Altman thought of Raymond Chandler, Philip Marlowe, himself, and all of us people as best served by a wry witticism and dry disconnectivity in the face of the obvious fact that we might one day have to blow our brains out to escape whatever Dostoevsky novel we may happen to end up in. His EXACT words about Chandler: “he was a suicide like the rest of us.” Out of his 1970s masterpiece factory, then, it is not surprising to find the delivery trucks unloading a gallows-humor pisstake on Chandler’s best novel. This movie sure grumpified the prudes, purists, practicum pirates-of-pud-pulling, and pilgrims of impatience. It also directly engages the counterculture more than any other Altman masterpiece, with Gould’s (Elliot really was America in the 1970s in micro) genius chainsmoker reenacting the Chicago trials w/ some truly dumbass Gestapo in the first act (as it melts, unseen, somewhere, into the second, as this is an Altman after all). The gang of ruffians with whom he must later tussle are composed of a sociopathic Jewish Mentch right out of Nietzsche, a Mexican, an Italian, and … wait for it … Arnold fucking Guvn’rnator guards the office’s panel-wood door. California. Hilarious. “It’s alright with me.” (And great music from John Williams of all the people in the shitty-pants’d world!). In the words of Moe Sizlack of The Simpsons: “looks like it’s suicide again for me!” Groucho Marx would be proud.
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