Five Easy Pieces

This was the film that made Jack Nicholson into a superstar. Jack plays Robert Eroica Dupea (Bobby), a former piano protégé who is estranged from his artistic upper class family. We find Bobby working on oil rigs in California. He lives with his waitress girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black) and spends his free time bowling or drinking with his mate Elton. One day at the rigs Elton tells Bobby that Rayette is pregnant and shortly afterwards he is arrested. Bobby takes off and visits his sister (also a pianist) at a recording studio in LA. She informs him that their father has suffered two debilitating strokes. The second half of the film is about Booby visiting his father and family where they live on a remote island off Washington State. It is a simply sensational performance from Nicholson, who is playing a complex and deeply conflicted character. He does not fit anywhere. He has rejected his background and yet can never be at home in the blue collar world of his new life. There is the famous and much quoted "Chicken Salad Scene" where Bobby tells a diner waitress to "hold the chicken between her knees". The film was perfect for its time, capturing the disaffection and weariness at the end of the Sixties. Even now it is effective and enjoyable, mostly for the realism and honesty of the characters. The title "Five Easy Pieces" comes from an apparently fictitious book of piano music for childre