The Long Goodbye

[Calvin]

NOTHING SAYS GOODBYE LIKE A BULLET

When private eye Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is visited by an old friend, this sets in train a series of events in which he’s hired to search for a missing novelist (Sterling Hayden) and finds himself on the wrong side of vicious gangsters.

So far so faithful to Raymond Chandler, but Robert Altman’s inspired adaptation of the writer’s most personal novel takes his legendary detective and relocates him to the selfish, hedonistic culture of 1970s Hollywood, where he finds that his old-fashioned notions of honour and loyalty carry little weight, and even his smoking (universal in film noir) is now frowned upon.
Widely misunderstood at the time, The Long Goodbye is now regarded as one of Altman’s best films and one of the outstanding American films of its era, with Gould’s shambling, cat-obsessed Marlowe ranking alongside more outwardly faithful interpretations by Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• High Definition presentation of the film from a digital transfer by MGM Studios
• Original uncompressed mono 2.0 PCM audio
• Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
• Rip Van Marlowe – An interview with director Robert Altman and star Elliott Gould
• Vilmos Zsigmond Flashes The Long Goodbye – An interview with the legendary cinematographer
• Giggle and Give In – Paul Joyce’s acclaimed documentary profile of Robert Altman, with contributions from Altman, Elliott Gould, Shelley Duvall, assistant director
• Alan Rudolph and screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury
• Elliott Gould Discusses The Long Goodbye – a conversation with crime novelist Michael Connelly, recorded in March 2012
• David Thompson on Robert Altman – David Thompson, editor of ‘Altman on Altman’ and producer of the BBC’s ‘Robert Altman in England’, talks about The Long Goodbye‘s place in Altman’s filmography
• On Raymond Chandler – Chandler’s biographer, Tom Williams, outlines the author’s life and work and discusses Altman’s adaptation of The Long Goodbye
• On Hard Boiled Fiction – Crime writer and critic Maxim Jakubowski discusses the emergence of hard boiled detective characters from the pages of the pulp magazines from the 1920s through to the 1950s
• Original Theatrical Trailer
• Radio Spots
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jay Shaw

[domino harvey]

As per this magazine ad, The Long Goodbye will be a Q4 Arrow Academy release.

EDIT: Somehow missed the post above me!

Time to sell your MGM DVDs of the Long Goodbye for big bux now, kids

[hearthesilence]

Time to sell your MGM DVDs of the Long Goodbye for big bux now, kids

Not that big - unless you kept it sealed for some reason, don't expect to get more than $12 for it. (And that's before Amazon/ebay/etc. takes a cut.)

[Jeff]

Is there any label kicking more ass than Arrow right now? After getting burned on The Fury, I won't be buying any more featureless Fox or MGM Twilight Time titles until I'm positive Arrow doesn't have them.

The Long Goodbye is a Top 50 film for me, and I can't wait to see what supplements they come up with. I won't be selling my Vilmos Zsigmond autographed copy, but I hope to never play it again! What a pleasant surprise this week to discover that we should be getting definitive Blus of The Long Goodbye and Nashville in the near future. Now if only Warner would let Criterion get their mitts on McCabe, we'd have the trifecta.

[feihong]

The Long Goodbye is a Top 50 film for me, and I can't wait to see what supplements they come up with. I won't be selling my Vilmos Zsigmond autographed copy, but I hope to never play it again! What a pleasant surprise this week to discover that we should be getting definitive Blus of The Long Goodbye and Nashville in the near future. Now if only Warner would let Criterion get their mitts on McCabe, we'd have the trifecta.

I share your every sentiment here (except that my copy of The Long Goodbye isn't autographed by the cinematographer or anyone else). Stoked to be getting (hopefully) proper representation of my favorite Altman movies. Hopefully my real favorite, McCabe, will appear soon.

[A man stayed-put]

That Long Goodbye package looks tremendous. Christ, Arrow are doing some great work at the moment.

[colinr0380]

I've seen "Giggle and Give In" which is an excellent profile of Altman's career, though it will be interesting to see how many of the extensive clips from his filmography that featured in it will be able to be included.

It was a 1996 episode of "Cinefile", an occasional series on films that would run on Channel 4 to usually tie in with their film seasons (others that I remember include a documentary on Robin Williams from 1993, one on film noir and neo-noir to coincide with Channel 4's "Dark and Deadly" season, and one on film adaptations of novels to coincide with the "Novel Image" season, both from 1995. Here's one on Cassavetes and one that accompanied the 1996 Kubrick season), and I have especially fond memories of that particular documentary as that piece and the season of Altman films around it was where I got to see most of his works for the first time.

