In Which Nothing Says Goodbye Like A Bullet

Softly Glowing Detective Story

by MOLLY YOUNG

The Long Goodbye begins the way every California detective story should. A shifty-looking man named Terry Lennox shows up in the middle of the night and asks his friend, the private eye Philip Marlowe, for a ride to Tijuana. Lennox is wearing gloves and nursing a quartet of fingernail scratches on his right cheek. Marlowe complies, no questions asked. What are friends for?

"Vaya con dios," Lennox calls in farewell as he hops out of Marlowe's car at the border.

"Oh, thanks a lot," Marlowe mutters. It is now dawn. The police show up at Marlowe's house that afternoon and arrest him. Terry Lennox's wife is dead, Lennox is the prime suspect, and Marlowe is accused of acting as an accessory to the crime. "Where didja go last night, Marlowe?" one of the cops asks him. "Oh, is this where I'm s'posed to say, 'What is this all about?' and he says, 'Shut up, I ask the questions'"? Marlowe wisecracks. He is arrested.

The Long Goodbye is filmed the way a lot of movies in the seventies were filmed, to ensure that everyone comes out with peach-colored skin and softly glowing hair. When Vincent Canby reviewed it in 1973, the critic found Altman's movie so good that he "didn't know where to begin describing it."

Outlining the plot, based on Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel, is indeed a pain in the ass. Luckily, it isn’t necessary, since the storyline is neither a tight nor particularly compelling one as Altman spins it. Gould's Marlowe, plus the sleazy Los Angeles atmospherics that Altman is so good at portraying, are the beginning and end of The Long Goodbye.

It is more than enough to spend the film wrapping your head around Gould's character. He has a particular kind of male swagger built of equal proportions masculine and feminine qualities; being slender but deep-voiced; graceful but stolid, attractive to women but invulnerable to their charms. His face has just the right proportion of elegant and roughhewn features. He moves gracefully and with only a mild awareness of those around him. In the same category of male actor are Peter Fonda, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. One can find examples of the type in every decade.

Gould's Marlowe is cool without being unflappable. This is an interesting trick. Coolness is the impression of invincibility, but Marlowe gets beaten up, told off, hoodwinked and hit by a car over the course of the movie. Even his cat has the best of him: "You clawed me, you sonuvabitch," the private eye complains.

Like all exemplars of coolness, Gould’s Marlowe inspires imitation, and while it might be useful to watch the film with a friend for plot-unraveling purposes, it is even better to watch it alone for Marlowe-imitating purposes. Some things will come easy: slouching, sleeping in your clothes, talking to yourself, lighting dozens of cigarettes, and buying brownie mix at 3 AM for the neighbors.

Others will be more difficult to arrange, like having two best friends in the world: one a cat and the other a murderer. Do your best, and dwell in how langorous you’d look if Altman were there to film you.

Molly Young is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here.

"Lapsed Catholics" — Future of the Left (mp3) highly recommended

"Throwing Bricks at Trains" — Future of the Left (mp3)

"You Need Satan More Than He Needs You" — Future of the Left (mp3)

"I Am Civil Service" — Future of the Left (mp3)

Future of the Left myspace

In Which You Played The Game, Now Witness The Result

The Secret to Success

by KARINA WOLF

The Player
1992
102 minutes

Jack Nicholson supposedly said that he will commit to a script if it has just three outstanding scenes. The Player, amid its poison asides and insider jokes, has two standout sequences and one knockout one.

The seduction of June Gudmundsdottir is as effective as any scene from the '40s films name-checked in Altman’s picture. Griffin Mill, a beleaguered studio exec, receives increasingly threatening notes from an angry writer. If he quiets this unnerving threat, Mill reasons, he’ll be able to quell his other troubles. Griffin drives to the house of the disaffected writer and rings the scribe while standing outside. But instead of reaching the writer, Mill engages in a lengthy phone flirtation with Kahane’s girlfriend.

June is a wonderful creation, all icy self-involvement and paradoxical reply. She’s the only character who doesn’t work in the film industry or like movies at all. “I like words,” she allows. “I don’t know if I like complete sentences.”

Tim Robbins nearly becomes appealing as he peers through Scacchi’s window. They make small talk while she constructs aloof mixed media paintings. The pure invention of the character makes her more compelling than the stock types (producer, writer, executive, detective) we’re asked to follow when Altman puts the noir plot through its paces. Greta Scacchi imbues her role with latent sensitivity. I think through her, the film suggests the nature of all narcissistic characters — there’s an unreachable sympathy at their core, and a monomania that passes for a while as integrity.

Certainly, by the end of the film, June’s complicity in her boyfriend’s murder and her love for the callow Mill eclipse the promise conveyed in her introduction. The entire movie sags when June succumbs.

I'm always mystified how rubber-faced Tim Robbins became the leading man of early '90s satires. Maybe it was his activism or his alignment with social crusader Susan Sarandon (she has a non-speaking role in the film). Maybe it was the fact that he could keep up with Altman’s roving cinematic eye. (The other terrific scenes in the film follow Mill’s disorientation when he commits murder and is humorously interrogated by Whoopi Goldberg).

Altman seems to be viewed as a social critic as well as an actor’s director, and his ensembles have the same cache as those of mid-period Woody Allen. The difference between the two auteurs is instructive. Allen’s films are arguably responses to Bergman and the great Russian novelists. Altman’s work is more in the vein of British social satire and French comedy of manners. That is to say, one director measures the nature of a moral universe; the other proceeds from disbelief in it.

