Taglines: Nothing says goodbye like a bullet.
The Long Goodbye movie storyline. Philip Marlowe is a chain smoking Los Angeles private investigator, quick with a one liner, and fiercely loyal to his friends. It is that loyalty which makes Philip grant the request of his long time friend Terry Lennox when Terry shows up on his doorstep late one evening: immediately drive him to the US-Mexico border into Tijuana.
The next morning, Philip learns from LAPD that Terry’s wife, Sylvia, has been murdered, Terry the primary suspect. Held in jail as an accessory to murder as he does not tell the police anything about his and Terry’s latest encounter, Philip is released three days later as the police further tell him that Terry is dead by an apparent suicide in Mexico. Philip neither believes Terry murdered Sylvia or committed suicide.
Not fully by his own choice, Philip gets further embroiled in Terry’s story. Philip is visited by gangster Marty Augustine and his associates, who believe Philip has or knows where “his” money is that Terry had. Before that visit, Philip is hired by Eileen Wade to locate her husband, author Roger Wade, who has been missing for a week, who has a penchant for over-imbibing, and who has a violent streak when he’s drunk as witnessed by the bruise on Mrs. Wade’s face.
As she believed, Philip is able to locate him in one of the region’s many high end private detox clinics, those where he often frequents after especially destructive drunken sprees. It’s the casual acquaintanceship the Wades had with the Lennoxes about which Eileen admits to Philip that Philip later learns is much more that makes Philip believe the Wades are also tied into the death of the Lennoxes in some manner, either directly or indirectly. Philip has to tie the pieces together, including discovering what happened to Augustine’s money, before Augustine makes good on his threat against him.
The Long Goodbye is a 1973 American neo-noir thriller film directed by Robert Altman and based on Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel of the same title. The screenplay was written by Leigh Brackett, who cowrote the screenplay for Chandler’s The Big Sleep in 1946. The film stars Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe and features Sterling Hayden, Nina Van Pallandt, Jim Bouton, Mark Rydell, and an early uncredited appearance by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The story’s period was moved from 1949–50 to 1970s Hollywood. The Long Goodbye has been described as “a study of a moral and decent man cast adrift in a selfish, self-obsessed society where lives can be thrown away without a backward glance… and any notions of friendship and loyalty are meaningless.
The Long Goodbye (1973)
Directed by: Robert Altman
Starring: Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Mark Rydell, Henry Gibson, David Arkin, Jim Bouton, Warren Berlinger, Jo Ann Brody, Stephen Coit, Enrique Lucero, Vincent Palmieri
Screenplay by: Leigh Brackett
Cinematography by: Vilmos Zsigmond
Film Editing by: Lou Lombardo
Costume Design by: Kent James, Marjorie Wahl
Art Direction by: Sidney H. Greenwood
Music by: John Williams
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: March 7, 1973
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