Five Easy Pieces
Directed by	Bob Rafelson
Produced by	Bob Rafelson Richard Wechsler
Screenplay by	Adrien Joyce
Story by
Starring
Cinematography	László Kovács
Edited by
Production company
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	September 12, 1970
96 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1.6 million
Box office	$18.1 million^[1]

Five Easy Pieces is a 1970 American drama film written by Carole Eastman (as Adrien Joyce) and Bob Rafelson, and directed by Rafelson. The film stars Jack Nicholson, with Karen Black, Susan Anspach, Ralph Waite, and Sally Struthers in supporting roles.

Jack Nicholson has a son Raymond and a daughter Lorraine with actress Rebecca Broussard. Lorraine was born on April 16, 1990, while Raymond was born on February 20, 1992. These are only two out of Jack’s other children. Nicholson had on-and-off relationships with several women, creating a little controversy over the paternity of his children. Aug 16, 2015 Like father, like son – quite literally. Jack Nicholson‘s youngest son, Ray Nicholson, 23, looks so much like his Oscar-winning father that they could be twins (well, if you ignore the huge.

Jacks casino poker schedule. The film tells the story of surly oil rig worker Bobby Dupea, whose rootless blue-collar existence belies his privileged youth as a piano prodigy. When Bobby learns that his father is dying, he goes home to see him, taking along his waitress girlfriend.

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards, and, in 2000, was selected to be preserved by the Library of Congress in the National Film Registry.

4Reception

Plot[edit]

Bobby Dupea works in an oil field in Kern County, California with his friend Elton, who has a wife and a baby son. Bobby spends most of his time with his waitress girlfriend Rayette, who has dreams of singing country music; or in the company of Elton, with whom he bowls, gets drunk, and has sex with other women. Bobby has not told Elton that he is a former classical pianist who comes from an upper-class family of musicians.

Rayette gets pregnant and Elton is arrested on an old warrant for having robbed a gas station. Bobby quits his job and goes to Los Angeles where his sister Partita, also a pianist, is making a recording. Partita tells him that their father, from whom Bobby is estranged, has suffered two strokes. She urges Bobby to return to the family home in Washington state.

Rayette threatens to kill herself if Bobby leaves her, so he reluctantly asks her along. Driving north, they pick up two women headed for Alaska, one of whom is obsessed with 'filth'. The four of them are thrown out of a restaurant when Bobby gets into an argument with a waitress who refuses to accommodate his meal order, which is not on the menu but is not for anything special.

Embarrassed by Rayette's lack of polish, Bobby registers her in a motel before proceeding to the family home on an island in Puget Sound. He finds Partita giving their father a haircut, but the old man seems completely oblivious to him. At dinner Bobby meets Catherine Van Oost, a young pianist engaged to his amiable brother Carl, a violinist. Despite personality differences, Catherine and Bobby are immediately attracted to each other and they later have sex in her room.

Rayette runs out of money at the motel and comes to the Dupea estate unannounced. Her presence creates an awkward situation, but when pompous family friend Samia ridicules her, Bobby comes to her defense. Storming from the room in search of Catherine, he discovers his father's male nurse giving Partita a massage. Now more agitated, he picks a fight with the very strong nurse, who knocks him to the floor.

Bobby tries to persuade Catherine to go away with him, but she declines, telling him she believes he does not love himself, or anything at all. After trying to talk to his unresponsive father, Bobby leaves with Rayette, who makes a playful sexual advance that he angrily rejects. Shortly into the trip, Rayette goes into a diner for coffee while stopped for gas, he gives her his wallet and abandons her, hitching a ride on a truck headed north.

Cast[edit]

Jack Nicholson as Robert 'Bobby' Eroica Dupea
Karen Black as Rayette Dipesto
Susan Anspach as Catherine Van Oost
Lois Smith as Partita Dupea
Ralph Waite as Carl Fidelio Dupea
Billy 'Green' Bush as Elton
Irene Dailey as Samia Glavia
Toni Basil as Terry Grouse
Helena Kallianiotes as Palm Apodaca
William Challee as Nicholas Dupea
John Ryan as Spicer
Fannie Flagg as Stoney
Marlena MacGuire as Twinky
Sally Ann Struthers as Shirley 'Betty'
Lorna Thayer as Waitress
Richard Stahl as Recording Engineer

Music[edit]

The opening credits list the five classical piano pieces played in the film and referenced in the title. Pearl Kaufman is credited as the pianist.

Frédéric Chopin, Fantasy in F minor, Op. 49, played by Bobby on the back of a moving truck;
Johann Sebastian Bach, Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903, played by Bobby's sister, Partita, in a recording studio;
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat major, K. 271, played by Bobby's brother, Carl, and Catherine upon Bobby's arrival at the house;
Chopin, Prelude in E minor, Op. 28, No. 4, played by Bobby for Catherine;
Mozart, Fantasy in D minor, K. 397.

Also listed are four songs sung by Tammy Wynette: 'Stand by Your Man', 'D-I-V-O-R-C-E', 'Don't Touch Me', and 'When There's a Fire in Your Heart'.

Reception[edit]

Box office[edit]

According to Variety, the film earned $1.2 million in North American in 1970.^[2] By 1976 the film had earned $8.9 million in North America.^[3]

Critical response[edit]

The film opened to positive reviews. It holds an 87% 'Certified Fresh' rating on online review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 45 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The critics' consensus states: 'An important touchstone of the New Hollywood era, Five Easy Pieces is a haunting portrait of alienation that features one of Jack Nicholson's greatest performances.'^[4]

Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four:^[5]

The title of Five Easy Pieces refers not to the women its hero makes along the road, for there are only three, but to a book of piano exercises he owned as a child. The film, one of the best American films, is about the distance between that boy, practicing to become a concert pianist, and the need he feels 20 years later to disguise himself as an oil-field rigger. When we sense the boy, tormented and insecure, trapped inside the adult man, Five Easy Pieces becomes a masterpiece of heartbreaking intensity.. The movie is joyously alive to the road life of its hero. We follow him through bars and bowling alleys, motels and mobile homes, and we find him rebelling against lower-middle-class values even as he embraces them. In one magical scene, he leaps from his car in a traffic jam and starts playing the piano on the truck in front of him; the scene sounds forced, described this way, but Rafelson and Nicholson never force anything, and never have to. Robert Eroica Dupea is one of the most unforgettable characters in American movies.

He named the film the best of 1970, and later added it to his 'Great Movies' list.^[6]

John Simon criticized Five Easy Pieces for its pretentiousness and oversimplification but said if anything saved the film from triviality, we

Jack Black Son Of Jack Nicholson