DZ-123: Flawed Characters in Noir

It helps to bring out Barbara Stanwyck dressed in nothing but a towel.
Yes. The Hays Code can go jump. Ha ha ha!
Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!
Hi, I'm Mel Killingsworth.
And I'm Chas Fisher.
Welcome to Draft Zero, a podcast where one Australian and one,
oh so close, but very American, and emerging filmmaker try to work out what
makes great screenplays work.
And today we are doing Noirvember in December.
This is me being very optimistic that I'm going to get this podcast edited in
the next two weeks during Christmas madness.
But to be more specific, this is a prelude of sorts to our upcoming exploration
into character journeys,
inspired by Mel's commitment to Noirvember every year, as will be reflected
in the accompanying Shot Zero elements.
But specifically...
I came at this with the lens of what can all stories, rom-coms,
comedies, thrillers, action,
dramas, and I do think some of these veer into melodrama, which we'll get into,
what can any other story learn from film noir?
And to do that, we have broken Chas's golden rule of only limiting ourselves to three examples.
You wanted to break this, for the record. I threw a ton of things at the wall,
but you wanted to go four.
And given I've broken my golden rule and we're doing four films,
this may well be broken up into two episodes.
So this may well be part one of two episodes. We'll see how we go,
how efficient Mel and I can be.
Stay tuned.
We're also breaking Chas's not-so-golden rule of doing classic movies as well as more modern movies.
So, this is for a very particular reason, not just that Mel constantly wants
to slap me when I think somewhat.
I'm not claiming that we can't learn things from classic movies,
but it's more like, A, it's been done a lot by other, you know,
more empirical researchers, more established film historians and academics.
How dare you?
And secondly, I do feel that the cinematic language evolves over time.
To that end, we are doing Noir Through Time.
So, we are doing 1944's Double Indemnity, written by Billy Wilder and Raymond
Chandler, from the novel by James M. Cain.
We are doing the 1973 The Long Goodbye, written by Leigh Brackett,
also from the novel by Raymond Chandler.
And then we are doing from 1995, Devil in the Blue Dress, written by Carl Franklin
from the novel by Walter Mosley.
And then finally, 2024's entry, Woman of the Hour, written by Ian McDonald,
directed by the lead, Anna Kendrick, or A-lead, I think I will venture as we get into it.
Yeah, A-lead.
Because there's two specific things. I think we'll find other elements of noir
as we go through this that will speak to all stories.
But there were two things that I particularly want to get from in my writing,
which is a sort of spiritual follow on of sorts of how to make unlikable characters
likable, which was one of our early episodes.
But that was all about getting audience kind of hooked into a character.
It was only the first five pages.
Whereas this, I want to look at particularly main characters and protagonists doing things.
Despicable horrific things and yet
the audience is carried along with them compelled by
them and how can we have films showing characters lead characters point of view
characters doing despicable horrible things and not have the world view of the
film endorse this behavior because I think it's really important I mean I know
I had someone unironically say we're in a post-woke world,
meaning that we don't have to worry about being woke anymore,
which I think to them translated as don't have to care about other people's
feelings and background and existence.
But parking that there, it is really hard to show really despicable things,
I think, in stories without certainly been my experience with readers of my
work feeling uncomfortable. And that's, I go, well, that's what I want you to feel.
I want you to feel uncomfortable. And finally, related to those two things is
do these characters in noir, do they change?
Because that's going to lead into a longer exploration on character arcs.
Oh, I should have said, Stu has not been fired from the podcast.
He is continuing to be sucked into being a post-production supervisor.
Producer credit to be determined on a Hollywood movie, which is exciting, but,
does not have bandwidth for this, but he will be back in the new year with our
new exploration young character arcs.
Okay, Mel, do you have a lens? Before we do the pipeline of going, what is film noir?
Do you have a lens?
Well, I think that, I mean, I find your lens very interesting.
Like you had the questions and I said, let's explore that.
I think for me, I'm fascinated by noir
essentially every 20 years ish
resets you know 70s noir is wildly different than
90s noir which is wildly different than where we are right now there's a
lot of tech noir um and things like that so I'm really interested in looking
at sure through your lens but also does that change significantly and again
these are broad generalizations there's going to be exceptions in every era
but throughout the fact that we chose films that are you know 20 to 30 years apart in every case,
is there a significant difference in how they're written?
Everything's cyclical. Everything will come back around again,
including things, you know, in movies made 100 years ago.
But, you know, what are the trends in those character things?
And I think the fact as well that we've essentially got a code movie,
a movie made during the Hays Code,
and two of them are set during the Hays Code, will also be quite interesting
in terms of the fact is that Hays Code made it more difficult to...
make your characters unlikable without punishing them. And so talking to your
point of endorsing worldview, I think that's also very interesting.
I'm going to be ruthless about not letting this turn into a poor film history podcast.
I have a whole primer on the Hays Code. We can put that in the show notes.
But at least say what the Hays Code is in a sentence for listeners.
The Hays Code was a code governing the Motion Picture Association of America
that said, And if you have certain things, well, first of all,
you're not allowed to have certain things in your film.
So you're not allowed to be blatant about homosexuality. You're not about to
be blatant about murder or things like that.
Or if you do depict them, the characters must be punished within the narrative. They have to die.
They have to recant and become a nun.
You know, they have to have some horrible ill befall them so that you can do
it. Now, there was a lot of coding as well so that you would hide your character
and say, oh, you know, they weren't gay.
They just always smelled like lavender and, you know, lived with a roommate and whatever.
But the fact is that the code would say, you know, if you commit murder,
then the narrative has to declare you a bad guy or you have to be imprisoned
by the end or die by the end or lose your wife in your house and your car and
your job and all those sorts of things. That was a one long run on sentence.
Yeah, I will completely take it. And look, here's what I hope people who may have, listeners,
if you have zero interest in film noir, I'm hoping you still tune in for this
because the fact that this collection of ideas and themes and stylistic and
narrative approaches to story have survived a hundred years,
despite there being very different social mores at these different times, I think is testament to,
what noir is so hopefully that will segue us neatly into what is film noir.
Uh what is oh that's do I have to do this in one sentence as well because we're
in trouble I think film noir is a genre right but it is often is it a genre
well yes as we were discussing as we were looking through this thing it is often
not always but often a secondary or tertiary genre okay.
I'll allow it.
It is also, I think, one of the genres most made up of style,
which is why, yes, we are looking at scripts. We are looking at things like that.
However, there is a lot to do with looks and things as well.
Your dialogue, your plot, your tropes.
Framing.
Are all.
Lighting.
Yeah, within that. But so is your framing and your lighting and your look of
things and your staging.
All of that is involved. But I do think it is a genre. However,
it is often like you would have a drama or a mystery or a thriller,
and then noir is sort of your second or third sort of genre.
All right. Now, my kids were like, what is this film noir that you're watching
all these movies about, Dad, and keep talking about?
I looked up a 10-minute YouTube video from a film historian to show my kids what film noir was.
And it focused very much on when it was clearly a genre in that it wasn't just a style.
And not to say that it's just a style now, but those movies in and around 1940s,
there was just a huge number of them.
It was like a sought after cinematic experience.
And from this historian's point of view, it had several things.
it had crime it had
to feature characters trapped by their
own transgression and often that being
trapped was represented visually so that's around the framing people might know
the classic uh you know venetian blind shades even if they don't have never
watched a single film noir they'll know that feeling and I think those were
the main ones there there are narrative tropes there's usually because there's a crime,
there's usually a detective character, not necessarily,
very rarely, in fact, a police officer, often not a police officer at all.
Noir believes in ACAB.
Certainly.
But often a private detective or someone who's investigating themselves because
the police won't investigate, et cetera.
