Robert Jay Rafelson (February 21, 1933 – July 23, 2022) was an American film director, writer, and producer. He is regarded as one of the key figures in the founding of the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s. Among his best-known films as a director include those made as part of the company he cofounded, Raybert/BBS Productions, Five Easy Pieces (1970) and The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), as well as acclaimed later films, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and Mountains of the Moon (1990). Other films he produced as part of BBS include two of the most significant films of the era, Easy Rider (1969) and The Last Picture Show (1971). Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show were all chosen for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. He was also one of the creators of the pop group and TV series The Monkees with BBS partner Bert Schneider. His first wife was the production designer Toby Carr Rafelson. Early life Robert Jay Rafelson was born in Manhattan on February 21, 1933 to a Jewish family, the son of Marjorie (Blumenfeld) and Sydney Rafelson, a hat ribbon manufacturer. His much-older first cousin, once removed, was screenwriter and playwright Samson Raphaelson, the author of The Jazz Singer, who wrote nine films for director Ernst Lubitsch. "Samson took an interest in my work," Rafelson told critic David Thomson. "If he liked a picture, then I was his favorite nephew. But if he didn't like it, I was a distant cousin!" Rafelson attended the Trinity-Pawling School, a boarding school in Pawling, New York, from which he graduated in 1950. As a teenager he would often run away from home to pursue an adventurous lifestyle, including riding in a rodeo in Arizona and playing in a jazz band in Acapulco. After studying philosophy at Dartmouth College (where he had made friends with screenwriter Buck Henry), and graduating in 1954, Rafelson was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in Japan. In Japan he worked as a disk jockey, translated Japanese films and was an adviser to the Shochiku Film Company as to what films would be financially successful in the United States. In an interview with critic Peter Tonguette, Rafelson said he was fascinated by the films he saw in Japan, especially those of Yasujirō Ozu, whose original approach to editing captivated him as a young