Nice to see you broadening your cultural horizons, Greg. It's hard to go wrong with Chandler, for all the reasons you demonstrated here.
I had the privilege during my earlier days in the screen trade to be introduced to Billy Wilder, by then involuntarily retired but still involved in things. I got a post-graduate education in the movies over two years of lunches with him in his office over in Beverly Hills, listening to his stories (I think got the job because I was the only person he knew who hadn't heard them all 10,000 times). He told me about working with Chandler when they wrote "Double Indemnity." His most withering comment was "The man had no problem creating pictures with words but he couldn't use pictures as words." That's a common failing with writers who aspire to the movies; they think a screenplay is "literature," when - as Wilder put it - "A screenplay is a blueprint and a screenwriter is a draftsman." "Movies" is a contraction of "moving picture," the method by which the story is told. He told me the fact I was a photographer was going to be very useful in my screenwriting and he was right - I still tell aspiring screenwriters that the road to success is to go over to Harry's Cameras and get a good used Nikon.
But one of the reasons Chandler has been adapted so well in the movies is because his work is easy to adapt. The pictures just flow, as you demonstrated so well. If you look at the opening scene of "The Big Sleep" on the screen, it relates to everything in that opening paragraph.
Thanks for this. I love all the old Hollywood stories. And of course Billy Wilder is one of the all-time greats and one of my all-time favorites. One of these weeks I will write about him more. "Sunset Blvd." and "Some Like It Hot" both on my personal top 10 list.
Chandler could also write zippy dialogue, which is helpful...although the repartee in the Big Sleep film is WAAAY more than what's in the book, and I think makes the movie less powerful.
He's also one of my favorites. I think I've read everything he ever wrote at some point, something that is true of very few writers...
Given that the movie starred the new "It" couple, Bogart and Bacall - who had achieved that place through the "zippy" dialogue in their first movie together, "To Have and Have Not," ("You do know how to whistle? You just pucker up your lips and... blow") I'm sure the studio pushed to give the public what they wanted.
Happy Sunday, Greg! This was such wonderful reading for a Sunday morning. Took me back 50 years to all of the greats: Chandler, Hammett, and (in the same breath!) Hemingway. And made me think about all of the books and films since that bear their imprint (Scorsese's Mean Streets, Polanski's Chinatown, Banville's Quirke books. . .).
For fun, you might watch this excerpt of an interview from the 30th anniversary Blu-ray edition of Miller's Crossing, with Megan Abbott talking to Joel and Ethan Coen about noir and their film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN-iXfllAg8
And I don't think there is a hero out there for us. I think we will have to be that hero ourselves.
Thanks, Leah. Thanks so much for that! "Miller's Crossing" is the best Coen Brothers movie (although my favorite will always be "Burn After Reading"), and it's been ages since I've seen it. "Chinatown" is #2 on my all-time list, a perfect film in every way.
You're right -- there is no hero. The hero is all of us, if there a hero be.
Miller's Crossing is one of just a few great noir movies in my view, along with Once Upon A Time In America & (get ready) Pennies From Heaven, the sui generis noir musical.
My Sunday mornings are all the better when they begin with a Greg literary lesson. The turbulence that is today's America prevades my sleep, each day begins more tired than the last one, horrific what ifs constantly disturb my sleep. Your lessons somehow deal with today's realities through the stories and characters you write about, leaving me with a hope that better days lie ahead and I will make it to the day of the big sleep, whenever that mysterious day unfolds.
Thanks, keep these most fascinating pieces coming.
Thanks, Old Man. This has been a particularly angry-making couple of weeks, what with the MSM suddenly all realizing that you know, maybe this Musk guy isn't so hot. I guess it's good they at least figured it out?
In the battle between Trump and Musk, my money's on Trump, btw. Elon is, to quote the great Walter Sobchak, "a fucking amateur, Dude."
The human condition is a perpetual state of "figuring it out". No instruction manual provided. No hero is coming. And it's ok, we can handle it most of the time.
I'm pretty sure I never saw The Big Sleep movie but I could hear Bogart speaking every Marlow line in my head. Good stuff.
I'm not the biggest fan of the film, because they insert too much cute dialogue, and it didn't need more cute dialogue. But Bogart IS the perfect Marlowe, despite being as short as Marlow is tall.
Of course Chandler is one of the great wordsmiths with his
The Long Goodbye being my favorite. Recently a friend introduced me to Charles Ray Willeford. Then I recalled watching the film Miami Blues. I have ordered New Forms of Ugly.