[feihong]

The picture up on Amazon UK for the Long Goodbye cover looks pretty incredible.

http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/images/titl ... ALcomp.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[A man stayed-put]

The picture up on Amazon UK for the Long Goodbye cover looks pretty incredible.

http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/images/titl ... ALcomp.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That cover is pretty great. Does anybody know if that 12 certificate is just a placeholder or has it been downgraded from 18?
I've had a quick search on the BBFC website and it doesn't appear to have been re-classified.

[MichaelB]

Definitely a placeholder - there's no way it would get a 12! (The film's Arrow Academy predecessor, The Night of the Hunter, is a 12, which I suspect is relevant.)

As you'll already have seen, The Long Goodbye was last classified in 2003, when it still got an 18 despite the BBFC having already undergone its great post-2000 liberalisation.

I suspect the single scene responsible is a bit of inadvertent Coca-Cola product placement - if you've seen the film, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. And hell would freeze over before the BBFC would give that anything milder than a 15, and I suspect an 18 is more likely.

[MichaelB]

Arrow announcement:

We are delighted to confirm two late additions to 'The Long Goodbye' - a 53-minute conversation between its star Elliott Gould and crime novelist Michael Connolly, and the booklet will also feature an archive interview with screenwriter Leigh Brackett. The full specs are now updated on our site!

And to save you looking those up, they are:

-High Definition presentation of the film from a digital transfer by MGM Studios
-Original uncompressed mono 2.0 PCM audio
-Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
-Rip Van Marlowe – An interview with director Robert Altman and star Elliott Gould
-Vilmos Zsigmond Flashes The Long Goodbye – An interview with the legendary
cinematographer -Giggle and Give In – Paul Joyce’s acclaimed documentary profile of Robert Altman, with contributions from Altman, Elliott Gould, Shelley Duvall, assistant director Alan Rudolph and screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury
- Elliott Gould Discusses The Long Goodbye - a conversation with crime novelist Michael Connelly, recorded in March 2012.
-David Thompson on Robert Altman - David Thompson, editor of 'Altman on Altman' and producer of the BBC’s 'Robert Altman in England', talks about The Long Goodbye‘s place in Altman's filmography
-On Raymond Chandler - Raymond Chandler’s biographer, Tom Williams, outlines the author's life and work and discusses Altman’s adaptation of The Long Goodbye
-On Hard Boiled Fiction - Crime writer and critic Maxim Jakubowski discusses the emergence of hard boiled detective characters from the pages of the pulp magazines from the 1920s through to the 1950s.
-Original Theatrical Trailer
-Radio Spots
-Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jay Shaw
-Booklet featuring new writing on the film by Brad Stevens, an archive interview with screenwriter Leigh Brackett, a new interview with assistant director Alan Rudolph and an American Cinematographer article discussing Zsigmond’s unique treatment of the film, illustrated with original archive stills and posters

[Altair]

These new extras are very welcome - in all it looks a fantastic package. Any word yet on its rating? All the publicity photos of the cover show it to rated a "12", yet the BBFC website says it is still "18": http://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/long-goodbye-1973

[MichaelB]

Unless you're planning to give it to a 12-year-old as a Christmas present, I don't see why it matters that much - but my understanding is that it is indeed an 18.

[matrixschmatrix]

Wow, that release was an obvious must buy already- now it's getting into the realm of the kind of thing that I would use to entice people to buy region free blu-ray players. It's hard to imagine even Criterion bettering that one.

[zedz]

Wow, that release was an obvious must buy already- now it's getting into the realm of the kind of thing that I would use to entice people to buy region free blu-ray players. It's hard to imagine even Criterion bettering that one.

Indeed, this looks like the richest Altman release ever, in terms of extras.

Pretty nice cover, too:

[MichaelB]

One more extra has been added at the last minute: an isolated music & effects track.

And here's the reversible cover artwork:





The other 1973 poster artwork is on the back of the booklet - it was created by Mad magazine's Jack Davis for the New York release in October after the film flopped in other cities in March. (How odd to think that a film's release could be staggered by six months within the same country! Unimaginable today, of course.)

[Jeff]

Here's a good piece by Adrian Curry on the different art used to try to sell this film. I'm glad the Jack Davis art is being included somewhere. This is by far my most anticipated release, and I'm so glad to hear you're producing, Michael. Looks like one hell of a set!

[Altair]

Personally, I would like to have seen the Jack Davis poster (one of my favourite post-war American comic artists) included on the reverse sleeve, but any sort of inclusion is better than none, and it seems churlish to complain about one of Arrow's greatest releases! For those who have never seen the Davis poster, you can see it here: http://24.media.tumblr.com/367e1784e86d ... 1_1280.jpg

[MichaelB]

I made the decision, and it took me all of five seconds - the other 1973 poster clearly works much better in design terms as a cover. Not least because it has a very strong colour scheme that beautifully contrasts with and therefore complements Arrow's new Jay Shaw artwork in a way that the Jack Davis artwork wouldn't.

