good morning, turnpike-heads! after waffling about what I should make this edition of the turnpike be about, I decided to be a bit self-indulgent – after all, that's what this newsletter is entirely about. therefore, I'm just going to briefly write about two robert altman movies that I believe you should watch. these are some of his most popular movies, so I don't expect to be highlighting some “underrated hidden gems” exactly, but they're good movies and are worth watching if you haven't yet. onwards!
“the long goodbye”
it's hard for me to put into words how much I enjoy “the long goodbye”. it's a really odd film – an adaptation of the raymond chandler novel of the same name, but rather than being noir, it's neo-noir. an intentional decision is made: philip marlowe, our lead detective, is still the 1940s archetype of a suave, cool man. however, the entire rest of the setting is contemporary, set in the 1970s. phil marlowe lives next to a bunch of yoga freaks who are usually doing topless yoga. it's a new world out there, and philip marlowe is a man out of time.
the movie takes a man who used to be a hero in the original source material, and makes him a complete and total loser. philip marlowe is not a cool man, and yet elliot gould plays him so perfectly that you end up feeling that maybe he knows something the rest of us don't, that in his seemingly childlike attempts to simulate a Man of the 1940s, he has found some sort of peace that helps him deal with the fact that he's such a complete fuckup.
the movie changes the novel's plot to suit its need. some pretty big alterations are made, all to serve the slightly-comedic-and-melancholic tone that it adapts. the soundtrack is a rare pre-Star Wars John Williams score, in which he mostly scores the same song (the titular “Long Goodbye”) in whatever style fits the atmosphere and mood of any given scene. it's a really special film, and one that I think about a lot. go watch it!
“popeye”
on paper, a “popeye” movie starring robin williams and shelley duvall should've turned out exactly like this. that's what i'd say. we were blessed by God that this movie exists. there's a fair amount of Stories surrounding it: that they ran out of movie during production, that they built an entire little town set that is still standing today as a tourist town, that Williams clashed with Altman a fair amount, over the former's tendency to ad-lib new lines. these stories are all worth knowing about, because they do a fair job of enhancing your “popeye”-watching experience.
because what is the robert altman popeye anyway? it's a children's movie that is too strange for kids, and too childish for adults. it's a musical. it's an excuse for williams to mumble his way through one of the weirdest lead performances that shockingly works. and more than anything else: it's an excuse for the great shelley duvall to play olive oyl. that's what this movie is.
and for a fair chunk of the runtime, you almost feel that it's maybe the best kids' live action movie of all time. you could come up with a number of accolades, like oh, surely this is actually the most underrated altman, or the best movie based on a comic strip, or any number of things. and then you get to the climax, in which the movie's vanishing budget becomes very apparent, as the lead characters fight a giant octopus in a really strange sequence. where I ended up was this: altman's “popeye” was unfairly maligned at release, but I think history has found the correct ranking for it, all things considered. it's not the best movie of all time, i'd even hesitate to call it great, but it's a really good time and a really strange movie, and that alone makes it more than worth the watch.
that's it for the turnpike this week – it's a short one. take care everyone, and I'll see you in a week.