Thank you again for your reminding us of such greatness.
Agreed, The Long Goodbye is the best one. And contains this gem, as Marlowe works out his chess problems: "Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as can be found outside an advertising agency."
Well, MY new year resolution is to start paring away some of this media I own by actually watching/reading it. It turns out I have THE BIG SLEEP in Kindle format, and two movies from 1946 and 1978, and I don't think I've watched/read any of it. Although I must have seen the Bogart version at some time in my life because I remember it, vaguely. I'm also a big noir fan and am drawn to stories of Los Angeles from the 1930s through the 1950s. I have been as long as I can remember and have no idea why, and long ago gave up trying to figure it out. Maybe it's a reincarnation thing for all I know. At any rate, good reminder this morning of some of the things I've been missing by spending my time watching dreck like Y2K (Ugh!) and reading trash to get away from non-fiction books about politics -- although A LITTLE LIFE is still one of my favorite books, so that's not trash. REJECTION: FICTION has turned out to be clever, but ultimately trashy, so I'm almost done with it and need a palate-cleanser. Thanks for the heads-up for THE BIG SLEEP, Greg, and Happy New Year!
Thanks, Steve. If you like noir, you'll love it. I would say it's less hard boiled than other stuff, in a good way. The humor gives it more complexity. I will also caution that, in addition to being a misogynist, Marlowe is homophobic (in an era where gay sex was illegal, and thus figures prominently in detective stories), lowkey racist, and a tad antisemitic for good measure. Like you, I love all the old LA stuff. There's something distinctly American, I think, about LA, and especially its transformation into Hollywood. "Chinatown" is one of my all-time favorite movies, for example. Happy New Year!
Oh yes, some of the best writing in the English language is crime fiction. Are you familiar with James Lee Burke? Your analysis of Chandler reminds me of his Dave Robicheaux books, set in Louisiana. (The Texas and Montana books, not so much, but maybe that's me.) Once when my book group was fawning over a particularly clumsy metaphor in a well-hyped literary novel I grabbed a Burke paperback from my shelf and opened it to a random passage for comparison. Burke was clearly the better writer. Same with Chandler: he's up there with the best of 'em. Thanks for highlighting him today.
Thanks, Abby. No, I don't know Burke but will check him out.
In his essay, Chandler talks about how detective novels get published even if the writing is meh, because there is such demand, and are always more popular than novel novels. He is much more concerned with character, setting, tone, mood than plot, which is what makes it good.
I always enjoyed detective novels, and now that I don’t have much opportunity to read books, I can at least enjoy good writing—yours!—that reminds me of novels I have enjoyed. I want to applaud your ending to this piece, wherein you express hope for the eventual awakening of humanity.
Heroes aren't made. They happen. Usually when there's a fire to put out. A gunman to stop or simply a wrong to right. Heroes leave a place better than they found it. We call it a legacy.
DementedDonald is NOT a hero. He leaves carnage & misery wherever he roams. He & his have desecrated the 14th Amendment, rendering it meaningless - along with much of the other Amendments.
The Big Sleep is also known among morticians as The Great Equilizer. We come into to this world as nothing and with nothing... we leave it the same way.
I can only hope the Big Sleep comes soon for DonnieBoy. We all deserve a breather from his recklessness & chauvinism. I'm sure Panama, Canada & Danmark (Greenland) would agree.
Maybe your most beautifully written essay yet but it makes me sad. The more enormous and undoable what we need to accomplish gets, the more we do what we can and those of us who can, wax more literary. Messages in bottles to wash ashore & be read where & when we can't know.
thank you Greg. When I am reading your appreciation of other wonderful writing, I wonder if you are also writing any fiction novels. If so, I am already a fan!
as always, a reminder of goodness and appreciation of the many good things in our day to day, yesterdays and tomorrows.
Hi, Dennis. Thank you, and thanks for asking. I have three novels: a thriller set in 1991 (Totally Killer), and day in the life novel (Fathermucker), and an epic saga about the Byzantine Empire (Empress). Something for everyone, I hope!
"Ova heah, Canino." "I got here first, Eddie." Forgive me all my dreams and stagings of sweet revenge. I know the films (both versions) frame by frame, but never thought of reading the book. I will now, thank you.
