Product Details

• Actors: Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson
• Directors: Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Bob Rafelson, Henry Jaglom, Peter Bogdanovich
• Format: Widescreen
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 6
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Criterion Collection
• DVD Release Date: November 23, 2010
• Run Time: 691 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B003ZYU3SC
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #37,075 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
  • #71 in Movies & TV > Blu-ray > Musicals
• For more information about "America Lost and Found: The BBS Story (Head / Easy Rider / Five Easy Pieces / Drive, He Said / The Last Picture Show / The King of Marvin Gardens / A Safe Place) (The Criterion Collection)[Blu-ray]" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Head (1968)
While the Beatles delighted fans with A Hard Day's Night, the Monkees confounded theirs with Head. Bob Rafelson, who cocreated the prefab four's hit television series, penned this psychedelic showbiz satire with Jack Nicholson, star of the director's acclaimed follow-up Five Easy Pieces. In an accompanying interview, Rafelson acknowledges, "Quite frankly, there was a bit of acid involved." That's clear from the start as drummer Micky Dolenz jumps from the Golden Gate Bridge to the lilting, lysergic strains of Carole King and Gerry Goffin's "The Porpoise Song." Unharmed, Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork proceed to play pop stars, soldiers, and cowboys at war with the public, actor Victor Mature ("The Big Victor"), and the star-making machinery (Rafelson and Nicholson break the fourth wall with their brief cameos). Jones also boxes Sonny Liston, woos Annette Funicello, chats with Frank Zappa ("The Critic"), and dances with choreographer-turned-singer Toni Basil of "Hey Mickey" fame. It's rambling and discursive, but the musical sequences, which anticipate the video era to come, are great. This Criterion edition comes with a swell selection of extras, including commentary from the band, trailers and promo spots, a snazzy slide show, an awkward TV interview, screen tests in which the quartet's innate charm shines through, and an informative documentary about BBS (the production company of Rafelson, Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner) with historian Douglas Brinkley and critic David Thomson, who describes Rafelson and associates as "hippies, dopers, party animals to the max." --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Easy Rider (1969)
This box-office hit from 1969 is an important pioneer of the American independent cinema movement, and a generational touchstone to boot. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper play hippie motorcyclists crossing the Southwest and encountering a crazy quilt of good and bad people. Jack Nicholson turns up in a significant role as an attorney who joins their quest for awhile and articulates society's problem with freedom as Fonda's and Hopper's characters embody it. Hopper directed, essentially bringing the no-frills filmmaking methods of legendary, drive-in movie producer Roger Corman (The Little Shop of Horrors) to a serious feature for the mainstream. The film can't help but look a bit dated now (a psychedelic sequence toward the end particularly doesn't hold up well), but it retains its original power, sense of daring, and epochal impact. --Tom Keogh

Five Easy Pieces (1970)
This subtle, existential character study of an emotionally distant outcast (Nicholson) forced to confront his past failures remains an intimate cornerstone of American '70s cinema. Written and directed with remarkable restraint by Bob Rafelson, the film is the result of a short-lived partnership between the filmmaker and Nicholson--the first was the zany formalist exercise, Head, while the equally impressive King of Marvin Gardens followed Five Easy Pieces. Quiet and full of long, controlled takes, this film draws its strength from the acutely detailed, nonjudgmental observations of its complex protagonist, Robert Dupea--an extremely crass and frustrated oil worker, and failed child pianist hiding from his past in Texas. Dupea spends his life drinking beer and sleeping with (and cheating on) his annoying but adoring Tammy Wynette-wannabe girlfriend, but when he learns that his father is dying in Washington State, he leaves. After the film transforms into a spirited road movie, and arrives at the eccentric upper-class Dupea family mansion, it becomes apparent that leaving is what Dupea does best--from his problems, fears, and those who love him. Nicholson gives a difficult yet masterful performance in an unlikable role, one that's full of ambiguity and requires violent shifts in acting style. Several sequences--such as his stopping traffic to play piano, or his famous verbal duels with a cranky waitress over a chicken-salad sandwich--are Nicholson landmarks. Yet, it's the quieter moments, when Dupea tries miserably to communicate and reconcile with his dying father, where the actor shows his real talent--and by extension, shows us the wounded little boy that lurks in the shell of the man Dupea has become. --Dave McCoy

