Robert Altmans controversial update of Raymond Chandler,
The Long Goodbye, willfully torpedoes Chandlers
highly regarded literary detective story and creates in its place a 1970s
parody of Phillip Marlowe (Elliot Gould) as a shabby, disorganized, confused and
confusing private eye, only loosely enclosed in Chandlers meticulously crafted criminal
underworld. Another of Altmans genre-reversing exercises that perplexed public
and critics, and that today confirms his place as a great anti-American
American director.