It reeked of Hollywood.
The reporter, in trying to get an interview with famed film director Bob Rafelson '54 , was passed from one office to the next, repeatedly put on hold.
Then came the assistant who continuously called him "babe" and, in ambitious defense of her employer, insisted he not discuss longtime friend and collaborator Jack Nicholson nor their upcoming film with the press-weary Rafelson.
This was the man who practically invented counterculture in the 1960's? The maverick director of the 1970's? Gone Hollywood?
But then Rafelson took the phone.
A gruff, laconic figure still using expletives well into his sixties. A seasoned filmmaker who hasn't stopped bashing the big studios even after forty years of coexisting with them. A man who seemed far more interested in discussing the changes at his alma mater than his own career -- "So there are girls at Dartmouth now?"
Now this was the man whose "Easy Rider" helped redefine cinema, defining an era.
This was the man who turned Nicholson into a star and with their "Five Easy Pieces" turned alienation into an art form.
And this was the man who will receive the prestigious Dartmouth Film Award on April 18.
Although impressed with the current film community at Dartmouth, Rafelson has few memories of such a society during his days at the college. He was a philosophy major whose artistic discovery came when he won the Frost Playwriting Contest for a play he later directed.
After graduating in 1954, he joined the military service, became a disc jockey in Tokyo and later joined a band in Mexico.
After minor jobs in TV, he soon brought the sixties counterculture to mainstream America by assembling and producing The Monkees as well as their popular television series.
He soon directed his first film, 1968's "Head," which he co-wrote with his friend Nicholson and starred The Monkees. The movie was essentially a filmed LSD trip, to which Rafelson freely admits having done thorough research for. Yet in the past years, according to Rafelson, the film has resurfaced as a cult classic due to the manner in which it "exposes" 1960's rock groups.
With success in hand, he went on to form his own production company and vocalized a philosophy that he still maintains today: "directors make films, make a company that permits that."
The first film he produced through his company was 1969's "Easy Rider." Directed by Dennis Hopper, the film follows Hopper, Peter Fonda and a breakthrough performance by Nicholson as they crossed the country on their motorcycles.
"The film nearly collapsed in the first week," causing Rafelson to mortgage his house in order to keep it afloat. But his confidence in his director and his vision helped make the film a monumental success and turned the 1960's underground into popular culture.
He then returned to the director's chair to bring "Five Easy Pieces," which he co-wrote, to the big screen with Nicholson in the starring roll. With it, Rafelson explored characters and themes that had never before been touched on by the American cinema.
"We were aspiring to make something different," he says of his film. And he did with his story of an outcast trying to regain lost connections with his family and himself. The film portrayed its characters with an uncommon, intimate touch that left a permanent mark on modern cinema.
The film was nominated for four Academy Awards in 1970, including best picture.
He continued bringing his original vision to the screen in films such as the erotic thriller, "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1982), and the historical epic, "Mountains of the Moon" (1989).
Loyal to his 1970's roots, he calls the Hollywood producers of today "marketers, not filmmakers," and he stresses how difficult it is to make small, intimate films in the 1990's.
Which makes the $22 million he managed to raise for his upcoming "Blood and Wine" all the more impressive. The film, to be shown during his appearance at Dartmouth, once again stars Nicholson, this time opposite Michael Caine and Judy Davis.
Rafelson feels the film is a completion of the trilogy he started with "Five Easy Pieces" and "The King of Marvin Gardens." It explores the same family themes, but this time in the form of a neo-noir thriller. A bloody, often down right nasty film that deals with a jewel heist gone wrong and the sexual tensions that run through a family.
On the Dartmouth Film Award he is to receive, Rafelson finds "a pleasing irony to have gone to a college and received its award."
Keeping with his rebel filmmaker status, he never attended the Oscars, even when nominated. But he will be returning to Hanover: "I haven't been a big believer in most competitions, but I'm more comfortable with this format."
"Of course," he deadpans, "no one knows what the f--k I look like anyway."