Drive, He Said (1971)
Jack Nicholson's first directing effort is a sports movie as it might have been conceived by Jean-Luc Godard, rife with kinetic editing and easy eroticism (as well as the casual sexism of the time). Hector (William Tepper, who later played Tom Hanks's father in Bachelor Party) is a rising college basketball star in a troubled relationship with dance student Olive (Karen Black, Five Easy Pieces), while his roommate, guerrilla theater student/political activist Gabriel (Michael Margotta, Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?), keeps himself awake so long to avoid the draft that he slips into madness. There is no plot per se, though the ebb and flow of Hector's relationship with his bullying coach (Bruce Dern, Silent Running) runs throughout the movie. Drive, He Said is mostly a state-of-consciousness film, striving to capture the mood of student unrest of the late 1960s/early '70s, a mix of manic frustration and existential dislocation (some scenes were shot during an actual student riot). The opening sequence, in which the guerrilla theater troupe disrupts a basketball game, is stunning, and the raw immediacy of how Nicholson, a notorious basketball fan, shot the playing was hugely influential. Contemporary audiences may grow impatient with the loose narrative, but visually intriguing moments and empathetic turns of character abound--if you surrender to the movie's idiosyncratic flow, Drive, He Said is a rewarding experience. --Bret Fetzer

A Safe Place (1971)
A Safe Place, Henry Jaglom's first feature film, succeeds on so many levels it is difficult to name a mere few. In attitude, one could call it kin to Easy Rider, the film Jaglom assistant edited with Dennis Hopper, and which led to Jaglom's affiliation with Jack Nicholson, who plays Mitch, Susan's unscrupulous ex-boyfriend in A Safe Place. While the film technically tells the story of Susan, a.k.a. Noah (Tuesday Weld), and her tenuous relationship with the more conservative Fred (Phil Proctor), A Safe Place operates more like a poetic, colorful dip into the consciousness of the characters who star in the film. Editing goes chronologically awry, flashing back and forth, repeating and skipping scenes; settings and conversations tie loosely together according to Susan's skewed logic; and a few key plot digressions create a melancholy, psychedelic mood more than they fortify Susan's tale in any straightforward way. These traits make the film. While time slips away under the spells of a homemade Ouija board that Susan and her friends play with, and is marked by her preoccupations with a mysterious Magician (Orson Welles) pulling rainbows out of boxes and trying to make zoo animals disappear, A Safe Place evokes the mystical, idealistic climate of the 1960s. In its intimate portrayal of Susan/Noah, constantly staring into the camera and revealing her thoughts through breathy dialogue, the film also lays the groundwork for Jaglom's desire to make women's films, as he did with Eating: A Very Serious Comedy About Women and Food and Babyfever. Somehow, through Jaglom's abstract, theatrical storytelling method, which is further explained in some informative director interviews in the extras, themes reveal themselves elegantly. On one level a simple love story, A Safe Place invites viewers to dig deeply into the universal fears inherent to most relationships: fears of repeating the same mistakes, fears of inability to love, fears of the future, fears of becoming too attached. All these fears, collaged into a patchwork of scenic moments and clips, miraculously express levels of human awareness that far exceed those in the average romantic comedy. --Trinie Dalton


The Last Picture Show (1971)
Like Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, and The Graduate, The Last Picture Show is one of the signature films of the "New Hollywood" that emerged in the late 1960s and early '70s. Based on the novel by Larry McMurtry and lovingly directed by Peter Bogdanovich (who cowrote the script with McMurtry), this 1971 drama has been interpreted as an affectionate tribute to classic Hollywood filmmaking and the great directors (such as John Ford) that Bogdanovich so deeply admired. It's also a eulogy for lost innocence and small-town life, so accurately rendered that critic Roger Ebert called it "the best film of 1951," referring to the movie's one-year time frame, its black-and-white cinematography (by Robert Surtees), and its sparse but evocative visual style. The story is set in the tiny, dying town of Anarene, Texas, where the main-street movie house is about to close for good, and where a pair of high-school football players are coming of age and struggling to define their uncertain futures. There's little to do in Anarene, and while Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) engages in a passionless fling with his football coach's wife (Cloris Leachman), his best friend Duane (Jeff Bridges) enlists for service in the Korean War. Both boys fall for a manipulative high-school beauty (Cybill Shepherd) who's well aware of her sexual allure. But it's not so much what happens in The Last Picture show as how it happens--and how Bogdanovich and his excellent cast so effectively capture the melancholy mood of a ghost town in the making. As Hank Williams sings on the film's evocative soundtrack, The Last Picture Show looks, feels, and sounds like a sad but unforgettably precious moment out of time. --Jeff Shannon

