The filmmaker who captured the counterculture
Bob Rafelson 1933–2022
Bob Rafelson took an unlikely route toward bucking the moviemaking establishment. The New Hollywood pioneer first co-created The Monkees, the 196668 slapstick-filled sitcom that birthed a real-life pop band. Then, yearning to do something more serious, he and partner Bert Schneider funneled their Monkees earnings into an independent production company that sought out daring countercultural projects. His first big-screen venture Head—a trippy satire of the Monkees featuring then–B-list actor Jack Nicholson—was a flop, and Rafelson later said it had been written with “a psychedelic assist” from LSD. But the company struck gold with 1969’s Easy Rider. Rafelson then quickly cemented his own reputation as an auteur by becoming director, co-writer, and co-producer of the 1970 classic Five Easy Pieces, which starred Nicholson as a disaffected classical pianist turned roughneck. “There is something about migration, and about the displaced American, and about the inability to grasp our own roots that is so elemental to our lives,” Rafelson said in 1997.
“It excites my imagination, and it does seem to find its way into my work.”
Born to a New York City hatmaker, Rafelson was “a true cinephile from a young age,” said the Los Angeles Times. When he was drafted and sent to Japan, he worked for military radio and translated Japanese movies into English. Back in the U.S., he became a story editor for television. He rose to become a TV producer in the early ’60s and, with Schneider and later another partner, formed BBS Productions. BBS ushered in “a new wave in indie film,” said The Hollywood Reporter. Rafelson had an eye for talent. He directed Nicholson in seven films, and his 1976 bodybuilding comedy Stay Hungry boosted the careers of Jeff Bridges, Sally Field, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But the short-tempered filmmaker had some “notable blowups,” said The New York Times.
In 1980, he was fired after punching a movie exec while filming Brubaker. After that, he kept working but had no further hits before his 2002 retirement. Still, he loved to reminisce about New Hollywood’s freewheeling heyday. BBS’s formula, he explained in a 2010 interview, was simple. “Let’s get the maddest creatures we can find on the planet,” he said. That approach, he added, turned up “some really first-grade wackos.”