The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973) Wise-acre. Ass-hole. Cutie-pie. Philip Marlowe's called a lot of names, but in Robert Altman's version of "The Long Goodbye," he's also "The Marlboro Man, The Duke of Bullshit."

 

As Elliott Gould's Phillip Marlowe says again and again "It's okay with me." 

It was supposed to be a straight-ahead adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel. Leigh Brackett, who had written a lot of Howard Hawks' films (including his adaptation of Chandler's "The Big Sleep") changed the ending, added some characters and complications and Hawks was contacted to direct. Nope. Then Peter Bogdanovich, who also passed, but mentioned Robert Altman for director. Altman loved the new ending, had already worked with the then-cast Elliott Gould for Marlowe and a deal was made.

And that's where the changes come in. Because the last adaptation of a Chandler Philip Marlowe story was the somewhat irrelevant Marlowe starring laconic James Garner in the title roll. Created deep in the 60's, that film feels old-fashioned and a bit musty (even with Bruce Lee kicking apart Marlowe's office!). But for The Long Goodbye, Altman was going to drop Marlowe into early 70's era Los Angeles, where everybody wore caftans and bushy sideburns, were into macrobiotics, EST and pot—a post-hippie era of conspicuous consumption that had trickled down from Marlowe's beat (problems with the rich) to the exotic dancers and truck-drivers of the pre-disco era.* Marlowe and his code of honor would seem out-of-touch in such a world. 

Then throw in Elliott Gould's rat's nest interpretation of the character and you get a completely other sensibility—one begins to suspect Marlowe of being incompetent in such a world, unable to function (he can't even find his own cat), but he does, snapping to whenever some dies (or is about to). And another nice touch is Gould's mumbling patter along the way, supplying his own first-person narrative, ala Chandler.

L.A. in twilight is still the same and the supporting cast of hoods and thugs (including a before stardom Arnold Schwarzenegger) as menacing as the time the Marlowe books encapsulated (late '30's to mid-50's), but now they're more than just socially deviant, they're demonstrably sociopathic in the form of Marty Augustine (director Mark Rydell), with twisted justifications for their actions, which can sometimes be just a sadistic play of power. And that's what makes Leigh Brackett's screenplay a bit different than the tone she took 'way back in 1945 when she and William Faulkner adapted Chandler's "The Big Sleep" for Howard Hawks and Bogey and Bacall: there's no sense of right and wrong, it's a sense of right and wrong for "me." And Brackett allows Marlowe to make a final statement condemning that world. It's the only way that this Marlowe...in this world...can "make it right." 

There are problems—some stunt-casting—Nina Van Pallandt (mistress of Howard Hughes scammer Clifford Irving) and Jim Bouton (former Seattle Pilot and author of "Ball Four!")—call more attention to the actors than the characters and Altman regular Henry Gibson has no steel core to speak of for his predatory doctor, but throughout, Altman and ace cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond bring a formal off-the-cuff look to everything in L.A., culminating in two beach shots reflected in windows that present two perspectives on conversations, while in a push-focus the audience is clued in to happenings going on at the surf's edge, one inconsequential, the other, irretrievable. It's a fine example of Altman's ability as a seamless film-maker making his movie in the camera and relying less on the unique art to film-making of editing.

Three posters/One film: The original film-poster that confused L.A. audiences into thinking they'd be seeing a straight-ahead thriller. The film was withdrawn for six months and re-instated with the  Jack Davis-designed "Mad" style poster—in the upper right of this article—for the New York run, where it was very successful. The international poster ("Nothing says goodbye like a bullet") is included next to the initial poster.

 
* And in a running gag, the percolating presence of a mordant "Long Goodbye" theme (written by Johnny Mercer and John "T." Williams--two years before Jaws) pervades everything in Los Angeles—right down to the mantras and door-bells. Good thing there weren't cell-phones back then.

Ocean's Thirteen

The Plot Thickens.... 

