Welcome back sleuth spotters for Day 3
of Philip Marlowe Week. A slight break yesterday as my co-host and I
were working on Rotten Ramblin' On's sixth podcast. So while we did
battle with a barrage of B-Movies, the film of the day got skipped.
You have my apologies, gentle readers. With that in mind let's get
back to the gumshoe known as Marlowe. This time around of all people
Eliott Gould steps in the shamus' shoes and it might be a tight fit.
Based on the 1953 novel The Long Goodbye, Philip helps a buddy of his
across the border to Mexico only to get pinched by the cops the
moment he walks in the door back home. Accusations of murder,
conspiracy and aiding and abetting. This is The Long Goodbye.
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| Bloody finicky cat! |
Our neo-noir (a more current film
using elements of film noir such as style, theme, content and even
media that has not been in use since the 1940s and 1950s)
opens with Marlowe (Eliott Gould of M.A.S.H., Harry and Walter
Go to New York, A Bridge Too Far, The Muppet Movie, The Devil and Max
Devlin, E/R, Bugsy and Ocean's Eleven) having to feed his
very finicky cat (Morris the Cat) when his best friend
Terry Lennox (MLB All-Star Jim Bouton) asks Marlowe for
a lift from L.A. To Tijuana. Hope he is getting some gas money out
the deal. No sooner does Marlowe return home he is met by two
detectives accusing Lennox of murdering his wife Sylvia. The two jog
his memory but Marlowe refuses any cooperation thinking it is a bum
rap so they toss him in the jug for three days for obstruction.
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| That's not Gene Wilder!! |
The cops tell him that Lennox killed
himself as a guilty conscience so they spring him. Marlowe calls it
bull but what can you do? After a quick drink at the bar, Marlowe
checks in with Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt of American
Gigolo, Cutter's Way, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Time Out and Tales
of the Unexpected) on a missing person's case. Her husband
has up and left and the police really don't seem to have any interest
in this, given the copious amounts of runaways, homicides and car
thefts so they have a lot on their plate as it is. This blonde
bombshell claims her husband Roger (Sterling Hayden of The
Asphalt Jungle, The Killing, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to
Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and The Godfather) while a
brilliant novelist tends to go on drunken tears and be missing for
days on end but this time he has been gone for too long. Eileen
needs Marlowe to suss him out, hose him down and get him home.
Sounds like a cake walk, right? Interestingly enough, the late
Lennoxes also used to reside on the same neighborhood right up the
beach. Coincidence?
Roger's behavior is erratic hiding over
in a mental facility and the doctor seems to be holding him there
against his will. Wade blurts out to Marlowe that he knew the
Lennoxes socially to a level that gets Marlowe thinking there is a
lot more to Terry's suicide and Sylvia's murder. Should Marlowe keep
stepping on toes and peeping through windows for the truth? Does he
let his friend's death go overlooked?
A few points of interest in the film.
As this is a Roger Altman movie, the camera is always in motion. The
man never believed in static shots (a shot on an person,
place or thing that has no action and is held still, later inserted
from editing) Gould completely improvised the police custody
scene when he smears fingerprint ink all over his face and dialogue
surrounding most of it.
Both David Carradine and Arnold
Schwarzenegger are uncredited in the film as David is Dave a.k.a.
Socrates, a guy being held for smoking some doobage and Arnold is a
strong arm and at 6'3" that could make about anyone cringe.
Sterling Hayden wrote his own scenes and his character's home was
actually Altman's house. The gorgeous car Gould is driving around
is a 1948 Cabriolet Lincoln Continental Convertible that was actually
his car.
This film is one of five Gould made
with Altman including: MASH, The Long Goodbye, California Split,
Nashville and The Player. Not too shabby, huh?
Giving the copious amounts of nudity in
the film I would skip letting the kids watch it.
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