Production
Producers Jerry Bick and Elliott Kastner bought the cinematic rights to The Long Goodbye novel and made a production deal with the United Artists distribution company. They commissioned the screenplay from Leigh Brackett who had written the script for the Humphrey Bogart version of The Big Sleep. The producers offered the script to both Howard Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich to direct it. Both refused the offer, but Bogdanovich recommended Robert Altman, who, initially, was uninterested, until allowed to cast Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe — despite the producers' original choices being Robert Mitchum and Lee Marvin.
United Artists president David Picker may have picked Gould to play Marlowe as a ploy to get Altman to direct. At the time, Gould was in professional disfavor because of his rumored troubles on the set of A Glimpse of Tiger, in which he bickered with co-star Kim Darby, fought with director Anthony Harvey, and acted erratically. Consequently, he had not worked in two years; nevertheless, Altman convinced Bick that Gould suited the role. United Artists had Elliott Gould undergo the usual employment medical examination and a psychological examination attesting to his mental stability.
Jim Bouton, cast as Marlowe's friend Terry Lennox, was not an actor. He was a former Major League Baseball pitcher and the author of the best-selling book Ball Four.
Read more about this topic: The Long Goodbye (film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“[T]he asphaltum contains an exactly requisite amount of sulphides for production of rubber tires. This brown material also contains “ichthyol,” a medicinal preparation used externally, in Webster’s clarifying phrase, “as an alterant and discutient.””
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)