be too good to be true and that’s because it is.

Jack Nicholson is fascinatingly cast against type as a reserved, button-downed intellectual. David is a quiet, responsible person, which is in sharp contrast to Bruce Dern’s motor-mouthed Jason, a guy always on the make. He’s a consummate bullshit artist and the cynical David sees right through his hustle. The King of Marvin Gardens is an intriguing snapshot of an Atlantic City that doesn’t exist anymore. At the time, it was in decline but all of the old architecture was still gloriously intact and Rafelson shows it off to the degree that it is almost another character in the film. It’s interesting to note that the film’s offbeat rhythm anticipates Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ’66 (1998) complete with a woman dancing by herself in a spotlight. Dern and Nicholson play well off each other and are believable as brothers. They have a familiar short hand and get on each other’s nerves much like real siblings do.

Special Features:

On the Head DVD is an audio commentary by The Monkees – Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork. Rather appropriately, they talk about how they got their own television show and then the film. They are all pretty candid about how badly the film performed at the time and how it was their attempt to trash the image of the band from the show.

“From The Monkees to Head” is an interview with director Bob Rafelson. He talks about the genesis of the T.V. show and how The Beatles influenced it with A Hard Day’s Night. He goes on to talk about how the show led to the film and how everyone around him told him not to make it.

“BBS: A Time for Change” is a 30-minute featurette on BBS, an independent production company that existed from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. This is an excellent look at the genesis of this company and its place in cinematic history.

There are screen tests for all four Monkees that were done before the T.V. show. They were integrated into the pilot episode and helped launch the show. Their personalities really come out in this footage. We also see two of The Monkees paired up with two other guys that never made the final cut.

“The Monkees on The Hy Lit Show, 1968” is a rare T.V. appearance by the band to promote Head. It takes place next to a boxing ring (?!) and it is interesting to see them try and explain their film.

“Promotion” includes several theatrical trailers, T.V spots and radio spots for the film. Also included is a collection of stills and behind-the-scenes photographs.

On the Easy Rider disc, there is an audio commentary by co-writer and director Dennis Hopper that was recorded in 2009. He kicks things off by talking about the genesis of the film. He also talks about his motivation for making the film and what he was trying to say with it. He points out bits of dialogue and visual inserts that were improvised. There are several lulls throughout as Hopper tends to get caught up in watching the film.

Also included is a 1995 commentary by Hopper, Peter Fonda and production manager Paul Lewis. This is a much livelier track as everyone shares filming anecdotes like Phil Spector lending his limousine and bodyguard to the film. They also point out where various scenes were shot and how also just how stoned Jack Nicholson was during the famous campfire sequence.

There are two trailers.

The second disc starts off with a 30-minute BBC2 documentary entitled, “Born to be Wild”. It features Hopper, Fonda, Karen Black and cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs. Hopper and Fonda talk briefly about how Roger Corman taught them to make a film fast and cheap. Of course, they address the casting of Nicholson and how Hopper didn’t see him in the role. Everyone tells some good filming anecdotes in this highly enjoyable extra.

Carried over from the 35^th Anniversary Edition is “Easy Rider: Shaking the Cage,” an hour-long retrospective documentary featuring new interviews with Fonda, Hopper, Seymour Cassel (who worked on the crew) and Black. Hopper says that the film was an attempt to counter the mainstream fluff like the Frankie and Annette beach party movies that ignored sex, drugs and contemporary rock ‘n’ roll. This is a top-notch look at all the wild stories of filming Easy Rider, including the infamous Mardi Gras shoot.

“Hopper and Fonda at Cannes” features a segment from French T.V. of Fonda and Hopper at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival with their film and they briefly talk about it.

Finally, there is an interview with Steve Blauner, one of the founders of BBS. He talks about the genesis of the company and about their start in T.V., creating The Monkees. He points out that the money from the show paid for Easy Rider.

If you own the 35^th Anniversary Edition of the film you might want to hold on to as the commentary that Hopper does on it is not included, nor is the excellent BFI Modern Classics book on Easy Rider by Lee Hill or the bonus CD with select songs from the film.

The Five Easy Pieces disc starts off with an audio commentary by director Bob Rafelson and interior designer Toby Rafelson. Toby points out that the entire film was shot on practical locations. Originally, she didn’t want to do the film but Bob convinced her when he told that he was going to use their own furniture (!). By keeping it under budget and on time, he had final cut and could also cast whomever he wanted. Naturally, Bob talks about working with Nicholson on this engaging track.

