Gillian Welch – Recliner Notes

The Long Goodbye: Altman and Gould’s Marlowe, the Scuzzy ‘70s, and an Imagined Soundtrack

The Long Goodbye directed by Robert Altman

Director Robert Altman called his 1973 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled crime novel The Long Goodbye “a satire in melancholy.” The film stars goofily sincere Elliott Gould as detective Philp Marlowe alongside the beautiful Nina van Pallandt, baseball pitcher turned controversial memoirist Jim Bouton, film director Mark Rydell, the stormy Sterling Hayden, and Altman regularContinue reading “The Long Goodbye: Altman and Gould’s Marlowe, the Scuzzy ‘70s, and an Imagined Soundtrack”

Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)

There’s a moment during the climax of Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 ultra-violent Western The Wild Bunch that is a direct connection to Bob Dylan’s song “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)” off of his 1978 album Street-Legal. In the film, the outlaw gang, who serve as the plot’s anti-protagonists, are engaged in the biggest, bloodiest shootout depictedContinue reading “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)”

Billy 4

Released in 1973, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid was a Western directed by Sam Peckinpaugh. Bob Dylan’s involvement in the film apparently started when he ran into novelist and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer, who told Dylan that he was writing a screenplay about the relationship between Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. Hearing about theContinue reading “Billy 4”