Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/569837
dga quarterly 51 PHOTO: COLUMBIA/PHOTOFEST where Bobby comes from—a family of oddball classical musicians— he learns that their father has suffered two strokes. Partita wants Bobby to visit him in Washington on their family's island estate. He reluc- tantly agrees and leaves the studio, at which point Rafelson cuts to a jarring, up-close, handheld shot of Bobby having torrid, furniture- crashing sex with the previously introduced bowling alley pickup. "That cut is great, dynamic," says Cholodenko. "It says a lot about the character's inner life without being expository. He's got a lot of anxiety and stress, and wants to cut loose and be free. He's pent up. He's freaking out, and wants to fuck everything up. It said to me, re- ally think about what you want to express subtextually with the cam- era. It can be in sync with whatever the emotion is." Bobby hits the road, with Rayette tagging along, and stops to give a ride to two women stranded by a car wreck, one of whom (Hel- ena Kallianiotes) immediately dominates the space with coarse ha- rangues ("It's all crap!") about humanity. Though it's never stated clearly, Cholodenko voices what clued-in 1970 audiences might have educatedly guessed: "Here's the lesbians, right?" says a laughing Cholodenko, who's made a few films addressing the lesbian expe- rience. "This was 1970. They're a little bit stereotypical, but it was overs, and this is very anti-Hollywood." The next hint that Bobby isn't really a blue-collar guy is during a traffic jam on a highway. First he gets out of his car, perturbed, and yells at drivers, a scene that shows Nicholson in full tantrum mode. "You sense this openness between actor and director," says Cholodenko. "This has been a big influence on me. I try to be very clear about what scripts and actors are about, where they're headed, and holding that space, and it's allowed me to let the actor go off book, to add things I might not have thought of. Annette Bening did that a lot on The Kids Are All Right (2010)." Bobby then climbs atop a truck bed carting a piano and bangs out a song over the din of honking horns as the truck pulls away. Clearly, he's a musician. "Eighteen minutes in and we discover this about the guy," says Cholodenko. "It's beautiful that the piano's out of tune. It's a foreshadow. I like that it's a lot of simple metaphors, like this thing about the road. He never really cares where he's going. He's just going." After discovering Rayette might be pregnant, Rafelson cuts to Bob- by in a suit and tie driving into Los Angeles. He enters a recording studio booth where his nervous-looking sister, Partita (Lois Smith), is sitting at a grand piano recording an album. As we realize that this is