So there's usually a detective character, there's often, it's become a cliche
now, but at the time, it wasn't.
Femme fatales, Madonna whore kind of dichotomy around female characters.
And I think that ACAB perspective, for me,
is perpetuated by how does the world,
because often these detectives are uncovering
forces that they then subsequently at
the end are insurmountable for the the
detective so often they had kind of tragic or
bittersweet endings and like I'm not trying to be too specific here but I do
we were having a discussion and I think they're different to quote-unquote gangster
movies which are and corruption movies which are often about the rise and fall
of someone within a crime world.
I think those can be noir, but that narrative arc is not the same.
And I think that's why I want to come down to do these characters in these different
movies demonstrate change? If so, how do they change?
What's their relationship with their own crimes, their own transgressions?
What's their relationship with the rules of the world around them?
Well, and again, to be very, very, very broad, Often, gangsters are about the
gang and the mob or the people within that.
And noir is more interested, very broadly speaking, in...
the system and the system being broader society, being the police,
being, you know, culture at large and how you can or cannot necessarily win with it.
Although I'm very, I'm not disagreeing with that, but I feel that Double Indemnity
as our first one is not really interested in that at all.
It's interested in societal mores around things for sure, but it is actually
quite like personal and insular absolutely and again which is why I said broadly and was talking.
You know why.
A lot of gangster films are not.
Yeah noir.
Per se because yeah Double Indemnity has that but it also has a lot of the other
um tropes if you I think noir is such a trope genre.
Yeah oh voice over is another classic part of the certainly the 40s element that's.
Why we picked Veronica Mars for our voiceover episode it's noir it's got the voiceover.
So I think there were lots of kind
of tropes that came out of noir and have
survived and their references and they're
often put over the top of other like their
stylistic things their cues for an audience
to feel a certain way or their you know cinematic shorthand but they could be
put into other genres whereas I I think a lot of really successful neo-noir
are not necessarily doing fedoras and Venetian blinds and rain-slicked city
streets and chiaroscuro.
They might be doing none of that and yet be firmly in noir from a more worldview
character perspective.
This is me working really hard because I'm hoping there'll be a listener out
there who's like, fuck noir, I never want to see a noir in my whole life,
and I'm trying to get them through this episode.
But also they have. They have seen it.
Yes. So the running list of, I was running through every film that we'd ever
analyzed on Draft Zero, and I was asking Mel, noir or not noir?
There were a couple that were very borderline or that I haven't seen in a report of contention, but.
But this is where we got to. The Nice Guys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,
Destroyer, Michael Clayton, Emily the Criminal, Thief, Seven,
No Country for Old Men, You Are Never Really Here, Killing Them Softly,
In the Bedroom, Fargo, Zodiac, Training Day, Hell or High Water,
Gone Girl, Shutter Island, Sicario,
Eastern Promises, A History of Violence, The Disappearance of Alice Creed,
Nightcrawler, The Untouchables, Reservoir Dogs, and Prisoners and I mean we
could throw Blade Runner in there as well the Matrix I feel has definite noir stylistic visual cues.
Well the Wachowskis' film that got them the ability to make Matrix is they made
one of the most quintessential and like prototypical noirs of all time and that
was you know Bound yeah Bound which got them the blank check to do the Matrix
And it certainly has a lot of sci-fi,
futuristic noir elements for sure.
So from all those films, people can go, oh yeah, I can see maybe the visual
elements or maybe like that didn't strike me as noir at all.
Like in the bedroom, it comes across as a melodrama potentially,
but it is about a grieving man discovering what is the extent of his humanity
and transgressing and getting away with it and reassessing his role with his
own morality at the end without,
you know, let the justice system do its thing and did not feel that justice had been served.
And directly confronts the societal systems that make people feel what is quote
unquote right or wrong or justice or not, et cetera.
Yeah.
You know.
All right. I feel like we've done pretty well. As far as Draft Zero intros go,
we're not doing too badly.
Shall we jump in to Double Indemnity?
Yes.
I killed Dietrichson. Me, Walter Neff, insurance agent, 35 years old,
unmarried, no visible scars.
Until a while ago, that is.
Yeah, I killed him. I killed him for money and for a woman. It all began last May.
I was thinking about that dame upstairs and the way she had looked at me.
And I wanted to see her again, close.
Without that silly staircase between us.
How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?
I can't stand it anymore. What if they do hang me?
They're not going to hang you, baby. It's better than going on this way.
They're not going to hang you. Because you're going to do it and I'm going to help you.
Yes, from the moment they met, it was murder.
Always behind them with his devilish hunches and his brilliant brain was Keyes.
The murder's never perfect. All this comes apart sooner or later.
And where two people are concerned is usually sooner.
Could they get away from him and his relentless pursuit?
And could they get away with murder?
Okay, Mel, do you want to summarize what Double Indemnity is about?
Double Indemnity is about an insurance salesman who meets a hottie and does
terrible things for her.
And sadly, it causes a giant rift between him and his boyfriend, and then he dies.
That is the plot. It is your prototypical record scratch, I bet you're wondering how I got here.
And then it opens on this man stumbling into his insurance office and starting
a tape recording and beginning to monologue into it and saying,
you know, by the way, I confess I've done these terrible things.
I'm about to die. And then it flashes back and starts telling the story from the beginning.
Office memorandum.
Walter Neff to Barton Keyes, claims manager. Los Angeles, July 16th, 1938.
Dear Keyes, suppose you'll call this a confession when you hear it.
Well, I don't like the word confession. I just want to set you right about something
you couldn't see because it was smack up against your nose.
You think you're such a hot potato as a claims manager, such a wolf on a phony
claim. Maybe you are. But let's take a look at that Dietrichson claim.
Accident and double indemnity. You were pretty good in there for a while,
Keyes. You said it wasn't an accident. Check.
He said it wasn't suicide. Check. He said it was murder.
Check.
You know this ends very badly for him.
I'm going to proverbially bury the lead in that the key final confrontation
of the film has Fred McMurray's character.
Walter.
The insurance salesman. He's going to the house of said hottie.
Barbara Stanwyck, played by Phyllis Dietrichson and a famous name.
Who we're fairly clear at this point that he is going to murder her.
That's his intention. he's worked his way through
and we're going to come back to this but
the reason I'm just putting a pin in it now is that he
meets Nino who was going to be the fall guy was going to be the patsy for all
the crimes and misdemeanors that these two were going to commit to together
and Walter deliberately saves Nino which I think is important and then Barbara shoots Walter,
Wings him Well, sufficiently to pretty seriously hurt him But, you know I.
Think he's gut shot or like ribs.
Or something like that I feel it's like top of the lung Yeah.
Lung is bad Well.
In the end he can't like physically move From that wound So,
something internal is going on That's not good But she can't bring herself to,
Do a kill shot And they have a discussion about how she can't Bring herself to do that.
Why don't you shoot again, baby?
Don't tell me it's because you've been in love with me all this time.
No, I never loved you, Walter, not you or anybody else. I'm rotten to the heart.
I used you just as you said. That's all you ever meant to me.
Until a minute ago, when I couldn't fire that second shot.
I never thought that could happen to me. Sorry, baby, I'm not buying.
I'm not asking you to buy. Just hold me close.
If I'm not mistaken, he shoots her twice because she can't shoot him the second
time, which would have finished him off.
She couldn't shoot him the second time to finish him off. He shoots her twice. He finishes her off.
And also, again, Hays Code, she's dead. She has to die.
Yeah. So there's no voiceover, but
there is flashbacks from him literally recording his recounting of this.
It's a diegetic voiceover, really.
Absolutely it is, but I do think it's an important distinction.
