My alternative canon #3: The Long Goodbye

Note: I’ve often discussed my favorite movies on this blog, but I also love films that are relatively overlooked or unappreciated. Over the next two weeks, I’ll be looking at some of the neglected gems, problem pictures, and flawed masterpieces that have shaped my inner life, and which might have become part of the standard cinematic canon if the circumstances had been just a little bit different. You can read the previous installments here. 

During my freshman year of college, one of my first orders of business was to watch a bunch of movies I’d never had the chance to see. This was back in the late nineties, long before Netflix or streaming video, and filling in the gaps in my cinematic education was a far more haphazard process than it is now: I’d never even had a Blockbuster card. (When I finally got a video store membership, the first movie I rented at the Garage Mall in Cambridge was Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.) I saw many of these films on videocassette in one of the viewing booths at Lamont Library, where you could borrow a pair of headphones and watch a title from the open stacks: it’s how I was introduced to Vertigo, Miller’s Crossing, 8 1/2, the first half of Chimes at Midnight—I never finished it—and many others, including The Long Goodbye. I’d wanted to watch it ever since reading Pauline Kael’s ecstatic review from The New Yorker, especially for the line: “What separates [Robert] Altman from other directors is that time after time he can attain crowning visual effects…and they’re so elusive they’re never precious. They’re like ribbons tying up the whole history of movies.” And when I finally took it in alone one night, I liked it for what it clearly was: a quirky satire of Los Angeles noir that managed to remain compelling despite devoting a total of about five minutes to the plot. Many of its scenes seemed even quirkier then than they did in its initial release, as when Elliott Gould, playing Philip Marlowe, is menaced by a gang of thugs that turns out to include a young, mustachioed Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But it wasn’t until I saw it again a few years later, with an enthusiastic audience at the Brattle Film Archive, that I realized how funny it was. It’s perhaps the one film, aside from M*A*S*H, in which Altman seems so willing to structure comedic set pieces with a genuine setup and payoff, with a big assist from screenwriter Leigh Brackett, who uses the framework of Raymond Chandler’s original novel as a kind of low-horsepower engine that keeps the whole thing running. The film’s basic pleasures are most obvious in the scene in which Mark Rydell’s gangster smashes a Coke bottle across his own girlfriend’s face and then says to Marlowe: “That’s someone I love! And you I don’t even like!” But an even better example is the scene in which Marlowe is hit by a car, followed by a cut to an unconscious figure in a hospital covered from head to toe in bandages—followed in turn by a shot of Marlowe, in the same room, looking balefully at the patient in the next bed. Described like this, it sounds unbearably corny, but I don’t think I’ve ever been so delighted by a gag. In fact, it might be my favorite comedy ever. (It also has my favorite movie poster, drawn with Mad-style dialogue balloons by Jack Davis, which includes a joke that I didn’t get for years. Robert Altman: “This is Nina van Pallandt, who portrays a femme fatale involved in a deceptive plot of shadowy intrigue!” Van Pallandt: “How do you want me to play it?” Altman: “From memory!”) Movies from The Big Lebowski to Inherent Vice have drawn on its mood and incomparable air of cool, but The Long Goodbye remains the great original. It tried to deflate a myth, but in the process, it became a delicious myth in itself. And part of me still wants to live in its world.

“Well, that’s just your opinion, man…”

Note: Every Friday, The A.V. Club, my favorite pop cultural site on the Internet, throws out a question to its staff members for discussion, and I’ve decided that I want to join in on the fun. This week’s question: “Is there any work by an artist you love that is highly regarded and you know you should at least like, but you just can’t?”

I’ve spoken here before about the completist’s dilemma, or the sense that with so much content available at the click of a button—especially on television—it’s no longer enough to be a casual fan. It’s impossible to say that you like Community based on having seen a handful of episodes: you’re expected to have worked your way through all five seasons, even the gas-leak year, and have strong opinions about the relative worth of both installments of “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.” There’s a similar process at work when it comes to the artists you admire. I’ve always had qualms about saying that I’m a fan of an author, director, or musician if I haven’t delved deep into his or her entire catalog, and I’m quietly racked by guilt over any omissions. Am I really a David Bowie fan if I’ve never listened to Low? How can I say anything interesting at all about Thomas Pynchon if I’ve never been able to get through anything beyond Gravity’s Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49? And if most of the songs I’ve internalized by The Smiths, or even New Order, come from their greatest hits collections, do I have any business ranking them among my favorite bands of all time?

