The Long Goodbye

Why Robert Altman made Raymond Chandler’s classic 1950s noir novel as a 70s detective story.

Fine. You got me. Caught. Guilty as charged. The Set in the Seventies feature is supposed to focus on films set in the seventies, not films made in the seventies. The Long Goodbye was released in 1973 and set in the same year – a pretty textbook case of a film made in the seventies – and should be ineligible, correct?

Well, yes. But I make the rules, meaning I can also break them.

The Long Goodbye is an adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel of the same name. Instead of setting the film in the early 1950s as per the book, director Robert Altman chose to update the setting to 1970s Los Angeles, meaning The Long Goodbye is an example of a film where the source material was adapted to be set in the seventies. Loophole exploited. Take these handcuffs off at once.

Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye is often cited as one of the best crime novels of the 20th century. It follows witty private detective Philip Marlowe as he becomes embroiled in a supposed murder-suicide incident involving his sort-of friend, Terry Lennox. Marlowe is initially hauled in by police, suspected of being an accessory to the crime, before being released without charge. As the dust settles on the murder-suicide, the investigation seemingly closed, Marlowe is hired by a wealthy heiress to track down her husband, famous author Roger Wade. His search takes him to the idyllic Idle Valley, a wealthy part of Los Angeles that’s home to quirky characters and eccentric couples. It’s as if Marlowe’s arrival interrupts a soap opera from a parallel universe; the longer he spends in Idle Valley, the more he becomes wrapped up in the residents’ personal melodramas. The novel reaches a crescendo in true noir fashion, as the intertwining plot unravels in the nick of time for our man, Marlowe.

Chandler’s novel employs all of the quintessential tropes of mid-century noir, perfectly capturing 1950s Los Angeles. We are treated to all of the classics: the wisecracking private dick; the cast of peculiar, offbeat characters; the endemic alcohol dependency; the dive bars serving Gin gimlets as the Californian sun sets outside; the heavy-handed police; all fused together to form a textbook tale of mysterious LA noir.

Philip Marlowe has a stereotypically hard shell that surrounds his often pensive, thoughtful interior. Chandler uses Marlowe as a vessel for his own musings, allowing Marlowe’s thoughts to flow out as poetic prose; a notable example being his description of every type of blonde-haired woman you are likely to come across in Los Angeles, provoked by him spotting the beautiful Eileen Wade across a hotel pool area before she introduces herself and reveals her proposition for Marlowe to look for her husband. Chandler’s Marlowe is the all-American man, the assured wiseguy capable of a slick one-liner befitting of the golden age of Hollywood that he’s living through. Picture the look and voice of Rex Banner, the Elliot Ness parody from The Simpsons, in the episode where Homer becomes the beer baron of Springfield, and you’ll have an idea of how Marlowe comes across in the book.

If Raymond Chandler’s novel is a perfect representation of the slick stylings of 50s noir, Robert Altman’s 1973 film adaptation is something very different. Altman subverts almost all of the tropes from the book, shifting the atmosphere, pace, and structure of the story to fit the hazy, lazy, crazy days of the early 70s.

The most distinguishable difference is Marlowe himself. In the 1946 adaptation of one of Chandler’s earlier novels, The Big Sleep, Marlowe is portrayed by Humphrey Bogart; the ultimate leading man. The American Film Institute selected Bogart as the greatest male star of classic American cinema. It’s no exaggeration to say that he became the archetype for a certain kind of central male performance that we still see on-screen today; the sultry, stone-faced sophisticate of few words and a long gaze. It would be easy to underestimate his on-screen presence if you were born too late to have seen any of his work, but give Casablanca a try and see how Bogart carries himself with constant cool amidst the chaos of Rick’s jazz bar and the ongoing Second World War.

Bogart’s performances in The Big Sleep and other noir films like The Maltese Falcon set the bar for the on-screen detective. So who did Altman choose to play Marlowe for his 70s reboot? Surely it had to be someone with the same gravitas as Bogart? One of the typical leading men of the New Wave of American cinema; Paul Newman, Robert Redford, maybe even Jack Nicholson in a Chinatown-like turn?

Not you, Paul Newman. Slide it on back. For the 1973 version of Philip Marlowe, Altman went with Elliot Gould, whose erratic behaviour on set of his previous films meant that he hadn’t worked in nearly two years. That’s right; Elliot Gould. Also known as Ross and Monica’s dad, in Friends. Jack Geller, private eye. Not quite what you would associate with an updated take on a Humphrey Bogart classic, but the choice is definitely intentional. Altman said that he wanted his take on The Long Goodbye to feel like 50s Marlowe had woke up in the 1970s; a private eye stuck in the wrong era, still adjusting to the changes around him.

