Five Easy Pieces the road life of its hero. We follow him through bars and bowling alleys, motels and mobile homes, and we find him rebelling against lower-middle-class values even as he embraces them. In one magical scene, he leaps from his car in a traffic jam and starts playing the piano on the truck in front of him; the scene sounds forced, described this way, but Rafelson and Nicholson never force anything, and never have to. Robert Eroica Dupea is one of the most unforgettable characters in American movies. He named the film the best of 1970, and later added it to
The King of Marvin Gardens which included the Monkees film "Head" (1968) and "Five Easy Pieces" (1970), which established both men as major figures in Hollywood. Dern and Nicholson had previously worked together in "Psych-Out" (1968) and "Rebel Rousers" (1970). Nicholson and Scatman Crothers subsequently co-starred in Miloš Forman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975) and Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980). Co-star Ellen Burstyn had previously worked in the TV series "Gunsmoke", in which Dern had also appeared, and would soon achieve worldwide fame with her starring role in William Friedkin's "The Exorcist" (1973). The film was one of the few screen appearances made