Oceans Eleven was an enjoyable, breezy updating of a not-very-good "Rat Pack" movie with a nicely eclectic cast from many walks of the entertainment industry. It was a lark, with no real sense of any danger or risk. It just seemed like director Steve Soderbergh and star George Clooney (partners in the production company, Section 8)were getting free rein of Vegas and dragging along a bunch of pals along with them.
Oceans Twelve, however, showed signs of fatigue. Instead of Vegas, it was filmed in Europe. The large majority of the cast was arranged to "rot in jail" for most of its running time, while Matt Damon and Julia Roberts carried the weight of the plot, storyline and ad-libbed dialogue to sometimes excruciating effect (Okay, so Roberts played Tess Ocean, the wife of George Clooney's character, and when he gets way-laid, she flies to Europe where she's recruited to pass herself off as...Julia Roberts, and hilarity ensues when *gasp* Bruce Willis "cameos in" to complicate matters!!) Not much worthwhile there, but Clooney got to write off his Lake Como estate, so I guess that's something.

So, now it's the third go-'round, the unlucky Thirteen and to "play it safe" and "cover all bets," the crew goes back to Vegas to avenge another hoodwinking of deep-pockets gang member Reuben (Elliott Gould) by another puffed-ego Vegas properties owner, one Willie Bank, played by Al Pacino on cruise control. Once again, it's a con of "Mission: Impossible" proportions involving false identities and accoutrements, loaded dice, coins and roulette balls and the use of not one, but two large tunnellers (that were used to dig the Chunnel we're told) to carry out the various schemes. While it's true you have to spend money to make money this movie takes it to new extremes. 

Along the way there are pleasant cameos by Julian Sands and Eddie Izzard (Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones' absences are explained away quickly--"it's not their fight"), Vincent Cassel (from 12) and even Exec. Producer Jerry Weintraub. Everything's in place--everybody's a wise-acre, Clooney makers a tuxedo look like casual wear, Pitt's wardrobe is still horrendous, and they even manage to work in Andy Garcia's rival casino owner in on the plot--though fortunately, they don't turn him into a suddenly reformed "good guy." 

Ellen Barkin and Matt Damon

(with the nose he wasn't allowed to wear in The Brothers Grimm)

Because Pacino's on board, there's a couple sneaky Godfather references in the dialog--one to Pacino's face, but like most of the in-jokes (right down to the last lines) they're so "inside" that they'll probably go over a large portion of heads. But despite these minute differences, it's the first movie all over again--like Return of the Jedi, the third in the "Star Wars" series and Last Crusade, in the "Indiana Jones" cycle--but as with those films, the ingredients making up Ocean's Thirteen have been left out to curdle a bit. It's fun and all, with a couple of laugh-out-loud moments involving Oprah Winfrey, and Soderbergh directed, shot and edited the thing himself, but is it too much to ask for something a bit more original? One gets the impression that if not for the perks to cast and crew, they would have done well to have left the table and cashed out a little earlier.

Contagion

I had planned to put up a review of Soderbergh's The Laundromat today, but this seems a more appropriate choice from his work. 

Written at the time of the film's outbreak. 

"Night of the Coughing Superstars"
or
"Please Wash Your Hands Before Exiting the Theater"

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.  Or even to crowd The Bitch. Because, sooner or later, she's going to look at all that nice smooth asphalt we've laid across her, and send up some crab-grass to seek out the weak spots and crack it.

"How do you like them pot-holes, Ozymandias?"*

Steven Soderbergh's "pandepic" Contagion fits quite well in the movie medical chest that includes such plague-filled films as Panic in the Streets, The Satan Bug, and The Andromeda Strain (one could also mention "The Stand," I Am Legend and the recent Rise of the Planet of the Apes—even, if we're talking Gaia's uprising, such natural disasters as The Happening (2008) and The Birds)—an organized, technologically advanced, scientifically-disciplined infrastructure is helpless against a simple organism that spreads through the sheer inevitability of exponentiality.**  

It also cross-germinates into the "Butterfly Effect" genre (see Babel, 21 Grams, Crash)—you know, where we're all so interconnected that if a butterfly sneezes in China, we'd better cover our mouths in the United States or else we'll keel over into the Stone Age.***  And with so many stars (all very good, actually), it also reminds of one of those Irwin Allen SAG-slaughter disaster movies of the 1970's, that featured tag-lines like: "Who Will Survive?"

