SOURCE: "Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye: Marlowe in the Me Decade," in Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 25, No. 2, Fall, 1991, pp. 87-90.

In the following essay, Ferncase discusses Altman's retelling of the story of Philip Marlowe in his The Long Goodbye.

In the popular culture, few artifacts are guarded with the kind of reverence that is commonly reserved for old movies. Defenders of Hollywood's silver screen legacy are frequently vociferous over perceived indignities to which the films are submitted. A figure no less than Martin Scorsese has raged over the fugitive dyes in Eastmancolor prints (which reduced hundreds of 1950s films to faded ghosts of their former selves); strike the practice of colorizing black-and-white movies for video release continues to provoke howls from film academics and movie buffs alike. The brouhaha seems to have less to do with preserving films as art objects than it does with protecting the...