Fwiw, my own work over the past 20+ years of trying, with a handful of colleagues, to penetrate the dense fogs and webs of our computerized election system to establish whether our nation's inexorable rightward veer, culminating this November, is organic or synthetic (i.e., rigged) feels a lot like a loner detective in a house of mirrors, who can expect no help at all from the authorities. Whoever is writing this script, however, has not seen fit to solve the crime, unravel the mysteries, or pay the detective in question.
The film gives no clue as to the derivation of the title. I figured if I lived long enough I might find out one day.
The book is, IMO, better than the film. The plot is tighter, and the film overdoes it with the witty repartee, to the point of silliness. If you don't love the book, I'd be shocked.
I mean this very sincerely: that, what you just said about penetrating the fogs and webs, should absolutely be a novel. That's the best way to convey the information. The detective figures it out, the powers that be stifle the attempt, and the bad guys get away. Like in Chinatown. You should think about doing it that way!
It's such a cool title, and it doesn't appear in the book until the last page.
No novelist I! But amazingly, others have taken a crack, most notably David Pepper, former chair of Ohio Democratic Party, whose Jack Sharpe series features three novels woven around election rigging schemes. Two other authors, whose names elude me. It does make for good political thrillers -- and Pepper really knows his stuff. The problem is that even *he* rolls his eyes at suggestions that life is imitating art in this area. If you want to take a crack, I can give you plenty of material!
Nice to see you broadening your cultural horizons, Greg. It's hard to go wrong with Chandler, for all the reasons you demonstrated here.
I had the privilege during my earlier days in the screen trade to be introduced to Billy Wilder, by then involuntarily retired but still involved in things. I got a post-graduate education in the movies over two years of lunches with him in his office over in Beverly Hills, listening to his stories (I think got the job because I was the only person he knew who hadn't heard them all 10,000 times). He told me about working with Chandler when they wrote "Double Indemnity." His most withering comment was "The man had no problem creating pictures with words but he couldn't use pictures as words." That's a common failing with writers who aspire to the movies; they think a screenplay is "literature," when - as Wilder put it - "A screenplay is a blueprint and a screenwriter is a draftsman." "Movies" is a contraction of "moving picture," the method by which the story is told. He told me the fact I was a photographer was going to be very useful in my screenwriting and he was right - I still tell aspiring screenwriters that the road to success is to go over to Harry's Cameras and get a good used Nikon.
But one of the reasons Chandler has been adapted so well in the movies is because his work is easy to adapt. The pictures just flow, as you demonstrated so well. If you look at the opening scene of "The Big Sleep" on the screen, it relates to everything in that opening paragraph.
Thanks for this. I love all the old Hollywood stories. And of course Billy Wilder is one of the all-time greats and one of my all-time favorites. One of these weeks I will write about him more. "Sunset Blvd." and "Some Like It Hot" both on my personal top 10 list.
Chandler could also write zippy dialogue, which is helpful...although the repartee in the Big Sleep film is WAAAY more than what's in the book, and I think makes the movie less powerful.
He's also one of my favorites. I think I've read everything he ever wrote at some point, something that is true of very few writers...
Given that the movie starred the new "It" couple, Bogart and Bacall - who had achieved that place through the "zippy" dialogue in their first movie together, "To Have and Have Not," ("You do know how to whistle? You just pucker up your lips and... blow") I'm sure the studio pushed to give the public what they wanted.
A great essay...this is the kind of quality that makes me click "upgrade to paid"...
Thanks, Andy, for the kind words, and for the upgrading click!
Great article. Don't even want to imagine a woke Marlow.
Thanks, Wayne. The Sternwood sisters both call him a beast and a brute, but he is much more complex than that.
Happy Sunday, Greg! This was such wonderful reading for a Sunday morning. Took me back 50 years to all of the greats: Chandler, Hammett, and (in the same breath!) Hemingway. And made me think about all of the books and films since that bear their imprint (Scorsese's Mean Streets, Polanski's Chinatown, Banville's Quirke books. . .).
For fun, you might watch this excerpt of an interview from the 30th anniversary Blu-ray edition of Miller's Crossing, with Megan Abbott talking to Joel and Ethan Coen about noir and their film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN-iXfllAg8
And I don't think there is a hero out there for us. I think we will have to be that hero ourselves.
I agree with you.
Thanks, Leah. Thanks so much for that! "Miller's Crossing" is the best Coen Brothers movie (although my favorite will always be "Burn After Reading"), and it's been ages since I've seen it. "Chinatown" is #2 on my all-time list, a perfect film in every way.
You're right -- there is no hero. The hero is all of us, if there a hero be.
