Elliott Gould

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“Casinos Are Like Movie Sets”

December 28, 2014 in Excerpts, Film | Permalink

California Split isn’t just one of my favorite Altmans, but one of my favorite films, period. The story of two friends of convenience who quietly, unwittingly, become real friends while trying to bring down the house in Las Vegas is like walking in on a brisk, fascinating conversation that seems like it’ll never end, until it does, abruptly, wistfully. 

In “California Split: 40 Years Later,” an epic three-part interview (one and two and three), Kim Morgan of the Los Angeles Review of Books interviews stars Elliott Gould and George Segal and screenwriter Joseph Walsh. The wonderful talk ranges well beyond the movie, capturing Hollywood of a certain era. One tidbt: Gould passed on starring in McCabe & Mrs. Miller. A brief excerpt:

“Kim Morgan:

Casinos are like movie sets. You know, an enclosed world of playing, making money, losing, performing, with the big star and the character actors and the extras. Rules and chaos at every turn. It’s a separate universe that anyone off the street walking into feels immediately intimidated or confused by.

George Segal:

Yes. I like that analogy. It’s a lot like that. We are the living embodiment of a sequel to California Split 2. I mean, this is it.

Elliott Gould: 

The level of risk what you’re talking about is for sure …

Joseph Walsh:

And they split … these two magnificent actors in this picture, these characters, they split. The beauty, certainly aided with Altman too. And then the idea of gambling. We’ve all been to Vegas. Do you ever watch the faces there? Do you ever watch the people who have never gambled? They are so excited. And you pay for that excitement. But to look underneath, underneath all that, there is a trap. There is a sadness. And for the George character, I always thought, this is the kind who would always end up in trouble. He gambles because something is missing in his life. I didn’t even know what that was. What was missing. Even when I was writing. And we didn’t need to know. His gambling is a way to kill the something that’s missing. Whereas Elliott’s character gambles as a way of life. His emotional content for everything and the laws that he steals time away … these are the words, ‘I steal time. I can’t steal any more time.’ And to see that come together as a writer, and to see the two actors pull that off to such an extent, I’m not even that amazed anymore. You watch it again and it’s not dated at all because these feelings and these things are never gonna stop. In the world of gambling, they will never stop. These emotional feelings.”

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“Lipkin And His Team Were Able To Sequence The Virus In 31 Hours”

September 19, 2011 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In writing about the new Steven Soderbergh film, Contagion, Alex Tabarrok of the Marginal Revolution points out an unintended benefit of the war against bio-terrorism that arose after 9/11:

“That is exactly right. Fortunately, under the umbrella of bio-terrorism, we have invested in the public health system by building more bio-safety level 3 and 4 laboratories including the latest BSL3 at George Mason University, we have expanded the CDC and built up epidemic centers at the WHO and elsewhere and we have improved some local public health centers. Most importantly, a network of experts at the department of defense, the CDC, universities and private firms has been created. All of this has increased the speed at which we can respond to a natural or unnatural pandemic.

In 2009, as H1N1 was spreading rapidly, the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency asked Professor Ian Lipkin, the director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, to sequence the virus. Working non-stop and updating other geneticists hourly, Lipkin and his team were able to sequence the virus in 31 hours. (Professor Ian Sussman, played in the movie by Elliott Gould, is based on Lipkin.) As the movie explains, however, sequencing a virus is only the first step to developing a drug or vaccine and the latter steps are more difficult and more filled with paperwork and delay. In the case of H1N1 it took months to even get going on animal studies, in part because of the massive amount of paperwork that is required to work on animals.”

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Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Little Murders (1971)

February 21, 2011 in Film | Permalink

Elliott Gould also played the lead role in the 1969 stage version of "Little Murders."

Both romantic and a comedy though neither in the usual sense, Little Murders is a nihilistic love story set in New York during the late ’60s, when the city was notable for blackouts, blue language and brown tap water. Originally a Jules Feiffer play, the film adaptation remains the only feature directed by Alan Arkin, who certainly didn’t get cheated with this dark vision of life during an age of steep decline.

Photographer Alfred Chamberlain (Elliott Gould) doesn’t defend himself when muggers punch him in the head because he knows their flailing arms will eventually tire. He’s given up his commercial photo career so that he can take pictures of excrement left on the filthy sidewalks. And it barely permeates the fog on his shoulders when Patsy (Marcia Rodd), a brassy woman with an eye for renovation, storms boldly into his damaged life. She introduces him to her severely dysfunctional family and gets him to marry her, but Alfred still can’t snap back to consciousness, if he was ever there to begin with. The photographer is a portrait of the seemingly hopeless turmoil he inhabits, a mean era only getting meaner. When Alfred does manage to awaken, it’s certainly not for love.

Little Murders manages to make some truly appalling, depressing things funny, but it’s obviously after more than just laughs. “Every age has its problems,” Patsy says, trying to bring cheer to her listless new husband, “but people manage to be happy.” But what if the things that make you feel happy–or feel at all–just cause more problems?

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Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: The Silent Partner (1978)

August 8, 2010 in Film | Permalink

This role was Elliott Gould's final hurrah in the '70s.

In a decade that seemed to have an endless supply of great thrillers, Daryl Duke’s excellent 1978 tale of brutal gamesmanship, The Silent Partner, is one of the era’s most unfairly forgotten genre pictures. Duke is probably best known for directing the soapy Thorn Birds TV miniseries, but he turned out a pair of first-rate pictures during the ’70s: Payday, his drama about a dissolute country singer, and this tense thriller, which is blessed with a taut screenplay by a young Curtis Hanson, who would, of course, go on to co-write and direct L.A. Confidential.

Meek Toronto bank teller Miles Cullen (Elliott Gould) loves tropical fish and chess, but the world doesn’t love (or respect) him. The co-worker he adores (Susannah York) thinks he’s a wet rag and is sleeping with their married boss. But the mild-mannered teller has an epiphany when he accidentally discovers that a mall Santa Claus (Christopher Plummer) is going to rob his branch. Knowing what’s heading his way, Cullen hatches a plan to divert most of the funds to his waiting briefcase, hand over a small sum to the robber and use the loot to start his life all over again somewhere else. The scheme goes off without a hitch, save one–the thief is a sadistic maniac who figures out what’s happened and will stop at nothing to get the money back from the mousey banker. But Cullen is the mouse that roared, and he engages in a high-stakes game of wits with his murderous rival.

This movie is bursting with talent, featuring everything from Gould in the sweet spot of his career to a small supporting turn from John Candy to a score composed by jazz great Oscar Peterson. But perhaps most memorable of all is Plummer. Incredibly wicked and wearing heavy eye make-up, he looks like a mannequin come to life with homicidal rage. Even the tropical fish should be very afraid.

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