Incidentally, the booklet will be featuring the Davis artwork without the speech bubbles, partly because we didn't have a clean copy of the actual poster (there's a reasonably hi-res one floating about online, but it's got very obvious folds down the middle), but also because by not featuring the title and credits we could effectively permit a closer look at the actual artwork.

But for those who want to see the speech bubbles, a shot of that poster is included in one of the new HD-shot extras (the David Thompson one, I think). I only have a low-res, low-bitrate version for reference right now (the disc is currently being authored, and there's little point sending gargantuan HD files directly to me), but I don't see why they shouldn't be perfectly readable in the final version.

[peerpee]

I'm hot for this Blu. Can't wait to see how it looks. The cinematography is glorious. Interested to know whether the supplied master was lovely or whether it had extra work done? Has JW overseen it?

[MichaelB]

JW has indeed overseen it, or at least overseen a spruce-up of MGM's existing master. This is what's going in the back of the booklet.

The Long Goodbye is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 with mono 1.0 sound.

The HD master for The Long Goodbye was made available from MGM via Hollywood Classics. The film was transferred from the original 35mm Interpositive held by MGM. Colour grading was performed by Paul Schramm at Todd-AO Video in Hollywood, CA. Director of Photography Vilmos Zsigmond provided detailed colour notes so the master could better match the original look intended look from 1973, resulting in an overall emphasis on muted, desaturated colours with very low contrast. This look, which is maintained on Arrow’s Blu-ray edition, is correct and true to the film’s original theatrical release. Yvonne Medrano managed the process for MGM Technical Services.

Additional picture restoration was supervised by James White and completed at Deluxe Digital Cinema - EMEA, London.
Digital Restoration Artists: Tom Barrett, Clayton Baker, Dana O’Reilly
Deluxe Management: Mark Bonnici, Graham Jones

I haven't seen it myself yet, but it shouldn't be too long now - it's currently being encoded.

[tenia]

I hope it's better than the French Potemkine, because it wasn't really attractive.

[MichaelB]

Final running times of the Long Goodbye extras:

• Rip Van Marlowe (24:34, 4:3 SD)
• Vilmos Zsigmond Flashes The Long Goodbye (14:23, 4:3 SD)
• Giggle and Give In (56:32, 4:3 SD)
• Elliott Gould Q&A (53:05, 16:9 HD)
• David Thompson on Altman and The Long Goodbye (21:04, 16:9 HD)
• Tom Williams on Raymond Chandler (14:27, 16:9 HD)
• Maxim Jakubowski on Hard-Boiled Fiction (14:33, 16:9 HD)
• Trailer (2:30, 16:9 SD)
• Radio Spots (3:24, 16:9 HD)

Total: 3:24:32

...and the booklet is a crammed 40 pages (nearly 12,000 words).

Some more details:

• Despite the volume of video extras, the video bitrate on the main feature was hovering around the mid to high 30s on the scenes that I investigated (a mixture of daylight and nocturnal shots). I told encoder David Mackenzie not to compromise on this in any way, and he's amply delivered;
• The Jack Davis Mad magazine-style artwork appears on the back of the booklet without the speech bubbles - I had a much higher-resolution copy of the artwork in that form. But I gambled that the speech bubbles would be readable when the poster version was reproduced on the HD extras, which has happily turned out to be the case;
• The soundtrack is LPCM 1.0 rather than the originally announced (and standard for Arrow) 2.0. Criterion does this, as it ensures that the sound will emerge from the central speaker in surround setups, but in this case it was also a cunning method of being able to add separate M&E tracks at the last minute without affecting the file size - we simply removed one of the redundant duplicate tracks on the main film soundtrack.

[MichaelB]

Sony DADC couriered me a test pressing of the check disc yesterday, I signed it off first thing this morning, so the mass replication button should be pushed today. I also imagine that review copies will be going out imminently.

I'm especially pleased with the menus - Arrow has changed their overall design as of the December releases, the thick white border has been banished and the text is now upper and lower case where necessary, and I think it's a vast improvement.

It also means that context-setting "footnotes" can be incorporated into the menus - for instance, saying when Giggle and Give In was first broadcast and why it therefore stops in 1996. This was even more useful with regard to the notorious factual error in Rip Van Marlowe, when Robert Altman erroneously claims that Leigh Brackett died before the film came out and never got a chance to see it (whereas she actually died five years later and saw it at least twice). Because Altman's statement began and ended with a dissolve, it was impossible to cut it cleanly, and we didn't particularly want to generate a dedicated subtitle track just to cover that point, so the documentary is now presented exactly as before, but an unobtrusive note on the menu flags up the issue at the start.

[EddieLarkin]

Arrow has changed their overall design as of the December releases, the thick white border has been banished

Thank God.