Of all the creative energies and commercial synergies that swirled around Hollywood at the end of the 1960s, surely the strangest was the one between the Monkees, actor Jack Nicholson and the producer-director who was to become a presiding genius of the American new wave: Bob Rafelson. Yet if Rafelson had not co-created pop music’s great boyband in his capacity as a TV producer, his company would not have been as madly successful as it was: he would not have been able to produce Dennis Hopper’s countercultural classic Easy Rider in 1969 (co-starring Nicholson) and Peter Bogdanovich’s cinephile gem The Last Picture Show in 1971. And it all allowed Rafelson to become a key director of the time, with an enduring partnership with Nicholson that gave birth to some of the greatest films of the era.
The Monkees had given Rafelson crucial professional access to the world of popular music which plugged him into the zeitgeist – or, to be exact, an expertise in fabricating the zeitgeist. The band he helped invent may not have been as cool as the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, but they starred in the film he directed and co-wrote with Nicholson: the ineffably freaky and directionless all-star zanefest Head in 1968 which did nothing but annoy the critics and the Monkees’ more conservative fanbase. It’s been doggedly claiming cult status ever since.
