Happy Birthday Raymond Chandler

[William]

http://www.williamahearn.com/chandler.html

[gtr]

On 2012-07-23 04:55:48 +0000, William said:

> http://www.williamahearn.com/chandler.html

Sure wish I could get a copy of "High Window". Not that it means
anything. I've been reading the Chandler novels lately. Just finished
Lady in the Lake. Then I saw the movie. I couldn't make it. With the
novel fresh in my brain the they way they whittled and reworked it
didn't make a lick of sense.

Seems I remember seeing and liking it 5-6 years ago.

The novels have honestly ruined the movies for me.

[William]

On Monday, July 23, 2012 1:40:26 AM UTC-4, gtr wrote:

> Sure wish I could get a copy of "High Window". Not that it means
> anything. I've been reading the Chandler novels lately. Just finished
> Lady in the Lake. Then I saw the movie. I couldn't make it. With the
> novel fresh in my brain the they way they whittled and reworked it
> didn't make a lick of sense.
>

Vintage put out an edition a while back. I found my copy in a used bookstore. "Lady In The Lake" is a terrible film and one of my favorite Chandler novels.

>
> The novels have honestly ruined the movies for me.

Except for "The Long Goodbye," I agree. Love both the book and the film.

[gtr]

On 2012-07-23 05:49:49 +0000, William said:

>> The novels have honestly ruined the movies for me.
>
> Except for "The Long Goodbye," I agree. Love both the book and the film.

Isn't that the godawful Elliot Gould/Robert Altman thing? Again,
because of this jaunt of mine, I hunted it down and watched the first
20 minutes of it a few weeks ago and could tolerate no more.

[William]

On Monday, July 23, 2012 9:41:10 AM UTC-4, gtr wrote:

> Isn't that the godawful Elliot Gould/Robert Altman thing? Again,
> because of this jaunt of mine, I hunted it down and watched the first
> 20 minutes of it a few weeks ago and could tolerate no more.

A lot of people have that response. I simply disagree, that's all.

[oblomov]

I like the Altman/Gould take on Marlowe, but a couple of years ago I
got a
bunch of audio books of Chandler's novels read by Elliot Gould and
they
were godawful. I couldn't listen to more that a couple of chapters.
Gould does
a lousy job as a reader.

[gtr]

I believed my complaint to be the updating of it for "modern tastes"
with lots of hippies and swinging LA instead of the vibe I get from the
books. Sure, a detective is a detective a murder's a murder but the
ambience of the thing is most of what (I think) I like about the
Marlowe things.

Marlowe is a "wise guy", but the Gould version strikes me an aimless
smart ass. As Spade says: "The cheaper the crook the gaudier the
patter." The first part of the movie, all about him and cat, getting
cat food late at night and all the rest. This just doesn't look like
the chess-playing Marlowe to me.

It's unfair to judge it by the first 20 minutes, but I just couldn't
seemed so utterly un-Marlowe.

[William]

On Monday, July 23, 2012 10:59:41 AM UTC-4, gtr wrote:
>
> It's unfair to judge it by the first 20 minutes, but I just couldn't
> seemed so utterly un-Marlowe.

I wrote this a while ago for something else.

The key to understanding Raymond Chandler’s iconic private detective Philip Marlowe is to understand that there really isn’t a Philip Marlowe at all. A simple test is to read “The Big Sleep” and then read “Farewell, My Lovely” and compare the character of Marlowe in each. When the Marlowe of “The Big Sleep” has his pistol drawn, people listen. In “Farewell, My Lovely,” they don’t. In “The Big Sleep,” Marlowe is a hard-boiled gumshoe with a bizarre attitude toward women. The Marlowe of “Farewell, My Lovely,” is confused, passive and while he still has a bizarre attitude toward women, he actually gets the girl. Not the rich, well-settled Anne Grayle of the movie – “Murder, My Sweet” – who will inherit everything from her father, but the down-to-earth Anne Riordan of the novel who has nothing and owes nothing to nobody.

Humphrey Bogart – who is actually playing Sam Spade Lite – in “The Big Sleep” is usually thought of as the “definitive” Philip Marlowe, when, in fact, Dick Powell’s Marlowe in “Murder, My Sweet” is much, much truer to the Marlowe of that novel.

And that brings us to “The Long Goodbye” that Chandler had such a hard time writing and that didn’t start out as a Philip Marlowe novel.

“[The main character] was merely a name,” Chandler wrote in a letter, “so I’m afraid I’m going to have to start all over and hand the assignment to Mr. Marlowe, as a result of which I’m going to lose a number of good scenes because they took place away from the leading character. It begins to look as though I were tied to this fellow for life. I simply can’t function without him.”

“Anyhow I wrote [The Long Goodbye],” Chandler wrote to his agent “as I wanted to because I can do that now. I don’t care whether the mystery was fairly obvious, but I cared about the people, about this strange corrupt world we live in, and how any man who tries to be honest looks in the end either sentimental or foolish. Enough of that. There are more practical reasons. You write in a style that has been imitated, even plagiarized, to the point where you begin to look as if you were imitating your imitators. So you have to go where they can’t follow you . . .”

Leigh Brackett followed. Brackett – who wrote the screenplay for Howard Hawks’ “The Big Sleep” along with Jules Furthman and William Faulkner – understood the notion of Marlowe looking “sentimental and foolish” in the present day when she wrote the script for “The Long Goodbye.” Director Robert Altman understood – after seeing Paul Bogart’s 1969 production of “Marlowe” based on Chandler’s The Little Sister – that updating Philip Marlowe in any conventional way wouldn’t work.

Elliot Gould – with his wisecracking pathos – is perfect for the Marlowe of The Long Goodbye who realizes that his time has passed and the only friend he ever had in life had played him for a fool. This is the self-conscious Marlowe of despair and the novel sometimes reads like a suicide note and with that in mind the ending – written by Brackett and not Chandler – seems to feel so true to the sensibility of the novel. Elliot Gould’s Marlowe may not be what Chandler wrote, but it plays as if it is what Chandler meant.

[gtr]

On 2012-07-23 15:12:28 +0000, William said:

> Elliot Gould – with his wisecracking pathos – is perfect for the
> Marlowe of The Long Goodbye who realizes that his time has passed and
> the only friend he ever had in life had played him for a fool. This is
> the self-conscious Marlowe of despair and the novel sometimes reads
> like a suicide note and with that in mind the ending – written by
> Brackett and not Chandler – seems to feel so true to the sensibility of
> the novel. Elliot Gould’s Marlowe may not be what Chandler wrote, but
> it plays as if it is what Chandler meant.

Interesting. I guess he should have called the character something
other than Marlowe, but of course that was his publisher and editor's
problems. Not to mention his fans.

Actually, though I've not read the book or seen the movie through to
completion, the fact that the movie doesn't start with him being
awarded a case, but having a friend's disappearance foisted on
him--that too has the story listing to port.

I've heard that the murder mystery format is a straight-jacket so I can
sympathize with Chandler, but I sympathize much more with my own
selfish demands.

[reilloc]

I like that stupid movie and I like my stupid cats, now, what's the
scene in "Marlowe" that "that Bogart refused to direct and Garner
refused to act in," please?

Thanks,

LNC