Posts tagged Elliot Gould

Last night was the Tony Awards, which is longer on talent and shorter on self-congratulations than most award shows.  When I watch awards shows with the moll, we have a drink or two.  It was martinis for the Oscars.  But last night I let Raymond Chandler and Robert Altman pick the cocktails.   Chandler’s description of a gimlet in The Long Goodbye is famous the world over:   “They don’t know how to make them here,” he said. “What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.” In the 1973 film, Robert Altman and Elliott Gould transform Marlowe into a more self-aware private dick for The Seventies.  In the film version of The Long Goodbye, Marlowe orders a CC and ginger.  Technically, this is a highball and not a cocktail—and should be in a different glass.   But let’s not split hairs.  Both are simple to make and delicious to drink.  And Raymond Chandler would never turn up his nose at that.

Last night was the Tony Awards, which is longer on talent and shorter on self-congratulations than most award shows.  When I watch awards shows with the moll, we have a drink or two.  It was martinis for the Oscars.  But last night I let Raymond Chandler and Robert Altman pick the cocktails.  

Chandler’s description of a gimlet in The Long Goodbye is famous the world over:  

“They don’t know how to make them here,” he said. “What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.”

In the 1973 film, Robert Altman and Elliott Gould transform Marlowe into a more self-aware private dick for The Seventies.  In the film version of The Long Goodbye, Marlowe orders a CC and ginger.  Technically, this is a highball and not a cocktail—and should be in a different glass.  

But let’s not split hairs.  Both are simple to make and delicious to drink.  And Raymond Chandler would never turn up his nose at that.

17 notes 

Gould’s Philip Marlowe grew on me during the course of the film.  His addled muttering at the beginning was definitely more Altman than Chandler.  But Gould was able to synthesize the two over the course of the movie to portray an updated hardboiled hero, yes, but one still rooted in Chandler’s novel.

Gould’s Philip Marlowe grew on me during the course of the film.  His addled muttering at the beginning was definitely more Altman than Chandler.  But Gould was able to synthesize the two over the course of the movie to portray an updated hardboiled hero, yes, but one still rooted in Chandler’s novel.

19 notes