Restless, globetrotting auteur Bob Rafelson escaped his middle-class Jewish home on NYC's Upper West Side at age 14, hitchhiking and riding boxcars to Arizona where he worked as a cowboy until breaking his back in a rodeo put an end to that pursuit. He played in a jazz combo in Acapulco, Mexico, and his Army service took the former tramp seaman to Japan where he worked as a disc jockey for the Far East Network. Rafelson managed to get court-martialed twice, once for striking an officer, the other time for on-air "subversion" (instead of saying "This is the Far East Network", he said "This is
