Two Hundred A Day - Episode 148: Marlowe (1969 Movie)

Episode Date: November 23, 2025

We're back! We watch the 1969 movie Marlowe, starring James Garner, Rockford Files alums-to-be Rita Moreno and William Daniels as well as Carroll O'Connor and Bruce Lee. An adaptation of the Raymond Chandler story "Little Sister," contemporary reviewers seemed to find it lacking as compared to the classic Humphrey Bogart interpretation of Phillip Marlowe, but we really enjoyed it! Of course we are coming to it with Rockford on our minds, and it's fun to see the precursors to character traits and attitudes that end fully developed over 6 seasons of television. If you like The Rockford Files, you'll probably dig it! Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files (http://tinyurl.com/200files)! We appreciate all of our listeners, but offer a special thanks to our patrons (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday). Thank you Detectives, Gumshoes and everyone else who supports the show! We will continue posting our occasional episodes over there, which include the screenshots discussed in this episode. Thanks to: * Fireside.fm (https://fireside.fm) for hosting us * Audio Hijack (https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/) for helping us record and capture clips from the show

All right, I'm recording. Okay. All right. Shake it out. Yeah. Get back into the old mindset. Uh-huh. It'll be easier than I'm always fighting this for the other one.

James Garner is Marlowe, and Marlowe comes on strong. Marlowe's the man who asks the question. Does your mother know what you do for a living? Marlowe's the man who's asked to give the answers. How'd you know about that, too? I'm a train detective. I'll be private buzz. What can I buy you with?

What's your price? How much? A hundred a day and expenses. Are you hard to occupy? But don't forget you're a lady. The nice, fleshy, uncomplicated girls turn you on. Welcome to Marlowe country. It's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

Welcome to 200 a day. The podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show The Rockford Files and associated concerns. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epida Ravishaw. Welcome back, Epi. Yeah. It's like riding a bike. Mm-hmm.

I was going to say this feels like brushing your teeth, as if that was like a thing. Something that you forget how to do, but then you pick up again, and it's... Yeah, yeah, that you stop doing for a while. He stopped doing for a while. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's been a while. It's been six months, seven months.

Something like that. By the time this comes out, it'll probably be six, six. If you're hearing this, it's come out, and you can do the math. Yes. We're done with the Rock Profiles. We have been done with the Rockford Files. And now we have moved on to other James Gardner properties. And or other detective 70s shows that generally involve probably the creative folks, right?

For example, perhaps shows that Stephen Cannel would do a lot of writing for or something like that. In this case, as we threatened, I believe, multiple times, we are talking about the 1969 movie Marlowe starring James Garner. And we've got some Rita Moreno in there, so that's a... A significantly more than I had anticipated, Rita Moreno. Yes, yes. Got William Daniels, who was a multi-appearance Rockford Foe, including the attorney in so help me god and uh the voice of kit famously yes yeah it's actually uh there's a few uh nice

rockford goons in this i didn't do a full like that guy scan right who's this guy who's that guy but there were definitely some faces that seem very familiar oh yeah yeah a lot of good I'm sure crossover Rockford goons, thugs. There's also not Rockford related, but there's Carol O'Connor, which is fun. I don't think Carol O'Connor was never in a Rockford file.

Never in a Rockford file. I don't think I've ever singularized the Rockford files that way before. That's a Never in any episode of the Rockford files. Yes. Bruce Lee's in it for a hot minute. The sergeant,

Kenneth Toby, was in the Rockford Files. Yes. Which is probably where I recognized him from. But he was in, there's one in every port and the Prisoner of Rosemont Hall where he was, oh, in Prisoner of Rosemont Hall, he was the police chief. Max Kilmore. He was like the bad guy in that one, the villain, if you will. So, of course, I recognize him. He's been a cop and lots of things, including this movie.

Yeah, yeah, he's a very cop actor. I feel like Jackie Coogan. He definitely has a that guy face. Yeah, but he wasn't, it doesn't look like he's a Rockford, that guy. Yeah, this is more towards the end of his career, actually. I was going to say, I'm getting this kind of mixed up. There's something I saw recently that had several Rockford Goon alumni in it, and now I can't recall what it is.

Was it Scarecrow and Mrs. King? Well, no, but I should, okay, so I have been enjoying some related things, including a friend of the show, Sam Anderson, lent me the Nichols series, The Western that was done between Maverick and the Rockford Files, it takes place at the end of the Wild West. There's like, people have cars and Rockford is the sheriff, or Rockford, Nichols, James Gardner's character is the sheriff of a town and he rides a motorcycle, like an early, early Harley-Davidson. And it's a delight. I was actually kind of shocked by how much I enjoyed it, which I shouldn't be. Like, you know, he does.