Gould’s Marlowe mutters and meanders through Los Angeles with a constant air of disillusionment; he isn’t operating on the same level as those around him. Marlowe delivers one-liners when they aren’t appropriate, he misses the obvious advances from the troupe of free-lovin’ hippie girls who live next door, he even fails to trick his pet cat to eat a different brand of cat food, when the supermarket has ran out of the cat’s preferred brand. If he can’t outfox his pet cat, what chance does he have in the real world with actual human beings? Marlowe doesn’t even have a cat in the novel; so not only does the film suggest that he has woken up in the wrong decade, he’s also woken up in the wrong apartment. The motif of Marlowe being more suited to a different era is not exclusive to his personality; he has a cigarette permanently stuck to his bottom lip (literally every scene) in contrast to the yoga-loving, health conscious Californians, he wears the same suit and red tie throughout the film despite being in stuffy LA sun, and he drives a 1948 convertible.

Having overseen the change to the novel’s central character and the period in which the story takes place, Altman and screenwriter Leigh Brackett go the whole hog, removing some of the peripheral characters and streamlining the story; though most importantly, they completely change the ending too. To put it in a different way, the film is broadly different in all but name. Apparently Altman didn’t even finish reading the book, and said that ‘Chandler fans will hate my guts – I don’t give a damn’. Nice.

So what possessed Altman to take a book so steeped in a certain era, so typical of a certain genre, so iconic in its representation of the private detective central character, and flip it on its head? Long before he became a master of satire, Altman’s first foray into the film industry was as the co-writer of Bodyguard in 1948, another noir thriller that starred Lawrence Tierney, nearly 50 years before he played heist boss Joe in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. There is a theory that during the writing of Bodyguard, Altman’s ideas were side-lined in favour of those of his co-writer, George W. George, and perhaps this sting at the beginning of his career set off a chain of events that ultimately led him to bastardise a famous noir novel 25 years later; the ultimate revenge on the genre as a whole.

Sounds pretty farfetched to me, but it might be true. More likely, is that classic noir was simply the next victim to Altman’s infamous subversive approach to filmmaking. He is famous for applying a layer of satire to usually-serious subjects, allowing humour to seep through and bubble under the surface. Before The Long Goodbye, Altman applied his own anti-war sentiment to M*A*S*H, his Palme d’Or-winning take on the Korean War, and served up some Wild West revisionism with McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Having successfully smashed and spoofed the other classic genres of American cinema – war and westerns – what better to target next than an adaptation of a classic noir novel?

Altman uses The Long Goodbye to offer his take on Hollywood and the usual clichés that it employs. When Marlowe is confronted by police over the Terry Lennox murder-suicide case, he contemplates how to answer their queries; ‘is this where I'm supposed to say, “What's all this about?” and you say, “shut up, I ask the questions”’? Altman shines a light on the violence that is often fetishized by the film industry by adding a domestic violence incident courtesy of the organised crime boss who Marlowe crosses, which is not present in the book. It comes from left-field, completely at random. It feels like Altman is looking to provoke the viewer, showing them how strange it is to watch violence for violence’s sake, with no real benefit to the plot of the film.

The missing writer, Roger Wade, is played by Sterling Hayden; most recognisable to me as the police chief who enjoys a pleasant veal dinner with Michael Corleone and The Turk in The Godfather, or the crazy air base boss in Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. In the film, Wade is the difficult, alcoholic writer; prone to lots of day-drinking and incessant ranting; the classic troubled writer. Luckily for Altman, Hayden was almost permanently drunk and stoned when filming his scenes. There is a reason that his performance feels so authentic.

Altman discards the usually-used chameleon detective persona and flips it to fit the clumsy, almost slapstick sensibility of Gould. At one point when looking towards Wade through a window, Marlowe starts to talk to him with his nose squashed against the glass. Everything else in the scene is played straight, nobody mentions this ridiculous action. The choice to inject this kind of straight-up slapstick in what is ostensibly a detective thriller encapsulates how Altman is always toying with the idea of descending in to full-on comedy farce.