Contagion comes a few years after the majority of us could dismiss SARS and H1N1 in the real world with a blithe "where's the pandemic?" (completely dismissing such very real threats as AIDS and the hair-trigger Ebola and Marburg viruses).**** But, it is chilling that with all our research capabilities, we'd still be running behind any new threat, simply because the little suckers can evolve faster in the gut than we can be creationists in the lab. And Scott Z. Burns (who wrote Soderbergh's The Informant! and is updating "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." for him*****) has taken an...er...clinical approach with his screenplay, starting moments after "first contact," following the progress of the disease from China, to the United states, its spread and detection by the Center for Disease Control and their efforts to isolate the cause, and, possibly, find a cure. However fast they go (and it's a process hampered by testing schedules and production runs...and which pharmaceutical companies will profit from it), it's not enough to prevent wide-spread death and a near-collapse of societal structures throughout the world. 

"It's figuring us out faster than we're figuring it out," says one of the techs (Jennifer Ehle) to her boss at CDC (Laurence Fishburne)...and it doesn't have a bureaucracy to work through. The drama is situational, so don't go in expecting ambulance chases and LED countdowns to disaster, but, instead, situations where families are ripped apart, investigators become victims, and desperation becomes just another symptom. It's a procedural with a widely-flung spray pattern.

The cast is amazing...Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet...and just when you think they've run out of actors, up turns John Hawkes, Elliott Gould, Demetri Martin, and Bryan Cranston...you half-expect the full cast of Ocean's 13 to show up and cough out cameos. No one dominates, everybody underplays, and the heroics are human and low-key. 

Nicely done, and food for thought, just wash your hands before eating.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a 2:00pm appointment for a flu shot.

Capricorn One

Capricorn One (Peter Hyams, 1978) And then came the backlash.

The Moon landings happened between 1969 and 1972, with six landings—more were planned but were scrapped due to budget cuts and general disinterest in "Man's Greatest Adventure"—and one mission (Apollo 13) that had to be scrapped due to equipment malfunctions. In 1976, a book was self-published by a former technical writer for Rocketdyne (who'd manufactured the Saturn 5 rocket engines) that the Moon landings were faked, based on his theories and his Bachelor of Arts in English.

Peter Hyams was working on the CBS broadcasts of the moon landings, which included—in lieu of real pictures from space—video simulations, animations, and staged views of a life-size Lunar Module on a Moon-simulated stage. He wrote a treatment of a Moon landing hoax in 1972 and after the Watergate scandal, began shopping it around where it was eventually sold to Sir Lew Grade in 1975.

The premise for Capricorn One is that NASA discovers—at the last minute—that the environmental system on-board just plain doesn't work, that despite astronauts supposedly testing the suits and spacecraft before launch, or even having test flights, and despite that keeping the astronauts alive during the mission might be "job 1." So, Head of NASA Dr. James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) has the three man crew (James Brolin, O.J. Simpson, Sam Waterston) taken out of their capsule before launch and flown to a Nevada base where a planned faux-Mars walk will take place five months hence.*

The studio is a humble affair where all the action—all the action—would take place in a 90° arc around the landing craft—forget that a mission to Mars would be a long time affair requiring months of transit time and and a long staying time, a few months at least, to make the trip worth it, and, you know, "distance". Not to mention that the equipment to be used is the 1969 moon landing vintage—the real lunar lander couldn't support its own weight in anything more than the 1/6th lunar gravity (for some unknown reason—but I'll speculate money—NASA cooperated with this project). 

Anyway, the astronauts, for the good of the country, decide to go along with the subterfuge—and there's also the little matter that if they don't, their wives will be blown up on the trip back to Houston after the launch. Given that threat, you would think these pilot-engineers would be able to connect 1 to 1 and realize that if they're threatening to kill the wives (who wouldn't know about the conspiracy), then it's a small step (rather than a giant leap) to kill three of the  people in the know.