Too often Altman’s films revel in their superiority. The film’s bravado ending, with Mill squelching a blackmailer by sealing a film deal, feels too triumphant. Another of Altman’s characters explains the secret to success: he gets ahead by taking advantage of other people's insecurities. Altman’s finest moments arrive in The Player when the director exposes but doesn’t profit from human weakness.

Karina Wolf is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls so hard right here for your reading pleasure.

"Everyone Is Guilty" — Akron/Family (mp3)

"They Will Appear" — Akron/Family (mp3)

"Last Year" — Akron/Family (mp3) highly recommended

Akron/Family website

In Which Altman Moves On To Something Else

Altman's Revenge

by PETER BISKIND

In 1954 Robert Altman met and married his second wife, Lotus Corelli, a former model. This marriage lasted three years, and the Altmans had two boys, Michael and Stephen. A year later, he made a low-budget feature, The Delinquents, that was financed by a small Midwest exhibitor.

He was determined to edit the picture in L.A. The exhibitor refused to pay his airfare, so in the last week of August 1956 he dumped the dailies into a '56 Thunderbird that he had finessed from the production, and headed west, accompanied by an Iranian friend, Reza Badiyi. Altman turned his back on Kansas City for good, leaving behind two marriages, a couple of kids, his parents, and his sister. During the trip they listened to the Republican convention, which nominated Eisenhower and Nixon. Altman was a Democrat, supported Adlai Stevenson.

The following year he landed a job working for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. This would be the beginning of a decade's worth of television work, which repeatedly saw him make his mark with innovative methods. He would antagonize whoever there was to antagonize, and in high dudgeon, move on to something else.

Along the way, like a snowball rolling down a hill, he picked up people who would become part of his creative team. Among them was Tommy Thompson, whose claim to fame was that he had, in 1946 while working for the Armed Forces Radio Services in Tokyo, reported that Japan had been invaded by a Godzilla-like sea monster. This prank was something Altman could appreciate, and the two men became fast friends.

Thompson began working regularly for Altman as his first assistant director. He used to pick him up from his apartment in a grand old building on the northwest corner of Fountain and La Cienega in West Hollywood, to take him to work. Often he'd knock on the door, no answer. He'd walk in and find Bob, passed out, an unfinished drink by his side.

"He was like the big Pillsbury Dough Boy," Thompson recalls. "I'd get him in the shower, dressed, down to the car, and we'd get out on the location. He sat in the high director's chair while I stood behind him. As they'd rehearse he'd nod off and I'd kind of poke him, and he'd wake up and say, "How was it?" I'd say, "Run it again," and he said, "All right, let's run it again." And he'd go back to sleep. I'd punch him, "Say 'Cut'!" "Cut! How was it?" "Tell 'em to go faster." "Speed it up a little, guys." We'd run through the whole day like that."

***

One day, when Altman was hanging out in George Litto's office, the agent handed him a screenplay, saying, "This is written in a style that might appeal to you. Read it?" It was M*A*S*H. The writer, Ring Lardner Jr., was just emerging from the shadow of the blacklist.

Litto saw a similarity between the feel of the piece and the material Altman liked to do. Altman called a day or so later and said, "This is great. Can you get me the job?" Litto replied, "I don't know. Probably not." Fox was an old-line studio that still liked to work with producers. Ingo Preminger had a deal there, and Richard Zanuck had given him the green light on M*A*S*H. Lots of directors, including Friedkin, had turned it down. Litto showed Preminger some of Altman's work. Preminger liked what he saw, and decided to take a flier on the director. Litto negotiated the deal, $125,000, and 5 percent of the picture. But when Fox heard that Preminger wanted to hire Altman, they went through the roof.

He was still infamous for a TV show he did nearly a decade earlier that had gotten the studio into hot water. One of the Fox executive expressed the feeling at the studio: "You're making a deal with trouble!"

Owen McLean, Zanuck's business affairs guy, was a tough nut. McLean called Litto, said, "George, I have a memo here that Ingo, without authorization, made a deal with you for Bob Altman. We cannot stand behind this because Ingo was not—"

"All I know is I made the deal, Owen. I'm just a humble agent. Just tell me what you have to say and I'll transmit your proposal to my client."

"You're full of shit, George, but here's the deal. $75,000 cash, take it or leave it. Don't come back and try to negotiate with me. That's what he gets if he wants to do the picture."

Litto called Preminger, said, "McLean is trying to provoke me. he doesn't want Bob to do the picture."

"What are you going to do, George?"

"I'm going to make the deal, and if the picture's great, I'm depending on you to fix it later." Litto called Altman, told him the terms. Altman was furious. Litto said, "Bob, you really want to fuck 'em?"

"I'd love to fuck 'em."

"Okay, take the deal. You'll make a great picture. I'll make you rich on the next one, all right?" The director acquiesced. Litto never did make Altman rich. But he came close, and would have succeeded had Altman not indulged in his propensity to shoot himself in the foot.

Peter Biskind is the author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, from which this excerpt is taken. You can purchase the book here.

"Lucky Jim" — Mclusky (mp3)

"Without MSG I Am Nothing" — Mclusky (mp3)

"She Will Only Bring You Happiness" — Mclusky (mp3)