Rebels on the road, entry 1 of 3: Counterculture as shown in alienation from family
[This has been edited somewhat, partly in coordination with a few future film reviews. I apologize for dumb errors that appeared in the first edition of this.]
[This has been edited somewhat, partly in coordination with a few future film reviews. I apologize for dumb errors that appeared in the first edition of this.]
I’ve wanted to write on this film a long time, and I wanted to view it yet again before doing so, but unfortunately, I can’t, so I’ll write with reference to memory and some online resources. Also, a useful source for some information on this film is in Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs, & Rock ’n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
This film is counted among the best, or most representative, or seminal (take your pick) films of the 1970s, by such critics as Don Shiach in his often insightful, occasionally questionable Jack Nicholson: The Complete Film Guide (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1999). (I like reading this critic’s book on Nicholson, but I find numerous points on which to disagree with him, and some of them derive from what I think is a certain tone-deafness British seem to have to some stylistic or self-assertive aspects of American life.) Five Easy Pieces was the first, or a major first, effort by the production company headed by Bert Schneider, who died recently, and Bob Rafelson, the latter of whom also directed this film and directed later, notable films, including the remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). (Schneider’s and Rafelson’s production company helped make Easy Rider [1969], under the name Raybert Productions, and their company behind Pieces was named BBS Productions.)
In some ways, Five Easy Pieces seems a rather crudely made film, but this is deceptive; I think it says a lot within a small budget and seemingly simple production values, due in large part to its script, and also due to several of its notable actors, not least Nicholson, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work here. One of its writers (with Rafelson) is Carole Eastman, under the pseudonym Adrien Joyce; I believe this was Eastman’s first script (noted in Biskind?), and it was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay.
When you read the Wikipedia description of this film, you get a very bare-bones, rather philistinish account that lays out plot elements tonelessly. I think a useful key to understanding this film—not least because I’ve known a person or two like Bobby Dupea, played by Nicholson, but because I know a fair amount about the type of personality generally—is looking at Bobby as an example of a personality disorder that leads him to draw away in a consistent, irresistible “undertow” from the direction his talent, upbringing, and family orientation should lead him. (Leave aside the question of what specific personality disorder Bobby’s would be, whether borderline, narcissistic, antisocial, or something else. More on this topic in a minute.)
Two cultures that may seem to echo cultural divisions in the U.S.
Bobby’s birth family is all accomplished musicians, playing classic works (and five classic pieces are played by different individuals, including Bobby, during the film, hence the film’s title). They seem to have grown up, and some still live, at a remote enclave up the West Coast (Puget Sound, says the Wikipedia article), on an island or peninsula or such reachable only by ferry. Bobby has left this situation—which seems to mix elements of “home” and a highfaluting artists’ colony—and has ended up in working in an oil field (where the movie opens), and for intimate companionship he has taken up with a rather simple girlfriend (named Rayette, played colorfully by Karen Black). She waitresses for a living, and has aspirations of being a country singer, while spending time with repeated playing of her Tammy Wynette records. (The latter’s music frequently plays on the film’s soundtrack, both as a sort of atmosphere enhancer that is sympathetic to Rayette, and as a way, I think, to display a certain irony toward the music and the country culture behind it; in this film, you can really appreciate how Wynette’s music is so banal with its major chords and idiotic lyrics such as extolling “stand[ing] by your man.”) Rayette and Bobby hang out with a fellow oil worker, Elton, and his wife, who live in a trailer with one or two young children.
Bobby is, on one level, like the rebels of the 1950s through 1970 who thumbed their nose at middle-class respectability, did more “earthy” or blue-collar work, partied “hard” at night, competed avidly at peasant-level games, slept around…. At the time, their tendencies were addressed by such thinkers as Erik Erikson as cases of “identity crises,” and today we would characterize at least some of them as instances of personality disorder. (Shiach’s interpretation in his Nicholson book, that Bobby is merely a case of a male who won’t face his commitments, is laughably oversimplifying. “Failure to commit” doesn’t explain why Bobby drinks and channels his competitive instincts into games like bowling or cards as he does, or supposedly can’t feel anything when he plays a Chopin piece he knows well.)
