“HOLLYWOOD is easy to hate, easy to sneer at, easy to lampoon.” Raymond Chandler’s essay Writers in Hollywood published in the Atlantic in 1945 I’m going to go out on a limb and say that novelist/screenwriter Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity) was not in a happy place when he wrote the essay Writers in [...]
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“Here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding.” Sydney Greenstreets’s character in The Maltese Falcon Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett “Hammett made the detective story fun to write, not an exhausting concatenation of insignificant clues.” Raymond Chandler Just as Raymond Chandler influenced other writers, other writers influenced him. And one of those writers was Dashiell Hammett [...]
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“I had no notion of becoming a writer,” is how writer Walter Mosley describes his life before reading the following two sentences: “He was looking at me and neither his eyes nor his gun moved. He was as calm as an adobe wall in the moonlight.” The Long Goodbye, written by Raymond Chandler “It took Raymond [...]
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“Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since.” Paul Auster If we rewind to 1928 and look at a 40-year-old Raymond Chandler, we do not see any proof that he is (or even is becoming) the writer Raymond Chandler. That is the writer [...]
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“Ian Flemming was massively influenced by Chandler. So someone like Bond is a reflection of Marlow because he’s dry, he’s ironic, he’s the drinker, he’s the lone wolf. These characters are still with us, they still live on. And they are so totemic in their style that they will never ever age.” Actor Toby Stephens Back [...]
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“Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.” Private detective Philip Marlow Farewell, My Lovely written by Raymond Chandler There’s no question that as a writer Raymond Chandler had a voice, but until this weekend I had [...]
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“Truth is not found in the sunshine, truth is found in the shadows.” Novelist Paul Lieberman (Gangster Squad: Covert Cops, the Mob, and the Battle for Los Angeles) Interview with Jessy Williams “With journalism and with detective work, you’re searching for the narrative. You’re sort of hunting around for the truth of it. It’s really [...]
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“He [Polanski] said, ‘Johnny, please no diffusion on the lens; I don’t want a Hollywood look.’ So I borrowed an idea that the great Jimmy Wong Howe had told me about. I used Chinese tracing paper to shift the light and color so that it turned beige and gold. Roman liked it.” John Alonzo (Director of [...]
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“You know what happens to nosey fellas?” Man with the Knife in Chinatown (played by the director Roman Polanski) “Every film I make represents a departure for me. You see, it takes so long to make a film. By the time you get to the next one you’re already a different man. You’ve grown up [...]
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“I went to Jack (Nicholson) and said ‘What if I wrote a detective story set in L.A. of the ‘30s?’ He said “Great.” The one feeling I had was a desire to try and recreate the city. But that was just the beginning. Then owing to a building project near where I lived, I got [...]
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