Miller's Crossing is one of just a few great noir movies in my view, along with Once Upon A Time In America & (get ready) Pennies From Heaven, the sui generis noir musical.
My Sunday mornings are all the better when they begin with a Greg literary lesson. The turbulence that is today's America prevades my sleep, each day begins more tired than the last one, horrific what ifs constantly disturb my sleep. Your lessons somehow deal with today's realities through the stories and characters you write about, leaving me with a hope that better days lie ahead and I will make it to the day of the big sleep, whenever that mysterious day unfolds.
Thanks, keep these most fascinating pieces coming.
Thanks, Old Man. This has been a particularly angry-making couple of weeks, what with the MSM suddenly all realizing that you know, maybe this Musk guy isn't so hot. I guess it's good they at least figured it out?
In the battle between Trump and Musk, my money's on Trump, btw. Elon is, to quote the great Walter Sobchak, "a fucking amateur, Dude."
Musk, the exact opposite of The Dude who was in the end always true to himself. In reality Musk is best described as a shape shifter
At 87 I must admit I can’t keep up with my reading. I got lost reading The NY Times article on the 100 best books of the 21st century.
I’m going back to the 20th century to read some Raymond Chandler. Thanks for a GREAT SUNDAY READ.
A plain page
Challenges
To gain thoughts sage
My pen to lay.
Words can be a maze.
Thoughts lost in the haze
May bubble to the top
And spill out as I jot.
Persistence pays
For ideas rise
To bring a smile
At thoughts worthwhile.
So, as you wend ‘long your way
And I have my little say,
I crave to make your day
As aft you gang aglay.
This is why
I’ll always try
To find the way
To have a say.
On this blank page
My words are laid
The tempting pane
Not plain I said.
Billserle.com
A Bill original poem, regardless I like it.
Thanks, Bill. I particularly like the Burns reference you snuck in there! Well done.
The human condition is a perpetual state of "figuring it out". No instruction manual provided. No hero is coming. And it's ok, we can handle it most of the time.
I'm pretty sure I never saw The Big Sleep movie but I could hear Bogart speaking every Marlow line in my head. Good stuff.
Thanks, Rick.
I'm not the biggest fan of the film, because they insert too much cute dialogue, and it didn't need more cute dialogue. But Bogart IS the perfect Marlowe, despite being as short as Marlow is tall.
Great comparative overview.
Of course Chandler is one of the great wordsmiths with his
The Long Goodbye being my favorite. Recently a friend introduced me to Charles Ray Willeford. Then I recalled watching the film Miami Blues. I have ordered New Forms of Ugly.
Thank you again for your reminding us of such greatness.
Agreed, The Long Goodbye is the best one. And contains this gem, as Marlowe works out his chess problems: "Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as can be found outside an advertising agency."
Well, MY new year resolution is to start paring away some of this media I own by actually watching/reading it. It turns out I have THE BIG SLEEP in Kindle format, and two movies from 1946 and 1978, and I don't think I've watched/read any of it. Although I must have seen the Bogart version at some time in my life because I remember it, vaguely. I'm also a big noir fan and am drawn to stories of Los Angeles from the 1930s through the 1950s. I have been as long as I can remember and have no idea why, and long ago gave up trying to figure it out. Maybe it's a reincarnation thing for all I know. At any rate, good reminder this morning of some of the things I've been missing by spending my time watching dreck like Y2K (Ugh!) and reading trash to get away from non-fiction books about politics -- although A LITTLE LIFE is still one of my favorite books, so that's not trash. REJECTION: FICTION has turned out to be clever, but ultimately trashy, so I'm almost done with it and need a palate-cleanser. Thanks for the heads-up for THE BIG SLEEP, Greg, and Happy New Year!
Thanks, Steve. If you like noir, you'll love it. I would say it's less hard boiled than other stuff, in a good way. The humor gives it more complexity. I will also caution that, in addition to being a misogynist, Marlowe is homophobic (in an era where gay sex was illegal, and thus figures prominently in detective stories), lowkey racist, and a tad antisemitic for good measure. Like you, I love all the old LA stuff. There's something distinctly American, I think, about LA, and especially its transformation into Hollywood. "Chinatown" is one of my all-time favorite movies, for example. Happy New Year!
