1970, The Beginning of the End.

JACK NICHOLSON — FIVE EASY PIECES — 1970

It’s a simple situation that so many people know. It was tragic in 1970. It is pathetic in 2023.

A boy is born into a family of musicians. He is more or less forced to take the same road and enter a musical career. The Piano will be his instrument. But it never was his choice and if you can learn how to play an instrument properly, even if you do not like it, sooner or later you get bored, if not something worse.

He runs away from his family and gets odd jobs to survive. He gets a girlfriend because it is what you have to do. He lives, even on his escape, a life that is dictated by rules coming from “society as a whole.” In 1970 that was the norm and that led so many young people to drastic choices that often went along prostitution, crime, drugs, various diseases, and AIDS was not yet there but soon it will lead to a real carnage.

He is trapped by his family to come back because the father has had a stroke and is very bad: he cannot speak at all anymore. They live on an island. He leaves his girlfriend who has come along on the mainland and he takes the ferry. Soon She will…