Because it's diegetic, it has an intended audience.
It is not the detective in their own head or in the way that we talked in our
voiceover episode. And that is to the third lead in this film.
Barton Keyes, played by Edward G. Robinson, who's just all over noir.
And so, yeah, the idea is that Walter is confessing and he says,
you know, you can use this as evidence, but he is directly talking to Barton Keyes.
He is saying this to him. And then Barton shows up at the end right before he
dies and lights his last cigarette, you know, and lets him have a cigarette before he dies.
And so he's giving this to his and I say boyfriend only half jokingly.
Like, it's clearly coded that they are codependent, in love with each other,
whether you read that as romantic or not.
Absolutely in love with each other. They are also co-workers at this insurance company.
And Barton has sort of been working it so that, you know, Walter can essentially
step up in the company and take over his role.
And there's all these, you know, complex.
And there's also these scenes, right, where Barton's like, well,
I tried having a wife and it just wasn't for me.
You know, they're lighting each other cigarettes in tons of scenes.
They're clearly intimate.
However you want to read that, go for it.
Yes. So Keyes...
I think it's a sign of the times, right, that the hero, the detective character,
Keyes, is A, not neither the protagonist nor the point of view character.
He's very much the antagonist of the movie.
He's like the shark chasing these two down.
Not that he knows it's his friend.
He's chasing whoever's done this thing. Yeah.
But it just bemused me that the hero of a film would be like an insurance investigator
who prides himself on denying insurance claims.
It's denying, yep, and not a cop, again, very crucial, but also the one who's
like, well, there's all these people cheating the system, and I can see through them.
Now look, Garlopis, every month hundreds of claims come to this desk.
Some of them are phonies, and I know which ones.
How do I know? Because my little man tells me.
That little man, that little man in here. Every time one of these phonies comes
along, he ties knots in my stomach. I can't eat.
And the reason he can't see through Walter, as Walter says to him on tape,
is I'm too close to you. That's the only reason you didn't catch me.
You got everything right except who it was and because we are too close.
You know why you couldn't figure this one, Keyes? I'll tell you.
Because the guy you were looking for was too close.
Right across the desk from me. Closer than that, Walter.
I love you too.
And on top of that, like Walter could have got away with it.
And this is another decision that I want to explore.
Define it.
Okay. Wouldn't have got the money.
Right.
So Walter and Phyllis together have arranged, killed her husband.
Yes.
Faked his death as a train accident because train accidents under the life insurance
also forged a life insurance policy first uh got him to sign it under under
fraudulent pretences this is chas.
The lawyer coming out it is it's it's very clever how they do it but.
Yes technically.
The husband knows it exists but they forged his you know final signature on
the policy they got etc yeah.
And they would get double indemnity they'll get a double payout on a very low
risk low likelihood low likelihood accident which was train so I don't want
to get necessarily into the machinations maybe we can because I do think there
is a lot of noir where it is,
there is like reveling in minutiae details.
Yes the complexity of those plot bits red.
Herrings tangents that may never get resolved.
Sometimes famously yeah the.
Big Sleep comes to mind.
Well right like you have these noir plots where you're like actually if you
sit and think about it for 30 seconds none of this works like the Maltese Falcon
right which is quote unquote the quintessential You're like, wait, what?
But just because there's so many threads and so many machinations and so many
moving parts and things, sometimes you can kind of just bluster your way through it.
This, however, airtight, airtight. The plot is mwah.
Keyes has a running line that Walter does quote back at him that the people
who commit murder are on like a trolley, like a fixed track that is inevitably
going to their moral corruption.
And with that moral corruption comes their undoing, as it were.
And that is how the film plays out. But it's said at the very beginning and
we're opening on a guy who's been shot confessing to a crime.
We don't know the details of it.
Confessing to a crime and confessing to his moral degradation through having
committed this crime and a second crime and considering a third and fourth crime, etc. Mm hmm.
So, first of all, I think while there's no voiceover, I think as a lesson that
I'm taking from this, how to make it compelling, just tell the audience up front
that the crime has happened, that the transgression or the sin or whatever you
want to call it has happened.
Because then it becomes a how done it and a why done it, not a who done it.
Yep.
And so you are immediately told by this film that we're going to be reveling
in how and why these characters do this.
Right. How did you get to this point? Because then it flashes back to him basically
being like a Boy Scout, right?
Like he's got this job and he's working his way up and, you know,
he's and you go, wait, wait a second. Like the juxtaposition is stark.
So how did you get from that to this so quickly? Well, he met a hottie home amongst us, et cetera.
And when he meets said hottie he immediately accuses her to her face of don't
ask me to commit insurance fraud and help you murder your husband like in the
first meeting and she's like who me but also I would like to sleep with you yeah and.
He's like oh well in that case.
I want to ask you something Walter could I get an accident policy for him without
bothering him at It would make it easier for you, too. You wouldn't even have to talk to him.
I have a little allowance of my own. I could pay for it, and he needn't know anything about it.
Why shouldn't he know? Because he doesn't want accident insurance.
He's superstitious about it. A lot of people lie on it. It's funny,
isn't it? If there was a way to get it like that, all the worry would be over.
See what I mean, Walter? Sure, I got good eyesight.
You mean you want him to have the policy without him knowing it?
That means without the insurance company knowing that he doesn't know it.
That's the setup, isn't it? Is there anything wrong with it? No, I think it's lovely.
Then if some dark, wet night, that crown block did fall on him.
What crown block? Only sometimes it can't quite make it on its own.
It has to have a little help.
I don't know what you're talking about. Of course it doesn't have to be a crown
block. It can be a car backing over and we could fall out of the upstairs window.
Any little thing like that, just so it's a morgue job. Are you crazy?
And that is really all that it takes. He can't get her out of his mind.
Yep.
And where I think this film focuses less on the systems and the forces that
they're up against than the other films that we're studying in this episode
is it provides zero backstory and motivation for these two. She's not beaten.
No, it gives you a little bit of hers. And she's rotten from the start.
Yeah.
Because she's only with her current husband because she murdered his ex-wife on her. Well, you know.
It does get revealed later on. But in that initial meeting, right?
Sure, sure, sure.
And even early on, it's like, he doesn't care for me. He doesn't love me.
That is about the extent of his transgression.
Right. Oh, the motive is, I would like to sleep with you.
Yeah.
That's it. That's all they need.
But he doesn't have any, like, I'm poor. I need this money.
I am oppressed by my job. I hate the insurance industry. There's none of that.
Well, there is a little bit of the idea that he's bored.
Yes.
Right. The idea that this nine to five, oh, I'm about to get promoted to a thing
where I won't be going out door to door anymore.
I'll be getting more money, but I'll only be able to sit behind a desk and my
soul won't be able to take that. I want to go out.
And they're like, well, no, this is more money. It's more prestige.
It's better. It's easier.
And he's like, but I'll be bored. And so there is a little bit of that idea
of, well, I am chasing something that normal societal quote unquote success doesn't give me.
I think he is, I mean, he knows what a gun Keyes is. He knows who he's going
to be up against by trying this, right?
Yeah, yeah. It's a challenge.
And knows he's not smarter than Keyes from the very beginning,
and yet still thinks that he knows enough to be able to get away with.
There's definitely a cat and mouse.
I mean, he's not 100% thinking with his brain at that point.
Sure.
But yes, he does. He's like, well, maybe I know you well enough.
Maybe you've taught me enough that I can, you know, get this by you.
It was a hot afternoon and I can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along that street.
How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?
Maybe you would have known, Keyes, the minute she mentioned accident insurance.
But I didn't. I felt like a million.
But I guess my broad point is, because they've told you that the transgression
already happened, You don't need
to carry the audience along with a pure introduction into this character.