Oh yes, some of the best writing in the English language is crime fiction. Are you familiar with James Lee Burke? Your analysis of Chandler reminds me of his Dave Robicheaux books, set in Louisiana. (The Texas and Montana books, not so much, but maybe that's me.) Once when my book group was fawning over a particularly clumsy metaphor in a well-hyped literary novel I grabbed a Burke paperback from my shelf and opened it to a random passage for comparison. Burke was clearly the better writer. Same with Chandler: he's up there with the best of 'em. Thanks for highlighting him today.
Thanks, Abby. No, I don't know Burke but will check him out.
In his essay, Chandler talks about how detective novels get published even if the writing is meh, because there is such demand, and are always more popular than novel novels. He is much more concerned with character, setting, tone, mood than plot, which is what makes it good.
I always enjoyed detective novels, and now that I don’t have much opportunity to read books, I can at least enjoy good writing—yours!—that reminds me of novels I have enjoyed. I want to applaud your ending to this piece, wherein you express hope for the eventual awakening of humanity.
Thanks, Earl. I appreciate that. We will wake up. We have to!
Heroes aren't made. They happen. Usually when there's a fire to put out. A gunman to stop or simply a wrong to right. Heroes leave a place better than they found it. We call it a legacy.
DementedDonald is NOT a hero. He leaves carnage & misery wherever he roams. He & his have desecrated the 14th Amendment, rendering it meaningless - along with much of the other Amendments.
The Big Sleep is also known among morticians as The Great Equilizer. We come into to this world as nothing and with nothing... we leave it the same way.
I can only hope the Big Sleep comes soon for DonnieBoy. We all deserve a breather from his recklessness & chauvinism. I'm sure Panama, Canada & Danmark (Greenland) would agree.
I like the proper ending in
The Long Goodbye film starring Elliot Gould.
I have to see that one. I missed it and have wanted to see it. Love Gould.
Amen to all of that, Kris. I'm sure his tomb, when it is revealed, will be a monument to gaudiness and poor taste. Which is fine by me!
Trump's tomp will include a Made in China-stocked souvenir shop.
Maybe your most beautifully written essay yet but it makes me sad. The more enormous and undoable what we need to accomplish gets, the more we do what we can and those of us who can, wax more literary. Messages in bottles to wash ashore & be read where & when we can't know.
Thanks, Richard. It's a sad time, but we have to try and deal with the sadness and use it somehow to turn it around.
Here I've spent a lifetime wanting to be less angry & now is when I need it, lol.
The hardest emotion to process, I think, is justified rage.
thank you Greg. When I am reading your appreciation of other wonderful writing, I wonder if you are also writing any fiction novels. If so, I am already a fan!
as always, a reminder of goodness and appreciation of the many good things in our day to day, yesterdays and tomorrows.
Hi, Dennis. Thank you, and thanks for asking. I have three novels: a thriller set in 1991 (Totally Killer), and day in the life novel (Fathermucker), and an epic saga about the Byzantine Empire (Empress). Something for everyone, I hope!
Oh my: “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”
Right?
"Ova heah, Canino." "I got here first, Eddie." Forgive me all my dreams and stagings of sweet revenge. I know the films (both versions) frame by frame, but never thought of reading the book. I will now, thank you.
Fwiw, my own work over the past 20+ years of trying, with a handful of colleagues, to penetrate the dense fogs and webs of our computerized election system to establish whether our nation's inexorable rightward veer, culminating this November, is organic or synthetic (i.e., rigged) feels a lot like a loner detective in a house of mirrors, who can expect no help at all from the authorities. Whoever is writing this script, however, has not seen fit to solve the crime, unravel the mysteries, or pay the detective in question.
The film gives no clue as to the derivation of the title. I figured if I lived long enough I might find out one day.
The book is, IMO, better than the film. The plot is tighter, and the film overdoes it with the witty repartee, to the point of silliness. If you don't love the book, I'd be shocked.
I mean this very sincerely: that, what you just said about penetrating the fogs and webs, should absolutely be a novel. That's the best way to convey the information. The detective figures it out, the powers that be stifle the attempt, and the bad guys get away. Like in Chinatown. You should think about doing it that way!
It's such a cool title, and it doesn't appear in the book until the last page.
No novelist I! But amazingly, others have taken a crack, most notably David Pepper, former chair of Ohio Democratic Party, whose Jack Sharpe series features three novels woven around election rigging schemes. Two other authors, whose names elude me. It does make for good political thrillers -- and Pepper really knows his stuff. The problem is that even *he* rolls his eyes at suggestions that life is imitating art in this area. If you want to take a crack, I can give you plenty of material!