Five Easy Pieces of four: The title of "Five Easy Pieces" refers not to the women its hero makes along the road, for there are only three, but to a book of piano exercises he owned as a child. The film, one of the best American films, is about the distance between that boy, practicing to become a concert pianist, and the need he feels 20 years later to disguise himself as an oil-field rigger. When we sense the boy, tormented and insecure, trapped inside the adult man, "Five Easy Pieces" becomes a masterpiece of heartbreaking intensity... The movie is joyously alive to
Jack Nicholson MGM, and other issues. Nicholson starred in "Five Easy Pieces" alongside Karen Black in 1970 in what became his persona-defining role. Nicholson and Black were nominated for Academy Awards for their performances. Nicholson played Bobby Dupea, an oil rig worker, and Black was his waitress girlfriend. During an interview about the film, Black noted that Nicholson's character in the film was very subdued, and was very different than Nicholson's real-life personality. She says that the now-famous restaurant scene was partly improvised by Nicholson, and was out of character for Bobby, who wouldn't have cared enough to argue with a waitress.