Oh, Stuart Marlin is in it as well. He plays a proto-angel, and it's good. And, yeah, I recommend if you can get a hold of some, check it out. But the other thing that I have been watching over the past year or so are the old Scarecrow of Mrs. King shows. And at some point, Juanita Bartlett had, like, a guiding hand in that show. Like, she didn't create it. But, like, at some point she came in and had some control over it. And then I think she left, or she didn't have any credits on this episode,

but there was an episode in the fourth season we just watched recently where there was a Russian who is trying to defect. And I don't want to do any spoilers. Spoilers for Scarecrow and Mrs. King. Yeah, yeah. But there's this great moment where Mrs. King is talking to him. He's in a hospital. She's not revealed that she's a spy trying to figure out if he's a wrong. Russian trying to defect, and he's not revealed

that he's a Russian trying to defect. But they're talking, and he's watching the TV. And what he's watching on the TV is clearly some public domain Western footage. But he says, is that Maverick? And then they both start

talking about how much they like Maverick. They talk about all the different Maverick brothers. She mentions that there's a fourth one that he doesn't even know about yet, because he just got to America. And then later, on, when she had to sneak a message to him, he was like, Maverick. And they did it with a Maverick Billboard. Nice. Or not Billboard, but like an ad on the side of a cab. I was like, this is

wonderful. This is great. They both just talked about how much they love Maverick. I mean, and who doesn't? Right. Another, uh, another high up in the, on the leaderboard for other things we're going to do for, uh, bonus 200 a day. Bonus. Yeah. Things. But I, I had like this moment. This little sad moment when I watched it when I was like, oh, I don't have 200 a day anymore to just quick tell everyone about this thing that happened in this old 80s television show. But I do. It turns out. Yeah.

Here we are. We are. Marlowe. Marlowe. This is a good one. Yeah. This has come from a patron recommendation over multiple, probably multiple years ago at this point. Yeah.

And when we start talking about how we were going to be finishing. finishing Rockford, but then still want to do some things, like, oh, you should, you should look at Marlowe. It's good. It has James Garner and Rita Moreno. Uh, patron, you were correct. Yes. It's good. And it has both of those people in it. We'll get to it when we get to it. But there's a lot of good stuff in here. Do you know who's incorrect, though? Who's incorrect? Like all of the reviewers of the day. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you spent any time looking. Nope. I was like, I bet, I bet this has mixed reviews. Yeah, it's mixed. I think they want it something grittier, I think it's what it was.

You know, obviously, we'll get to it when we get to a TM register trademark. I would say I was surprised by how Proto Rockford it was. I thought it would be more different and it's not, which is good for us. But I can clearly see where someone who hasn't gone forward in the future to watch a show that hasn't been made yet and thus can enjoy a lot of these through lines. yeah, would be looking for something that's a little grittier and more, I assume, more like the novel. I have not read this particular. I've not, but Emily has. Oh, yeah?

And her review of it is, it's not her favorite. But she really enjoyed the movie. So maybe this movie just needed to be this. What I think is, is that reviewers of the time had sour, sour souls. Oh, okay. And they didn't enjoy fun. Yeah, yeah. That's my guess.

Maybe they just didn't like witty repartee. yeah exactly or in character commentary on the presence or lack of what would he repartee yes but yes as we said we'll get to it when we get to it um yeah so just to zoom out a little bit uh this is the first of our hey we're not abandoning this show shows which is nice it feels nice to come back to it we have been busy with other things uh so if you are in the world of as you have brought to my attention the correct phrasing of truly true role-playing games. Right, yes. We've been working together over at the Unwritten Earth Symposium to create some new unwritten worlds for our adventure-minded brethren to explore. That is both a podcast where we talk about game design and is also we are feverishly working on getting our first publication out our

adventure and hobbyist annual 2025 collection of system adventurous scenarios. So that's just to say, if you're interested in any game stuff, check out those things, because that's where we're spending a lot of our time. Yes. I will issue a public apology now. If you have emailed us in the last six months, we have not gotten back to you. It's just one of those things where after doing our, having our formal

final episode of the Rockford Files and spinning up unwritten earth stuff, we just needed a break. We just needed to like kind of step away for a little bit and then you know, things get busy and we aren't able to spin every single plate in the world.

