Mga app ng Google
Pangunahing menu

Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

""There Will Be Blood," Edward Doheny, and Raymond Chandler"

7 Comments -

1 – 7 of 7
Blogger Jim O'Sullivan said...

By the way, the reason that "The Big Sleep" (both in novel and movie form) has a reputation as being impossible to follow is because it's true. The novel's bad enough, but the scriptwriters butchered the plot further, so the movie's ending makes virtually no sense at all. Why I feel the need to say this, I have no idea.

1/22/08, 1:31 PM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

The death of the Sternwood chauffeur, whose car goes off a Malibu pier into the Pacific, is never fully explained. It was probably a suicide, caused by the younger Sternwood daughter breaking his heart.

Chandler's plots generally don't involve a large, planned-out conspiracy. Instead, usually something happens that can't be ignored -- somebody goes missing or a dead body turns up -- and that leads to a lot of rocks being turned over and a lot of unseemly conduct being exposed, much of it only tangentially related to the original crime.

Kind of like when young Chandra Levy disappeared in Washington, and it was quickly discovered that she was sleeping with her married boss, Congressman Gary Condit. Then lots of people assumed he killed her, but no evidence for that has turned up. That's kind of like a Chandler plot - a little unsatisfying, but instructive.

1/22/08, 4:14 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good point Steve. Of course Hammett because he WAS a real detective had more tightly focused plots. Red Harvest was based on his strike breaking work at Butte Montana.

1/22/08, 5:21 PM

Anonymous anony-mouse said...

With Chandler its not the plots, its the language. James M Cain had much better plots (and movies based on them).

1/22/08, 7:00 PM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

Cain's "Mildren Pierce" is a wonderful ultra-realist novel, with a great section on how to run a chicken restaurant (the Joan Crawford movie version is good but not as good as the book).

The funny thing about the famous movie version of Cain's book "Double Indemnity" is that Raymond Chandler rewrote (with Billy Wilder) all the dialogue. Chandler said the dialogue was perfect to read but all wrong for the movies. Cain, who was working at the same studio on the screenplay for a different movie, was called in and he agreed with Chandler.

1/22/08, 7:59 PM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

Jeez, Hammett's "Red Harvest" was based on real events? That's scary - there are like 50 dead bodies in that book. It starts out like a normal murder mystery but the action ends up like that in "All Quiet on the Western Front."

Nothing like the old mining business for intense worker-capitalist struggles...

1/22/08, 8:01 PM

Anonymous drawbacks said...

It's alleged that Bogart and Howard Hawks phoned Chandler to resolve their argument as to who had killed the chauffeur, but Chandler had no idea.

1/23/08, 6:32 AM

Comments are moderated, at whim.
You can use some HTML tags, such as <b>, <i>, <a>

Comment moderation has been enabled. All comments must be approved by the blog author.

You will be asked to sign in after submitting your comment.
OpenID LiveJournal WordPress TypePad AOL