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
Easy Pieces singing, and as a result he became self-conscious about his singing. Reflecting in 2004 on the process of recording "Easy Pieces", Cole felt that they had been pushed into making a second record too quickly: "We didn't give ourselves time to step back and think. The record company was telling us 'this is your moment and you must take it now' – which is crap. People would have waited for us. We were insecure so we made the record too soon and the record company fired Paul Hardiman." Unlike the widespread praise for "Rattlesnakes", the reception for "Easy Pieces" was