“Soul Searching in Five Easy Pieces” features an interview with Rafelson where he talks about the film’s development. He was nervous about doing Five Easy Pieces because it was the first time he worked with actual, serious actors. He had written two screenplays but didn’t like them. He showed them to screenwriter Carol Eastman and she threw them out and wrote her own.

“BBStory” is a 2009, 46-minute documentary about BBS Productions and features the likes of Rafelson, Peter Bogdanovich, Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, and several others. It starts off with the social and political conditions that gave birth to the company. The studio system was collapsing and BBS made films that reflected the times that people were living in.

“Bob Rafelson at AFI” features excerpts from an audio recording of Rafelson speaking at the American Film Institute. He talks about his career and the films he made for BBS.

Finally, there are two teaser trailers and one full-length trailer.

Drive, He Said starts off with “A Cautionary Tale of Campus Revolution and Sexual Freedom,” a featurette where Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern and co-producer Harry Gittes talk about making this film. It was about college campus revolution and at one point during filming a real riot broke out on the campus they were at. They went ahead and filmed it without permission. Nicholson talks about shooting the basketball sequences and how he cast actual players.

Also included is a trailer.

A Safe Place includes an audio commentary by director Henry Jaglom. He points out that the film was originally a play starring Karen Black. By adapting it into a film he wanted to make it more abstract, exploring the internal nature of Tuesday Weld’s character. Jaglom is quite eloquent and engaging on this track.

“Henry Jaglom Finds A Safe Place” sees the filmmaker talking about the influence of improvisational theater and the New Wave of European cinema. He was interested in creating stories about the inner lives of women.

“Notes on the New York Film Festival” sees Jaglom and Peter Bogdanovich talk with film critic Molly Haskell about The Last Picture Show and A Safe Place in 1971. It’s great to see them all in their prime talking so confidently about their work. The two directors banter playfully with each other in this enjoyable extra.

Also included are outtakes of Orson Welles blowing his lines and four screen tests.

There is a trailer as well.

The Last Picture Show includes an audio commentary by director Peter Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman and Frank Marshall. The director explains why he shot the film in black and white and says that the town was divided about them filming there. He goes into the casting choices with some interesting stories. Shepherd says that she never acted before doing that film and gives her impressions of working on it as do the other participants.

Bogdanovich returns for another commentary, this time by himself. There is some overlap from the previous track making it kind of redundant. Not surprisingly, he dwells on the nuts and bolts of filmmaking and discusses its themes.

Also included are two trailers.

The second disc includes “The Last Picture Show: A Look Back,” an hour-long documentary made in 1999 with most of the key cast members and Bogdanovich and author Larry McMurtry recalling their experiences of making the film. It takes us through the genesis and filming to its reception. There is a fair amount of crossover of information from the commentaries but if you’re not into listening to commentaries then this is for you.

“A Discussion with Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich” sees him talking about how he got into show business, what directors influenced him and, of course, The Last Picture Show.

“Picture This” is a documentary about Bogdanovich and key cast members reunited to make the sequel, Texasville (1990) while also talking about their experiences making the original film. It also paints a fascinating portrait of the people that lived in the town.

Also included are 16mm screen tests of several actors in the film.

There is location footage that Bogdanovich shot while scouting places to shoot for the film.

“Truffaut on the New Hollywood” features filmmaker Francois Truffaut talking briefly about the New Hollywood directors in 1972 on French T.V. He also offers high praise for The Last Picture Show.

For The King of Marvin Gardens, there is a selected-scene commentary by Bob Rafelson. He talks about some of the stylistic choices he made. After Five Easy Pieces, he wanted to make a more abstract film. He talks about the film’s style and comments on the characters.

“Reflections of a Philosopher King” sees Rafelson and actress Elle Burstyn talking about the characters in the film and how they came to be and evolved over the course of filming.

“Afterthoughts” features Rafelson, cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs and actor Bruce Dern talking about the style of the film and how it was achieved and why. There is some overlap from the previous extras but Dern and Kovacs’ comments are quite good and funny as hell.

“About Bob Rafelson” is brief text biography of the man’s career.

Finally, there is a trailer.