At the very least, when it comes to the major works of someone you like, it’s assumed that you’ll adore all the established masterpieces. It’s hard to imagine a Radiohead fan who didn’t care for OK Computer or The Bends—although I’m sure they exist—or a Kubrick enthusiast who can’t sit through Dr. Strangelove. Still, there are glaring exceptions here, too. I don’t know of any directors better than the team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever rewatch The Tales of Hoffmann, which filmmakers as different as Martin Scorsese and George Romero have ranked among their favorites—it just strikes me as a collection of the Archers’ worst indulgences, with only occasional flashes of the greatness of their best movies. David Lynch is about as central to my own inner life as any artist can be, but I can’t stand Wild at Heart. And while I think of David Fincher as one of the four or five most gifted directors currently at work, of all the movies I’ve ever seen, Fight Club might be the one I like least, partly because of how it squanders so much undeniable talent. (To be fair, I haven’t revisited it in ten years or so, but I don’t expect that my opinion has changed.)

But perhaps that’s the mark of an interesting artist. An author or filmmaker whose works you love without qualification may be a genius, but it’s also possible that he or she sticks too consistently to what has worked in the past. I like just about everything I’ve seen by David Mamet, for example—yes, even Redbelt—but there’s a sense in which he tends to rely on the same handful of brilliant tricks, with punchy dialogue, pointedly flat performances, and an evenness of tone and conception that can make even his best movies seem like filmed exercises. Compared to a director like Lars von Trier, who takes insane chances with every picture, or even Curtis Hanson, whose search for new material often leads him into unpromising places, Mamet can seem a little staid. Over time, I’d rather hitch my wagon to a storyteller whose choices can’t be predicted in advance, even if the result is a dead end as often as it becomes a revelation. I don’t necessarily know what the hell Steven Soderbergh is thinking with half the movies he makes, but there’s no denying that the result has been one of the most interesting careers of the last half century.

And even when an artist you respect is operating within his or her comfort zone, it’s possible to be left cold by the result. I love Joel and Ethan Coen: Inside Llewyn Davis was one of my favorite movies from last year, and just last night I rewatched all of Fargo, intending to just leave it on in the background while I did a few things around the house, only to end up sucked in by the story yet again. Yet I’ve never quite been able to get into The Big Lebowski, despite years of trying. It literally works fine on paper: the screenplay is one of the most entertaining I’ve ever read. In execution, though, it all strikes me as mannered and overdetermined, the furthest thing imaginable from the spirit of the Dude. (Watching it alongside The Long Goodbye, one of its obvious inspirations, only underlines the difference between real spontaneity and its obsessively crafted simulation.) Aside from The Hudsucker Proxy, which I’m happy to watch again any night, I’m not sure the Coens are really made for pure comedy: their funniest moments emerge from the bleak clockwork of noir, a genre in which the helplessness of the characters within the plot is part of the joke. The Big Lebowski is fine, on its own terms, but I know they can do a lot better—and that’s what makes me a fan.

Would you have a drink with this man?

Note: Every Friday, The A.V. Club, my favorite pop cultural site on the Internet, throws out a question to its staff members for discussion, and I’ve decided that I want to join in on the fun. This week’s question: “What fictional pop culture figure would you like to go drinking with?”

Protagonists can be a bore. We’ve all been taught that in a good story, the narrative and the hero’s objectives should be inseparable: the conflict should emerge moment to moment from something that the protagonist urgently needs to accomplish, and when his goal has been met—or spectacularly thwarted—the story is over. That’s true enough, and a work that structures itself according to these principles will be infinitely more readable than one that moves aimlessly from one manufactured encounter to another. In practice, though, it often results in leads who are boringly singleminded: when his every action needs to advance the plot, there isn’t enough room for the digressions and loose ends that bring characters to life. That’s why the star of a sitcom or dramatic series is often the least interesting person in sight. Unlike the supporting cast, which has room to go off on tangents, the guy at the center of the show has to strike a constant balance between action, motivation, and relatability, which can drain him of all surprise. A sidekick gets to drift along with the current, and his detours aren’t fatal to the momentum, while the protagonist is under so much narrative pressure that when the story relaxes, he bursts, like a fish brought up from its crevasse to the surface.

As a result, when we think about fictional characters we’d most like to spend time with, we tend to gravitate toward the secondary players. If nothing else, they seem like they’d be willing to sit down and have a drink with us, unlike the protagonist, whose mind would always be skipping ahead to the next plot point. In recent years, television has given us protagonists with the richness and unpredictability of great supporting characters—from Tony Soprano to Don Draper to Walter White—but even they wouldn’t make particularly good drinking companions. Even when a dramatic series allows its protagonist more breathing space, the leads are often burdened with so much backstory that the prospect of hanging out with them seems vaguely exhausting, if not terrifying. We simply know too much about these men and women to relax around them. (This may be why characters in procedurals or more episodic shows, whom we get to know over many years without the cumbersome weight of an overarching story, seem like more fun. I’d love to have a drink with Sherlock Holmes, as long as Watson was there to keep him on his best behavior, and it would be great to kick back with any member of the first two crews of the Enterprise.)

