Drive, He Said

Drive, He Said is a 1971 American independent film directed by Jack Nicholson, in his directorial debut, and starring William Tepper, Karen Black, Bruce Dern, Robert Towne and Henry Jaglom.

Based on the 1964 novel of the same name by Jeremy Larner, the film follows a disenchanted college basketball player who is having an affair with a professor's wife, as well as dealing with his counterculture roommate's preoccupation with avoiding the draft in the Vietnam War.

Hector Bloom is a laconic, libidinous college basketball star distracted by obligations and current events: the misadventures of his volatile roommate Gabriel, a potential pro career, the draft, campus unrest, and a turbulent affair with Olive, the wife of Richard, a professor and friend.

He abuses drugs, disrupts a basketball game with a guerrilla theatre stunt, goes crazy during an induction physical, ransacks his apartment, espouses anti-establishment views about everything, and drifts aimlessly.

[5] During a break in the filming of this movie, which he directed and which required a brief non-sexual nude scene for an actress, Jack Nicholson decided to operate his own personal casting couch to find the perfect girl.

[6] The Motion Picture Association of America unsuccessfully attempted to grant the film an X rating due to its profanity and sexual content.

"[11] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote "It is not a great film, but it is an often intelligent one, and it is so much better than all of the rest of the campus junk Hollywood has manufactured that it can be indulged in its sentimental conventions.

"[13] Variety called it "an uneven film" with "a bombastic, racy, pellmell style touching on all that has gone before, but with a modern ring which may appeal to youthful audiences.

"[16] Pauline Kael, looking back on the film in 1978, called it "perhaps the most ambitious, chaotic, and daring of the counterculture films—it had a deranged, dissociated vitality.

[21] Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment issued a standalone DVD as part of the Sony Pictures "Choice" Collection on June 4, 2013.