That first decision to do wrong, you don't have to put the work in,
in terms of backstory or given circumstances.
Right.
To get the audience across that line of that transgression because we know it's coming.
Yep.
So when he flicks between meeting one and meeting two, you're like, okay, I'm on board.
Sure.
Right?
It helps to bring out Barbara Stanwyck dressed in nothing but a towel.
Yes. Hays Code can go jump. all right have we got enough to get into the the
three questions I think so all right,
So, I think we're kind of already answering how do the protagonists in this
story do horrible things and yet we're compelled by them right until the very end.
I think because, like, the point of view character, which is clearly Walter,
like, we start with him, he's giving the voiceover, etc.
He starts as a guy, I'm just a guy, I just have a job, etc.
And there's a lot of, oh, well, there but for the grace of God, right?
Like, I could be, he's an everyman. I could be this guy. I could be tempted.
He's very charming. He's witty.
Oh, Fred MacMurray is fantastic in this.
And also, Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. Okay, just real quick,
tiny little detour. They've also done a rom-com together.
They've also done their films together. Their chemistry is off the charts.
Yeah, we will be accepting here the speeding exchange.
Again, you want to talk about writing, like a perfect two minutes of writing.
I wish you'd tell me it was engraved on that anklet.
Just my name. As, for instance? Phyllis. Phyllis, huh?
I think I like that. But you're not sure. I'd have to drive it around the block a couple of times.
Mr. Neff, why don't you drop by tomorrow evening around 8.30? He'll be in then. Who?
My husband. You were anxious to talk to him, weren't you? Yeah,
I was, but I'm sort of getting over the idea, if you know what I mean.
There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
How fast was I going, officer? I'd say around 90.
Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Suppose I let you off with a warning this time. Suppose it doesn't take.
Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles. Suppose I bust out crying and
put my head in your shoulder.
Suppose you try putting it on my husband's shoulder. That tears it.
8.30 tomorrow evening, then. That's what I suggested. You'll be here, too?
I guess so. I usually am. Same chair, same perfume, same anklet.
I wonder if I know what you mean.
I wonder if you wonder.
And, like, their chemistry is there. So he comes on, and he's dressed nicely.
great suit but again every man so you're like great I'm putting myself
in your shoes I could be you I have
a normal job I I want a normal life I want a
little bit more than life is giving me I meet a hottie and
now what so the Barbara Stanwyck character is yes she's the co-lead but we're
never in her shoes we're always in walter's shoes yeah and saying oh somebody
else could tempt me to this because we always want to imagine ourselves as the
hero right or as the good guy or whatever.
Well, Walter wants to be the good guy. He wants to be the hero.
He's striving. He just gets tripped up.
Oh, tripped up. Does he want to be the hero?
He's got the hots for a woman and so decides to commit murder and to get insurance fraud.
Okay. He convinces himself that he's saving her from this loveless marriage,
from this, you know, all these other things. Again.
Does he? I feel like he's fully on board. I feel like he gets on the trolley car.
He's lying to himself to get what he wants.
Right. And we've all done that at some point in our life. And so we can see
ourselves making that mistake again. We're once removed watching him.
We're going, well, you're stupid, but I've done something similar.
Certainly, maybe not that bad to that extent, etc.
But we say, oh, I could convince myself I was doing the wrong thing for the
right reasons or for a noble reason, you know, right.
or because I'm in love or because she's trapped by this guy that they're not
in love with each other, et cetera.
He is really trying to convince himself, at least for the first third.
That he's- I felt differently about it, but I'll get some excerpts and see which one of us is right.
Yeah, I think he's just lying to himself.
Because as Keyes and he, because they work together,
part of the delight is you've seen Walter
and Barbara commit this crime we know exactly how
it happens and then you see it start to unravel tiny piece
by tiny piece it starts with Keyes going this is suicide this is they're going
to get the money it's going to get paid out and then just little things start
tugging at Keyes and Keyes is using Walter to bounce his ideas and his thinking
off and so Walter is present for all this and Walter is seeing the wheels come off his plans you.
Know you ought to take a look at these statistics on suicide sometime you might
learn a little something about the insurance business Mr.
Keyes, I was raised in the insurance business. Yeah, in the front office.
Come now, you've never read an actuarial table in your life, have you?
Why, we've got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race,
by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day.
Suicide, how committed? By poisons, by firearms, by drowning, by leaps.
Suicide by poison, subdivided by types of poison, such as corrosive,
irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth.
Suicide by leaps, subdivided by leaps from high places, under the wheels of
trains, under the wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from steamboats.
But Mr. Norton, of all the cases on record, there's not one single case of suicide
by leap from the rear end of a moving train.
And you know how fast that train was going at the point where the body was found?
15 miles an hour. Now, how can anybody jump off a slow moving train like that
with any kind of expectation that he would kill himself?
No, no soap, Mr. Norton. We're sunk and we'll have to pay through the nose and you know it.
Also, as the wheels come off, he stops spending as much time with Barbara and
so stops being as spellbound struck as he could be.
They can only see each other, you know, in supermarkets, in passing, et cetera.
So like she doesn't have as much time to have him under her thrall, if you will.
But I do still think like there's a huge element of the first crime that relies on him lying to himself.
Okay.
And we've all done that.
I just, I felt maybe because it was so quick that it went from your bad news,
but I got the hots for you to we're going to murder someone and get a whole
lot of money and run away together.
So maybe it was just the speed of it.
But even that is like him saying, well, I'm doing a really bad thing,
but like for this beautiful, wonderful, lovely angel, right?
Which is the idea of a femme fatale.
He doesn't, I think it's very crucial that he does not put together the pieces
that she's done other things until much later in the story.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Very crucial. And like, if he knew that earlier, then I'm like, yeah, he's all in.
But, and again, I think when he's lying to himself, there's a tiny part of him
that knows he's lying to himself, right? And he has to like work to keep this
facade for himself to allow him to go through with the first action.
And because of the insurance claim, he's spending time with Barbara's stepdaughter,
the daughter of the man he murdered, very coldly strangled.
Oh, so good.
And so he's being exposed to her innocence and seeing himself through her eyes.
Right. And he's had one or two interactions with her, but they were all in the
context of her father and her stepmother.
and so he's convinced herself like oh she's hanging
out with the wrong crowd and she's you know a bit of a
floozy and she's all of this so like even that
is fine if you know I'm helping her
divest of a bad boyfriend right like again
lying to himself but as he then
has to face the fact that actually you know she's just a normal teenager in
love with a normal guy that you know probably may or may not go anywhere but
they're perfectly normal fine things he has to He's constantly confronted with
the lies that he's fed himself in order to enable him to do this thing. Yeah.
As soon as he starts to have that distance from her and feels that he's going
to get caught and is hearing about the extent of her sins and that she was actually
rotten to the core, not some ingenue that he's rescued.
Yep.
And he feels taken advantage of. So all those things compound to the point where
we're pretty certain he's going to the house to murder her.
blame it on Nino, the boyfriend that they were trying to set up.
I mean, Noir loves creating these things, right, where he's going to a house
to murder a woman in cold blood.
And yet we're looking at this saying, well, this is the only way out.
Like this is she deserves it both from what he knows and what we've learned.
If you don't do that, the system is going to come down as hard or harder on
you than it is on her because of the way she set things up.
you know it there's this element where
by the time he goes to do that you're actually rooting for him to do it yeah
which is that's a great great noir bit where you're like yeah you're bad andy
but I want you to do this also bad thing because I understand where you're coming
from you know it's it's delicious so.
That's really important the the full understanding so we don't have voiceover,
but we do have this confessional.
So, we are given access into both Walter in the moment and retrospectively judging himself.
