Five Easy Pieces (Milo Rau) about how we deal with the emotional shock and pain caused by an extremely upsetting experience. Milo Rau's "Five Easy Pieces" is also a reflection on theatre. The title "Five Easy Pieces" refers to a series of exercises that Igor Stravinsky composed in 1917 in order to teach children how to play the piano, and that were also called "Five Easy Pieces". The theatre production of Milo Rau is made up of five monologues, each offering a different perspective on how children learn to act and how they learn to grow up. Milo Rau sees his performances as "Lehrstücke", in
Jack Nicholson handle the role, saying, "There is James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, and Henry Fonda. After that, who is there but Jack Nicholson?" During the filming, Nicholson struck up what became a lifelong friendship with co-star Garfunkel. When he visited Los Angeles, Garfunkel would stay at Nicholson's home in a room Nicholson jokingly called "the Arthur Garfunkel Suite". Other Nicholson roles included Hal Ashby's "The Last Detail" (1973), with Randy Quaid, for which Nicholson won for Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival, and he was nominated for his third Oscar and a Golden Globe. Television journalist David Gilmour writes