I wrote this introduction for The Mesilla Valley Film Society’s screening of The Long Goodbye in April, 2023.

The Long Goodbye is very different from the films we’ve featured so far, and not just because it’s in color. This is Robert Altman and Leigh Brackett’s ode to Chandler as a genre, taking his most complex novel and reworking and remixing it to fit in a two-hour timeframe while updating its lead to work with an actor that the studio forced upon them. It’s a proper film noir as well as a comment on the genre and one of its most popular protagonists.

While the detective genre in film had dropped dramatically in popularity, Chandler’s books still sold consistently, and this was the last of his Marlowe novels to get made into a film. There was a TV version made in 1954 starring perennial noir snoozer Dick Powell, but it took producers Jerry Bick and Elliot Kastner to get this made, in large part thanks to getting United Artists to commit as the distributor early in the process if they gave the role of Marlowe to Elliott Gould.

They commissioned The Big Sleep screenwriter Leigh Brackett, and she quickly gave them something to work with, a two-hour script that took the framework of the original, stripped out a lot of the typical Chandler-esque complications and changed the ending to be less cliché. With that draft in hand, they approached directors like Howard Hawks (who had helmed The Big Sleep) and Welles acolyte Peter Bogdanovich, who recommended Robert Altman, who was making Images at the time.

(Rumors have it that UA president David Picker may have used Gould as a way to get Altman to direct from the very beginning. The actor hadn’t worked in two years after his erratic and irritating behavior on the set of A Glimpse of Tiger, and Altman had a good working relationship with him dating back to M*A*S*H.)

Altman liked the script and instead of reading the book, he used a collection of letters and essays titled Raymond Chandler Speaking to get the vibe right while he worked with Brackett to make the movie more in tune with his vision for the character.  Brackett said “Altman was a joy to work with. He had a very keen story mind.” Altman said “Chandler fans will hate my guts. I don’t give a damn.”

I’m a Chandler fan that thinks this movie captures what makes Chandler work while losing a lot of what can make his labyrinthine novels so frustrating for anyone who happens to not read them in a single sitting. It’s bursting with character and Gould’s take on the character is just so damn cool. Plus, there’s a really good cat in it.

(One last thing and then we’ll start the movie. I want you to pay special attention to the scenes with Gould and Sterling Hayden. Hayden, who starred in noir classics like The Killers and The Asphalt Jungle, was, at the time of filming, perpetually stoned and notoriously prickly. Altman gave him the opportunity to get drunk, smoke weed, and ad-lib with Gould at the director’s own beach house in Malibu. For a guy who repeatedly claimed he hated acting in Hollywood, he sure seems to be having a blast here.)

As always, thanks to the volunteers, thanks to you guys, I hope you had a happy Easter and I look forward to seeing seeing you next month for Clouzot’s Diabolique.