We have Barbara's crimes being revealed over time.
And that we were told at the very beginning that the transgression had been done.
So, I think those are the main ways. But all right, do these characters change?
I want to be really specific here. I think what we're going to get into when
we do our run on character arcs is I think there's different metrics for change.
Because, of course, they change.
Okay.
Right?
Right, right, right.
They go from being not murderers to murderers. They have life experience.
So I'm like, are they fundamentally different people?
This is the philosophical question, right? When you get drunk,
do you change what you do or do you simply allow your inhibitions to fall and
do what you would normally want to do?
Were these societal inhibitions not placed upon you externally?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
Right. I also think that it's interesting that, um, most like for like Double Indemnity happens.
And well, Double Indemnity is tricky because essentially it happens all within
about five minutes because we're with him making his confession and then and
seeing it in flashback, etc. But a lot of this happens.
Most noir happens in a short span of time. Most noir does not take 10 years.
So you're not seeing a significant change. You are saying, does this reveal
who you are as a character? Was Walter always like this and he just needed some
hottie to unlock it in him?
Or does he significantly change upon his meeting Phyllis, right?
I think that's quite difficult to answer. And I think that's a very thorny,
very human question. When we do things, we say, oh, that's not me. Well, but you did it.
Right.
Yeah. I feel like it's interesting because they don't do any of that.
Who was he growing up? What's his backstory?
What's his worldview coming into the movie early on?
Yeah. You never flashback before he met her.
Yeah.
Like you literally see him having one conversation on his way out the door to
meet her and that's it. That's all you get.
And you have no discussion of like what his war experiences might have been
or, you know, where he grew up or anything like that.
Which is, I do think that having Barton is fascinating because Barton is a character,
he's the baseline, right?
And he loves Walter and he believes Walter is a good person.
So I do think there's an element of you saying, well, if Barton believes in
Walter, then maybe Walter was kind of a good guy or good enough or had something redeeming in him.
But again, even that is very tricky because does he change or does he simply
reveal who he always was? Well, I've seen this film so many times and this is your first, correct?
This is my first watch, yeah.
So I'm curious what you thought coming in cold.
So I think there's three decisions that he makes that do actually demonstrate
that he's undergone change in this film.
I've mentioned, like, it takes very little to convince him to become a murderer.
I know it's his first time being a murderer, but it takes him very little, right?
I mean, again, it's all coded, but I don't think they've actually slept together
before he agrees to do the murder.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like he agrees and then they sleep together and then he does that.
So yeah, that's basically just like, you know, she's batting her eyelashes.
So I don't think he's necessarily a good person, nor do I think he,
he never has that kind of moment of moral introspection, except his decision to confess at all.
He's still planning on escaping. Even at the end of the movie,
he does, like, walk to the door or stumble in the doorway, right?
Right.
He still doesn't want to be caught or thrown in jail or killed or tried.
He's still trying to escape all those.
But it was important enough, his relationship with Barton Keyes was...
That's it. That's what drives him.
Important enough for him that
he is going to stumble back into his office in the middle of the night,
bleeding out and dying from a gunshot wound in order
to record this confession so he cares about Keyes, Keyes cares about him and I've
already mentioned that he saves Nino as opposed to trying to pin the murder
he's about to commit on Nino he Nino is not a good guy right no.
I mean we don't know that much of him but he's he's he's headed for a bad end yeah.
He treats uh his girlfriend, Lola, that terribly, terribly, terribly.
Look, also they're young, like, you're like, yeah sure, 20 year olds are all
a bit of a dick, like, whatever. But, yes, correct.
But, you know, I don't think anyone, any of us in the audience would have judged
him for continuing with his plan of pinning the murder on Nino,
but he decided that Nino's transgressions for whatever they were,
in Walter's book, were not worth,
pinning murder on.
And I think that is different to how he was,
at the beginning.
You think he would have pinned it on Nino at the beginning yeah.
I mean he plans a cold-hearted.
Yeah murder I guess so and the
scene that I'm I've already done for Shot Zero and then I'll put up we'll
put in the show link every single shot very intentionally frames Walter literally
physically between Phyllis and Barton he's in the middle of the devil and the
angel you know metaphorically on his shoulder fighting over his soul and I I
I think what what you say is quite interesting.
Does he change because he saves Nino? I think he's never been confronted with having to.
So does he change or does he simply realize that's who he is?
He would have saved Nino because Barton as his, you know, sort of Jiminy Cricket
would have always compelled him to do that.
Or does he realize through engaging with Phyllis, I hate this part of me.
I want to reject it actually this is not who
I am yeah I was tempted into it tried it
nope spit it out run away it's an interesting like to some extent it's a philosophical
question but to some extent I think you're right like he he does the changes
at the beginning he might have thrown Nino under the bus and at the end he's
at least come to understand who he wants to be wouldn't do that Yeah.
And I think really importantly for Phyllis slash Barbara, the film has been
very careful to, as you say, reveal slowly how rotten at the core she is.
But then she actually, right at the end, because she can't bring herself to
murder him, because for the first time, she has fallen in love.
No, didn't want to. Didn't expect to.
Didn't even realize she couldn't fire that second shot until a minute ago.
What a line.
She does change and surprises herself with her change.
And I buy it. I actually buy it. Like, you know, say what you will about actors
choices and versus writing on the page.
I buy it that she changes and didn't want to change.
She was changed against her will through contact with this guy.
And again, like a bit of second degree contact, I think, with Barton,
like because a lot of Barton's philosophy is what drives Walter's choices.
And is she still irredeemably bad at the end?
Yes. Is she a shade lighter, a shade more human, a shade more,
hey, there's actual love and sacrifice and real genuine empathy in the world.
Just a shade. Yes, I do think that. And I and I buy it in that scene.
Yeah.
So, what is the worldview of this film versus the characters?
Look, part of the reason I love noir is it's fairly nihilistic.
I think the worldview of the film is that there are bad-to-the-core people that even they,
when they are confronted with actual altruism and goodness or whatever, at least can hesitate.
at least can recognize what it is like and that's worth pursuing however even
though it's worth pursuing you probably still die on the way I.
Think it's really important that they never get the money unlike.
Gangster films where.
You get that sequence of where oh crime is fucking awesome dude like they never have that.
Yeah yeah there's nothing in this film
that says crime is fucking awesome crime is stressful crime
is flop sweats and like
lying awake at night and not being able to see you know your hottie respectively
you know to both of them and worried about your boyfriend like finding out and
you might think it's fun but the moment you actually have to indulge in it you
realize oh my god it's so stressful I actually don't want this this is not the good kind of stress.
And so, God, does the murder happen in the first act culmination?
Are we talking a third act structure or a five act? I go with a five act structure.
Okay. I feel like the first third of the movie culminates with the murder.
Okay, sure.
The second third is like the cat and mouse between Keyes and Walter.
The final act is when the wheels have come off and Walter is kind of turning
on Phyllis slash Barbara.
so I think the fact that Keyes has a philosophy that gets quoted back to him
about the inevitability,
of this journey that they're on the film has got quite a clear theme that is
stated and that this fate is not fate in that they were out of control there's
no system that's controlling them they made their fate with that choice to commit murder.
There it is Walter it's beginning to come apart at the seams already Thank you very much.
Murder is never perfect. Always comes apart sooner or later.
And when two people are involved, it's usually sooner.
Now, we know the Dietrichson dame was in it and a somebody else.
Pretty soon we'll know where that somebody else is. He'll show.
He's got to show. Sometime, somewhere, they've got to meet. Their emotions are all kicked up.
Whether it's love or hate, it doesn't matter. They can't keep away from each other.
They may think it's twice as safe because they're two of them.
