It’s the end of another week here at BCB After Dark: the hippest hangout for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit with us for a while. We’re always glad to see you. We’ll waive the cover charge for you. The dress code is casual. There are still a few tables available. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The
late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
Last night I asked you for your pick for the Vedie Himsl Cubs’ Minor League Pitcher of the Year. Many of you lamented the paucity of good performances by Cubs pitchers, but I will once again remind you that offense was up by about 30 percent this year in all minor league levels below Triple-A.
In any case, you went with Brooks Caple, who got 50 percent of the vote. Dawson Netz came in second with 24 percent and Jackson Brockett was third with 18 percent.
Here’s the part with the music and the movies. Please join us. But you don’t have to.
It was 100 years ago today in Hamlet, North Carolina when we were blessed with the birth of the great saxophonist John Coltrane.
We’ve already listened to parts of A Love Supreme as our tribute and I’m pretty sure we will get to “My Favorite Things” when Christmas time rolls around. So tonight I thought we’d finish off with another one of the Coltrane performances that most of us are familiar with already. I had a hard time deciding between “Blue Train” and “Giant Steps.” So I decided to give you both of them.
Here is “Blue Train” from 1958. It features Lee Morgan on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Kenny Drew on piano, Paul Chambers on double bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums.
Two years later, Trane released the album Giant Steps. The title track featured here, written by Coltrane, is often cited as one of the most complex series of chord progressions on any song.
This one also has Chambers on bass, but Art Taylor is the drummer and Tommy Flanagan on piano.
I think I owe you an essay on director Robert Altman’s 1973 Neo-noir The Long Goodbye, starring Elliot Gould as Raymond Chandler’s iconic detective Philip Marlowe. Chandler’s novels were notoriously difficult to adapt to the screen, so Altman, Gould and screenwriter Leigh Brackett just use the book as a general guide and create a crime film that’s delightfully perverse in its own right.
I read the novel The Long Goodbye about 20 years ago. What I remember about it was Chandler’s vivid prose, his memorable characters and a plot that was complicated and nonsensical even by Chandler’s standards, which is saying a lot. I went into this film remembering the characters but only vaguely remembering what happened to all of them.
About 30 years earlier, Brackett was tasked with adapting Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep to the big screen with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Back then, she had to worry about the Production Code as well as pumping up Bacall’s part after Bogart and Bacall became front page tabloid news. Here, Brackett deals with Chandler by dealing with the spirit of the novel rather than the actual details.
My first impression was that no matter what his character’s name was, Gould was not playing Philip Marlowe. Gould’s Marlowe is more low-key and easygoing than Chandler’s. His catchphrase is “It’s all right with me,” which is a huge change because nothing was all right with Chandler’s Marlowe. Marlowe in the novels was almost always angry. Even when Gould’s Marlowe is angry, he generally does everything he can to not show it and to de-escalate.
Also, not to spoil the plot, but Gould’s Marlowe does things that Chandler’s Marlowe never would.
But what Altman and Brackett did was make Marlowe a “man out of time.” The story is moved up to the 1970s, but Marlowe is still a man of the fifties. He drives a 1948 Lincoln Continental. He wears a white shirt, a tie and a jacket, even while he lives next door to a group of women hippies who dance around topless on their balcony constantly.
The film starts with Ball Four author Jim Bouton playing Terry Lennox, a friend of Marlowe’s. We quickly find out that Lennox has stole a bunch of money from mobsters and has been accused of murdering his wife. Lennox commits suicide and the mobsters think that Lennox left the money with Marlowe.
Meanwhile, Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt) hires Marlowe to find her alcoholic and famous author husband Roger Wade (Hayden Sterling). He’s in a rehab clinic under the control of the manipulative Dr. Verringer (Henry Gibson, of all people).
Marlowe eventually comes to believe that the deaths of the Lennoxes is connected to the Wades. Meanwhile, a sadistic mobster (Mark Rydell) comes after Marlowe looking for his money.
So the plot of the movie The Long Goodbye makes more sense than the plot of the novel, but it’s still not exactly easy to follow. But Chandler was all about the vibes and Altman smartly recreates the aura of Chandler and not the plot and characters. The scene is corrupt and violent. Truth is hard to come by. In both the book and the movie, Marlowe sees himself as someone who swims above the culture of corruption that permeates Los Angeles, both in 1953 and 1973.
Despite the film being in color, Altman creates that noir feel by using desaturated colors, He takes camera angles where parts of the scene is obscured by things in the foreground. Then, of course, there is the famous Altman overlapping dialogue that muddies up what is being said.
