Tarter Source

(Nov. 9, 2022)

The Jack Nicholson movie, “Five Easy Pieces” (1970) is playing at the Peoria Riverfont Museum’s SuperDuper Big Screen Theater this Friday (Nov. 11) at 6:30 p.m. and I thought back to the time I saw this picture when it first came out.

It was in Washington, D.C. on a double date with fellow Bradley University student Bruce Specktor at American University where we spent the spring of 1971 in the nation’s capital at American’s Washington Semester program. After I read Marc Eliot’s account of the “Pieces” in his “Art of the Film” email series (free plug–along with Renae Kerrigan’s celestial snapshots, part of the benefit package that comes with a museum membership is pithy film news from Eliot and Big Screen manager David Stief), I decided his account was a lot better than mine.

But I have to disagree with Marc’s comment about the diner scene in “Pieces” (the one where Nicholson throws a fit with a waitress who definitely didn’t make it into the Miss Congeniality finals). “It’s funny and showy but also weak and out of context; I’ve never heard of any diner in America that wouldn’t make a sandwich the way a customer wanted it,” offered Eliot

Really, Marc? I think I’ve read “no substitutions” on more than one diner menu over the years. But that’s not the point. I think we can all identify with service hassles we’ve encountered and how we’ve tried to handle them. The fact that the diner blowup is the most memorable scene in a movie that had a lot of good scenes is proof of that. It’s also vintage Nicholson whose highlight reel is one of the best (“Here’s Johnny” and “You can’t handle the truth” probably head the list).

Besides, this was 1970, a time of protest when sticking up for yourself or sticking it to the man (or woman) was culturally important. The times never looked more in contrast (20th century versus 21st) than when that dining scene was recalled in “About Schmidt,” the 2002 film with an older and only slightly wiser Nicholson.

Here’s Jack at another diner, sitting alone this time. He places his very precise breakfast order only to be informed by a less-than-cheerful server that there were no substitutions. This time Nicholson makes no fuss, meekly defers and the scene moves on.

While that scene was filmed it was never used in the original “Schmidt”movie. You can only find it among the deleted scenes on the DVD (it’s also available on YouTube). “Schmidt’s” producers say they liked the idea because it illustrated our “conformist times” (compared to the roaring 60s/70s portrayed in “Pieces”) but left it out because “it didn’t work in rhythm” with the movie. Utter nonsense—what rhythm? Give me a good bit any day, especially one that tips its hat to a memorable scene from the past.

But let’s get back to “Five Easy Pieces.” “In 1970, Nicholson was at the peak of his acting prowess,” stated Eliot. “Coming off the surprisingly affecting performance he gave as George Hanson in Dennis Hopper’s hippie hijinks Sixties sleeper ‘Easy Rider,’ there was nowhere for him to go but up (rather than high).

“After nearly a decade of anonymity and struggle, Jack was considering retiring from acting in favor of devoting all his time to screenwriting, making his modest ends meet scribbling horror and motorcycle gang cheapies for legendary ‘B’ movie director Roger Corman. Nicholson was then cast by Bob Rafelson in ‘Rider’ as a last-minute fluke that happened only after actor Rip Torn, who’d already signed to play Hanson, had to be removed, following an altercation with Hopper.

“In 1969, prior to the film’s release, Nicholson, who nearly a decade earlier had relocated to Hollywood from New Jersey and stayed with his sister in her apartment there, still had no idea that she wasn’t his sister at all, but his mother. The full story of that twisted Oedipally-odd tale may be found in my (here comes another free plug) bestselling biography of Jack (who didn’t find out until 1973 when he was making Roman Polanski’s Oedipal odyssey ‘Chinatown’ but that’s another story). For now, suffice it to say, Nicholson’s complex personality off-screen that transferred well onto it, was at least, in part, a product of his messy childhood, as was his decision to move to the other side of the country to try to find himself through the identity of many characters he wrote and/or portrayed,” wrote Eliot.

“Rafelson, who died this past July (2022) at the age of 89, helmed only 12 films, six of which starred Nicholson, who admired Rafelson’s tough-guy persona – he once threw a crew member down a flight of stairs over a disagreement — and likely felt a bit grateful to him for jump-starting his own (Nicholson’s) film career,” Eliot said.

“Like Moses, Rafelson led the new crop of film-school directors out of studio bondage and into the promised land of cinematic independence, but never made it into the promised land of milk, honey, fame, respect and prosperity, the five pillars of industrial-strength Hollywood,” concluded Eliot.