The Long Goodbye (film)

The Long Goodbye is a 1973 neo-noir film directed by Robert Altman and based on Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Leigh Brackett, who cowrote the screenplay for The Big Sleep in 1946. The film stars Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe and features Sterling Hayden, Nina Van Pallandt,Jim Bouton, and Mark Rydell.

The story's time period was updated from 1949–50 to 1970s Hollywood. The Long Goodbye has been described as "a study of a moral and decent man cast adrift in a selfish, self-obsessed society where lives can be thrown away without a backward glance ... and any notions of friendship and loyalty are meaningless."[1]



Contents
[hide]  *1 Plot  ==Plot[ edit] == Late one night, with nothing better to do than feed his fussy cat, private investigator Philip Marlowe is visited by his close friend Terry Lennox, who asks for a lift from Los Angeles to the California–Mexico border at Tijuana. Marlowe obliges.
 * 2 Cast
 * 3 Changes from the novel
 * 4 Production
 * 4.1 Screenplay
 * 4.2 Principal photography
 * 5 Soundtrack
 * 6 Critical reception
 * 7 References
 * 8 External links

On returning home, Marlowe is met by two police detectives, who accuse Lennox of having murdered his rich wife, Sylvia. Marlowe refuses to give them any information, so they arrest him. After three days in jail, the police release him, because Lennox committed suicide in Mexico. It is an open-and-shut case to the police and the press, but the official facts do not sit right with Marlowe.

In the meantime, Marlowe is hired by Eileen Wade, the platinum-blonde trophy wife of Roger Wade, an alcoholic novelist with writer's block, whose macho, Hemingway-like persona is proving self-destructive. She asks that Marlowe find her husband, who, despite regular alcoholic binges and days-long disappearances from their Malibuhome, now seems to be missing.

In the course of investigating Mrs. Wade's missing-husband case, Marlowe visits the subculture of private detoxification clinics for rich alcoholics and drug addicts. He locates and recovers Roger Wade, and learns that the Wades knew the Lennoxes socially. He becomes increasingly convinced that there is more to Terry's suicide and the murder of Sylvia.

Marlowe incurs the wrath of ruthless gangster Marty Augustine, who wants money returned that Lennox owed him. Augustine viciously injures his own mistress just to demonstrate what could happen to Marlowe, saying, "That's someone I love. You, I don't even like."

After a side-trip to Mexico, where officials corroborate the details of Lennox's death, Marlowe returns to the Wades' house, where a party is broken up after an argument over Roger's unpaid bill from the detoxification clinic. Later that night, Marlowe socializes with Eileen, but they are interrupted when she sees a drunken Roger wandering into the sea; before they can stop him, he drowns, in an apparent suicide. A saddened Eileen confesses to Marlowe that Roger had been having an affair with Sylvia and that he might have killed her. Marlowe tells this to the police, who rebuff the claim, satisfied that Roger's time at the clinic provides an alibi.