So I'm going to try to make an effort to go through the email and get back to anyone who may have sent us a thing and expected to reply or is slightly disappointed that we never got back to them. I can't imagine you'd be very disappointed because, you know, what could we possibly have to add to the brilliant insights that you generally send us an email? Like, usually someone sends us something and it's great.

And I respond and go like, well, those are some great points. Thanks. Yeah, yeah. So consider yourself answered with, wow, those are some great points. Thanks in advance. And I'll try to get back to email soon. We did get one fun email from a listener who reedited an episode of the Rock Profiles to include our. episode about that rock profiles like it was like the DVD audio commentary. Yeah like a

commentary track yeah. Yeah we appreciate that I need to email that listener back to say we appreciate that like it's obviously there's copyright issues so we're you know yeah it's not going to be a public thing right but it's fun the fact that that

our I don't know semi semi informed views seem to sync up well enough to go into a DVD style special feature is is pretty cool so it's a little weird for i think me and you specifically to like sit down and watch it as a thing because it's like deja deja vu it's like watching a show we've already watched and listening to words we've already said uh so there's a there is a third level of like huh what an interesting experience that uh it's a little it's not something that i've watched like

all the way through because it was a little it's just a strange sensation i guess I, when I did it, I put, I propped a mirror up against the computer so I could watch my own reactions while listening to myself talking about it. And then you do a split screen of your reaction, your live reactions as you're watching it. And then I do a little commentary on my live reaction. Exactly. It goes all the way down. Yeah.

No, I'm not that TikTok. As a kids say. As a kid say, yes, you are not that TikTok. That is indeed what the kids say. But yeah, it feels good to be back. Our other show is not research heavy. It's more just talking. So sitting down and watching the movie and taking the notes.

Yeah, there's old muscles. Yeah, I did feel like I was slipping back into a well-worn groove with that, including, like, oh, I know I need to start it now because I know it's going to take me long enough. I'm not going to finish it in one sitting. So, like, I have to plan to, like, back half of my week to make sure I have enough time. to do it. Along those same lines, I watched, okay, so let me just say a little, a couple things about the DVD here, because we both, we both just took a gamble. Yep. And bought the DVD. So, yeah, so Marlowe is available to rent on like Apple, Apple TV and Amazon. I think wherever you can rent a bunch of them. Streaming movies, you could rent it. Yeah. We didn't see it streaming for free

anywhere, I think. No, I don't think so. Um, you know, on a lark, I was like, huh, is a DVD available. It is advertised as the, it's not like remastered, but it's like, I think it says remastered on it. Yeah, but like I don't know if it is. Like it just feels like a thing they just slapped on it. But yeah. Yeah. I guess there was enough about the DVD release that I was like, oh, I bet this is probably like higher quality to watch than renting it and having it be some like old print ripped from a TV station or something, uh, which is kind of what I assume it could have looked like. It was only like a handful of bucks more than the rental, too. Yeah, it was like six bucks to rent or like 10 to buy the DVD or something like that.

Yeah. So the cover of the DVD is lovely. I love the image of Marlow, James Gardner as Marlowe, and then like that image in a bunch of different bright colors around, very, very, I was going to say very 70s, very 60s, because this is the end of the 60s here. And that image is so important that when you put the DVD, in and you get the DVD menu. It's literally a photograph of the DVD box. I mean, is it so important or is it we made one picture and we're going to use it

everywhere we can because this is a low effort release. Yeah, I thought that was kind of funny. But the DVD comes with an extra, which is the trailer. And I thought to myself, oh, I should do the trailer as our opening montage, right? I didn't even think about that. But yeah, that would have been a good idea. But I was like, let's watch the movie first and then watch a trailer. So this is what I have to say about the trailer.

Okay. Watch the movie first, then watch the trailer. It is full of spoilers. Like, it, like, full on just tells you all the important beats and shows you all of them happening. It's the style of trailer where they talk about the actors by the actors' names. You know, they're like, James Gardner is Philip Marlowe. When Bruce Lee shows up in his office. And it's just like, wait, what?

Like, what are you a podcast? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But anyways, the trailer's fine, but like, watch the movie first. Sure. It is not enticing you to watch more to find out how all those things happen. It's just like, here's the thing. Here's what happens.

