America Lost And Found: The BBS Story

It's no exaggeration to say that BBS, an independent production company operating within Columbia Pictures between 1968 to 1972, was a defining creative force in Hollywood, despite producing only seven films, all of which are collected in this superb set. Among the best known are Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969), with its road-trip tale of two counterculture bikers (Hopper and Peter Fonda) who travel cross-country, picking up an alcoholic ACLU lawyer (Jack Nicholson) along the way; and Peter Bogdanovich's masterful adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel The Last Picture Show (1971), a demythologizing look at small-town Texas in the 1950s, starring Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, and Cybill Shepherd. Also presented here are the directorial debuts of Nicholson, in 1970's Drive, He Said, starring Bruce Dern and Karen Black in a story of college roommates facing contrasting futures; Henry Jaglom, in 1971's A Safe Place, a time-fractured fantasy featuring Tuesday Weld as a young woman who has relationships with a rich married man (Nicholson), a dull but earnest suitor (Philip Proctor), and a magician (Orson Welles); and Bob Rafelson, whose 1968 feature Head is an underrated mix of comic surrealism, psychedelia, and satire starring the Monkees. But the defining films in this collection are Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces (1970), a silent scream of alienation and narcissism with a revelatory performance by Nicholson as a failed concert pianist who has abandoned his cultured past but can't escape his family ties; and The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), with a suppressed Nicholson as an introverted DJ and Dern as his flamboyant hustler brother. Not all of these films were hits, but several captured the zeitgeist of a turbulent era while also creating a model for personal filmmaking with commercial appeal. All but two have been released on DVD before (A Safe Place and Drive, He Said make their debuts here), but this generous Criterion boxed set—available in either DVD or Blu-ray versions—presents the films in newly remastered editions, while also adding audio commentary tracks, archival interviews and featurettes, supplements carried over from previous releases, and a 112-page booklet. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)