The Long Goodbye - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The Long Goodbye or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The Long Goodbye

[kylie]

The Spanish phrase on Phillip Marlowe's pet door said "El Porto del Gato" which translates as "Cat's Door", though he misspelled "La Puerta", the word for door.

[amber]

Sterling Hayden did not have to hit any camera marks in his scenes.

[violet]

The license plate number of the Mercedes Benz that Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt) drove read "LOV YOU".

[christina]

The name that Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) told the police he was called was Sidney Jenkins.

[sandra]

There were three dobermans used for the suicide scene. According to Nina Van Pallandt: "There was one that was fierce, one that was less fierce, and one that went into the water.

[victoria]

Both Leigh Brackett and Robert Altman have said that Sterling Hayden and Elliot Gould''s dialogue during the drinking scenes was improvised. This was because Hayden was drunk and stoned on marijuana most of the time.

[fred]

Morris the Cat first did his "finicky" routine in this film.

[duane]

Robert Altman and Leigh Brackett spent a lot of time talking over the plot. Altman wanted Marlowe to be a loser. He even nicknamed Elliott Gould's character Rip Van Marlowe, as if he had been asleep for 20 years, had woken up, and was wandering around Los Angeles in the early 1970s but "trying to invoke the morals of a previous era". Her first draft was too long, and she shortened it, but the ending was inconclusive. She had Marlowe shooting Terry Lennox. Altman conceived of the film as a satire and made several changes to the script, like having Roger Wade commit suicide and having Marty Augustine smash a Coke bottle across his girlfriend's face. Altman said, "it was supposed to get the attention of the audience and remind them that, in spite of Marlowe, there is a real world out there, and it is a violent world".

[manuel]

In adapting Raymond Chandler's book, Leigh Brackett had problems with its plot, which she felt was "riddled with cliches", and faced the choice of making it a period piece or updating it.

[chad]

Trade paper 'The Hollywood Reporter' described the film as being "a gloriously inspired tribute to Hollywood".

[toni]

Nina Van Pallandt can be heard on the soundtrack of On Her Majesty's Secret Service singing "Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown".

[sara]

Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond tried to approximate human vision through the post-production technique of exposing the undeveloped negative to additional pure light (a technique called flashing), which literally dampens blacks and softens intense colors until they become pastel hues.

[ethel]

The name of the private estate was "Malibu Colony".

[nicholas]

Marlowe's car was a 1948 Lincoln Continental Cabriolet that belonged to Elliott Gould. In 2013 it was in The National Automobile Museum (The Harrah Collection) in Reno, Nevada, and where it had been repainted yellow.

[wesley]

A portrait of Leonard Cohen is visible in the background during the scene where Philip Marlowe and Eileen Wade are dining together in the Wades' residence. Robert Altman was an admirer of Cohen's, having used three of his songs - 'The Stranger Song', 'Sisters of Mercy' and 'Winter Lady', all from the soundtrack of his earlier western McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971).

[darrell]

There is a blue and red sticker on Marlowe's car windshield. On close examination, it is a membership and entry tag for the "Balboa Bay Club", a private beach front resort in Newport Beach, California. Numerous Hollywood celebrities and politicians frequented the club at the time. Since it is reported that Marlowe's car (Lincoln Continental 1948) belonged to Elliot Gould himself, it is likely that the tag and club membership that parallels some plots of the movie was originally his as well. (submitted by Mehran Neshat)

[tammy]

Sterling Hayden wrote his own scenes.

[kenzi]

Some movie posters for this film described its central character of Phillip Marlowe as being "The greatest of all private eye characters - Created by Raymond Chandler".