The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)
In The King of Marvin Gardens, Jack Nicholson plays against type; he's a depressive, introspective radio host, while Bruce Dern costars as his wild, dreamy brother always at work on his next scheme. When Dern invites Nicholson to get involved in a plot to buy a tropical island with someone else's money, Nicholson goes along for the ride. Everything about the film is surreal, from Ellen Burstyn as Dern's girlfriend, who begins to realize she's aging out of the games Dern plays, to the way the film is shot, with conversations on horseback and a private reenactment of the Miss America pageant with Nicholson in the Bert Parks role, singing "Here she comes, Miss America…." While the movie is not satisfying on every level, what director Bob Rafelson does best is to keep the audience off kilter, wondering who, if anyone, is the sane one. Extras include interviews with Burstyn, Dern, and Rafelson in which Rafelson admits Nicholson's opening monologue comes from a college essay that got him kicked out of class. --Paige Newman

Product Description

Like the rest of America, Hollywood was ripe for revolution in the late sixties. Cinema attendance was down; what had once worked seemed broken. Enter Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner, who knew that what Hollywood needed was new audiences—namely, young people—and that meant cultivating new talent and new ideas. Fueled by money made from their invention of the superstar TV pop group the Monkees, they set off on a film-industry journey that would lead them to form BBS Productions, a company that was also a community.

The innovative films produced by this team between 1968 and 1972 are collected in this box set—works created within the studio system but lifted right out of the countercultural id, and that now range from the iconic (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show) to the acclaimed (The King of Marvin Gardens) to the obscure (Head; Drive, He Said; A Safe Place).

Head (1968)
Hey, hey, it’s the Monkees... being catapulted through one of American cinema’s most surreal '60s odysseys. In it, Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork become trapped in a kaleidoscopic satire that’s movie homage, media send-up, concert movie, and antiwar cry all at once. Head escaped commercial success on its release but has since been reclaimed as one of the great cult objects of its era.
(85 minutes, color, monaural/surround, 1.78:1 aspect ratio)

Easy Rider (1969)
This is the definitive counterculture blockbuster. The former clean-cut teen star Dennis Hopper’s down-and-dirty directorial debut, Easy Rider heralded the arrival of a new voice in film, one planted firmly, angrily against the mainstream. After Easy Rider’s cross-country journey—with its radical, New Wave-style editing, outsider-rock soundtrack, revelatory performance by a young Jack Nicholson, and explosive ending—the American road trip would never be the same.
(96 minutes, color, surround, 1.85:1 aspect ratio)

Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Jack Nicholson plays the now iconic cad Bobby Dupea, a shiftless thirtysomething oil rigger and former piano prodigy immune to any sense of romantic or familial responsibility, who returns to his childhood home to see his ailing estranged father, his blue-collar girlfriend (Karen Black, like Nicholson nominated for an Oscar) in tow. Moving in its simplicity and gritty in its textures, Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces is a lasting example of early 1970s American alienation.
(98 minutes, color, monaural, 1.85:1 aspect ratio)

Drive, He Said (1970)
Based on the best-selling novel by Jeremy Larner, Drive, He Said is free-spirited and sobering by turns, a sketch of the exploits of a disaffected college basketball player and his increasingly radical roommate, a feverishly shot and edited snapshot of the early '70s (some of it was filmed during an actual campus protest). Jack Nicholson’s audacious comedy (starring Bruce Dern and Karen Black) is a startling howl direct from the zeitgeist.
(90 minutes, color, monaural, 1.85:1 aspect ratio)

A Safe Place (1971)
In this delicate, introspective drama, laced with fantasy elements, Tuesday Weld stars as a fragile young woman in New York unable to reconcile her ambiguous past with her unmoored present; Orson Welles as an enchanting Central Park magician and Jack Nicholson as a mysterious ex-lover round out the cast. A Safe Place was directed by independent cinema icon Henry Jaglom.
(92 minutes, color, monaural, 1.85:1 aspect ratio)

The Last Picture Show (1971)
The Last Picture Show is one of the key films of the American cinema renaissance of the '70s. Set during the early '50s in the loneliest Texas nowheresville to ever dust up a movie screen, this aching portrait of a dying West, adapted from Larry McMurtry’s novel, focuses on the daily shuffles of three futureless teens—enigmatic Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), (Jeff Bridges), and desperate-to-be-adored rich girl Jacy (Cybil Shepherd)—and the aging lost souls who bump up against them in the night like drifting tumbleweeds. This hushed depiction of crumbling American values remains the pivotal film in the career of the invaluable director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich.
(126 minutes, black and white, monaural, 1.85:1 aspect ratio)

