Five Easy Pieces
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| Five Easy Pieces | |
 original movie poster |
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| Directed by | Bob Rafelson |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Robert Daley |
| Written by | Carole Eastman Bob Rafelson |
| Starring | Jack Nicholson Karen Black |
| Cinematography | László Kovács |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | September 11, 1970 (USA) |
| Running time | 96 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,600,000 (estimated)[1] |
| Gross revenue | $18,099,091 (USA, 1971)[1] |
Five Easy Pieces is a 1970 film written by Carole Eastman (as Adrien Joyce) and Bob Rafelson, and directed by Rafelson. It is a meandering character study of Robert "Bobby" Dupea (played by Jack Nicholson), a seriously flawed drifter and former pianist who is estranged from his artistic upper-class family and from himself.
In the opening of the film, the character is working as an oil rigger, but he eventually quits this job after he finds out that his diner-waitress girlfriend, whom he's living with, is pregnant.
He visits his sister who pleads with him to visit their ill father. Reluctantly, he goes home to visit his family, taking his diner-waitress girlfriend with him out of guilt (though he ditches her more than once during their trip).
The film stars Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, and Susan Anspach. The cast also includes Billy Green Bush, Fannie Flagg, Ralph Waite, Sally Struthers, Lois Smith, and Toni Basil.
A title sequence as written in the screenplay showed earlier scenes in the Dupea family's life, including 10-year-old Bobby's recital program music: (the apparently fictitious) Grebner's "Five Easy Pieces". However, the sequence was not used, and the film titles open instead with the adult Bobby at the oil rigs.
The soundtrack employed five songs by Tammy Wynette, including "Stand By Your Man."
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Karen Black), Best Picture and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced.
In 2000, Five Easy Pieces was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Notable filmmakers Lars Von Trier, Joel and Ethan Coen, and Ingmar Bergman have expressed deep admiration for the movie, as have award-winning novelists Cormac McCarthy and William Gaddis.
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[edit] Famous scene
The movie's most famous scene takes place in a roadside restaurant where Bobby tries to get a waitress (Lorna Thayer) to bring him a side order of toast with his breakfast, which is not on the menu. Despite appeals to logic and common sense, the waitress adamantly sticks to the rules of the restaurant, so Bobby orders "a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce." and to hold the chicken. When the waitress asks "You want me to hold the chicken, huh?", he tells the waitress "I want you to hold it between your knees."
The waitress then indignantly orders them to leave, upon which Nicholson knocks the drinks off the table with a sweep of his arm.
The scene is iconic as a metaphor for the rebellious, free spirit of the youth of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a strong theme in the film as a whole. Thirty years later Nicholson would perform a scene in the movie About Schmidt which directly drew from this scene (available as a "Deleted Scene" extra on the DVD release). Nicholson's character in About Schmidt, an emotionally downtrodden retiree, in contrast, humbly accepts the waitress' "no substitutions" rule.
[edit] Trivia
The five classical piano pieces — not necessarily "easy" — played in the movie are:
- Chopin: Fantasy in F Minor Op. 49, played by Dupea on the back of a moving truck.
- Bach: Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, played by Dupea's sister, Partita, in a recording studio.
- Mozart: E-flat Maj. Concerto K.271, played by Dupea's brother, Carl, and Catherine upon Bobby's arrival to the island.
- Chopin: Prelude Opus 28 in E Minor no. 4, played by Dupea for Catherine.
- Mozart: Fantasy in D Minor K.397
[edit] References
- ^ a b Internet Movie Database. Box office/Business for Five Easy Pieces (1970). Retrieved on April 18, 2009.
[edit] External links
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