The Long Goodbye leaves a lasting legacy and influence on film and filmmakers. The creamy, pale cinematography from Vilmos Zsigmond’s ‘flashing’ technique helps to give on-screen Los Angeles the trademark haze that it has come to be associated with; Zsigmond went on to win an Academy Award for his cinematography on Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. John Williams composes the main song and motif that features in the film in 11 different styles – as supermarket background music or as a lounge song overheard on a radio – before he takes on god-like status in the composer world, conceiving the iconic themes for the likes of Star Wars, ET, and Jurassic Park. Most significantly, the central idea of a meandering character caught up in an unfamiliar world has been used time and time again; the influence on a film like The Big Lebowski is undeniable.

Arguably, the person most influenced by Robert Altman is Paul Thomas Anderson. Motifs from Altman’s work – mainly The Long Goodbye – can be seen throughout Anderson’s work, though mainly in two films. In Punch-Drunk Love, Adam Sandler’s central character wears a dark-blue suit and red tie combo throughout the film, just like Gould’s Philip Marlowe. OK – that could be a coincidence, but when it’s added to Sandler’s Barry Egan meandering in the Warhol Campbell’s Soup-styled supermarket just like Marlowe’s cat food hunt, you start to really connect the dots. Once Egan runs down an empty, moonlit street, there can be no mistake; this is lifted directly from Marlowe chasing Eileen Wade’s car in downtown Los Angeles. Anderson even comes from the San Fernando Valley, which was the basis for Chandler’s Idle Valley in the novel.

A couple of homages to Altman alone wouldn’t really make a mention of Paul Thomas Anderson worthwhile; he’s hardly the first director to take something from Altman, one of the most influential directors of the 1970s. It’s Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, and by extension the novel itself, that is overtly inspired by The Long Goodbye. Anderson has described Inherent Vice as a ‘companion piece’ to The Long Goodbye, though it would maybe be more accurate to call it a tribute act; it re-uses almost all of the main tropes of Altman’s film. We have the stoned, out-of-touch private eye (Elliot Gould and Inherent Vice’s Joaquin Phoenix), we have a revolving door of eccentric characters, we have someone missing and another person looking for them, we have millionaires, we have rough-housing police, we have strange homeopathic medical retreats and zany doctors, and we have Southern California. To get a feel for either film, or either book, it would probably be easiest to watch the film trailer for Inherent Vice, which Anderson personally produced for his films promotion. I’d put it up there with my favourite trailers; it’s probably better than the film. That pesky social media-induced non-existent attention span strikes again.

Author Thomas Pynchon is notoriously reclusive; he never gives interviews and hasn’t been photographed for decades. He’s known as one of the great American writers, producing heavyweight novels like The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity’s Rainbow in the second half of the 20th century. He surprised a lot of people by taking a far-more streamlined approach with 2009’s Inherent Vice, writing his version of a quirky detective novel, in what could almost be seen as his tribute to Raymond Chandler and his Philip Marlowe novels. Pynchon even produced a video trailer to accompany the release of his book, featuring the kind of Southern Californian vistas that look suspiciously like those that feature in Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation.

Anderson’s film arrived only five years after the release of the book. The coordination in which the book and film were both released in quick succession, both being clear and direct tributes to Chandler’s books and Altman’s film, feels like a really convenient coincidence; or a major criminal conspiracy. The conspiracy fitting of an organisation like Inherent Vice’s Golden Fang. It can’t be a coincidence; it must be a devious plan concocted by a reclusive 80-year old author and a film director. A conspiracy to allow both involved their chance to deliver a tribute to their favourite form of The Long Goodbye. A conspiracy involving films and books about conspiracies. Inception.

Enjoyment of each of the films is obviously personal taste, but the way they interact with their source material from the page is different. A first viewing of Inherent Vice can leave you scratching your head, cracking witty jokes such as; ‘Inherent Vice? More like Incoherent Vice, am I right?’, owing to the convoluted plot and ever increasing links between characters. Once you read the book, however, you realise that this is stylistic, an intentional way of putting you in Doc’s stoned sandals. You realise this was designed to mimic Doc’s ability to roll-up a new joint at the beginning of each chapter and smoke his way to the middle of a conspiracy. The book supplements your enjoyment of the film; it clicks in to place.

With The Long Goodbye, it’s the opposite. The slick noir from the book doesn’t exist in the film, it’s substituted for Altman’s subversion and crude take on the seedy underbelly of 1970s Los Angeles. You can enjoy Gould as Marlowe in his own right, but you will be disappointed if you want something that compliments the book. Altman was right, Chandler fans probably do hate his guts. And I’m sure he didn’t give a damn.