On this day, February 21, 1933, film producer and Monkees co-creator Robert Rafelson was born.

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Bob Rafelson



Rafelson in 2009

Born: Robert Rafelson; February 21, 1933; New York City, U.S
Died: July 23, 2022 (aged 89); Aspen, Colorado, U.S.
Education: Dartmouth College
Occupation(s): Film director, producer, screenwriter
Years active: 1959–2002

Robert Jay Rafelson (February 21, 1933 – July 23, 2022) was an American film director, writer, and producer. He is regarded as one of the key figures in the founding of the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s. Among his best-known films as a director include those made as part of the company he cofounded, Raybert/BBS Productions, Five Easy Pieces (1970) and The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), as well as acclaimed later films, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and Mountains of the Moon (1990). Other films he produced as part of BBS include two of the most significant films of the era, Easy Rider (1969) and The Last Picture Show (1971). Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show were all chosen for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. He was also one of the creators of the pop group and TV series The Monkees with BBS partner Bert Schneider. His first wife was the production designer Toby Carr Rafelson.

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Early television career

Rafelson's first professional job was as a story editor on the TV series Play of the Week for producer David Susskind in 1959. The series produced televised stage plays from contemporary and classical authors. Rafelson's job required him to read hundreds of plays, select which were to be produced, and write some additional dialogue uncredited. Rafelson's first writing credits were for an episode of the TV series The Witness in 1960 and an episode of the series The Greatest Show on Earth in 1963.

In June 1962, Rafelson and his family moved to Hollywood, where he began working as an associate producer on television shows and films at Universal Pictures, Revue Productions, Desilu Productions and Screen Gems. After an argument with Lew Wasserman over creative differences on the show Channing, culminating in Rafelson sweeping "awards, medallions, souvenir ashtrays, and other tchotchkes" from Wasserman's desk, he was fired.

In 1965, while working at Screen Gems, Rafelson met fellow producer Bert Schneider. They became fast friends and created the company Raybert Productions together that year. Raybert would later become BBS Productions and produce films as a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. Rafelson and Schneider's first project was a television series about a rock 'n' roll group. Rafelson said that the idea for the show, which was inspired by his own misadventures while playing in a band in Mexico, predated A Hard Day's Night. Rafelson said, "I had conceived the show before The Beatles existed," and it was based on his time as an itinerant musician more "interested in having fun" than "in earning a living." Raybert Productions sold the idea to Screen Gems and, when they were unable to get either the Dave Clark Five or the Lovin' Spoonful for the show, ran ads in Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter for musicians. The band that they created was The Monkees and the series ran from 1966 until 1968.

The Monkees was immediately a success with audiences and, despite the band being a manufactured act, was particularly popular with the youth demographic at the time. Rafelson and Schneider won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series as producers in 1967. Rafelson has said that "the whole show was created in effect in the editing room. The tempo was of paramount importance...I had to direct one or two of the shows for television to set the pattern of how these things should be made." Rafelson had said that "of the first 32 shows, 29 were directed by people who had never directed before, including me. So the idea of using new directors not perhaps too encumbered by traditional ways of thinking was initiated on that series and just continued on the movies we made later." He has cited the series' "radically different way of cutting and doing a half hour comedy because there were interviews that were interspersed [and] there was documentary footage."

Early film career

Collaborations with Jack Nicholson

Rafelson and Bert Schneider's newfound success allowed them to get more funding for Raybert Productions and to establish the record company Colgems. Their next project was Head, a feature film starring the Monkees. Co-written with friend Jack Nicholson, and featuring appearances by Nicholson, Victor Mature, Teri Garr, Carol Doda, Annette Funicello, Frank Zappa, Sonny Liston, Timothy Carey, Ray Nitschke, and Dennis Hopper, it was Rafelson's debut as a feature film director. Rafelson said, "Of course Head is an utterly and totally fragmented film. Among other reasons for making it was that I thought I would never get to make another movie, so I might as well make fifty to start out with and put them all in the same feature."

Head represented the first of many Rafelson-Nicholson collaborations, later to include Five Easy Pieces, The King of Marvin Gardens and The Postman Always Rings Twice, among others. In a profile of Rafelson in Esquire magazine, Nicholson commented: "I may have thought I started his career, but I think he started my career."

Head is a plotless, stream of consciousness film that, amongst other things, attempts to deconstruct the musical personas of the Monkees and satirize the consumer ideals of "image". In a song sung by the Monkees, they seem to confess by saying: Hey, hey, we are The Monkees/ You know we love to please/ A manufactured image/ With no philosophies. Other scenes utilize psychedelic or surrealistic theatrics such as the Monkees being sucked through a giant vacuum cleaner and turning into specks of dandruff in Victor Mature's head. The film ends with the Monkees being loaded into a truck and driven out of the Columbia Studio gates. The film was a financial failure and the popularity of the Monkees was already in decline, but it has since emerged as a cult classic with a strong following.

Raybert's next project, Easy Rider, directed by Dennis Hopper, premiered at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival and was released in July 1969, quickly becoming a cultural phenomenon. The film's success gave Raybert enough funds and clout to pursue more ambitious projects. Rafelson and Schneider soon added Schneider's childhood friend Stephen Blauner to their company and its name became BBS Productions (Bert, Bob and Steve). BBS's first project, Five Easy Pieces, was Rafelson's second feature film, shot in 1969. In an interview with Tonguette in Sight & Sound, Rafelson explained the idea behind BBS: "My thought was: there is so much talent here in the US but little talent for recognizing it. I thought together we could do this but that Bert should manage it."

The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis recently highlighted Rafelson and Schneider for founding "the groovy 1960s company Raybert (later known as BBS Productions) — and gave us Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show and Hearts and Minds, and lamenting the absence of such risk-taking companies today."

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Tue Feb 21, 2023: On this day, February 21, 1933, film producer and Monkees co-creator Robert Rafelson was born.