But it isn't twice as safe. It's ten times twice as dangerous.
They've committed a murder. And it's not like taking a trolley ride together
where they can get off at different stops. they're stuck with each other they've
got to ride all the way to the end of the line that's a one-way trip and the
last stop is the cemetery yeah.
They they created their own end like.
Their decisions.
Distinctly specifically led to their end like they're responsible for that whatever
whatever systems may or may not have like orchestrated their decision they still
made the decision and that's on them.
So this film somewhat amazingly tells
you coming in that they're murderers and
then you're sitting around watching how they commit murder and then
you're stressed wanting them to get away with murder and ultimately you're like
oh kill again because that's the only way you're going to keep getting away
with murder this film yeah makes you feel that way as an audience member absolutely
without ever endorsing this is good this is right.
This is necessary is very different than this is good.
Yeah but I think it was just like the fact I
feel like nowadays there's so much pressure on
us as writers to justify why a
character is doing something and I'm just so impressed with how bold this film
with like you go from smiling semi-successful insurance salesman middle class
guy just going yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna do it I'm gonna commit the murder and go with the hottie,
I'm impressed with the ballsyness of it.
Billy Wilder is nothing if not ballsy.
Are we ready to move on to The Long Goodbye?
Yes, let's do it. Hey folks, this is Mel from the future, just dropping into
note that when we talk about The Long Goodbye, a couple of times Chas or I say
Eileen when we mean Sylvia or Sylvia when we mean Eileen.
Eileen Wade is who hires Marlowe to find her husband Roger Wade,
whereas Sylvia is Terry's wife and she's dead and that kicks off a lot of the
plot but we never actually see her on screen so just clarifying that a couple
of times we transpose the wife names we.
Ever have got to be the nicest neighbor of a private eye meet Philip Marlowe
Marlowe Marlowe Marlowe Marlowe your name Marlowe you shouldn't be out of bed Mr.
Marlowe I'm not Mr. Marlowe this is Mr. Marlowe right here who are you you're
Philip Marlowe are you crazy yeah Elliott David Gould is Philip Marlowe in Robert
Altman's The Long Goodbye.
I'm honking my horn. You're supposed to get out of the way. It's okay.
You're a nice dog. I didn't do nothing. This is Wade.
Nina Van Pallandt is Eileen Wade.
She's a very shady lady. I like your face, too.
I feel you're someone I can trust. Your crazy, loony-tune husband could have killed Sylvia Lennox.
Sterling Hayden is her husband, Roger. Why don't you call your friend the Marlboro
Man in here? It's not his business.
He's a very crazy man. You ever think about suicide, Marlboro?
Me? I don't believe in it. Jim Bouton is Terry Lennox, a small-time punk.
Well, that's you, Marlowe.
You'll never learn. You're a born loser. You can't take my money. I want my money.
The Long Goodbye centers on an actual private detective, Philip Marlowe,
played by Elliott Gould, is in L.A.
His college friend Terry shows up with a bag asking Philip to drive him to Mexico.
Philip does. Philip is then arrested for being an accomplice to helping Terry
get away with having beaten his wife to death.
He's arrested for three days. He's let out once it comes to light that his friend
Terry has killed himself.
and Marlowe is convinced that Terry did not kill himself and did not kill his
wife and so goes about somewhat trying to prove that that's the case.
Meanwhile, he's also hired by a femme fatale, the wife of an author who happens
to be a neighbor of his friend Terry.
In the most beautiful beachside home you've ever fucking seen in your life.
Oh yeah, fucking, anyway. So, Marlowe is hired by this lady,
Sylvia, to go and find her husband.
Marlowe does, and it turns out that those two cases are very much intertwined.
The film, I think, is deliberately long and meandering. It revels.
This is the prototype for inherent vice, really. Yeah.
But to give away the ending, what Marlowe ends up discovering is that his friend
did murder his wife all along.
Yep.
And then Sylvia was having an affair with Terry, his friend,
and is now funding their lifestyle, running away.
He's faked his own death in Mexico. And Marlowe shows up in Mexico,
confronts Terry, revealing that he knows everything, and then basically shoots
Terry in cold blood and walks away, walking past Sylvia without making eye contact.
So-
All right. Full disclosure. So I have a Leigh Brackett tattoo.
I love the writer of this screenplay so much.
I have a tattoo of the author and I love the book and I love the movie,
although it's very divisive.
However, the book and the movie are very different. and
so sometimes if I get tripped up uh they essentially
start and end the same way but the
middle is like a lot of a lot of noir lovers hate this movie because Robert
Altman just does strange things with noir um I love it so like yeah full confession
I absolutely love it but it is it's a very it's an outlier and I was curious
you were the one who really suggested this movie Only.
Because I've not seen it before. You were like banging the drum for it.
And I'm like, well, 70s, this was neo-noir, right?
Like noir as a genre had commercially died.
I think we discussed as well, we discussed like, do we do Chinatown?
Do we do this? But this is not a period piece.
This is filmed in the time it is set. Whereas a lot of 70s noir is either this
real, it's paranoid thrillers that happen to be neo-noir or it's a period piece.
It's like set in the 40s, et cetera.
So, Chinatown is quintessential that. Yes, it's neo-noir, but it feels like,
to me, because of its period setting, that it could have been in the 40s, right?
Yes, it has a slightly more modern sensibility, but there's not much that happens
in Chinatown that wouldn't have happened in other 40s set noirs.
whereas this is very 70s so 70s like this film bangs the drum on how 70s it
is literally has five topless yoga instructors the.
Neighbors yeah who are they oh my neighbors.
Just constantly in the background through his window of his flat just constantly
delicious this is the era.
Of like they're referencing the hippies constantly even though the hippies are not,
crucial to the plot or crucial to whatever they are the literal and metaphorical
backdrop of this is the era of free love and all these other things are going on.
Well, and the other element of it is the sort of power figures that the wealth represents,
because there's a lot of, I think a lot of noir says the power isn't the cops,
the power is the people who own the cops or pay the cops.
And in this, there's a very 70s representation of power. These guys are intellectuals.
They've got their money from being a successful writer.
They have like intellectual parties. One of the nefarious characters is a doctor
who runs a rehab clinic. Like they're all...
They're socially feted. Like they're accepted and they're big figures in the community, etc.
And they're also all corrupt down to the core.
It's not like old money or politicians or anything like that.
So that's how I think it updates.
Like it is so of its time.
Yeah. but.
Just to I'm gonna call out some things some notes that I that I wrote if you
ever want to see a film example of save the cat in action watch the opening of this film.
Because he doesn't save his cat his cat goes missing and then never.
Fucking returns right but the opening five minutes are him trying to get cat
food for his cat like the cat wakes him up in the middle of the night he goes to the store.
He tried well no first he tries to feed the cat other things
and the cat's like you I'm not eating
this get me and then he goes to the store and
he's like he's asking the stock boy about the brand because he's like you don't
understand my cat will not eat any other brand he gets the brand which by the
way costs more than the generic shit yeah and also he references the cat constantly
in fact when the cops arrest him he's mad at them because he's Like,
I don't think you understand how important this cat is to me.
Like, when he, like, he's yelling at Terry because, like, oh,
my God, like, my cat is more loyal than you.
I, yeah, the cat is so crucial to me.
him as a character and also Elliot Gould
and this cat have just incredible like the way that they interact is really
lovely and really as someone who has directed animals on film incredibly difficult
to get animals to do anything let alone cats because they just don't want to
it's just it's so good it's incredible.
Yeah so we're missing
my favorite part of the bit where he pulls an empty tin of old cat food out
from his bed he shuts the cat out of the kitchen so that he can then pour the
new cat food into the old tin and then he lets the cat in and mimes opening
the old tin and serving him the cat food would.