Marlowe visits Augustine, whose missing money has been returned. As Marlowe leaves, he sees Eileen driving away, but is unable to catch up with her. He takes a second trip to Mexico, where he bribes local officials into revealing the truth about Terry. They confess to having set up Terry's apparent suicide, and admit that he is alive and well in a Mexican villa. Marlowe finds Terry, who admits to killing Sylvia, reveals that he is having an affair with Eileen, and gloats that Marlowe fell for his manipulations because Marlowe is "a born loser". Marlowe responds with "Yeah, I even lost my cat", shoots and kills Terry, then walks away, past Eileen Wade, who is driving a jeep on her way to meeting Terry. Marlowe pulls out his harmonica and plays the movie's theme. ==Cast<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == ==Changes from the novel<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The story and plot of the 1973 cinematic adaptation deviate drastically from those of the 1953 novel; screenplay writer Leigh Brackett took many literary liberties with the story, plot, and characters of The Long Goodbye in adapting it. In a major plot and character departure from the novel, at the film's end, Philip Marlowe kills his best friend, Terry Lennox. The father of millionairess Sylvia Lennox is not in the film's storyline, Roger Wade's murder is a suicide in the film, and gangster Marty Augustine and his subplots are entirely cinematic creations.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The Long Goodbye satirizes the changes in culture between the 1950s, when the private-detective genre was popular, and the 1970s, when the film was released; a making-of featurette on the DVD is entitled "Rip van Marlowe" to emphasize the contrast between Marlowe's anachronistically 1950s behavior with the film's 1970s setting. One cliché of the genre invoked in the film is culled from the original novel when Marlowe, under police interrogation, asks, "Is this where I'm supposed to say, 'What's all this about?' and he says, 'Shut up! I ask the questions'?"<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-2" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[2]  Marlowe's chain smoking, contrasted with a health-conscious California in which no one else in the movie smokes, is cited as another example of his incongruity with his surroundings.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The American iconography that Chandler laid down in his novels is maintained in the film. In addition to the 1948 Lincoln Continental Convertible Cabriolet that Marlowe drives, Gould also wears a tie with American flags on it (the tie looks plain red in the movie due to cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond's post-flashing).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-3" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[3] ==Production<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Producers Jerry Bick and Elliott Kastner bought the cinematic rights to The Long Goodbye novel and made a production deal with the United Artists distribution company.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan_4-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[4]  They commissioned the screenplay from Leigh Brackett, who had written the script for the Humphrey Bogart version of The Big Sleep. The producers offered the script to both Howard Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich to direct it. Both refused the offer, but Bogdanovich recommended Robert Altman, who was initially uninterested until he was allowed to cast Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe—despite the producers' original choices being Robert Mitchum and Lee Marvin.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan_4-1" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[4]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">United Artists president David Picker may have picked Gould to play Marlowe as a ploy to get Altman to direct. At the time, Gould was in professional disfavor because of his rumored troubles on the set of A Glimpse of Tiger, in which he bickered with costar Kim Darby, fought with director Anthony Harvey, and acted erratically. Consequently, he had not worked in nearly two years; nevertheless, Altman convinced Bick that Gould suited the role.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan_4-2" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[4]  United Artists had Elliott Gould undergo the usual employment medical examination and a psychological examination attesting to his mental stability.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan2_5-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[5]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Jim Bouton, cast as Marlowe's friend Terry Lennox, was not an actor. He was a former Major League Baseball pitcher and the author of the bestselling book Ball Four. ===Screenplay<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">In adapting Chandler's book, Leigh Brackett had problems with its plot, which she felt was "riddled with cliches", and faced the choice of making it a period piece or updating it.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan4_6-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[6]  Altman received a copy of the script while shooting Images in Ireland. He liked the ending because it was so out of character for Marlowe. He agreed to direct but only if the ending was not changed.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Thompson_7-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[7]  Altman and Brackett spent a lot of time talking over the plot. Altman wanted Marlowe to be a loser. He even nicknamed Gould's character Rip Van Marlowe, as if he had been asleep for 20 years, had woken up, and was wandering around Los Angeles in the early 1970s but "trying to invoke the morals of a previous era".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Thompson2_8-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[8]  Her first draft was too long, and she shortened it, but the ending was inconclusive.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan4_6-1" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[6]  She had Marlowe shooting Terry Lennox.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan5_9-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[9]  Altman conceived of the film as a satire and made several changes to the script, like having Roger Wade commit suicide and having Marty Augustine smash a Coke bottle across his girlfriend's face.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan5_9-1" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[9]  Altman said, "it was supposed to get the attention of the audience and remind them that, in spite of Marlowe, there is a real world out there, and it is a violent world".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan6_10-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[10] ===Principal photography<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Altman did not read all of Chandler's book and instead utilized Raymond Chandler Speaking, a collection of letters and essays. He gave copies of this book to the cast and crew, advising them to study the author's literary essays.