Blu-ray, DVD Release: Five Easy Pieces

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: June 30, 2015
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion

Following Jack Nicholson’s (Chinatown) breakout supporting turn in Easy Rider, director Bob Rafelson (The Postman Always Rings Twice) devised a powerful leading role for the new star in 1970’s searing character-driven drama Five Easy Pieces.

Jack Nicholson and Karen Black in Five Easy Pieces

Nicholson plays the now iconic cad Bobby Dupea, a shiftless thirty-something oil rigger and former piano prodigy immune to any sense of responsibility, who returns to his upper-middle-class childhood home, blue-collar girlfriend (Nashville’s Karen Black, in an Oscar-nominated role) in tow, to see his estranged ailing father.

Moving in its simplicity and gritty in its textures, Five Easy Pieces is a lasting example of early 1970s American alienation.

Criterion’s Blu-ray and DVD editions of the film contain the following features:

• Restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography László Kovács, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Audio commentary featuring director Bob Rafelson and interior designer Toby Rafelson
  • Soul Searching in “Five Easy Pieces,” a 2009 video piece with Rafelson
  • BBStory, a 2009 documentary about the legendary film company BBS Productions, with Rafelson; actors Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, and Ellen Burstyn; directors Peter Bogdanovich and Henry Jaglom; and others
  • Documentary from 2009 about BBS featuring critic David Thomson and historian Douglas Brinkley
  • Audio excerpts from a 1976 AFI interview with Rafelson
  • Theatrical trailer and teasers
  • An essay by critic Kent Jones

Buy or Rent Five Easy Pieces
DVD | Blu-ray