Your cat fall for that.
No not not at all because it would be taste and smell but the the lengths he
is going to like it really Marlowe and Elliot Gould's,
portrayal of Marlowe is not inherently likable, but they go to such lengths
for you to sit with him to go, all right, we're on board with this guy.
The opening five minutes is all about him trying to feed his cat.
Yeah.
And now you write that and people go, cut it. It's not important.
Because it does nothing for the plot. It does. And like you said, the cat disappears.
Yeah.
And then he's just referencing the cat. But the cat is so important to telling
you who this person is. Yeah.
So that's one thing I'm hanging
my hat on the other thing is in
the same way that it does it for Double Indemnity the film
tips its hand to you we meet Terry
before or no we see Terry I think possibly
is there's the film open on Terry getting into the car and
driving either way it's in amongst the cat
scenario we see Terry and he
gets into the car and it shows you that he has bloodied
and bruised knuckles and he puts driving gloves on
to cover them up so the film is
telling us Terry has beaten someone
very badly right and yet
I got suckered in by Marlowe's absolute faith
that Terry was innocent right Marlowe
was getting beaten black and blue by the police and you
know still would be like not say a bad thing about his friend would not believe
you know whenever Eileen was trying to we learn retrospectively throw Marlowe
off the scent by saying that Terry probably killed his wife Marlowe doesn't believe it right I.
Can't understand how he could do something like that how could he kill his wife
I mean there were nice people I don't know it's just hard well I'll tell you
something I don't believe he killed his wife I read in the paper you know he
confessed and they had a letter and all from him Mrs. Weir, have a good night.
I'll see how everything is in the morning. Okay, and thank you again.
So I was like, there's going to eventually have to explain away the bruised
knuckles as a red herring.
Yeah.
And no, it wasn't a red herring. It told us all along.
Which I think is two things. It's knowledge of genre, right?
It's knowledge of a lot of things that you see within noir is then explained
later as something different or can be explained by something that's either
innocent or adjacent, but quite different. But it's also...
We all know that there are, again, like the identification with Marlowe is very
important, because as a viewer, we all know that we've done things that have
been seen externally as what they are not.
And we're like, no, no, no, let me let me explain this to you.
Like, no, really, genuinely, it's actually this thing and people don't believe you.
and so the identification with Marlowe even
though we've seen his other things of Terry we think no you can explain that
no it's actually a thing and loyalty is the crux of
to me loyalty is the theme of this film it's the crux
of this film and Marlowe is loyal which is what the
cat shows right like yeah yeah he's gonna be grumpy
about it he's gonna be an asshole but he
is loyal to who he thinks to his friends and
who he thinks his friends are even again like at the beginning we
see all of these you know models quote-unquote models next
door and he's loyal to them because they're his friends and they've never done
anything wrong to him and they you know they help him out they clearly are his
weed dealers also um again a little bit a little bit coded but yeah and he's
he's good to them and they're good to him and it's a very you know um tete-a-tete sort of situation yeah.
There's a line when he leaves when they ask him to get brownie mix when he's
off to the store to get the cat.
Yeah yeah they.
There's a throwaway line nicest neighbor we've had.
And you imagine that these are people
who I mean even in the 70s are clearly looked down
upon by society which noir is really interested in you know
class and jobs and all of that and that
he's like well I don't give a shit like you're good to me I'm good to you I
don't care if you have this job that's frowned upon or whatever and so yeah
loyalty is the key yeah and that's shown with the cat and that's shown with
what he does to Terry until he realizes that Terry doesn't deserve it.
Yes, which is right at the end. So,
does this fit the mold of here's a man caught by a transgression following it
to its inevitable lead to be confronted by insurmountable powers?
I think there's variations of that in this film.
I do think his transgression is
that he drives his mate to Mexico without asking why or doing any of that.
Well, there's two transgressions. And that's a transgression,
but you can see it from two different angles, right?
Like, yeah, that's the thing you did wrong. But also, like, society tells you
you go to the cops and his personal moral code says, well, fuck the police and do this other thing.
And he would not transgress his code.
Yes.
So this is a transgression against societal mores, but not a transgression against his personal code.
Absolutely agree. but I feel like the cops are immediately portrayed as corrupt
and so he's vindicated in.
Well they beat him they they like they arrest him and then they start smacking
him around immediately before they actually know anything hold.
Him three days without charge like yeah.
Just later literally like hitting him upside the head arresting him without
cause like yeah they are corrupt like again noir says a cab but yeah within
this very specific story the cops are clearly dirty yeah app.
And so there's, like, I don't want to necessarily get into the details of it,
but there's a number of different threads.
There's a, Terry, his mate, was like a drug mule, essentially,
or running money for a gangster.
The gangster comes looking for his money. So Marlowe is being looked at by the cops.
He's being chased by, um.
Threatened by the gangster. Yeah. And the gangster there's this great scene
where the gangster basically demonstrates how nasty he is by glassing his girlfriend.
And that's where Marlowe's like, oh, well, like, sure, you want to do drugs.
I don't give a shit. Oh, you've glassed your girlfriend.
Now I'm against you because you've done something that is against my moral code.
Sure, but against him how? What does he do to Augustine? Absolutely nothing.
Well, he's just in the way.
Yeah, but I mean, so you're saying that Augustine has breached Marlowe's moral code, which he has.
Yes, absolutely.
But Marlowe does absolutely fuck all about it.
Well, he has no power to do it at that point. He knows that if he attempts to
do something at that point, he's dead. And I think there's a lot of,
there's this idea of like Marlowe recognizing, again, he does the same thing with the cops.
He doesn't fight back because he knows that that's futile.
Yeah.
Like he knows that gets him nowhere except further beaten up.
Yes.
So there's, he does what he can with what he has.
Yeah.
But at the same time, he actually doesn't give a shit about Augustine until
it violates his personal moral code. yeah.
But even when it violates his code he's still trying to close that out like
he gets a five thousand dollar bill from a letter named signed terry and he
goes straight to Augustine to show say this is evidence that terry's still alive
he's like trying to get Augustine off his back right.
Off his back yeah but he's also still trying to implicate augustine like and
there's this really fascinating thing that I love about noir where he's like
well I think the cops are all evil and dirty but I would love to implicate you
and let the cops pick you up because you're actually still worse like it's it's very,
it's very shaggy dog like save the cat and shaggy dog tail but he's there's
all these like tertiary threads where he's like well if I couldn't get the cops
sicked on your trail and therefore like get you off the streets then that's
overall still a moral win yeah.
Yeah, but he doesn't get him off the streets.
No, because in noir you usually fail.
He gets his money back and he walks out.
The end of noir is often incredibly narratively unsatisfying.
It's untidy. It's not a happy ending. Everybody loses.
Everybody loses. If you get out alive, you have won.
That is, I think, one of the things that differentiates a lot of noir and gangster
film or whatever, right?
where like even a gangster film where you die it's like a conclusive narratively
satisfying ending and noir is just like no everything's still fucked and you
just have to go on and it's all still fucked.
And this is this is where I think
anyone who's writing a story where that is
where they want it to end they want to leave the
audience with everything is still fucked then go and
watch a whole lot of noirs to try and pull out how do
you successfully tell that story in a satisfying way two more observations I'd
like to make before we ask the questions of the The Long Goodbye one is there's
no voiceover whatsoever but in classic Altman style there is a running mumble
to self for the whole film um file.
That under should not work and yet works and lots of other people talking in
the background just like a constant buzz of people talking I think when he's
in the When he's in the cop shop,
and again, I've seen this movie a bunch of times, when he's in the cop shop,
it's one of those things where you don't really see Elliot Gould's mouth moving,
but you're in a wide enough shot that it's probably actually a voiceover,
but you can just believe he's mumbling to himself, it's fine.
