Vincent Longo's essay “Bob Rafelson’s Ambivalent Authorship” was recently published in the anthology The Other Hollywood Renaissance, eds. Dominic Lennard, Barton Palmer, and Murray Pomerance (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). Longo’s essay follows Rafelson’s career as a director and counterculturist in the 1970s. During this time, Rafelson directed three films: Five Easy Pieces (1970), King of Marvin Gardens (1972), and Stay Hungry (1976). In each Rafelson attempted to establish himself as a so-called auteur while creatingfilms that explicitly critiqued American class structures and hierarchies. Through close readings of these films and examinations of Rafelson’s textual and paratextual self-promotion, Longo argues that Rafelson’s changing conceptions of film authorship and attempts to brand himself as an auteur clashed and often undermined attempted critiques of class-division in his films during this time.
