Like the rest of America, Hollywood was ripe for revolution in the late sixties. Cinema attendance was down; what had once worked seemed broken. Enter Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner, who knew that what Hollywood needed was new audiences – namely, young people – and that meant cultivating new talent and new ideas. Fueled by money made from their invention of the superstar TV pop group the Monkees, they set off on a film-industry journey that would lead them to form BBS Productions, a company that was also a community. The innovative films produced by this team between 1968 and 1972 are collected in this box set from Criterion, to be released on both Blu-ray and DVD – works created within the studio system but lifted right out of the countercultural id, and that now range from the iconic to the acclaimed to the obscure.

America Lost and Found: The BBS Story will be released in the US by Criterion on Blu-ray on 23rd November 2010 at the SRP of $124.95, and on DVD on 14th December 2010 at the SRP of $99.95.

Head (1968)

Hey, hey, it's the Monkees... being catapulted through one of American cinema's most surreal sixties odysseys. In it, Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork become trapped in a kaleidoscopic satire that's movie homage, media send-up, concert movie, and antiwar cry all at once. Head escaped commercial success on its release but has since been reclaimed as one of the great cult objects of its era.

Featuring a new, restored high-definition 1.78:1 digital transfer, with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition, plus the following extras:

• Audio commentary featuring Monkees Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork;
• New video interview with director Bob Rafelson;
• New documentary about BBS, featuring critic David Thomson and historian Douglas Brinkley;
• More!

Easy Rider (1969)

This is the definitive counterculture blockbuster. The former clean-cut teen star Dennis Hopper's down-and-dirty directorial debut, Easy Rider heralded the arrival of a new voice in film, one planted firmly, angrily against the mainstream. After Easy Rider's cross-country journey – with its radical, New Wave–style editing, outsider- rock soundtrack, revelatory performance by a young Jack Nicholson, and explosive ending – the American road trip would never be the same.

With a new, restored high-definition 1.85:1 digital transfer, and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition, both discs have the following extras:

• Audio commentary featuring director Dennis Hopper;
• Easy Rider: Shaking the Cage, a 1999 documentary featuring behind-the-scenes footage;
• Footage of Hopper and star Peter Fonda at Cannes in 1969;
• New video interview with BBS's Steve Blauner;
• More!

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Jack Nicholson plays the now iconic cad Bobby Dupea, a shiftless thirtysomething oil rigger and former piano prodigy immune to any sense of romantic or familial responsibility, who returns to his childhood home to see his ailing estranged father, his blue-collar girlfriend (Karen Black, like Nicholson nominated for an Oscar) in tow. Moving in its simplicity and gritty in its textures, Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces is a lasting example of early 1970s American alienation.

With a new, restored high-definition 1.85:1 digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition;

• Audio commentary featuring director Bob Rafelson and interior designer Toby Rafelson;
• Soul Searching in Five Easy Pieces, a 2009 video piece in which Rafelson discusses the film;
• BBStory, a 2009 documentary;
• Excerpts from an audio recording of Rafelson at the American Film Institute in 1976.

Drive, He Said (1970)

Based on the best-selling novel by Jeremy Larner, Drive, He Said is free-spirited and sobering by turns, a sketch of the exploits of a disaffected college basketball player and his increasingly radical roommate, a feverishly shot and edited snapshot of the early seventies (some of it was filmed during an actual campus protest). Jack Nicholson's audacious comedy (starring Bruce Dern and Karen Black) is a startling howl direct from the zeitgeist.

Featuring a new, restored high-definition 1.85:1 digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition, plus the following extras:

• A Cautionary Tale of Campus Revolution and Sexual Freedom, a 2009 video piece in which director Jack Nicholson discusses the experience of making this film;
• Theatrical trailer;
• More!

A Safe Place (1971)

In this delicate, introspective drama, laced with fantasy elements, Tuesday Weld stars as a fragile young woman in New York unable to reconcile her ambiguous past with her unmoored present; Orson Welles as an enchanting Central Park magician and Jack Nicholson as a mysterious ex-lover round out the cast. A Safe Place was directed by independent cinema icon Henry Jaglom.

With a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, and uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition, both discs have the following extras:

• Audio commentary featuring director Henry Jaglom;
• Henry Jaglom Finds 'A Safe Place', a 2009 video piece in which the director discusses the film;
• Notes on the New York Film Festival, a 1971 video piece featuring an interview conducted by critic Molly Haskell with directors Peter Bogdanovich and Jaglom about their films The Last Picture Show and A Safe Place;
• Deleted scene and screen tests;
• Theatrical trailer.

The Last Picture Show (1971)

The Last Picture Show is one of the key films of the American cinema renaissance of the seventies. Set during the early fifties in the loneliest Texas nowheresville to ever dust up a movie screen, this aching portrait of a dying West, adapted from Larry McMurtry's novel, focuses on the daily shuffles of three futureless teens—enigmatic Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), wayward jock Duane (Jeff Bridges), and desperate-to- be-adored rich girl Jacy (Cybil Shepherd)—and the aging lost souls who bump up against them in the night like drifting tumbleweeds. This hushed depiction of crumbling American values remains the pivotal film in the career of the invaluable director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich.

With a new, restored high-definition 1.85:1 digital transfer, and uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition, and the following extras:

• Two audio commentaries, one featuring director Peter Bogdanovich and the other featuring Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman, and Frank Marshall;
• Picture This, a 1990 documentary by George Hickenlooper;
• 'The Last Picture Show': A Look Back, an hour-long 1999 documentary;
• 2009 interview with Bogdanovich;
• Screen tests and location footage;
• Theatrical trailers and more!

The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)

For his electrifying follow-up to the smash success of Five Easy Pieces, Bob Rafelson dug even deeper into the crushed dreams of wayward America. Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern play estranged siblings David and Jason, the former a depressive late-night radio talk show host, the latter an extroverted con man; when Jason drags his younger brother to a dreary Atlantic City and into a real-estate scam, events spiral into tragedy.

• Boasting a new, restored high-definition 1.85:1 digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition, both discs will have the following extras:
• Selected-scene audio commentary featuring director Bob Rafelson;
• Reflections of a Philosopher King, a 2009 documentary about the making of the film;
• Afterthoughts, a short 2002 documentary about the film, produced by Rafelson;
• Theatrical trailer.