Reception
The film opened to positive reviews and huge business at the box office and holds an 86% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 35 reviews. It immediately became the movie that Bob Rafelson would be known for. He worked before on counterculture comedy as in the Monkees TV show and their famous cult film Head. Now he made a movie which considered the other side of youth, in this case, those that left the good life behind and were not content. For this movie, he won praise. It would also be remembered as the movie that got Jack Nicholson noticed in Hollywood. He was quickly approached to play modern day rebels with or without a conscience. The one scene in this film that Nicholson was liked for was the part where he fights with a waitress over eggs, toast, and a chicken sandwich, demanding that she hold the chicken 'between her knees.' He later worked with Rafelson on four more movies over the next twenty six years.
The film received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Karen Black), Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay. Nicholson lost to George C. Scott, but was nominated several times before getting the Award for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Read more about this topic: Five Easy Pieces
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)