In 1970, the '60s may have been over, but the youth of America was still riding the crest of the Woodstock Festival into the brand new decade. In 1969, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Charles Manson directed his followers to commit the Tate-LaBianca murders, Senator Edward Kennedy drove his car off a bridge, American troops illegally invaded Cambodia and had a continued presence in Vietnam, and American cinema celebrated the life of the hippie with Easy Rider. 1970 seemed an extension of 1969 as the Chicago Seven were convicted of conspiracy to riot, National Guardsmen shot and killed four students at Kent State University, and American cinema celebrated the restlessness of the new middle class in Five Easy Pieces (Lev, p.189-191). .
The success of Five Easy Pieces in America was an encouraging sign for American movies in an otherwise depressing time. In 1969 the surprising popularity of unconventional, 'downbeat' movies like Midnight Cowboy, Alice's Restaurant, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and, particularly, Easy Rider seemed to represent the beginning of a vital new phase in the development of the American film. Also in 1970, younger film-makers were given unusual freedom to create personal projects dealing frankly with contemporary social problems. Five Easy Pieces is a prime example of a young film-maker creating a personal project that deals frankly with contemporary social problems (Lev, p.6).
Five Easy Pieces, written by Adrien Joyce and directed by Bob Rafelson, fulfils the promise of the 1969 films that came before it. Like Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces is a 'road' picture. It is loosely structured, rough, portrait of the contemporary American drifter. It is independently produced film, unorthodox in both theme and style, as Easy Rider was; but it is also a more mature and honest work and a critique of some of the unacknowledged assumptions of Easy Rider. Many of the same people who worked on Easy Rider worked on Five Easy Pieces.