Patrick wrote:
"[Long Goodbye was supposed to change Elliot Gould's image]
From a character actor to a leading man a la Bogart and
Mitchum. The fact is that Gould has a good face, but it's not
a romantic face. While they certainly are not even similar
looking, both Bogart and Mitchum worked easily into the
romantic male lead over and over again. Gould is more like an
Edward G. Robinson. He makes a good dad, uncle, grandad, but
the love interest of a temptress, only if the character has
no clue what he's getting into. Gould could do a Cain
anti-hero effectively, but not a Chandler hard boiled
character."
If so, who was his romantic partner in Long Goodbye? The cat?
This seems like a terrible vehicle to accomplish that
goal.
And he had been a leading man in MASH, and a romantic lead in
Getting Straight and Bob & Carol & Ted &
Alice.
Judith M Kass's Robert Altman: American Innovator (1978)
confirms Terrill's story that Gould was uninsurable at the
time, so he was hardly in a position to dictate movies being
made to change his image. And Altman only talked himself into
the project he had initially rejected while lobbying on
Gould's behalf, backing up producer David Picker's choice of
Gould.
Interestingly, Altman's next film was Thieves Like Us, an
adaptation of the noir classic. It got great reviews. No one
seems to have a problem with this adaptation. Of course,
Altman did it as a period piece, not
"updating" it as he had Long Goodbye. I haven't seen the
movie, or read the book, keep meaning to do both (have seen
Nicolas Ray's earlier adaptation, They Live By Nght) -- how
faithful is Altman's take?
Mark
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03 Feb 2007 EST