Bob Rafelson, the author, director, producer and maverick who set the tone for the swinging, psychedelic Sixties with The Monkees, then was a pioneer in some of the influential eras within the historical past of impartial movie, has died. He was 89.
Rafelson, who collaborated with Jack Nicholson on seven options, together with the classics Simple Rider (1969), 5 Simple Items (1970) and The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), died Saturday evening of pure causes at his residence in Aspen, Colorado, his spouse, Gabrielle, informed The Hollywood Reporter.
Rafelson earned Oscar nominations for co-writing and producing 5 Simple Items after which, for an encore, produced Peter Bogdanovich‘s breakthrough hit, The Final Image Present (1971).
Alongside together with his late accomplice Bert Schneider, Rafelson created The Monkees, the touchstone NBC present that debuted in 1966. He conceived the thought of a program that mimicked the exuberance of The Beatles, particularly the freewheeling vitality of their 1964 movie A Exhausting Day’s Night time.
The sequence, produced by Raybert Productions, featured the comedian misadventures of a struggling musical quartet looking for fame and fortune whereas dwelling in Malibu. The foursome was chosen from an open casting name introduced with full-page advertisements, together with one in THR. Stephen Stills was among the many tons of who auditioned. For years, an city legend circulated that Charles Manson additionally had tried out. Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork in the end have been picked.
Colourful, fast-paced and stuffed with slapstick and silliness, The Monkees embodied the rebellious sensibilities of a youthful technology. And although it lasted solely two seasons and 58 episodes, it turned a pop-culture phenomenon (and introduced Rafelson and Schneider an Emmy in 1967 for excellent comedy sequence).
Along with guiding the sitcom as a producer after which government producer, Rafelson directed a number of episodes. He is also credited with writing two of the reveals that revolved across the group acting on tour.
Forged extra for his or her personalities than their musical skills, the quartet did possess expertise. Jones was an English singer and actor who had gained fame enjoying the Clever Dodger on Broadway in Oliver. Nesmith and Tork knew their method round a guitar and have been aspiring songwriters. Dolenz, a former baby actor finest recognized for the Nineteen Fifties NBC sequence Circus Boy, had an incredible pop voice (and would learn to play drums). However as they weren’t a pure combo, Rafelson and Schneider neatly employed musical producer Don Kirshner to supervise the music.
Kirshner in flip tapped a number of the prime songwriting expertise of the period. Neil Diamond, Carole King, Harry Nilsson, John Stewart, Carole Bayer Sager, Neil Sedaka and the workforce of Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart have been among the many contributors. The Monkees’ first 4 albums reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts, and the group landed six singles within the prime 10, together with “Final Practice to Clarksville,” “I’m a Believer, “Nice Valley Sunday” and “Daydream Believer.”
The musical legacy that The Monkees left behind is arguably the band’s largest influence.
After the sequence was canceled in 1968, Rafelson introduced The Monkees to the massive display with Head (1968), his big-screen directing debut, as he and Schneider had secured a five-picture cope with Columbia.
“Bob was urged by his companions and buddies to not make a film with The Monkees,” his spouse famous in a 2011 story in The Guardian in regards to the band. “They felt he had accomplished his work with them, and their viewers was already defecting. However Bob felt he wished to finish the cycle. He felt the reality of The Monkees’ story had not been informed — their manipulation, protest and substantial skills. He felt the true story, in summary [form], could be greater than definitely worth the telling.”
To create the screenplay, Rafelson teamed with Nicholson, then a B-actor and aspiring author. Reportedly, the duo devised the storyline throughout a marijuana-fueled session in Ojai, with Nicholson then fashioning it right into a script whereas beneath the affect of LSD.
Initially known as Modifications, the title was switched in a nod to the drug tradition of the day. Rafelson and Schneider preferred that, joking that they may market their subsequent characteristic with the slogan, “From the Guys Who Gave You Head.”
Critics discovered the film a disjointed, complicated stream-of-consciousness tour that deconstructed the pop persona that had made The Monkees stars.
That includes a unusual solid that included Victor Mature, Annette Funicello, Teri Garr, Frank Zappa and Sonny Liston, Head ridiculed an array of topics, together with battle, American values and the phoniness of Hollywood. Monkees followers have been alienated by the group lashing out towards the characters they performed on TV. The grownup viewers they have been making an attempt to impress had way back misplaced curiosity in what they thought-about a superficial pop band. Head was a box-office disappointment and stunted the Monkees’ reputation.
Later in The Guardian article, author Dorian Lynskey added, “However Rafelson truthfully believed it might work. ‘Bob was disenchanted as a result of he had hoped that the film transcended the group’s identify,’ Gabrielle says. He quickly realized his error. At a Greenwich Village screening, hipsters lured in by the enigmatic posters walked out the minute The Monkees appeared. The critiques have been savage. Of its $790,000 funds, it recouped simply $16,111.”
Over time, the movie has gathered a cult following, helped by the word-of-mouth that it’s best appreciated in an altered state.
The response to Head didn’t deter Rafelson. The second characteristic from Raybert Productions had been filming concurrently and was nearing launch. That was Simple Rider.
