Do you see this sign?" Five Easy Pieces at the Plaza Theatre"

These days Jack Nicholson typically plays variations on his leering, self-satisfied screen persona, but in the 1960s and 1970s he earned his reputation as one of Hollywood's countercultural figures, not the least for his involvement in Easy Rider. Nicholson may have given his best performance in this vein in Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces, in which he plays a talented young pianist who takes a job as an oil worker and struggles to find direction in contemporary America. Beginning June 17, The Plaza Theatre shows the 40 year-old Five Easy Pieces, which features some welcome moments of comic relief and this famous scene about questioning authority.

Incidentally, does anyone remember when the late Phil Hartman satirized this scene on "Saturday Night Live" about 20 years ago? He did an impression of Jack Nicholson arriving at the Warner Bros. office to collect his earnings for playing the Joker in Batman, and faced a similar runaround, including the warning posted in the office, "No Smartass or Sarcasm."