"An underappreciated masterwork of nuance and dread, this Bob Rafelson gem is a film I visit and revisit. We see Jack Nicholson at his most fearsomely restrained, Bruce Dern at his most dangerous, and Ellen Burstyn at her most complicated and weary."

"I’m also a big fan of Head and The King of Marvin Gardens, but this is my favorite of Bob Rafelson’s films. It is also one of the greatest ever about the solitude that comes from feeling adrift and morally alone in the world. I think Rafelson is oddly underappreciated, especially seeing as he made a succession of films that pretty much summed up the mood of seventies. I’m also determined to make a film with Karen Black."

"Five Easy Pieces is inventive, very funny, very fresh, and just a joy to watch. Probably one of the funniest moments in cinema I’ve ever seen happens when they’re driving with the two girls they’ve picked up, and one of the girls just keeps saying negative things about trash and filth. I love that Bob Rafelson had such freedom that he didn’t mind going deeper and deeper and repeating a joke. You feel that he doesn’t need to go fast just because there’s a producer telling him the joke has been understood and we need to move on. The moments are meaningful in themselves, and if you’re enjoying them, why not carry on? This is what Rafelson does, and I find it incredibly funny. But at the same time, it’s also deep. I would say that the last sequence at the gas station is probably one of the best endings in the history of cinema. This is the film every beatnik would have loved to make. It perfectly expresses this feeling about living intensely but without a sense of purpose, not knowing where you’re going."

"Head is my favorite film that stars a musical artist, by some degree. And yes, that includes the brilliant A Hard Day’s Night. However, the Monkees’ triumph of a movie is a Pyrrhic victory, because Head accelerated their demise, as it sees Dolenz, Nesmith, Tork, and Jones push the self-destruct button. Directed by Bob Rafelson and cowritten by Jack Nicholson, the movie shows the Monkees tearing down their wholesome network-TV, pre–Fab Four image with wild style. Much has been read into this stream-of-consciousness movie, with its overlapping dream sequences, surreal song numbers, and drug-influenced chaos. The simplest way of describing it is this: the Monkees are sick of being on their network show and attempt to break out of the studio lot, literally and figuratively. There are several scenes where the Monkees are trapped in a box, a live number where they are revealed to be plastic mannequins, and bookending sequences where the members commit suicide. So basically, the Monkees want out. There have been some claims by the Monkees since the film came out that this message was projected onto it by Rafelson and Nicholson, but the script was clearly born of a very real frustration with their image. The movie bombed in 1968, because not many Monkees fans wanted to know that their idols had painted-on smiles. What remains is a gem of rock music cinema, with great songs and images throughout. Plus, as depressing as the theme of entrapment is, it’s frequently very funny. I got to interview Dolenz about it at a New Beverly Q&A once. A young audience member quizzed him on the deeper themes, and he just replied, “Man, I was twenty-three . . .”"