the long goodbye

detective: my, my, you are a pretty asshole.
philip marlowe: yeah, my mother always tells me that.

just watched robert altman's the long goodbye starring a handsome young elliot gould. it was fantastic. the kind of movie i could tell i was going to love within 10 minutes of watching it.

it's set in a beautifully shot hazy 1970s southern california and features a clan of stoned nudists and a half-naked mustachioed arnold schwarzenegger helping gould take his clothes off.

i like what roger ebert has to say about it: "The book is not about a story but about the code of a private eye in a corrupt world. It is all about mood, personal style, and language." i also like how he describes gould's form of speaking throughout the film as "meandering dialogue that plays as a bemused commentary to himself."

i adored it.