The spend the length of the mission in that desert location—not too different from that Rocketydyne writer's premise that the Moon crews spent their missions in Vegas with hookers and showgirls (they weren't recognized and the women didn't talk or brag about it?). But the crew have no such amenities (and being on Earth, neither can they simulate zero-g conditions—a staple of televised crew activities in space—during their broadcasts**), and once their scheduled broadcasts have concluded, they start to realize their vulnerability (they're not needed anymore) and so they plan to make an escape to try to get back to civilization before the execution can take place.

Once the hoax is accomplished, the crew make their escape, hijacking a jet used to carry the would-be assassins to the desert facility and ditching it when it runs out of fuel—there wasn't enough for a return trip (just how well funded is this conspiracy?)—the astronauts split up to make it more difficult to find ALL of them. They are pursued by your standard conspiracy theory "black helicopters" that are not so smart to separate but pair up in their search. In fact, the black helicopters are rather comically imagined and shot. Looking like bugs, at one point they face each other as if talking in a forced perspective shot*** that belies the fact they'd be chopping each others' blades off if they were really facing each other.

Meanwhile, NASA announces that the astronauts were killed during re-entry. While the nation mourns, one of the cap-techs (named Elliott and played by Robert Walden) tips off an intrepid reporter Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould) that the television signal for the broadcasts beats the telemetry signals from the space-craft. 

Of course, it would. But what did they do with the spacecraft? Did they shoot it into a course for Mars—in which case it would take 21 minutes to reach Earth and that's a lot of difference—or is it in Earth orbits—in which case tracking stations around the globe would be receiving it at a rate once every 90 minutes (the time it takes to orbit) rather than the regular speed of the Earth turning into the signal (See how this gets less and less likely?).

Anyway, Caulfield starts to follow leads and signals and enlists the aid of an eccentric crop-dusting pilot names Albain (Telly Savalas—okay, mock if you want, but Gould and Savalas are the most entertaining thing about this picture) to help find the desert studio and find the astronauts who might've survived—spoiler alert: they have better luck than two "black helicopters").

The unlikely team of Gould and Savalas really are the best thing about the movie. The worst performance is a real surprise—Sam Waterston gives a horribly overly-emotive performance in times of crisis, and I'll put that down to his playing the Command Module pilot because they never get the attention that the other two in the crew get.

The movie is absolute hokum, but it's visuals were tantalizing enough to inspire all sorts of conspiracy theories, to give pictures to the specious theories that were circling like vultures—and shots from the film were used in some garage videos as a basis for likelihood. In this case, those images were more powerful than any logic, as nothing is mentioned in the film about where the actual rocket has gone and no one in the film questions the limited field of view of the faked Mars signals (something you couldn't say about the vistas of the moon missions—even Apollo 11 did a 360° sweep of the landing area with the television camera) or even why the camera couldn't be moved to show the back of the spacecraft (thus showing the stage). Details. For the movie-goer, that's not brought up. Out of sight, out of mind. Plus, if a reporter can figure out a deception is going on—while it's going on—it's not much of a deception. In a post-Watergate world, it was easier to believe a case of malfeasance from the government than it would be to believe that it's easier to actually make the trip than to fake it.

Capricorn One is a mediocre film, but its imagery is compelling enough to charge the imagination...and fool the gullible. In fact, it's just like a conspiracy theory—all surface and no depth and enough holes to fly a Saturn 5 through.

Still, in a 1999 Gallup poll, 6% of Americans believe the Moon landing was faked (Post 9/11, a Pew research poll said that the number had "skyrocketed"...to 7%). 25% of British citizens believe it was a hoax (8 of the 1009 interviewed think Louis Armstrong was the first man to walk on the Moon).

https://news.gallup.com/poll/3712/Landing-Man-Moon-Publics-View.aspx
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/moon-landing-faked-why-people-believe-conspiracy-theories/

The posters for Capricorn One played up the conspiracy angle.

