I know I’d seen The Long Goodbye before, and at the Cleveland Cinematheque, because—bless the place—but it has the most uncomfortable lecture-hall-style wooden chairs from the ’60s ever.
From my much more comfortable seat at the Film Forum, I mused I’d forgotten how funny Goodbye is, particularly film-noir gumshoe transplanted to the creamy yoga center of 1970’s Los Angeles Elliott Gould with his dopey looks and dry self-deprecating humor. Witness the strangely extended opening sequence where he learns he’s out of cat food, drives to the grocery store to buy more, discovers they’re out, reluctantly buys a different brand, returns home, opens the off-brand can and scoops it into an empty can of the cat’s usual cat food, then makes a big show in front of the cat about pretending to serve the cat its regular food. Of course, the cat knows it’s the wrong brand and refuses to eat it, which the audience has expects all along, but it’s really funny somehow anyway.
I have to imagine guys like Gould must have been a true mystery as leading men of ’70s cinema. How did these mugs become stars? To my point, see also two other not-especially handsome, alternately endearing/annoying, frequently charming guys (and also from Brooklyn!) from that era, Richard Dreyfuss and Woody Allen.
Wandering around the East Side before the movie, I regret to inform you I missed an awesome New York photo-op. On the Bowery I noticed that a League of Their Own style tour bus had just pulled up outside the Bowery Mission. A group of Amish people had just stepped off, the ladies clad in plain shapeless dresses and wearing those lace kerchiefs on their heads, while the men had on plaid long-sleeved shirts and black pants. They started photographing the various transients who were lounging around smoking and napping. One guy sitting on the stoop outside the door was all like, “Here I am. C’mon, muthafuckas, I’m right here,” with his arms raised, so they all clustered around and started taking even more photos like they were at the zoo and they’d just come across a surly emu. Meanwhile another mission resident off to the side was hastily scribbling a beggar sign on a scrap of cardboard.