Mark,
Re your comments below:
"Leigh Brackett, cowriter of The Big Sleep creenplay, wrote
it. And she says pretty much exactly this in her essay about
it, collected in The Big Book of Noir."
Why are you still talking about this? I thought you
surrendered (a surrender I recall accepting with my usual
magnanity and legendary modesty).
Seriously, though, while Leigh Brackett, as part of the
desperate campaign to salvage some box office out of the TLG
disaster, did say some nice things about it in an article
that was later reprinted in TBBON, significantly, the script
was written before Altman was on board.
Once Altman was put in charge, there were significant changes
in the script. In Brackett's original script, Marlowe was
much more assertive, much more, dare I say it, Marlowe-like.
That didn't fit with Altman's vision, and, consequently,
Marlowe was rewritten
(largely by Altman) into the pitiful wretch Altman wanted to
put on screen.
With a different director, using Brackett's original script,
the film would have been quite different, and, I would
suggest, much closer to Chandler's original vision.
JIM DOHERTY
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