Family Plot(1976) and "The King of Marvin Gardens" (1972) (Dern/Nicholson)

I saw Bob Rafelson's "The King of Marvin Gardens" the other night -- one of those movies that it took literally decades to see. It was a 1972 release -- and I was around in 1972 -- but I just never managed to ever see it til recently.

The film is Rafelson's high-art, low-excitement, rather incoherent follow up to Five Easy Pieces and, I guess, was considered a disappointment after that breakthrough film for the 70's. You ask me, they are BOTH pretty over-arty and pretentious, but that's the kind of filmmaker Bob Rafelson was, and that's the kind of movie his sponsors the "hip" BBS Entertainment wanted to make as the 70's launched. By the 80's, BBS was gone and Rafelson became a wandering has-been, occasionally saved by his friend Jack Nicholson (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Blood and Wine in the 90s.)

But it was the 70's, man, and New Hollywood in all its forms was out to bust up the rules. The Rafelson films were very, VERY arty and gritty and Eurofilm-ish in framing.

Meanwhile, some of the "old guard" were hanging on and winding down (but NOT fading out) in the 70's, and one of them was Alfred Hitchcock. He only made two films in the 70s -- his last before dying in 1980, but one was a comeback and critical hit(the brutal sex psycho thriller Frenzy) and the other was an attempt at non-violent comedy thrills ...Family Plot.

What does Family Plot have to do with The King of Marvin Gardens? Simple...Hitchcock offered the comic hero lead to Jack Nicholson, a very big star, first, and was turned down. Hitchocck ended up giving the lead to Bruce Dern, a lesser barely second tier star. "That's Hollywood."

In The King of Marvin Gardens, Nicholson and Dern are EQUAL stars and...something happened in a mere four years to change that. Nicholson and Dern were pals -- and had done a couple of Robert Corman biker movies in the 60's when Dern was arguably more famous(from his TV villain roles) ...but as one critic wrote, there eventually came a point where NIcholson "accelerated away" in stardom from his friend Dern.

It must have been tough on Dern, but Dern at least got somewhat of a star career in the 70's. The lead in Family Plot. A great "sympathetic villain" part in the big budget blimp thriller "Black Sunday." An Oscar-nominated supporting role to Jane Fonda and Jon Voight in Coming Home.

But...not enough like that for Dern. He ended up making himself a name as a long-lived character guy, still working today (2021) but in old man roles, including an Oscar nominated lead in "Nebraska" and two parts for Tarantino.

Still, you look at Nicholson on screen with Dern in "The King of Marvin Gardens" and you rather think: how come NICHOLSON became the big star? Standing next to each other, we find that Dern is much taller than Nicholson and more strapping, definitely more fit (Nicholson was never much for exercise whereas Dern ran 50 miles a day at a time), and -- in this movie at least, more handsome, not to mention -- here - more robust and charismatic. (But that's on purpose, Nicholson took the quiet, depressed role.)

I suppose it was a matter of acting talent that pushed Nicholson ahead of Dern, but it was also a matter of some luck. Nicholson got key, important films one after another in the early 70's -- Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Carnal Knowledge (right before Marvin Gardens), and after Marvin Gardens(which was a flop)...the Big Ones, all Oscar-nominated: The Last Detail, Chinatown..Cuckoo's Nest. Bruce Dern simply couldn't land those kinds of leads. He was stuck supporting Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby, or Walter Matthau in The Laughing Policeman.

Hitchcock did well by casting Bruce Dern in Family Plot if he couldn't get Nicholson - he got some of the same energy, the Roger Corman-based countercultural hipness and rather similar line readings and twangs. (Interesting: Family Plot also stars Karen Black from Five Easy Pieces and William Devane rather sounds like Jack Nicholson, too, as the film's villain.)

I recall feeling at the time that Bruce Dern was "low wattage" casting for Family Plot -- that Hitchcock simply couldn't get major American stars anymore. And it was true enough (word is that Al Pacino and Robert Redford were also offered the Family Plot role.)

But all these decades later, Bruce Dern is rather a Gold Standard of Surviving 70's stardom...a bigger deal NOW than he was THEN.

And King of Marvin Gardens shows that -- with a different set of movies and a different seat of career breaks -- Bruce Dern just might have been a bigger star than Jack Nicholson.

Tough town, Hollywood.