* At one point Kelloway grouses that Apollo 17 started getting complaints that the coverage was pre-empting re-runs of "I Love Lucy." As I remember it, it started with Apollo 12. If we had the same adventurous spirit at the time of Columbus, we'd be speaking Spanish!

** And this is is rich—during the televised Mars-walk, when they have to simulate Mars' lesser gravity, a director snaps his fingers and says "Slo-Mo" and the picture slows down—and if such a thing WERE possible, they'd still have to find some way to make up the time differential the longer "slo-mo" images would take when things go back to normal speed.

***

Ruby Sparks

Hearts and Minds
or
"The Situation is Crazy.  I Am Not."

Stephen King will see this one and slap his forehead for an opportunity missed for a seven hundred page novel. I've known enough authors of fiction that have mentioned a scary thing: they'll start writing, fleshing out the skeleton of an idea, the characters take shape, become three-dimensional, and then suddenly, they live. In fact (and fiction), they become so alive they'll start doing things and going in directions that the author never intended or had even planned for. The figments of the author's imagination take on a life of their own, rebel and...rather than the author changing them, they change the author, or at least his intentions for them.

Eerie. And the basis for Ruby Sparks, the latest film from Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the folks who directed Little Miss Sunshine. That film I wasn't too crazy about, as it seemed to scream "Indie Sensibilities" from every tortured writerly "quirk" that was tossed in. Ruby Sparks, however, is different—a nicely buttoned-up movie that reverberates with all sorts of echoes that ripple through the film and cross over in a concentric series of folded back references, self- and otherwise. 

Author Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano) is struggling with a follow-up novel after an initial success—struggling for 10 years, in fact. His shrink (Elliott Gould) gives him an assignment to take the pressure off, and Calvin is inspired, writing about an idealized, neurotic woman named Ruby Sparks. But, he's not just inspired, he's energized, so much so he can't wait to get back to his typewriter (it's this old piece of technology before a PC, or what was known in the Pleistocene era as a "word processor") to continue the work, spend more time with her, creating her. So much so that he starts to fear that he's falling in love with her. His brother reads the pages and his criticism is harsh: "You haven't written a person. You've written a girl. Geeky, messy girls are not what people want." He remains undeterred, writing all night and into the morning. Imagine his horror when he wakes up from his QWERTY keyboard, runs downstairs and finds Ruby (Zoe Kazan) in one of his shirts, eating cereal.

He freaks, naturally, much to her consternation, and then is shocked to discover that everybody can see her, too. She's just not a figment of his imagination; his imagination walks amongst us.

This is the stuff of male fantasy rom-com's. But, Ruby Sparks takes it into some dark places, ala Hitchcock, in the realms of identity, manipulation, male wish-fulfilments, and the odd idealization and expectations that love creates and blinds us to. We all create an object of affection (on both sides, sending and receiving), but whether that object has anything to do with reality depends on both parties and how much they want to compromise to achieve that...whatever it is..."more perfect union," let's say.

The script (by Kazan herself) explores some uncomfortable territory in that regard and Kazan has a knack for writing dialogue that is spot-on, but containing deep echoes that weight them further. It's one of the better rom-com/fantasy scripts to come along in awhile—at least it has a thought in its head—and the performers, while still showing an abundance of the too-eager "cutes," although, ultimately, its not enough to keep you wondering how it all could end. Yes, the film has its moments of coy cloyingness—for example, when Ruby goes to a family dinner with Calvin's hippy-dippy step-parents (Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas), that amounts to a side-bar, and just lets us know what we already know, that Calvin is a bit of a stick-in-the-mud and a buzz-kill, and (surprise, surprise) less capable of change than his own creation, which, if he wanted to, he could correct with a new sentence, or some Liquid Paper.

It doesn't go there (and only for revelation purposes, as if it did any more, it might be a good vehicle for Adam Sandler), nor does it end "Happily Ever After" as rom-com's do (but only because they choose to). Ruby Sparks chooses another way, fully committed to not committing and finding the fine balance of compromise.