Bobby’s case on a psychological level
The movie can be looked at as (most notably) a character study (as does critic Leonard Maltin in his compendium Movie & Video Guide), with Nicholson doing a good workmanlike job of portraying the talented, moody, quixotic, and inscrutable Bobby Dupea. But of course, the film is also about pre-marital relations (Bobby with Rayette), about family (with his birth family), and about immediate community too: a range of interpersonal relations. And the ensemble cast is crucial in helping this out. Further, not just “by extension” in the case study of Bobby, the film reflects the broader countercultural issues of the time, but it does so quietly within a story that seems as if it’s only about a small corner of the world. Yet the inadvertent result may be that, today, young people might find the film evocative of social implications that it had for its time, and that still might resonate with social issues of today, but might feel it is still dated and may seem, on a technical level, almost like a home movie of sorts.
Ironically, it may be the psychological “case study” aspect that might hold the most fascination for people today.
I should point out a few things: first, this movie doesn’t go to any lengths to look at Bobby in a sort of clinical or pathologizing manner, though the personality study of him does square with the metes and bounds of personality-disorder types in a laudatory intuitive way. (Personality disorders, or PDs, wouldn’t be spelled out explicitly in psychiatric diagnostic protocol until, I believe, the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM-III] of 1980.) More fundamentally, to call Bobby an example of this doesn’t mean we have a full explanation of his behavior, or any clue to what to do about it (if he were to seek treatment). Indeed, it would be fair to say that a lot of the personality “slovenliness” of young people of the 1960s and 1970s—hippies with their new manners, rebels with their choices that left them as dysfunctional within society as they still felt they were “suiting their own needs”—could be considered to represent psychological disorder, such as Erikson’s 1960s statements tended to outline some kind of conceptual groundwork for. Not that all of it was psychologically disturbed, either by the standards of the times or later; but in retrospect, the overlap between the two categories is quite suggestive; and some specific cases of people “doing their own thing” in that period could have been (or were) at some point cognized by the psychiatric establishment as fairly easily defined psychological disorder (e.g., Mark Vonnegut’s case as recounted in his book The Eden Express [1975], or Susanna Kaysen’s story in Girl, Interrupted [see my blog entry of April 19]).
But of course, for a swath of such people who are “societal rebels” on their face to really be instances of psychological disorder would have meant, in accord with more modern standards, they would have received some direction from some “authoritative sources” to receive professional attention (which of course happened in some cases 40 years ago), or would have sought it on their own initiative. And of course, being as rebellious as they were, many were not apt to do this. Another aspect of this matter is that, today, we might be quick to regard some of the rebellious stuff as psychological disorder, which could be said to represent a cultural shift toward over-pathologizing behavior, which can have enough of a point in a lot of cases. Lastly, because the cultural-rebel phenomena of the 1960s and ’70s were so widespread, you start to ask whether something that is a cultural trend can be really psychological deviance, which you tend to look at as more idiosyncratic and not culturally widespread.
But when we look at Bobby’s case, while the film makes no specific “clinical” points about him, the many features of his behavior read much like a list of what comprises a PD (and you could compare discussion of Travis Bickle as a sort of representative pathological type—of the “pathology of loneliness”—in the Taxi Driver DVD; see my June 8 blog entry). Bobby, on what seems like a general, poetically evocative level, identifies with, and immerses himself in, a lifestyle below his talents, incidentally putting himself at some significant risk (for health or legal issues). His lifestyle, social life, and leisure pursuits (consider even his drinking while driving to work) seem like negatives he dares to embrace, despite his “upscale” upbringing, while he seems to run away from some negative he senses, and doesn’t want to recognize, in himself. He feels, as we duly find out, that he cannot relate to his birth family for a cent.
But at certain key points, he—typical of this kind of personality—can suddenly assert that he is better than the “slobs” he has been taking up with, and tears himself away from them with recriminations, a show of snobbery, maybe even a level of violence. He does this with his oilfield buddy Elton when the latter has suddenly dared to be a bit self-righteous with Bobby in reminding him of his responsibility to Rayette after she has turned out to be pregnant, and Elton shows he couldn’t respect a man who would run away from his girl at a time like that. Bobby explodes with, “It’s ridiculous—some cracker asshole [who] compares his life to mine! Keep on telling me about the good life, Elton, because it makes me puke!”
Technical aspects: meeting requirements on a tiny budget
From what I’ve read, the film was worked on by two different editors (certainly, two are listed in the Wikipedia article), one for the first half-or-so, and another for the second half. The different editing styles reflect the parts of the story: Bobby in his rather random oilfield life is captured with choppy editing, scenes that seem vivid but lopped off short like sneak-looks; the later part of the movie, starting when he goes to visit his sister when she is at a recording studio, is more conventionally, calmly edited. Also, you’ll notice that Bobby affects a hick accent when he works in the oilfield, and he has shucked this off when he returns, if uneasily, to his family on a sort of pilgrimage to pay respects to his dying father, and otherwise seem to be forlornly looking for some kind of recognition or “closure.”
