The Boomer Film Generation

I remember seeing Five Easy Pieces and feeling that it was a dangerous movie, The tension, the edge, the performances, the utter disintegration of character --it felt like the movie itself might spin out of control at any moment.

How did a guy go from executive produce/writer/director of The Monkees TV show to Five Easy Pieces to 'where is he now?"

There's a good interview with him where he talks about his early days, working with Jack Nicholson (who may be the ultimate Rafelson actor) and how his brand of indie films has fallen out of favor in Hollywood.

The one movie of Rafelson's I'd really like to see is Head, his first film, which starred The Monkees and was co-written with Nicholson. There's some real cognitive dissonance in a sentence that contains 'The Monkees' and 'Jack Nicholson.'

With his partners at BBS Productions, Rafelson was involved in some of the landmark movies of the 60's-70's, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show, King of Marvin Gardens, and the Academy Award-winning documentary, Hearts and Minds. Stay Hungry, by the way, has the first ever (and maybe only?) scene with a nude Sally Fields.

Speaking of which, he also had an uncanny ability to spot the next rebel talent--using then unknowns or sort-of-knowns as Nicholson, Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange, and Angelica Huston.

So where is he? Best I can tell his most recent work is ) No Good Deed (AKA The House on Turk Street , which I seem to have missed. Then there's Porn.com, one of a trilogy of films in Tales of Erotica , which I know I missed. Fact is, I don't know where is or what he's doing. I surely hope we'll all get a chance to find out with another movie one of these days.

This is a nice long scholarly interview with Bob Rafelson.

If, like me, you have a sudden pressing need to own some of Rafelson's films like Five Easy Pieces, Amazon has a bunch of them.