Not only did Antonioni's picture (Blow-Up) afford the first glipmse of full frontal female nudity in the living memory of filmgoers, it also boasted of a meandering, opaque narrative structure that left most of the older executives scratching their heads. They didn't have a clue, but they knew it, and were flailing about for help. When neophyte director Paul Williams, then in his early thirties, went to MGM to pitch a project in 1967, he was told "No, no, no, we want to make movies that aren't about anthing. Like that Blow-Up picture."
Peter Biskind, Easy Riders Raging Bulls