Keep on telling me about the good life, because it makes me puke.

Couch-ridden, I've been working my way through my Netflix and OnDemand backlogs. Yesterday's highlight (and I am being discriminating here; I watched nearly 10 hours of TV) was Five Easy Pieces (1970), starring Jack Nicholson. Fresh off the success of Easy Rider, Nicholson got a beefy role as Bobby Duprea in this film costarring Karen Black, another Easy Rider alum and, in my opinion, really hard to watch as Bobby's maudlin airhead girlfriend Rayette.

I'd seen Five Easy Pieces in a college film class, but the terrible print and unfocused classroom environment left me with only an impressionistic memory of it--something about oil, music, a sailor--I had mostly forgotten. It's really pretty fresh for a movie that's nearly 40 years old. I also recently caught Alexander Olch's The Windmill Movie--a recent, raw documentary dealing with self loathing related to talent and class, as well as mental illness and womanizing--they make good companions.

I probably wouldn't bother writing about it, though, if it weren't for how badass Jack Nicholson was circa 1970. It's really hard to explain to anyone under 40 (caveat: I'm under 30) how cool Jack Nicholson can be. Most people my age and younger knew him first as the Joker, or even worse playing characters in decline--the pitiful mysogynist of As Good As It Gets, the crushed salesman of About Schmidt, the goddamn joke of The Bucket List.

But Nicholson tore shit up in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Five Easy Pieces, and Easy Rider. Check out some screen shots of him and the excellent wardrobe in Five Easy Pieces--easily shifting between blue collar Bobby in the oil fields in a flannel, stained jeans, and workboots, and pacific northwest piano prodigy in a black turtleneck and corduroy jacket. Not to mention the burgundy MA-1 jacket with a giant knit collar. Just ignore the hair. Not sure what was going on back then.