The “best rock and roll movie ever made,” according to Jack Nicholson: “I loved it”
Music and movies have been cross-pollinating for decades, with actors recording albums and musicians trying their hand at acting, and while Jack Nicholson was never interested in entering the recording booth and belting out a few tunes, he certainly lived a rock and roll lifestyle.
When the ‘New Hollywood’ icon was tearing it up in the 1970s, movie stars and rock stars were basically the same thing; they had legions of adoring fans, they couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed, anything they did sold tickets, and there were plenty of sex, drugs, and women along the way.
Nicholson embraced the debauchery of the period more than most, and he’s up there with any of music’s most notorious hell raisers. He also happened to be one of his era’s greatest talents in front of the camera, though, which meant he wasn’t in danger of losing himself in a haze of excess and indulgence.
Before he became a household name, an Academy Award winner, and an A-list fixture, the aspiring star fancied himself as more of a filmmaker than a performer. His interest in writing and directing quickly evaporated once he started riding that post-Easy Rider wave, but he does believe that he’s responsible for the greatest rock and roll flick in cinema history.
The bespoke subgenre has always been hit or miss, but few entries have ever been as wilfully bizarre as 1968’s Head. A psychedelic spinoff to The Monkees’ TV series, Nicholson produced the picture and co-wrote the script alongside the show’s co-creator, Bob Rafelson, who’d go on to become one of his most trusted collaborators.
In what shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s seen it, the story was concocted by the brain trust of Nicholson, Rafelson, and The Monkees while they were under the influence of drugs, leading to a virtually plotless escapade that finds the group embarking on a bizarre adventure where they find a habit of running into several counterculture figureheads.
It wasn’t exactly made for a wide audience, and neither was it anyone’s idea of a mainstream film. A disastrous early screening saw almost 25 minutes of footage removed, and when it was released, it bombed at the box office because nobody could understand why The Monkees had taken a sledgehammer to their carefully curated public image to make something so insane.
“Nobody ever saw it, man, but I saw it 158 million times,” Nicholson told Rex Reed, coming completely from a place of personal bias. “I loved it. Filmically, it’s the best rock and roll movie ever made. I mean, it’s anti-rock and roll. Has no form. Unique in structure, which is hard to do in movies.”
Unsurprisingly, its writer and producer was one of Head‘s staunchest supporters. When the dust had settled, he even suggested that he’d prefer it if the movie never found an audience, allowing him a second bite at the apple that would be guaranteed to succeed. “I hope nobody ever likes it,” he said. “I’m going to remake it with The Beatles, and then everybody will love it.” Obviously, he did not.
