#bob rafelson

HEAD (1968)

okay great now peter we have to convey that you’re DUMB so let’s scrap the dialogue. instead in this next scene you’re gonna straight up forget how to breathe and speak. yeah. then villain’ll crack you in the skull with a baseball bat, no time to rehearse that one so let’s just do it and see what happens. if he gets you a little bit it’s fine we’re on a tight schedule. oh and mike do me a favor and smack davy’s ass when the camera pans to you

Five Easy Pieces (1970) dir. Bob Rafelson

We were all exhausted in Chicago [August 1967]. We should have been resting between shots, with 30 cities in 40 days, and syncing, we had to shoot some sequences in between times. It was awful, really grueling. And tempers were really tight. We didn’t want to be making those damn shots on the road in between concerts, when we should have been able to relax and go someplace. Mick was sitting at the drums and we were syncing a number, I don’t remember which number it was, but it was one of those numbers with the colors fanning out behind us and in front of us with that backdrop. We did a bunch of tunes against that backdrop and we were in a break from shooting. Micky was sitting behind his drums, fuming. He was really ready to blow his cork someplace and somewhere. And I had a flashcube, and I tossed it ever-so-gently in the air—and I knew he was really in a mood to explode—and it hit him on the shoulder. And he looked at me, he glared, completely out of control, and threw his drumstick at me with all his might. I knew he was gonna do that, too, and I ducked. He missed me. And then we were in the clinch, and along came Rafelson. And Rafelson said, “Boys, boys! God’s sake, boys, boys!” And we stopped. Right then and there, we didn’t fight anymore. We just came out of it, and we pretended like we’d been pretending, just to put Rafelson on. He said, “Oh, God! You guys scared me so bad!”