Yeah. And I just want to note to the audience...
If you haven't seen this film, this film is hilariously funny.
Noir is so fucking funny.
And so noir does not have to be... I mean, the two films that we've watched
so far are delicious, delightful, funny.
I think three out of this four are laugh out loud hilarious.
Well, I just want to dispel the idea that noir means bleak.
Yeah, dour or yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Sure.
It can be, but that is a choice. I think you can find these stylistic tropes,
these narrative tropes in this world view and put it into any kind of tone of story.
I mean, there is slapstick in The Long Goodbye, a lot of physical slapstick,
a lot of physical comedy.
I mean, just my favorite bit, I think, in the whole film is the gangster is
coming, Augustine's girlfriend, and left the apartment with his cronies.
And Marlowe goes and does some shenanigans, but comes back and knows that there's
someone that's been left to tail him, but knows him as a generic hired henchman.
They're on first name basis.
You're working your way up.
And he's like, let me teach you how to be a better henchman.
right like giving him tips tips and guidance on how to do it listen.
Harry in case you lose me in traffic this is the address where I'm going thank
you great harry I'll wait to straighten you,
Harry, I'm proud to have you following me. Thank you.
And there's a security guard guy who has this running bit about impersonations.
And then he tells the security guard guy, like, oh, do this bit.
Like, this guy who's tailing me will really love it.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's very funny.
And in terms of slapstick, Marlowe goes through a gate, quite a tall gate.
And then along comes this henchman and climbs the gate to peer over the top.
And Marlowe just gently opens it, swinging the guy to one side and like looks
at it for him just like tut, tut, tut.
Just like truly funny, amazing. But also, let's start with the questions.
You know, I'm not sure Marlowe does horrible things.
I think he definitely transgresses. but this
one's he's a different character to the other three films
in that they go to real lengths to show that which we've established to show
that this is someone that's worth watching and while he's willing to drive a
friend to mexico he's got a suspicious bag bloody knuckles and is quote unquote
had a fight with his wife I have.
Friends if they showed up you know if they knocked on my door right now and
had blood on their shirt and said mate I need help I'd be You're like,
all right, I believe you.
And I think that's where you say, has the character changed?
I don't think that Marlowe has changed, but I do think his worldview has.
Like, he genuinely believed. And again, some of this is maybe colored by my
loving the book, having seen this movie multiple times, having written maybe
a thesis paper on, like, the concept of loyalty in this film. Right.
At the end, he is actually more jaded than he started.
Like, at the beginning of this film, he had a code. At the end of this film, he had a code.
But at the beginning of the film, he genuinely believed that there were still
people in his life that were loyal and that he could count on.
At the end of this film, he's actually gone, you know what, actually there are
not. I had one friend who fucked me over to such a royal degree that it has
actually made me doubt every other,
what I assumed to be foundational relationship in my life. And I cannot come back from that.
I think he always would have shot Terry. Like if Terry had shown up at the beginning
of the film and said, Marlowe, Marlowe, I've just beaten my wife to death. Yep.
Because that's his code.
He would have shot him like straight away.
Yep.
Right. Like, so I think in some ways, Marlowe hasn't changed,
but I agree with you on the jadedness.
His philosophy has changed, I guess, is maybe the thing, but he has not changed.
His core has not changed.
But his understanding of the world has changed.
And I also think, how do they make Marlowe a compelling protagonist when he's very rarely in control?
He's a detective. But okay, so one of the things I'm going to get to is two things.
You've already made the observation, but I think it's great,
is that he is often getting beaten up.
And until he shoots Terry at the end, never physically threatens anyone, never uses violence.
but you can feel in the moments when he's being
assaulted when he's powerless he's just biding
his time until there is something he has control over
and when he is hired as a detective and he is doing detective work they show
him we've already referenced the the knowledge gap he has over the henchman
but they show him being smart and being personable and being competent And.
Those are linked because there's a pragmatism to being smart and knowing when
you can win and when you can't and when you have to take the beating and when
you can administer the beating.
And I think he knows that he functions within a system.
Like the fact that he never goes after Augustine and doesn't even confront Sylvia at the end.
Because he understands that the class distinction, the money,
the power is not, he doesn't hold the power. What good would it do him?
Yeah, but also his code is she cheated on her husband.
That's fine by him. She didn't beat her husband to death, in which case he would have done something.
She cheated on her husband. The only person that she significantly transgressed against was him.
Yeah.
And he will let that go because, you know, pragmatism and personal. Yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, Marlowe is in some ways a more stereotypical noir lead than
Walter in Double Indemnity is.
Absolutely.
He's a detective. He is very much a fish out of water.
Like, Marlowe on the beach wearing his dark suit, like, he just does not look
like he should be in the sun.
Like, he looks like a creature of darkness who's been thrown into a very uncomfortable situation.
Sunshine noir. Oh, beautiful.
And, you know, these big class divides and these big representations of power,
either in the gangster character, in Sylvia's husband, the writer, Roger,
Sylvia herself, the cops.
And he only takes action when he knows he can have an impact and when there's
been a transgression against his code.
But he was, going back to that film historian, he was a character trapped by his decision.
If he hadn't driven his friend to Mexico, the plot would not have unraveled as it did.
But his moral code, without knowing what Terry had done, does not allow him
to turn Terry away from his door.
Yes. So, I mean, maybe he was always going to be trapped by his code.
But in the same way, they don't talk about it being an inevitability in the
same way that they discuss it openly in Double Indemnity.
But at the end of the movie, it feels like him murdering Terry is the...
It's the inevitable outcome of his code versus what he knew at the time.
He followed his code and therefore it would have always led him to this given those circumstances.
And I'm going to...
Again, giveaway, a learning that I'll have at the end.
But all of these films conclude with a character confronting what they've done,
not necessarily concluding that it's a bad thing, but assessing their own complicity
in the events around them.
In Double Indemnity, it's very clear. He's like, I did it. I'm the killer.
But in The Long Goodbye, I think it's the fact that Marlowe travels to Mexico
to confront his friend to shoot him, right?
There is like, this is my accountability. This is my responsibility.
Could have just left it go, let it go, right? Didn't have to do anything, right?
His code won't let him let it go.
Exactly. And then Devil in the Blue Dress, which we're about to transition into,
has Easy asking at the end of the movie,
basically, am I responsible for the actions of the people I'm friends with?
Without necessarily confronting his own decisions, but that is...
Okay. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. We'll get there in a second. Yep.
Well, do you want to... Are we done with The Long Goodbye?
I think so. I think so. Also, this... You had never seen any of these before this? Question mark?
No, not a single one of them. It's been a fun week.
This is interesting because I've seen all of these before. So this is really
quite fascinating because I do think once you get more and more familiar with
something, those first impressions, which can often be correct,
that you're bringing in where I was like, oh, I hadn't thought about it. Yeah, okay, sure.
But I've become a little bit inured to it. So, all right. All right.
All right, Draft Zero fans, we're going to stop right there and make this part
one of Noirvember in December, an exploration of both character arcs and worldview
through the unique themes and trends of film noir and how that works through the ages.
Please come back for Devil in a Blue Dress and Woman of the Hour,
cementing our learnings, comparing and contrasting how the same worldviews,
the same narrative tropes,
the same styles can be applied in different times with different systems of
oppression and all of them leading to a way of telling a story that will end poorly for everyone.
Yep.
So if you've got a story, no matter what genre it is, where you want everything
to end poorly for everyone, tune in for this next episode.
Excellent.
I hope you all feel like arguing with either Stu or myself about anything on
this episode or anything in general.
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