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan5_9-2" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[9]  The opening scene with Philip Marlowe and his cat came from a story a friend of Altman's told him about his cat only eating one type of cat food. Altman saw it as a comment on friendship.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Thompson_7-1" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[7]  The director decided that the camera should never stop moving, and put it on a dolly.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Thompson3_11-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[11]  However, the camera movements would counter the actions of the characters so that the audience would feel like a voyeur. To compensate for the harsh light of Southern California, Altman gave the film a soft pastel look reminiscent of old postcards from the 1940s.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Thompson3_11-1" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[11]  When it came to the scenes between Philip Marlowe and Roger Wade, Altman had Elliott Gould and Sterling Hayden ad lib most of their dialogue<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan5_9-3" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[9]  because, according to the director, Hayden was drunk and stoned on marijuana most of the time. Altman had originally wanted Dan Blocker for the role of Wade, but Blocker died just before principal photography began.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Thompson4_12-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[12]  He was, however, reportedly thrilled by Hayden's performance despite him being second choice to Blocker. Altman's home in Malibu Colony was used as the location for the scenes that took place in Wade's house. ==Soundtrack<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The soundtrack of The Long Goodbye features two songs, "Hooray for Hollywood" and the eponymous "The Long Goodbye", composed by John Williams and Johnny Mercer. It was Altman's idea to have every occurrence of the latter song arranged differently, from hippie chant to supermarket muzak to radio music, effectively achieving the correct mood for the hero's encounters with eccentric Californians while pursuing his case.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Thompson5_13-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[13] ==Critical reception<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The Long Goodbye was previewed at the Tarrytown Conference Center in Tarrytown, New York. The gala was hosted by Judith Crist, then the film critic for New York magazine.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan6_10-1" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[10]  The film was not well received by the audience except for Nina van Pallandt's performance. Altman attended a question-and-answer session afterwards where the mood was "vaguely hostile", reportedly leaving the director "depressed".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan6_10-2" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[10]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The Long Goodbye was not well received by critics during its limited release in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Miami.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan6_10-3" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[10]  Time magazine's Jay Cocks wrote, "Altman's lazy, haphazard putdown is without affection or understanding, a nose-thumb not only at the idea of Philip Marlowe but at the genre that his tough-guy-soft-heart character epitomized. It is a curious spectacle to see Altman mocking a level of achievement to which, at his best, he could only aspire".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-cocks_15-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[15]  As a result, the New York opening was canceled at the last minute after several advance screenings had already been held for the press. The film was abruptly withdrawn from release with rumors that it would be re-edited.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan6_10-4" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[10]  They<sup class="noprint Inline-Template" style="line-height:1;font-size:11.1999998092651px;white-space:nowrap;">[who?]  analyzed the reviews for six months, concluding that the reason for the film's failure was the misleading advertising campaign in which it had been promoted as a "detective story", and spent $40,000<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-gardner_16-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[16]  on a new release campaign, which included a poster by Mad magazine artist Jack Davis.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan7_17-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[17]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The Long Goodbye was rereleased. In his review for the New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "it's an original work, complex without being obscure, visually breathtaking without seeming to be inappropriately fancy".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-canby_18-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[18]  Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and praised Elliott Gould's "good performance, particularly the virtuoso ten-minute stretch at the beginning of the movie when he goes out to buy food for his cat. Gould has enough of the paranoid in his acting style to really put over Altman's revised view of the private eye".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-ebert_19-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[19]  Pauline Kael's lengthy review in the New Yorker ("Movieland-The Bums' Paradise", October 22, 1973) called the film "a high-flying rap on Chandler and the movies", hailed Gould's performance as "his best yet", and praised Altman for achieving "a self-mocking fairy-tale poetry".

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Despite Kael's effusive endorsement and its influence among younger critics,The Long Goodbye remained unpopular and earned poorly in the rest of the United States; nevertheless, the New York Times listed it in its Ten Best List for film for that year,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan7_17-1" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[17]  while Vilmos Zsigmond was awarded the National Society of Film Critics' prize for Best Cinematographer.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-McGilligan3_20-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[20]  Ebert later ranked it among his Great Movies collection and wrote, "Most of its effect comes from the way it pushes against the genre, and the way Altman undermines the premise of all private eye movies, which is that the hero can walk down mean streets, see clearly, and tell right from wrong".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-ebert_19-1" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[19]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">In 2008, Empire Magazine listed the film as one of the 500 greatest movies.<sup class="noprint Inline-Template Template-Fact" style="line-height:1;font-size:11.1999998092651px;white-space:nowrap;">[citation needed]