The cinematography throughout is by Laszlo Kovacs, who also worked on Easy Rider; one typical feature of his work is beautiful landscape shots lit a certain way by a sunset or the like.
A number of actors, some who would be more famous later, flesh out the cast: Billy “Green” Bush plays Bobby’s oilfield coworker and friend Elton (Bush would later appear in, among whatever else, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore [1974]); Sally Struthers, as a tart Bobby has a fling with after meeting her in a bowling alley, would later be the daughter Gloria on TV’s All in the Family; Karen Black would appear in numerous films of the 1970s (such as Nashville [1975]), then seem to disappear; Fannie Flagg, probably more famous as a writer, is Elton’s wife; and Ralph Waite, who plays Carl, Bobby’s supercilious twit of a brother (he is a true believer in the family’s musical ideals), is the musical preceptor for Susan Anspach’s character, and he indirectly provides comedy with a neck brace; Waite would of course be famous as the father on the TV show The Waltons. Another minor player is Richard Stahl, the aloof, impatient recording producer when Bobby visits his sister; he would turn up, I believe, in later TV.
Susan Anspach, a 1970s actress whose career in movies wasn’t substantial past 1981, plays Catherine van Oost, a budding classical musician taken under the wing of the Dupea family, specifically Carl; when Bobby meets her, he is attracted to her, and later, after she has gotten him to play a classical piece regarding which he says he didn’t feel anything, he has sex with her, like the type he is who would rather “bond” with such a woman not over artistic common ground but in order to show power sexually (and in a sense to “sully” her). She eventually sees through to his loner, emotionally impoverished nature, and spells it out to a gently, sadly beseeching Bobby in a speech near the end of the film (she says, in dated, seemingly teenage fashion that she can’t “go with” him); her speech seems as naïve and self-congratulatory as it is a poetic, elegiac summing of the film’s portrait of Bobby.
This is actually a point that is emblematic of the quirkiness of the film in its being elegantly insightful and yet seeming amateurish, like a college sophomore’s proud first-creative-writing effort—such as in the many quirky character names.
The diner scene
For some reason, for years, the most famous scene from this movie is the one where Bobby, accompanied by Rayette and the two hitchhikers, is at a roadside diner, and Bobby has trouble getting what he wants from the waitress, an omelet with plain toast. The latter of this is the sticking point: he finds he can only get it if he, creatively, orders a chicken salad sandwich and asks her to hold the chicken and the lettuce and mayo. The meaning of the scene concerns how Bobby, the consummate outsider, tries to work around the arbitrary impositions of “dull society,” but I guess because the scene is so well written, staged, and roundly filmed, it seems like a lot of later, more modern-style movies, hence it has long been a favorite, including having its own YouTube presence. But if you think this is all the movie is about, you’re missing a lot.
Colorful side characters make the scene
Another notable, but bit, player is Helena Kallianiotes as one of two hitchhikers—her name is Palm Apodaca (!)—whom Bobby, with Rayette, picks up as he drives north to his family; she provides obvious comedy as a hippie who rails on about all the dirt and filth in the world, mixing a sort of starry-eyed idealism with a neurotic obsessiveness (to the point where she seems to wear out her welcome with Bobby and is dropped off along the way with her companion). Generally she is arguably one of the great addle-pated hippie characters of cinema, along with the likes of Dennis Hopper as the photojournalist in Apocalypse Now (or as one of the costars of his own Easy Rider). (Side note: Shiach’s book notes that the two hitchhikers are lesbians, and Kallianiotes’ Wikipedia bio makes a rather explicit comment about her character being the “butch” half of a lesbian couple. Funny, but I never thought much about whether these characters were lesbians or not. Even if they were, that didn’t color how I regarded them. The “butch” comment may be by a modern writer who “can’t get into” her character entirely, but I think that’s due to the character’s rather obstreperous hippie nature, not to her being a butch lesbian.)
Lois Smith is Bobby’s sister Partita, who provides some of the real genuine affection in the film; Smith is a quirky actress, with her unusual cadences in delivering her lines; you can see her, 30 years older, as the important plot-mover Iris Hineman in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002).
The middle names of Bobby and his brother Carl are Eroica and Fidelio, which I believe are titles of compositions by Beethoven. It seems pretty obvious that, as much as Rafelson wants to show a balance in this film—and not tendentious social commentary—by exercising sympathy for this family, he also doesn’t hesitate to portray them as pretentious at worst, and quirkily, almost fanatically arts-ambitious at least.
