Electric Eye presents First of the Month Films
We’re pleased to welcome filmmaker Brian Brightly for this screening. He will share his film La Boheme, a short inspired by the Puccini opera, and participate in a discussion about his work after the show.
Bob Rafelson and his producing partner Bert Schneider first made their mark in Hollywood with the absurdist rock ’n’ roll sitcom The Monkees, then decided to make good parlay their clout into projects with more grandiose ambitions. First they made Head, a wild surrealist big screen musical adventure for the Monkees that upended their more or less squeaky-clean reputations. Then they got serious and made one of the landmark films of the emerging New Hollywood era, Five Easy Pieces.
Following Jack Nicholson’s breakout supporting turn in Easy Rider, director Rafelson devised a powerful leading role for the new star. In this searing character study, one of the best American cinema has every produced, Nicholson plays iconic cad Bobby Dupea, a shiftless thirtysomething oil rigger and former piano prodigy immune to any sense of responsibility, who returns to his upper-middle-class childhood home, blue-collar girlfriend (Karen Black, in an Oscar-nominated turn) in tow, to see his estranged, ailing father.
Moving in its simplicity and gritty in its textures, Five Easy Pieces is a lasting example of early-1970s American alienation.