Maybe the calmest thriller ever made, so when the ending comes it's like a thunder clap on a quiet evening. That isn't to say it doesn't get the blood pumping with a coke bottle moment that may be the most shocking thing since Cagney's grapefruit, with an undertone of menace, violence, and mystery - it's just that it saunters along on skinny legs for two hours, a slow burning cigarette, a rumpled suit. Gould's Marlowe is nothing short of incredible, a role that makes it seem as if he just popped out of the womb dressed and ready to go for this film. He doesn't pay attention to topless women or money not because he's too cool but because he's…

On the east coast we have hundreds -maybe thousands- or signs advertising “George Washington slept here.” I’m sure if you did the math there are more signs than there were possible nights in his life. In LA they have a similar phenomenon but the signs say “Elliot Gould lit a match on this surface to light a cigarette in The Long Goodbye.”

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a loser portrayed quite like this. Every moment of every scene bends over backwards to find a new way to humiliate Marlowe. But he doesn’t give a shit. He’s already lost. There’s a zen sadness to him that all the early 70s yoga freaks in LA can’t even touch. He’s dealing…

Philip Marlowe takes a big sleep sometime in the mid 40s and doesn't wake up until 1973, and only then because his cat is hungry.

One of the things I love about Robert Altman is that his movies are essentially long jokes, but unlike most comedians he knows when to stop kidding around - here in the scene where a heavy chooses to intimidate Marlowe through a chilling combination of a Coke bottle and his girlfriend's face. Nothing graphic is shown but it remains one of the most disturbing sequences of violence I've ever seen in fiction. And I'd never thought of it before, but the thread of violence against women runs very deep through the entire movie, from the…

Elliot Gould stars as Philip Marlowe a private investigator searching for the truth about a murder and a lot of missing money in legendary director Robert Altman's adaptation of famed author Raymond Chandler's novel. Pussy lick. Midnight snack. Salt makes everything taste better. Nude neighbors. Celebrity impressions. Badass hair. Elliot's cigarette. Brownie mix. Bootleg cat food. El Porto Del Gato. Shaft's cousin. Police harassment. The pokey. Bill before Beatrix Kiddo killed his ass. Piano man. Guard doggie. Sexy Mrs. Wade. Sterling Hayden's beard. Writer's block. Goons. Bloody bitch slap. Missing loot. Unfocused binoculars. Pretend Philip. The Marlboro Man? Sterling Hemingway? Beachside chit-chat. James Madison is on the $5000 bill. Doggie style. Dr. Quack. Ocean waves. The Terminator? Nose cast. Butt…

Part Five of Preparing (As Much As Humanly Possible) For Inherent Vice

A maddening, roaming, witty, wandering, and fascinating work of disillusion and social deconstruction; Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye is also a striking and vibrant neo-noir that cleverly subverts and wrecks expectations. Elliot Gould's performance is simply the cool of cool, and the tortured landscape that he flows through is both entrancing and sharply edged. Altman's direction is as smooth as butter, and his eye for the meandering and the pointless works astonishingly well here. Also worthy of mention is Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography, which shows the luscious result of "flashing" the undeveloped film negative.

At the end of the day, I really dug it, but I have a feeling…