The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)
For his electrifying follow-up to the smash success of Five Easy Pieces, Bob Rafelson dug even deeper into the crushed dreams of wayward America. Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern play estranged siblings David and Jason, the former a depressive late-night radio talk show host, the latter an extroverted con man; when Jason drags his younger brother to a dreary Atlantic City and into a real-estate scam, events spiral into tragedy.
(104 minutes, color, monaural, 1.85:1 aspect ratio)

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34 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Counterculture And A Film Revolution--Criterion Collects Film History, October 26, 2010

By 

K. Harris "Film aficionado" (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: America Lost & Found: The BBS Story (Head / Easy Rider / Five Easy Pieces / Drive, He Said / The Last Picture Show / The King of Marvin Gardens / A Safe Place) (The Criterion Collection) (DVD)

With so many surprising and great releases, I've come to take Criterion for granted. But then comes the announcement of "America Lost and Found: The BBS Story" and I'm like an excited kid on Christmas morning. Amazon has done a comprehensive job listing the contents of this impressive set, so I'm going to direct my comments at the eclectic mix of films provided. The BBS story is no less than a film revolution that occurred in the late sixties to try to foster younger artists to the industry and cultivate younger, more adventurous film goers. All films within "America Lost and Found" were produced between 1968 and 1972 and represent a challenge to the conventional film narrative of that period. In retrospect, some of the films have been proclaimed classics while others have become somewhat obsolete. But all are fascinating examples of an artistic rebellion that influenced the film industry for years to come (all the more astounding as much of the company's financing came from the funds generated by the Monkees).

My personal favorite within "America Lost and Found" is Peter Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show" which has been begging for a better DVD release. An evocative look at a dying small town, this gorgeous black and white film is supremely entertaining and boasts a spectacular cast. Desolate and spare, the film tells the story of Sonny and Duane who as they approach manhood must face the harsh realities of life, love, and friendship. Nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture, the film won supporting statuettes for Ben Johnson (a career high) and Cloris Leachman. Jeff Bridges and Ellen Burstyn also received nods as did Bogdanovich for Directing and Screenplay (which he co-wrote with the incredible Larry McMurtry).

Two other undeniable classics in counterculture are Dennis Hopper's "Easy Rider" and Bob Rafelson's "Five Easy Pieces." "Easy Rider" picked up two Oscar nods (including Jack Nicholson's first) and tells the simple story of two motorcyclists' journey across America. Capturing a specific time so perfectly, the film seems to embrace the anti-establishment freedom of its leads (Hopper and Peter Fonda) while making the compelling argument that ultimate freedom is an illusion and that choosing to challenge societal norms thus becomes the norm. And "Five Easy Pieces," another of my all time favorites, was nominated for 4 Oscars (including Jack Nicholson and Karen Black). Another journey picture (both in physical travels as well as in the spiritual/psychological realm), Rafelson's landmark has one of Nicholson's most iconic performances in a film that is immensely angry and riotously funny by turn. The chicken salad sandwich scene is an undisputed classic in American cinema!

Bob Rafelson's well regarded "The King of Marvin Gardens" is also included. An underrated gem set in Atlantic City, this tale of brotherhood and dreaming big casts a realistic light on a get-rich-quick scam gone wrong. Nicholson and Burstyn are on hand, as is Bruce Dern--and this compelling quasi-masterpiece shows the three on disparate (and times desperate) paths toward redemption. Rafelson also supplies this collection with the bizarre "Head," a meandering and psychedelic excursion into the minds of The Monkees. With a documentary feel, the film follows The Monkees on numerous and random musical encounters and celebrates their celebrity while at the same time seeming to indict the culture who embraces such excesses. Jack Nicholson makes his directorial debut on the uneven "Drive, He Said"--noteworthy mostly for the Nicholson credit. Depicting the college experience in the sixties, "Drive" tells the story of a disaffected basketball player. Introducing many plot threads, the film fails to follow an effective through line and is a fairly disjointed (though interesting) effort. And lastly there is Henry Jaglom's "A Safe Place," another oddity of interior monologue with Tuesday Weld descending into a world of fantasy.

