In Los Angeles, in 1969, there was no hipper hangout than 933 North La Brea Avenue, the headquarters of BBS Productions, the incubator of Hollywood's rebel phase—aka the New Hollywood. Located in a light-industrial stretch, the unassuming, three-story building was the film business version of a salon, with pot on hand to stoke the conversations when counterculture figures such as Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, Huey Newton, and Tom Hayden dropped in. Jack Nicholson, the unofficial fourth member of BBS, was often there, along with fellow actors Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper, and Karen Black. Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, who rented space on the first floor, would sometimes drop by.
This was no ordinary movie production company where the numbers-focused suits called the shots. BBS took great pains to announce that it was there to protect its artists from these philistines.
Bert Schneider ran the show at BBS, using the knowledge he’d gained growing up the son of Abe Schneider, an accountant who worked his way up to the president of Columbia Pictures. After a comfortable childhood in New Rochelle, New York, Bert Schneider got booted out of Cornell University, took a job in New York City at Screen Gems (Columbia Pictures’ TV production company), got married, and settled down to the “stable” life of an executive in the suburbs. Stability, however, wasn't in Schneider’s nature.
Schneider’s destiny was to shake things up on the other coast. In 1953, at 20, he relocated to Los Angeles where he handled various production roles for Screen Gems at a time when television was reinvented in the midst of explosive growth. Schneider ’s breakthrough came in 1965, when he partnered with director Bob Rafelson to develop and produce a TV show sitcom about a rock band with a vague resemblance to the Beatles. The Monkees, which ran from 1966 to 1968, was a massive success that paved the way to a six-picture deal with Columbia Pictures, which ceded an unprecedented degree of creative freedom, including control over the final cut.
Schneider brought his boyhood pal, Steve Blauner (who Nicholson once said was in charge of “pencils and erasers”), into the partnership, and Bert, Bob, and Steve formed BBS Productions in 1969.
That success with Columbia would lead to Schneider being considered the “father” of the New Hollywood movement that shifted power from studio executives to auteur directors while emphasizing countercultural, character-driven storytelling over formulaic filmmaking. The key figures in this youth-oriented movement were members of a generation that included Bob Rafelson, Dennis Hopper, Peter Bogdanovich, Hal Ashby, Robert Altman, Nicholson, and others who drew heavily from the French New Wave cinema that elevated film directors to the artistic status of writers and painters.
At his peak, there seemed to be no situation Schneider couldn't handle. Brilliant, handsome, charismatic, and charming, he had a talent for identifying new filmmakers like Hopper and Bogdanovich. BBS came out of the gate fast, with Hopper directing its first film, Easy Rider (1969), a hippie-culture “road movie” made for around $350,000 that grossed about $60 million worldwide. The film made B-movie actor Nicholson into a star overnight. Schneider was the only producer in Hollywood with the talent to harness Hopper’s feral energy and make him into a successful film director.
The next BBS film, Five Easy Pieces, directed by Rafelson, announced Nicholson as Hollywood’s new superstar. Made with an estimated budget of about $1.6 million, the film grossed around $18 million.
As the producer of back-to-back smash hits, Schneider was a superstar too. Without him, there would be no Easy Rider, and probably no Nicholson, who was seriously thinking of giving up acting before the role of George Hanson in Easy Rider came along.
Schneider was a visionary producer with far-Left politics that he acted on, often with a reckless abandon that could’ve landed him in prison. He was a risk-taker in politics, at his job, and in his personal life, which worked during his initial hot streak, but not when the drugs—especially cocaine, which he freebased—started taking their toll. Schneider wasn't able to hold back when it came to any of the temptations of the 1960s lifestyle, including “free love.” After his relationship with actress Candice Bergen ended, Schneider began dating a 16-year-old girl from his daughter's high school while in his early-40s. His compulsive womanizing destroyed all four of his marriages.
Being part of the anti-Vietnam movement was too mainstream for Schneider. His true passion was the Black Panthers, upon whom he lavished cash over the years. His close friendship with the radical militant group's founder, Huey Newton, ran so deep that he financed Newton's escape to Cuba after he was charged with murdering a 17-year-old prostitute. Newton gave Schneider a gold Panther ring to signify his status as an "honorary Panther.” Handwritten letters from Newton to Schneider, penned during prison stints and after releases, indicated a sexual relationship. Newton called Schneider "my love," referenced their "marriage," and described nights of "sensual excitement."
Schneider was the driving force behind making The Last Picture Show (1971) a commercial and critical success. He championed young director Bogdanovich’s vision, giving him full creative freedom that included the risky choice to shoot the film in black and white. However, the next two BBS films, A Safe Place (1971) and the Rafelson-directed The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), both featuring Nicholson, failed to find audiences. BBS’s future started to cloud.
By this time, Schneider ’s political passions were overtaking his film work, and the drugs were messing with his mind. There are several reports of him carrying around a plastic bag full of pharmaceutical substances. Still, he had one last hurrah in him, even though it came with a self-induced cost. Old Hollywood had neglected dealing with the Vietnam War. In 1974, he released Hearts and Minds, director Peter Davis' hard-hitting, un-narrated Vietnam War documentary that contrasted White House platitudes with napalm-scarred children. The film clinched the Best Documentary Oscar.
Schneider, in his acceptance speech, made the mistake of reading a congratulatory telegram from the North Vietnamese delegation to the Paris peace talks, opening up the door to criticism that the film was mere propaganda. Frank Sinatra took the stage and denounced Schneider, who was blind to the contradiction of making the entire film without narration, and then reading such a message from “the enemy” to the entire world.
The Oscars speech was pretty much Schneider’s last gasp in Hollywood. He did go on to partially finance Terrence Malick’s trouble-filled direction of Days of Heaven, but produced little else. Schneider, as gifted as he was self-destructive, would spend much the next three decades in seclusion as he fought a drug addiction that destroyed his looks and reputation. Nicholson was the only friend he had in the end.
Schneider died in Los Angeles at 78 of “natural causes” on December 12, 2011, a passing that received scant coverage beyond the Hollywood trade publications. According to his Los Angeles Times obituary, Schneider was estranged from his two children and many of his friends and colleagues in his later years due to personal problems. His life had long ago become a cautionary tale about the dark side of the 1960’s seductive promise of unlimited freedom.