Gould does a great job of creating a detective that’s all his own, even if I don’t think that character is Marlowe. Hayden’s performance stands out as the angry, alcoholic Roger Wade, a character that Chandler based on himself. Gibson throws himself into the part of a doctor who cares more about money than his patients. Jim Bouton is a retired ballplayer trying to act, but at least he looks the part. Nina Van Pallandt could be one of Hitchcock’s “icy blondes.”
Also, there’s a moment in the second half of the film where Marlowe is being threatened by the mobster over the missing money and in the background there’s a non-speaking extra with his shirt off playing one of his thugs. At that point, you can say “Hey! That’s Arnold Schwarzenegger!”
The Long Goodbye is only a Raymond Chandler movie is spirit. That’s probably a good thing. The movie version of Dorothy B. Hughes’ novel In A Lonely Place has almost nothing in common with the book and they’re both fantastic. The Long Goodbye, both the novel and the book, aren’t that good. But it’s an interesting and engaging spin on a Neo-noir that only an accomplished director like Altman could have pulled off in 1973.
Here is the trailer for The Long Goodbye.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
The talk of the Cubs right now is the weather. In particular, the weather in Boston this weekend. Major League Baseball and the Red Sox have already announced that the Cubs and Red Sox will play a doubleheader in Boston on Friday and there will be no game on Sunday. Saturday’s game is still scheduled to go on as scheduled.
The problem is that while the two teams will probably be able to get the doubleheader in on Friday (although that’s not guaranteed), Saturday’s forecast is as bad as Sunday’s. There seems to be no way to play that third game in Boston except on Monday.
I imagine that MLB is simply hoping the weather forecast for Saturday is wrong or that the 162nd game of the season won’t end up mattering and it can simply be canceled. We here at BCB have long advocated that the series be moved elsewhere, most likely St. Petersburg, but understandably the Red Sox aren’t too keen about that. I understand that the Red Sox don’t want to have to refund all that money to fans who bought tickets and they probably also have some end-of-the-year ceremonies planned for this weekend.
But Mother Nature doesn’t care about the Red Sox box office. The games are also completely meaningless to Boston, who is locked in to a Wild Card-round matchup with the Yankees in New York. But the games are very meaningful to the Cubs. Home field advantage is on the line as the three Wild Card teams are all tied for the three Wild Card spots as I write this.
To be clear, MLB should move game 162 to either St. Pete or Houston now. But in fairness to them, they still have a few days to do that, as long as they are preparing for that possibility right now. But if they wait until the last minute and Saturday’s game gets rained out like we all expect, there may only be one possibility and that’s playing game 162 on Monday in Boston.
To be clear, such an outcome would be awful for both the Cubs and Red Sox. Except maybe the Red Sox business side that then wouldn’t have to refund anyone’s money. But it would mean that the Cubs and the Red Sox would have to play Monday afternoon and then Boston would have to fly to New York to play again on Tuesday.
That’s not good for the Red Sox, but it’s not terrible. For one, Monday’s game would be meaningless to them and they’d just play their subs. They also have a short flight to New York after the game that would definitely be played in prime time, giving them a decent amount of down time before Tuesday’s game.
But for the Cubs, it’s a disaster. For one, they’re playing for home field. If they win, they’d have to fly back to Chicago after that game and likely play a day game on Tuesday, although perhaps they could get the late 8:10 pm start since there aren’t likely to be any West Coast teams hosting Wild Card games if the Cubs are hosting.
But if they lose that game, things get even worse. I suppose a flight to Philadelphia wouldn’t be too bad. But a trip to San Diego after a day game in Boston would be bad. At least they’d almost certainly get the last TV slot of the night in San Diego.
There is another option if the Cubs have to play on Monday—forfeit and go on the road for the Wild Card round on three days rest. This isn’t going to happen. MLB would put incredible pressure on the Cubs to play if they even considered it and Tom Ricketts wants his gates for the Wild Card series anyways. The Cubs would be heavy favorites in any game on Monday anyways.
But I am going to ask you what is the worse outcome for the Cubs—going on the road for the Wild Card series or playing at home after playing on Monday? Would you rather the Cubs fall out of home field for the Wild Card if that meant not having to play on Monday?
Again, let’s hope sanity comes to MLB and they schedule Sunday’s game in Tampa or Houston if necessary. But if they mess this up, is it worse that the Cubs have to start the Wild Card at home without an off day or that they start the Wild Card on the road?
Thank you for stopping by tonight. Please get home safely. Tell your friends about us. Don’t be a stranger. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next week for more BCB After Dark.
