A few months after Esquire published my profile of Bob Rafelson, I received an e-mail from the retired director informing me that he was taking his two younger sons to Puerto Rico for what he described as a “last hurrah.”
It was July 2019, and Bob was 86 years old with a steel rod in his spine, another in one of his arms, two shoulders that needed replacing, and other ailments acquired during a life that had been lived anything but carefully. But I still had a hard time believing that this would be the “last” of anything for the innovative, irascible, larger-than-life filmmaker. A “hurrah” of some kind, for sure, but certainly not his last, because Bob was a man who seemed like he’d probably live forever, just to be contrary.
