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Re: I don't believe I've ever heard of that version. It looks..perfect for our purposes. ;d There a lot of images of Gould looking like a total d-bag.

Well, The Long Goodbye is my favorite Raymond Chandler novel and by far his most personal novel as it was written during the period when his wife was dying. Combined with his awareness of his own flaws: his alcoholism and the doubts he felt about the value of his writing, his life then was forcing him into fits of melancholy and his talking about possible suicide.

The film, The Long Goodbye, was much anticipated by the Hollywood Buzz in 1972. I was not a big Eliot Gould fan even then but I enjoyed his acting in Robert Altman's M*A*S*H and since Altman was also directing 'Goodbye,' I figured it was to be a sure fire hit. Boy, was I ever wrong.

As best I can recall, my writing pard at the time, Sal Manna, wangled us a way into the audience for the United Artists preview in late summer of '72. The word on the street was that the film's time frame had been moved to the 1970s, so I was really looking forward to how it would come off-- It didn't by light years.

Chandler's plots always were somewhat complex and convoluted, but this was like watching paint that bubbled and bubbles but never get dry.

The Leigh Brackett (She's one of my favorite writers) screenplay adaptation deviates drastically from the 1953 novel. Don't really know if it was her screwing the pooch on this writing or if it was Altman and/or the studio making the changes, but there are so many literary liberties with all components of the plot and characters that one could say it out Altman's usual style of Altman's normal storytelling by overlapping dialogue and plot line. It was a friggin' disaster that left the audience with bug eyes trying to believe they saw what they saw. I didn't head anyone say anything good about the film but leaving I heard someone laughing uproariously, I turned and found Troy Donahue almost having a conniption fit with three male companions. Do not know if it was someone's joke or if he was just so damn tickled that he was not in The Long Goodbye.

The previews over the next month or so were so badly trashed, that the film's release was cancelled. After 6 months of re-shoots and editing, it premiered in New York March 7, 1973, and promptly sank, not earning much, if any profit.

I didn't see the re-release until sometime in the early 2000s and it was not much better than I recalled from the preview some 30-plus years before.