Roos also finds irony in the fact that “rebel” Schneider “came from the heart of the studio system. I always liked Bob and Bert, but Blauner, I didn’t like a bit.” There was an arrogance about them and not always a pleasant side. “They turned into moguls overnight with the same kind of tightness about money. Roos also notes, more ruefully, that the “New Hollywood” quickly bore a strong resemblance to the Old One.
#5 EASY PIECES TV#
“It started with ‘Easy Rider,’ so they had that success and The Monkees thing (Schneider-Rafelson produced the TV series) carried over. “The whole feeling at BBS (Schneider and Rafelson’s production company with Steve Blauner after “Pieces”) and with Jack (Nicholson) and all of us was ‘We’re where it’s at, we’re cool, we’re hip, we’re looking down at the rest of the industry,’” says Roos. Karen Black, Billy Green Bush and Jack Nicholson in 1970’s “Five Easy Pieces” Courtesy Everett Collection
#5 EASY PIECES MOVIE#
Roos also remembers the 1970 “vibe” around the film’s producers, Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, who were riding high indeed after the mega-success of their little motorcycle movie that could, “Easy Rider.” It also included “Shampoo” and “Chinatown” screenwriter Robert Towne and actress Sally Kellerman, whose role in “M.A.S.H.” put her in competition for the supporting actress Oscar against Black in 1970. The “we” that Roos casually refers to as his fellow Eurofilm buffs were some of the key pre-”New Hollywood” artists such as Nicholson, Hellman and Eastman, who’d all made a wonderfully Euro-styled obscurantist Western called “The Shooting” a few years earlier. (Director) Monte Hellman formed a little film society and we would go in groups to see the newest European films at the Coronet Theater on La Cienega or the Cinema Theater on Western and afterwards we’d all go as a group to Pupi’s (a Sunset Strip coffee shop) and talk, talk, talk, it to death.”
“Where we all kind of bonded,” recalls Roos, “was going to those kinds of movies the French New Wave, Italian films by directors like Antonioni and Fellini. No, it wasn’t an accident and yes, it all started in Europe. That illustrious moment quickly led to landmark American films such as “Chinatown,” “Godfather I & II,” (“II” co-produced by Roos) “Shampoo,” “American Graffiti,” (which Roos helped cast) “Badlands,” “Last Picture Show,” “Apocalypse Now” (Roos co-produced) and so many others. The film’s casting director, Fred Roos (who’s also an Oscar-winning producer), recalls the creation of “Five Easy Pieces” from deep inside that filmmaking world. I knew it moved me, challenged me, stimulated me, but I had no idea who made the film or what inspired them to tell a story that appealed so strongly to those of us out in the hinterlands as well as those in snootier places that came with fresh espresso and freshly-issued college degrees. Within a few years I’d have my own gig working inside the Roger Corman low-budget indie moviemaking machine that helped fuel the careers of Nicholson and Eastman, but in 1970 I was a lot closer to Bobby Dupea’s adopted world of oil-rigging rednecks than to the Jeff Corey acting classes and B-movie sets that set the table for the decade of game-changing movies to come. from my mill town (Fontana) only a few times back then and I remember thinking at the end of the film that drew me into The City, “Who is Adrien Joyce? (Eastman’s nom de plume) and has she been reading my mail?” You don’t have to be a twenty-something would-be intellectual punching a steel mill time clock in 1970 to appreciate the film, but I still remember the first time I saw it in Westwood on opening weekend.
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