Many of the films in "America Lost and Found" share a thematic connection. The films eschew conventional plot driven narratives in favor of character study. These directors wanted to present a realistic portrait of the era in which they lived and not an idealized film world. And many of the central characters in all the works are seeking to identify their place in the modern world or, indeed, determine if they have a place at all. The BBC story, through film, is an intriguing and progressive one in that it functioned in the studio system. Independent cinema of today still reflects many of the same ideals. A must have collection for film lovers. KGHarris, 10/10.

33 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars HEAD Finally gets a proper release! (5 stars for that movie alone), December 5, 2010

By 

Kevin Stafford (Rhode Island USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: America Lost & Found: The BBS Story (Head / Easy Rider / Five Easy Pieces / Drive, He Said / The Last Picture Show / The King of Marvin Gardens / A Safe Place) (The Criterion Collection) (DVD)

Since I am mostly commenting on the "HEAD" portion of this set, I should include that already having "Five Easy Pieces" in a restored version on DVD and "Easy Rider" has been reissued numerous times with not much bonus material here, this print of "HEAD" is from the original 35mm negative! Where-as the awful DVD release from Rhino, who lies in a leader frame that the Full Frame format is how the film was meant to be seen! I beg to differ and bow to Criterion for releasing this incredible movie in glorious widescreen and in a true 5.1! Don't worry, those purist that still listen through a Stereo Reciever (because MOST humans only have 2 ears),like myself..the stereo seperation will blow you away, especially if you have the inferior RHINO release, you need not do a side by side comparison! Not only are the songs in true stereo but the entire soundtrack through-out the entire movie. Including the closing credits (Known on the Colgems soundtrack as "PLus Strings") by Ken Thorne. Which also gives RHINO another bad mark. In October, RHINO released a "HEAD Deluxe CD boxset" and list the "Plus Strings as "stereo" and they are most certainly not, yet Criterion goes the extra mile and finds true masters to all the Stereo songs plus Ken thorne's excellent incidental music! "Porpoise Song" has the nice deep low ends and crystal clear highs. Special credit with the live "Circle Sky" and "As We Go Along" where the vocals were burried on the RHINO release. Not so on this print. You feel as if the movie were filmed yesterday! Not bad for a 42 year old film! The colors are vibrant and the print is so sharp you may want to keep your hands away from the screen! Criterion deserves an award for thier excellence!

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank You Criterion!, January 3, 2011

By 

Bob (Seminole, Florida) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: America Lost and Found: The BBS Story (Head / Easy Rider / Five Easy Pieces / Drive, He Said / The Last Picture Show / The King of Marvin Gardens / A Safe Place) (The Criterion Collection)[Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

I hadn't heard about this collection until i ran a search for Head on Blu Ray here at Amazon. At first I was ecstatic that it was on Blu Ray but dismayed that it was only available as part of a collection. When I saw the other films included coupled with the price being right i decided to buy it. I have now watched all the films and wasn't disappointed. Criterion does an excellent job with the HD transfers and the extras on each film.

Head was a lost gem I first saw on the CBS Late Movie in the early 1970s. To understand it, it helps to have some background about the Monkees and the myths surrounding them, as well as their desire to be taken seriously as a 1960s rock group. I already owned the Rhino DVD version, which professed that the 1:33 to 1 aspect ratio was original intended version. Nothing could be further from the truth; here it is presented in its original 1:78 to 1 aspect ratio (16:9 in the parlance of our times). The extras are very informative as is the commentary by Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork, Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz. Finally, an honorable version of this wonderful cult film!

I have seen Easy Rider several times over the years; the last time I saw it was a DVD presentation and I found it to be somewhat dated. However, due to the excellent HD transfer I was less focused on the lingo of the day and more on Laszlo Kovac's excellent cinematography. It's amazing how great the film looks with a proper transfer and it gave me a greatly renewed interest. Again, the extras are top-notch and very informative. It's equally impressive how much "bang for the buck" BBS got from all their films.

Five Easy Pieces was another film I already owned on DVD but again, this version looks wonderful.

The Last Picture Show is one of my favorite 1970s films and I never owned it before now. Again, the extras are excellent and the transfer is impeccable.

I had never seen the remaining films. A Safe Place and Drive, He Said were my least favorites though they are certainly interesting curious from the era. Sometimes films like these require repeated viewings to be fully appreciated though the acting in each were superb and both were original and imaginative. The King of Marvin Gardens was excellent and I'm surprised it didn't do well in its theatrical release years ago. Still, Criterion gave all the Class A treatment with high quality HD transfers and informative, interesting extras.

Criterion must be commended for their great efforts on this set. It's well worth purchasing and will provide several hours of viewing pleasure.