Close Encounters of the Treasured Kind #9: Carole Eastman / Capturing a Golden Moment #18: Five Easy Pieces

Carole Eastman

Carole Eastman aka Adrien Joyce (February 19, 1934 - February 13, 2004) performed as a ballet dancer, model and actress before becoming a screenwriter in the 1960s. As an actress she appeared in a number of TV series including The Untouchables (1961) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1962) and became a close friend of Jack Nicholson when they attended the same acting classes. She wound up writing the scripts for four of his films: The Shooting (1966), Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Fortune (1975) and Man Trouble (1992). Carole was a frequent visitor at a restaurant I managed in L.A. but always picked up her order to go. She was shy, quiet and gracious which together with ordering restaurant food, sparked my curiosity about an iconic scene she wrote for Five Easy Pieces: the one I've chosen as our next Golden Moment below.  

A.G.

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Director: Bob Rafelson

Scene: "Ordering Toast"

I asked writer Carole Eastman (aka Adrien Joyce) specifically about this scene and she said the waitress was not meant to come off so disparagingly. It was written to emphasise Jack Nicholson's character as the one with the bad behaviour, but was filmed to make the waitress look mean and disagreeable. Either way, it became a legendary motion picture scene, one I feel privileged to have spoken to its creator about. I was saddened to hear the news of her passing in 2004.