A-Z GUIDE TO MOVIES AND TV SHOWS PARODIED BY MAD, CRACKED, CRAZY, ETC. UP TO 1996. THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. SPOILERS AND OTHER NON-SEQUITURS, TOO. SOMETIMES THESE THINGS HAVE WORDS OR SITUATIONS WE DON'T USE ANYMORE. YOU KNOW, 'CAUSE THEY'RE OLD.
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Saturday, October 2, 2021
FIVE EASY PAGES (AND TWO HARD ONES)
FIVE EASY PIECES (1970)
dir: Bob Rafelson
MAD #145, September 1971
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Mort Drucker
Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson) is working on an oil rig, The whole plot on the film is that his past as a classical pianist isn't even revealed until the middle but the parody ruins that part by making jokes about it right at the beginning.
Note the boss is caricatured as Spiro Agnew, joked about in every issue while he was Vice President, and articles with him were reprinted long after he was gone, which is how most of us first became aware of him. There was the joke on The Simpsons in the 90s where Bart and Milhous are reading a MAD collection and asking "Who is Spiro Agnew? He must be some guy that works for them!"
We see Bobby's life on the oil rig and coming home to his girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black). She's bored, they argue a bit, then they go out bowling with his co-worker Elton (Billy "Green" Bush) and wife Stoney (Fannie Flagg). Elton reveals to Bobby he knows Rayette is pregnant and tries to convince him to settle down like him. While they're waiting for him in the car, he flirts with Twinky (Marlena MacGuire) and Betty (Sally Struthers) who think they recognize him from TV. Remember, at this point we just think Bobby is a working-class everyman.
Bobby and Elton end up screwing around with those girls, because that's how men behaved then. Later, on the way to work, they're caught in a traffic jam, and Bobby gets out of the car and jumps onto a pickup truck, in one of the only two scenes anyone knows about the movie. Drawn here are other famous classical musicians from the time. Bobby decides he's fed up with the job and quits, then runs back when he sees two guys attacking Elton and tries to fight with them, not knowing they're policemen there to arrest Elton.
Being unemployed now, Bobby wanders around and visits his sister Partita (Lois Smith) at a recording studio, where she's working as a classical pianist. Partita tells him their father has had a stroke and he should visit him with their family up in Puget Sound. Bobby goes home and tells Rayette he has to see his dying father, then at the last minute asks her to come along. In the last panel are Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper of Easy Rider, John Voight and Dustin Hoffman as Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, and Joe Namath just because he was the single biggest celebrity in 1970.
As they drive up north, they give a ride to two women (Helena Kallianiotes and Toni Basil) whose car has broken down. One of them keeps talking about materialism and greed. They stop over in a diner, in the other only scene anyone knows about this movie.
The two women eventually leave. Funny that in the parody he compares their appearance to his in Easy Rider since the quiet one of the two was also in that. But anyway, Bobby has Rayette stay in a hotel because he says he's not ready to introduce her.
Now his secret is revealed.
Now he meets his family, who are all a bunch of piano prodigies, He makes fun of his brother Carl (Ralph Waite) for being in a neck brace. When Carl leaves for a day running errands on the mainland, Carl's fiance Catherine (Susan Anspach), has an eye for Bobby and asks him to play something, but after he does he confesses he has no inner passion, so she backs off. He chases after her and they have a brief affair. Rayette has left the motel and gone up to see the Dupea family and they're not turned off by her lower-class demeanor like Bobby thought they would be. That night they have a guest over for a lecture, and Bobby is annoyed by the lecturer and the way she's seemingly talking down to everyone, and leaves the room.
Bobby still has feelings for Catherine, and roams the halls looking for her, and walks in on his sister Partita getting a massage from the father's nurse Spicer (John Ryan). He tries to fight Spicer. Bobby finally runs into Catherine who has chosen to stay with Carl. Bobby apologizes to his catatonic father for being such a disappointment. Bobby and Rayette finally leave and go back to Southern California.
The ending they don't show has him leaving her at a truck stop and hitching a ride with a trucker to start a new life.
And here's another photo they had in the letters column of celebrities enjoying their parody.
Another thing: at the bottom of page 4, the knight who seeks the grail is Richard Kiley as Don Quixote in the original Broadway production of Man Of La Mancha. I was able to track it down because this is another occasion where Drucker borrowed from Hirschfeld.
"Drawn here are other famous classical musicians from the time."
ReplyDeleteSpecifically, Glenn Gould, Liberace, Schroeder (from Peanuts) and Leonard Bernstein.
Another thing: at the bottom of page 4, the knight who seeks the grail is Richard Kiley as Don Quixote in the original Broadway production of Man Of La Mancha. I was able to track it down because this is another occasion where Drucker borrowed from Hirschfeld.
DeleteI got another one wrong - that's not Glenn Gould, it's Van Cliburn.
Delete