Word: rafelsons
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...suck an egg. It is a great find if you haven't found it yet. Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn and a smashingly beautiful girl (whose name we can't come up with but who does the sexiest tap-dance ever) make up the small society in this Rafelson risk...
...Easy Rider (1969) and in the freer, more personal films that flowed from its success, Nicholson became a kind of figurehead for a loose group of actors and film makers who were trying to expand the commercial genre. Nicholson, Actors Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, Writer-Directors Bob Rafelson, Monte Hellman, Carol and Charles Eastman-none of them then well known-all cheered and boosted each other. Their work was almost always full of aggressive invention (Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces, Hopper's The Last Movie, Nicholson's own Drive, He Said), but the new Hollywood passed...
...never seen any other actor do it," says Mike Nichols. "Usually everyone has their own cliques-the camera crew, the electricians, and so on -but when Jack's around, that feeling disappears." Occasionally, Nicholson's competitiveness gets in the way of the general bonhomie. Bob Rafelson recalls that during the shooting of The King of Marvin Gardens, all of Nicholson's bottled-up energies would come out in a series of demon Ping Pong games with the crew. Says Rafelson: "He demolished everyone who dared to take him on." Nicholson is smart enough to know when...
...above asserting himself to a director, however. There is a crucial sequence in Five Easy Pieces in which Bobby Dupea must break down in front of his paralyzed father. Nicholson did not want to do it, and Director Rafelson wrangled all night with him. "Jack said Dupea was crying out of self-pity -something Jack strongly opposed in himself and in others," Rafelson remembers. "I argued that Dupea was crying out of an agony of displeasure over the life he was leading, and that this displeasure had to be revealed. Finally, I said, 'Jack, this is all bullshit...
Soon after, Bob Rafelson was involved with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in preparing a motorcycle movie. Rafelson thought there was a good part for Nicholson, but Hopper wanted Rip Torn. Nicholson was dispatched to the set as a sort of production watchdog. He quickly became the right man at the right time. Torn dropped out of the movie, Nicholson moved in. Easy Rider wound up making $35 million. It also got Nicholson an Oscar nomination. All the scuffling was finally starting...