Taglines: Now the most talked about game in town will have a seat for you. Everywhere.
California Split movie storyline. Bill Denny and Charlie Waters meet when they are both on the same end of a fellow gambler’s wrath at a Southern California gambling club. Bill is a casual gambler who has a full time job as a magazine writer, whereas Charlie is a small-time career gambler, with the moxie to match his need to portray himself as the winner specifically to those at his poker table.
As Bill and Charlie spend more time together, Bill begins to want to emulate Charlie’s life, including hanging out with Charlie’s prostitute friends, Barbara Miller, but most specifically Susan Peters. Bill even goes into debt to his loan shark as he gambles more. Regardless, Bill and Charlie try to raise enough cash to take a trip to Reno with the goal for Bill to win some money at among others a high stakes poker game, but more importantly to get the gambler’s fix associated with winning big.
California Split is a 1974 American comedy-drama film directed by Robert Altman and starring Elliott Gould and George Segal as a pair of gamblers and was the first non-Cinerama film to use eight-track stereo sound. Some have praised it as the greatest film about gambling ever made.
California Split (1974)
Directed by: Robert Altman
Starring: George Segal, Elliott Gould, Ann Prentiss, Gwen Welles, Edward Walsh, Joseph Walsh, Bert Remsen, Barbara London, Barbara Ruick, Jay Fletcher, Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Colby, Alyce Passman, Joanne Strauss
Screenplay by: Joseph Walsh
Cinematography by: Paul Lohmann
Film Editing by: O. Nicholas Brown, Lou Lombardo
Set Decoration by: Sam J. Jones
Art Direction by: Leon Ericksen
Makeup Department: Joe DiBella
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: August 7, 1974
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