Bob Rafelson: The Overlooked Auteur

During the great auteur era of the seventies that breathed new life into cinema and launched a host of filmmaking visionaries (Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, DePalma, etc.) into the stratosphere, there were casualties. While those fantastic four filmmakers went on to make significant films in the decades that followed, others weren’t so fortunate.

After his one-two punch of Thunderbolt and Lighfoot and The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino practically killed the era with the disastrous Heaven’s Gate (a film whose artistic reputation would see no small amount of positive reassessment down the road). Peter Bogdanovich, who made The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc?, and Paper Moon all in succession, never made another film of that triptych’s caliber ever again.

This list of those who came out hot and then couldn’t sustain their flame must include Bob Rafelson. Rafelson’s career as a film director started in 1968 with, of all things, The Monkees movie, Head. A genuinely bizarre, and exceedingly trippy piece of celluloid that must have made the studio chiefs (who were surely hoping for a variation of A Hard Day’s Night) scratch their noggins with befuddlement. Head is very much of its time. It’s the kind of film that people tell you to watch when you’re high.

Just two years later, Rafelson teamed with Jack Nicholson, for the first of five times, and created the all-time great downer film, Five Easy Pieces. Written, directed, and produced by Rafelson. Five Easy Pieces is a brilliantly evocative document of the death of the ‘60s. As the talented musician Bobby Dupea, who hails from a wealthy family and then drops out of their lives to become an oil-rigger, the pre-icon Nicholson has seldom slipped into a character’s skin as deeply as he did here. For many, Five Easy Pieces is remembered mostly for the famous “hold the chicken” scene. Fair enough, of course, but I was most affected by the overwhelming sadness and the sense of lost potential that becomes all the more vivid when Bobby is forced to confront his family when his father becomes gravely ill. The final scene of the movie, which finds Dupea dropping out once again, is absolutely heartbreaking. 

Made on a tiny budget of less than $2 million, Five Easy Pieces was a sizable financial success and an even bigger critical one. Oscar took note as well, awarding the film with four nominations in the categories of best picture, screenplay, actor, and supporting actress (Karen Black). 

In the interim between Five Easy Pieces and his follow up film The King of Marvin Gardens, Rafelson served as an uncredited producer (a service he also provided to Easy Rider in 1969) on Bogdanovich’s 1971 masterpiece, The Last Picture Show. In just three short years, Rafelson was attached to three of the most indelible film classics of the era. 

Unfortunately for Rafelson, the road got bumpy from there. 

With 1972’s The King of Marvin Gardens, Rafelson once again explored the theme of the crushing weight of unfulfilled expectations. As the con-man Jason, Bruce Dern gives one of his greatest performances as he lures his depressed late-night radio host brother, David (Nicholson) into a get rich quick scheme involving a casino in Hawaii. David’s initial skepticism turns to certainty, and when Jason humiliates his girlfriend Sally (a raw and remarkable Ellen Burstyn) while packing for Hawaii, tragedy ensues. 

The King of Marvin Gardens is a pretty tough (and at times brutal) sit, but if you’ve seen it once, you’ll never forget it. Sadly, neither critics nor audiences took to the film, and despite being revered now by many film historians, it is largely a curiosity if not a completely lost film.

Rafelson didn’t get back into the director’s chair for another four years after the disappointment of The King of Marvin Gardens. When he did get behind the camera again it was at the service of the oddball dramedy Stay Hungry—a film about the world of professional bodybuilding starring Jeff Bridges, Sally Field, and a very young Arnold Schwarzenegger. Reviews were decidedly mixed, but the film made $24 million in 1976, which equates to $121 million in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation. 

Despite the financial success of Stay Hungry, five years would pass before Rafelson directed another film—1981’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, starring Jack Nicholson as a drifter who schemes with a lonely housewife (a crazy-great Jessica Lange) to kill her husband and take over his diner. Much like The King of Marvin Gardens, The Postman was not critically well-received upon release, but history has been more kind. The film has a reputation as a financial disappointment, but nothing could be further from the truth. The neo-noir remake of the 1946 classic (with Lana Turner and James Garfield) made $44 million on a budget of $12 million. That’s to say nothing of the blazing hot chemistry between Lange and Nicholson. 

After The Postman, Rafelson took another long layoff before directing again, with 1987’s wicked film noir Black Widow starring Debra Winger, and a career best Theresa Russell as a femme-fatale whose husbands have a way of turning up dead and leaving her all their money. Black Widow is the slickest film on his resume, but undeniably effective.  Reviews of the film leaned mixed to positive, and was a modest financial success as well.

Three years later, Rafelson took on what might have been his most ambitious project, Mountains of the Moon, starring Patrick Bergin and Iain Glen as the famed real-life 19th century British explorers of the River Nile, Capt. Richard Francis Burton and Lt. John Hanning Speke. Working with what was then the biggest budget of his career ($18 million), Mountains of the Moon received respectable reviews overall (including a notable “two thumbs up” from Siskel & Ebert), but was a complete box office failure, earning back just $4 million. I suspect the lack of Star power in leading roles affected the film’s success, but the picture really holds up as a portrait of a grueling expedition. 

After the financial failure of Mountains of the Moon, Rafelson  tried his luck (and found none) at romantic comedy with 1992’s Man Trouble, starring Jack Nicholson and Ellen Barkin. Man Trouble was the first truly bad movie of Rafelson’s career, and a complete washout at the box office. It is certainly the nadir of Rafelson’s career, and quite possibly Nicholson’s too. 

Unbowed by the disaster that was Man Trouble, Rafelson and Nicholson joined forces again in 1996 with the deeply under-appreciated Blood and Wine. It’s a dark and nasty piece of business (a good comparable would be Ridley Scott’s The Counselor), but does it ever work like gangbusters. Along with the two films Nicholson made with Sean Penn as director (The Crossing Guard and The Pledge), Blood and Wine pulls out of the legendary actor one of his least “Jack” performances of the back half of his career. 

As a philandering wine dealer who attempts to go from well-off to rich by stealing a diamond necklace with his accomplice (played by Michael Caine), Nicholson lights a cold fire in every scene of the film. He is absolutely at the top of his craft, and so was Rafelson. But just like with Mountains of the Moon, and Man Trouble, the film was a financial disaster (despite having co-stars Judy Davis and Jennifer Lopez in tow). Rafelson did direct one more film (2002’s disappointing Dashiell Hammet adaptation, No Good Deed), but he never escaped the shadow of Five Easy Pieces.

Rafelson may be one of the most misunderstood filmmakers of his era. Other than Five Easy Pieces, none of his films were considered both critically and financially successful movies at the time of their release. By my count, Rafelson made four truly great films (Pieces, Marvin Gardens, The Postman, and Blood and Wine), one nearly great film (Mountains), one very good film (Black Widow), two befuddling but distinctive films (Head and Stay Hungry), and just two bad ones (Man Trouble and No Good Deed). 

And look, being thought of as the guy who created Five Easy Pieces and wrote the fabled “chicken sandwich” scene is not a bad legacy. It’s just that Rafelson was so much more than that. 

He was one of the titans of the auteur era, and it seems like hardly anyone knows. I hope I may have convinced a few souls. 

Bob Rafelson died yesterday. He was 87 years old.