Inspiring Films: The Long Goodbye

Now that I'm putting together this play, I realize how important style is.  And how important it is to defy those expectations that people have.  But style comes from within.  Bob had such panache and that came entirely from him.  I also read his oral biography several times.  I love going back to it because it's other people taking about him.  It's him, too.  But he created such community that it's great to hear others speak so fondly (and not so fondly) and honestly about someone they worked with.  

Reading about Bob and watching certain films of his really made me excited about making theatre again.  I started doing theatre because I wanted to participate and I wanted to be around people.  I didn't have a lot of friends growing up, so being around people being weird and expressive was like manna.  The Lost Goodbye was a discovery for me.  I didn't know it at all before.  I had heard of it, but I hadn't seen it.  And it's just a good place to spend a couple of hours.  I have those same high hopes for this play I'm writing.

The Long Goodbye got me thinking about genre.  So many of Altman’s films are a take on a certain film genre.  The detective story, the war comedy, the hero story.  He takes these conventions and turns them on their ear.  It actually got me thinking about this Seven Deadly Sins project I’m working on.  These genres have become institutions.  They’ve become the way we make movies and the way we put stories into categories.  But Altman subverts that, especially in The Long Goodbye.

There isn’t a great deal of suspense in this film.  In moving Raymond Chandler’s story from the 50s to the 70s in California the land of sunshine, he does away with our expectations of a detective noir.  It’s not dark and shadowy.  The dark shadowy characters are out in the day.  It’s like a vampire with a tan.  Marlowe continually is shown in contrast with his LA surroundings.  It’s like the character was cryogenically frozen and then brought back to life in the present day.  He’s like Captain America in that way.  Boy, do I happen to be fond of the super hero analogies.

The Long Goodbye also has style.  It’s got a vibe that’s firmly rooted in its location.  You’ve got the Hollywood Hills and Malibu.  There’s something perennially cool about this film.  There’s a beautiful scene where the Wades are having conversation and the wife threatens to leave.  While they’re inside their house, you see the reflection in the window of Marlowe walking around on the beach.  It’s not a split screen or deliberately superimposed, but it has a great effect of letting us know that there are parallel stories going on at the same time.  It’s the visual equivalent of overlapping dialogue.

So what are the things I can take away from The Long Goodbye?  I don’t know if genre has a place in what I’m telling.  But I like the voyeuristic quality of the film and the cool character of Philip Marlowe who doesn’t bear any resemblance to the character in Chandler’s books.  Yet, he’s a cool guy.  So that subverting of expectations is something I want to take away.  There’s an atmospheric quality to The Long Goodbye that I’d like to steal from.  I feel like this play needs to have a definite vibe, a style, an approach.  It can’t just be a good story told well.  It’s got to have a ruffle or a pocket square or an ascot.  It’s got to have panache.