Bob Rafelson, a Monkees co-creator who became an influential figure in the New Hollywood era of the 1970s, has died. He was 89 years old. Rafelson died at his home in Aspen Saturday night surrounded by his family, said his wife, Gabrielle Taurek Rafelson.
Rafelson co-created the fictional pop group and television series The Monkees with the late Bert Schneider, which won him an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1967.
But Rafelson was perhaps best known for his work during the New Hollywood era, which saw a classic studio system give way to a batch of rebellious young voices and new filmmaking styles, and helping to introduce talents such as Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg.
Jessica Lange, left, and Jack Nicholson in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Photograph: TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy
Rafelson directed and co-wrote Five Easy Pieces, about an upper-class pianist longing for a more blue-collar life, and The King of Marvin Gardens, about a depressed afternoon radio talk show host. Both films starred Jack Nicholson and explored themes of the American dream gone wrong. Five Easy Pieces earned Rafelson two Oscar nominations in 1971, for best picture and screenplay.
Along with Bert Schneider, Rafelson also produced seminal New Hollywood classics such as Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show and Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider. Coppola once called him “one of the most important film artists of his time.”
The Monkees in 1967. Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Rafelson was born in New York City and was a distant relative of The Jazz Singer screenwriter Samson Raphaelson, who said he took an interest in her work. At Dartmouth he also befriended legendary screenwriter Buck Henry. He developed an interest in Japanese cinema and the films of Yasujiro Ozu, especially Tokyo Story, while serving in the US Army in Japan.
After college, Rafelson married her high school sweetheart Toby Carr, who would work as a production designer on her and other films. He got his start in the television entertainment business, writing for shows like The Witness and The Greatest Show on Earth.
But The Monkees was his first big hit. The idea for The Monkees, he said, predated the Beatles and their comedy A Hard Day’s Night, but it was well-timed when it premiered on NBC in 1966. It ran for two years and allowed Rafelson to make a stab to address. The Monkees appeared on his directorial debut, Head, which would be the first of many collaborations with Nicholson. “He may have thought I started his career,” Nicholson told Esquire in 2019, “but I think he started my career.”
Karen Black, left, and Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces. Photograph: Columbia/Sportsphoto/Allstar
Rafelson was most proud of the 1990 film he directed, Mountains of the Moon, a biopic that told the story of two explorers, Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, as they searched for the source of the Nile, he said Taurek Rafelson.
Rafelson left Hollywood two decades ago to focus on raising two children with Taurek Rafelson, Ethan and Harper, in Aspen. He and his first wife, Toby Rafelson, also had two children, Peter and Julie, who died in 1973 at the age of 10.