WHAT: Five Easy Pieces (1970, DCP)
WHEN: September 21, 2022 1 PM & 7:30 PM (Film starts at 7:45 PM.)
WHERE: Pickwick Theatre, Park Ridge, IL
WHAT ELSE: Special Guest Diane Bay, daughter of actress Karen Black
Organist Jay Warren performs pre-show music at 7 PM
HOW MUCH: $12/10 advance or $10 for the 1 PM matinee
Advance Tickets: Click Here!
“We’d had a revelation. This was the direction American movies should take: Into idiosyncratic characters, into dialogue with an ear for the vulgar and the literate, into a plot free to surprise us about the characters, into an existential ending not required to be happy. Five Easy Pieces was a fusion of the personal cinema of John Cassavetes and the new indie movement that was tentatively emerging. “ ~ film critic Roger Ebert
Diane Bay, the daughter of actress (and Park Ridge native) Karen Black, will visit the Pickwick Theatre on September 21 for a special screening of Five Easy Pieces (1970), starring Jack Nicholson and Karen Black. Diane will be interviewed onstage at 7:30 PM (with the film starting at 7:45 PM). She will be discussing her new book, Finding Karen Black: Roots Become Wings (2022).
Finding Karen Black, which will be available for purchase before and after the film, is a memoir chronicling Diane’s relationship with her birth mother. Diane had been given up for adoption when Karen was 19 years old. However, in 2011, after Illinois had opened its adoption files, Diane made the startling discovery of her mother’s identity. Both Diane and Karen wanted to meet. But it would be a bittersweet reunion; Karen’s life would be tragically cut short due to cancer. On a wider scale, Finding Karen Black is about Diane’s search for identity and finding one’s roots.
Five Easy Pieces, a film that deals with rootlessness in its own way, will be screened. Jack Nicholson stars as Bobby Dupea, an oil-rigger who has seemingly squandered his early potential as a pianist. Unable to cope with responsibility, he drifts through life with his blue-collar, unsophisticated girlfriend, Rayette (Oscar-nominated Karen Black). The only woman he can really relate to is his sister, played by Lois Smith. His ailing father, however, draws him back home where he meets a more intellectual girl (Susan Anspach). She stimulates Bobby and forces him to examine his own behavior.
The scene that everyone remembers, which is really disconnected from the rest of the film, is the “side order of wheat toast” sequence in the diner. But the film is much more than that. It’s a beautifully-crafted character study that embodies 1970s alienation. It’s the story of a man condemned to search for the meaning of his life. There are many fine moments– including perhaps the longest monologue/rant in film history courtesy of hitchhiker Helena Kallianiotes!
The film was directed by the late Bob Rafelson, who passed away on July 23, 2022. He would collaborate with Nicholson on seven films, beginning with the Monkees’ 1968 film, Head. The story was written by Adrien Joyce (the pen name of Carole Eastman), although some scenes, such as the one at the bowling alley and the Sally Struthers’ “dimple on the chin” story, were improvised by the actors on set.
With a budget of $750,000, the film was shot in just over thirty days and made use of practical locations. Five Easy Pieces is structurally divided into two halves with scenes shot in California, near Bakersfield, as well as in the Pacific Northwest. It was photographed by Laszlo Kovacs, who shot many films of the American New Wave, including Easy Rider.
Five Easy Pieces very much represents the ethos of what was then becoming New Hollywood. This wave of grittier films, which broke away from the traditional storytelling of the Hollywood studio system, began in the late 1960s with movies like the aforementioned Easy Rider. It is a tremendously influential work that continues to inspire modern filmmakers.
Diane Bay will be in the theatre lobby from 6:30 PM until 7:30 PM and then again after the film lets out. She will have copies of her new book, “Finding Karen Black: Roots Become Wings” (2022), available for purchase. (Paperback $12.50; Hardcover $20)
~MCH