ST ch 19 French 75s, Greasy Thumb Guzik

[Mark Kohut]

. The Long Goodbye is practically an essay about the source material, much
as One Battle After Another is.

Great remark/observation....

Thanks

On Wed, May 13, 2026 at 3:16 PM Robin Landseadel via Pynchon-l <
pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:

> Laura Kelber: I'm not at all sure that GR should be adapted. Some things
> are better left as they are. There was a short film, Impolex (2009), which
> I haven't seen. The late, great Dave Monroe saw it and thought it was
> reasonable. The one thing on my wish list for any Pynchon adaptation is
> that the adapter has a clear understanding of the book's meaning (to them)
> and has a Kubrick-like intensity about mapping it all out in detail ahead
> of time, and conveying that meaning on the screen (ah, if only Kubrick
> could have taken it on!). Anything less is just riffing (inspired by).
> That's how we ended up with Emerald Fennell's *"Wuthering Heights."* I
> can't think of any great adaptations of any of my favorite novels. The best
> adaptations (okay, just guessing here) take an underwhelming novel and make
> it better: Kubrick and *The Shining*, for example. David Lean's *Bridge On
> the River Kwai*. . . . "
>
> My vote for a fully successful film version of a classic novel is "The
> Maltese Falcon", John Houston's 1941 version. Very little taken out. I
> happen to think that Raymond Chandler's novels are great, have a sneaking
> suspicion Pynchon does as well. The two best adaptions of Chandler I'm
> aware of play havoc with the source material, that would be the 1946 Howard
> Hawks "The Big Sleep" and Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye" from 1973. The
> Long Goodbye is practically an essay about the source material, much as One
> Battle After Another is. I found myself really liking Inherent Vice after a
> couple-two/three viewings. I realized that stuff had to be cut in order to
> make a movie of reasonable length.
>
> Speaking of adaptation of classic material to the screen:
>
> “ . . . Some kind of classical music coming from the TV room. Mozart. In
> these desperate stretches of early-morning programming, she finds Ernie
> tubeside, his face transfigured in the ancient Trinitron glow, watching an
> obscure, in fact never-distributed Marx Brothers version of Don Giovanni,
> with Groucho in the title role. She tiptoes in barefoot and sits next to
> her father on the couch. There’s a big plastic bowl of popcorn, too big
> even for two people, too big for even two people, which Ernie after a while
> nudges in her direction. During a recitative he fills her in. “They cut the
> Commendatore so there’s no Donna Anna, no Don Ottavio, this way, without
> the murder, it’s a comedy.” Leoporello is being played by both Chico and
> Harpo, one for lines and one for sight gags, Chico fast-talking his way
> through the Catalog Aria for example while Harpo runs around after Donna
> Elvira (Margaret Dumont, in the role she was born for), pinching, groping,
> and honking his bicycle horn, as well as later picking harp accompaniment
> for “Deh vieni all finestra.” Masetto is a studio baritone who is not
> Nelson Eddy, Zerlina is very young, lip-synced and more-than-presentable
> Beatrice Pearson, later to portray another ingenue with a fatality for
> scoundrels opposite John Garfield in Force of Evil, (1948) . . . “
>
> Bleeding Edge pgs. 417/418
>
> There's that massive load 'o' popcorn again, or I suppose before, as that
> thread gets picked up in Shadow Ticket.
>
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>