Directed by Dennis Hopper from a screenplay by Hopper, Peter Fonda and Terry Southern, Simple Rider rocked Hollywood when it hit theaters in summer season 1969.
A counterculture commentary on America, Simple Rider starred Fonda and Hopper as pot-dealing hippies who, after a giant rating and a gathering with a drunken Lawyer (Nicholson), take to the highway to go cross-country on their bikes. Alongside the best way, they encounter the nice and the unhealthy of a nation.
Celebrating the free-spirited, drug-loving morés of the ’60s technology, Simple Rider was embraced by younger filmgoers. Produced for lower than a half-million {dollars}, it turned the No. 3 grossing movie of the 12 months and made a star of Nicholson.
Simple Rider additionally proved to the studios that their stodgy star-driven, big-budgeted method was in want of being changed. And Rafelson was simply getting began.
Raybert picked up a 3rd accomplice, Stephen Blauner, and adjusted its identify to BBS Productions (for Bob, Bert and Steve). In the meantime, Rafelson was specializing in his second characteristic, 5 Simple Items. True to his outsider leanings, the movie tells the story of a disconnected drifter, Bobby Dupea (Nicholson), who turns his again on his lifetime of privilege and his expertise as a piano prodigy to work on an oil rig. When his father turns into in poor health, he should return residence to face what he has been rebelling towards. Along with directing and producing, Rafelson wrote the screenplay with Carole Eastman.
5 Simple Items was hailed as a cinematic masterpiece. Roger Ebert select it as his finest movie of 1970, and it was nominated for 4 Academy Awards. Nicholson landed his second Oscar nom, cementing his stature as a number one man.
BBS Productions continued to usher in a brand new wave in indie movie with such fare as The Final Image Present; Drive, He Mentioned (1971), which marked Nicholson’s directorial debut; the Oscar-winning antiwar documentary Hearts and Minds (1974); and the Rafelson-directed The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), starring Nicholson and Bruce Dern as brothers in an Atlantic Metropolis-set story.
After finishing its manufacturing cope with Columbia, BBS Productions stalled and Rafelson centered on making his personal movies. These efforts included Keep Hungry (1976), which featured newcomer Arnold Schwarzenegger, and The Postman At all times Rings Twice (1981), which starred Nicholson and Jessica Lange in a stark, brutal remake of the 1942 MGM melodrama.
“If my movies have something in frequent,” he informed the Los Angeles Occasions in 1986, “it’s that they have an inclination to concentrate on characters who’re struggling to beat the burden of custom of their lives.”
His profession hit a snag, you may say, when he punched a Fox government within the jaw and was fired from the job of directing Robert Redford in Brubaker (1980). He give up the enterprise in 2002.
Robert Rafelson was born on Feb. 21, 1933, in New York. His father manufactured hat ribbons and his uncle was Samson Raphaelson, who wrote the brief story and the Broadway play that served as the idea for Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer (1927).
As a young person, Rafelson rebelled towards his father and refused to comply with him into the textile enterprise. “I used to be a kind of guys that took on all comers,” he informed the Occasions in 1997. “I began leaving residence on the age of 14.”
Rafelson’s travels took him to Arizona, the place he turned a rodeo rider, and Acapulco, the place he carried out as a jazz musician. He studied philosophy at Dartmouth earlier than being drafted into the U.S. Military. Whereas stationed in Japan, he labored as a disc jockey, translated Japanese movies and have become an adviser to the Shochiku Co., providing opinions on movies that he thought may do properly in American theaters.
When Rafelson returned residence, he secured a job within the mailroom of producer David Susskind’s firm. He labored his method as much as reader after which story editor for the Susskind anthology sequence Play of the Week and tailored a number of episodes. In 1961, he wrote an installment of the CBS fact-based drama The Witness.
In 1962, Rafelson got here to Hollywood and labored as an affiliate producer on such ABC reveals as The Best Present on Earth, starring Jack Palance, and Channing. On the latter, he butted heads with MCA mogul Lew Wasserman over the artistic path of the present. The argument ended with Rafelson sweeping the contents of Wasserman’s desk all around the flooring, and he was fired.
However shortly after, he signed on as a producer for Display Gems’ NBC adaptation of The Wackiest Ship within the Military, and it was right here that he met Schneider. The next 12 months, they fashioned Raybert, and shortly Display Gems could be offered on their concept for The Monkees.
Rafelson’s later directing efforts included Black Widow (1987), starring Debra Winger and Theresa Russell; the journey story Mountains of the Moon (1990); two extra movies starring Nicholson, Man Hassle (1992) and Blood and Wine (1997); and No Good Deed (2002).
In 1983, he helmed the music video for Lionel Richie’s mega-hit “All Night time Lengthy.”
Whereas in highschool, Rafelson started relationship Toby Carr, and so they married in 1955. She labored as a manufacturing designer with Rafelson on 5 Simple Items, King of Marvin Gardens and Keep Hungry. They’d two youngsters. Peter is a songwriter, finest recognized for the 1986 Madonna hit “Open Your Coronary heart”; Julie was killed at age 10 when a propane range exploded within the Rafelson residence in Aspen.
Survivors additionally embrace his sons with Gabrielle, Ethan and Harper; daughter-in-law Karen; and a nephew.
