Film Forum

U.S., 1970
Directed by Bob Rafelson
Screenplay by Carole Eastman
Starring Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Susan Anspach
Approx. 98 min. 

“Hold it between your knees.” Supremely alienated oilfield roustabout/piano virtuoso Jack Nicholson (as Bobby Eroica Dupea), on the run from his well-bred roots, dallies with blue collar waitress Karen Black (the name on her uniform is “Rayette”) and his brother’s classy fiancée Susan Anspach; bowls with buddy Billy “Green” Bush (wived by Fannie Flagg, author of Fried Green Tomatoes); gives a ride to motor-mouthed hitcher Helena Kallianiotes and a lesson in highway greasy spoon etiquette to a rule-ridden waitress; tries to reconcile with his stroke-silenced dad; and tosses off a few other easy pieces by Chopin. Long-time Nicholson pal Carole Eastman (Adrien Joyce) expanded on three sketches by director Rafelson, ultimately basing the character on both Nicholson and her brother, with scenes based on actual occurrences. Oscar® nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actor and Supporting Actress.

A SONY PICTURES RELEASE

Reviews

“One of the best American films! A masterpiece of heartbreaking intensity! Rafelson calls our attention to the grimy life textures and the shabby hopes of these decent middle Americans. They live in a landscape of motels, highways, TV dinners, dust, and jealousy, and so de we all, but they seem to have nothing else. The movie is joyously alive to the road life of its hero. We follow him through bard and bowling alleys, motels and mobile homes, and we find him rebelling against lower-middle-class values even as he embraces them. In one magial 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.”
– Roger Ebert

“One of the best American films for years... Nicholson’s performance was one of the great charismatic ones.”
– David Shipman

“It’s a striking movie, eloquent, important, written and improvised in a clear-hearted American idiom that derives from no other civilization, and describing as if for the first time the nature of the familiar American man who feels he has to keep running because the only good is momentum.”
– Pauline Kael