In film, where the tension between plot and character can be especially crushing, it’s often a particular actor’s magic that gives us the impression that a protagonist would make for an entertaining drinking companion. I’ve never been as big a fan of The Big Lebowski as some of its devotees, but I can see the shaggy appeal of The Dude, who ambles haphazardly through his own movie like an oddball supporting character who managed to wander into the center. Jeff Bridges deserves much of the credit for this, of course, and it’s no surprise that he’s ended up as the icon of a loosely organized cult: we’d all be happier if we and our friends were more like The Dude than, say, Jason Bourne. The Big Lebowski, in turn, is partially an homage to Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, which benefits in equal measure from Elliot Gould’s presence as Philip Marlowe. It’s possible that the seventies were the golden age of the hangout movie: the rise of independent productions and the auteur director allowed unconventional actors to migrate into leading roles, and if they seem less focused than your standard leading men, it may be because they’re just happy to be there. And we’re happy to be around them.

Sometimes an actor can coast so much on that illusion of affability that the result turns into laziness: I’m not an admirer of Adam Sandler, but he’s clearly a guy that a lot of moviegoers think they’d like as a buddy, which is why his movies have gradually turned into excuses for him to hang out with his friends by the pool. At best, though, an actor’s natural air of ease can become his greatest asset, as long as it’s paired with a director who is committed to using it in interesting ways. Bill Murray has always had a tendency to float through his roles, and one of the great pleasures of a movie like Ghostbusters or Groundhog Day is the chance to watch him maintain his sardonic equanimity through the strangest of circumstances. But it wasn’t until Murray fell in with Wes Anderson—and, to a lesser extent, Sofia Coppola—that he found the perfect setting for his gifts. The Murray of Rushmore or The Life Aquatic is, as Pauline Kael said of the late Cary Grant, a peerless creation, and it’s no accident that Anderson so often films him with a beer or a bottle in one hand. (“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go on an overnight drunk, and in ten days I’m going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it.“) I’d love to have a drink with Bill Murray. But, failing that, I’ll happily settle for another two hours with Steve Zissou.

True Grit and the Coen Brothers

I mean, who says exactly what they’re thinking? What kind of game is that?
—Kelly Kapoor, The Office

True Grit, as many critics have already noted, is the first movie that Joel and Ethan Coen have made without irony. I liked it a lot, but spent the entire movie waiting for a Coenesque twist that never came—which left me wondering if the twist was the fact that there was no twist. The truth, I think, is somewhat simpler: a combination of affection for the original source material and a desire by the Coens to show what they could do with a straightforward genre piece. (I also suspect that, after decades of thriving in the margins, the Coens were juiced by the prospect of their first real blockbuster.)

As much as I enjoyed True Grit, I found myself nostalgic for the old Coens, rather to my own surprise. There was a time, not long ago, when I would have argued that the Coen brothers, for all their craft and intelligence, were the most overrated directors in the world. In particular, I felt that the very qualities that made them so exceptional—their craft, their visual elegance, their astonishing control—made them especially unsuited for comedy, which requires more spontaneity and improvisation than they once seemed willing to allow. And even their best movies, like Fargo, never escaped a faint air of condescension toward their own characters.

As a result, with the notable exception of The Hudsucker Proxy, which I’ve always loved, I’ve never found the Coens all that funny—or at least not as funny as their admirers insist. Despite my affection for The Dude, I was never as big a fan of the movie in which he found himself, which reads wonderfully as a script, but never really takes off on the screen. And when the Coens try to work in pure comedic mode—as in The Ladykillers, Intolerable Cruelty, and the inexplicable Burn After Reading (which, I’ll grant, does have its admirers)—I find the results close to unwatchable.

In recent years, though, something happened. No Country For Old Men, though it never quite justifies the narrative confusion of its last twenty minutes, is both incredibly tense on the first viewing and hugely amusing thereafter. A Serious Man struck me as close to perfect—their best since Miller’s Crossing, which is still their masterpiece. The Coens, it seemed, had finally relaxed. Their craft, as flawless as ever, had been internalized, instead of storyboarded. Age and success had made them more humane. True Grit feels like the logical culmination of this trend: it’s a movie made, strangely enough, for the audience.

That said, though, I hope that their next movie finds the Coens back in their usual mode. (The rumor that they might still adapt The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is very promising.) True Grit is dandy, but it’s a movie that any number of other directors (like Steven Spielberg, its producer) might have made. For most filmmakers, this retreat from eccentricity would be a good thing, but the Coens have earned the right to be prickly and distinctive. With True Grit, they’ve proven their point: they can make a mainstream movie with the best of them. Now it’s time to get back to work.