Don't you want to watch these things happen? Yeah, exactly. I am curious, I mean, this is outside the scope of this episode, but I am a little curious to read this story now because I feel. like yeah i mean it's got to be different right like that's just the nature of the beast uh so i'm a little curious about whether some of the like lines are what like if there's any language that's like directly from the novel or not uh and uh that's mostly my question because chanler's kind of a little more spare with dialogue generally it's not as witty it's my i haven't read chandler in a while

yeah me too there are lines in here and we'll get to them when we get to them uh that are like canelrific, you know, like are extremely in the style of Rockford dialogue. So that's all. I'm curious about whether any of that is original to the source or whether it's like coming from somewhere else. So just a couple words about the movie itself, 1969, directed by Paul Bogart, a good name for a director of a Raven Chandler story movie. Yeah, yeah. He was a working director through this period. It looks like he started in the 50s. I did lots of TV and not a lot of movies.

Like TV and TV movies and then like a couple feature films. And this is one of those. He would go on to direct two episodes of Nichols. And it looks like he made his bones later with All in the Family where he has 97 director credits. Oh, hey. So good for him. But yeah, a director I was unfamiliar with. Same with the screenplay writer.

So it's adapted from the Raymond Chandler novel Little Sister. The script is by Sterling Sillifant, which is a good name. That is a great name. Yeah, again, lots of TV, couple movies as a writer, including the Poseidon Adventure, which I feel like is a movie you would know. Yeah, oh, I've seen that. Yeah, that's a good one. So he wrote that one.

So if you like the Poseidon Adventure. Yes. And then he had uncredited producer credits on Shaft movies, just digging into his IMD B bio. He was an uncredited producer on Shaft and Shaft's big score. And he wrote Shaft in Africa. So, I don't know, getting into the Shaftiverse. Apparently, we have some overlap. Oh, he did the Towering Inferno as well. Look, okay, so he has some classic disaster film background. Yeah, sorry, I am just now getting into like, I should have done this earlier. Yeah. Other than that, I think we just talk about the movie. Garner is listed.

on IMDB as an executive producer, which is uncredited in the movie credits. So, oh, cool. I was going to try and find my, I have the Garner biography. I was going to try and find my copy and see if he talks about if this move, if this was mentioned at all,

because I just don't remember, but I can't find my copy, so I didn't do that. It's index, right? Yeah. If you want to take just a moment, I'll go, I think I know where my copy is. So I can grab that.

Sure. Yeah, we can take a moment. moment. All right. Yes, I have found it. Okay. So here are the films. Going back in time.

Oh, maybe I've got to go forward in time. Are these time-a-bedical? Oh, here we are. Ah, all right. I can probably just read these three paragraphs. Marlowe. He gave it three stars. Are these self-shratings?

I don't know. In the back, there's an appendix about the films, and there's stars on them, but it doesn't say what? The stars mean, like, out of five, I'm assuming. Paul Bogart did a wonderful job with this Sterling Sillifant adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel, The Little Sister. Paul is a total pro, having directed scores of live programs during the Golden Nature television and countless episodes of series before moving on to feature films. In one scene, I'm in a restaurant with a date, and someone sends over a bottle of wine.

The waiter opens it and pours a little for me to taste. Sorry, I had to flip the page. Gore Vidal had just referenced my butt in his novel. What is happening here? Continue. Please continue. Okay, so let me start with this paragraph again. In one scene, I'm in a restaurant with a date and someone sends over a bottle of wine.

The waiter opens it and pours a little for me to taste. Same paragraph. Same thought. Gore Vidal had just referenced my butt in his novel, Myra Beckenridge, referring to it as impertinent and Baroque. Oh. Okay. One of the two would have been sufficient. I ad lit those two words,

impertinent and baroque, to describe the glass of wine in the scene, and Paul kept it in. That's great. That's exactly the kind of little insight I was looking for. Yeah. I was in good company playing Raymond Chandler's legendary private eye, following the footsteps of Humphrey,

Dick Powell, and Robert Montgomery. Plus, I got beat up, I got to beat up Bruce Lee, only in the movies. He did not, folks. He did not beat up Bruce Lee. We'll go over that. Yeah, we will. Bruce showed me some martial art moves between takes.

That's great. That's lovely. I will say, as just kind of a content warning, the only thing I think people should be aware of, the only part where I was like, uh, was that there was like a little bit, there's a homophobic joke in one of the Bruce Lee scenes. Yeah.

It's a needless. I mean, they're all homophobic jokes are needless anyways, but like in particular they didn't even need a beat for a joke in this one yeah but uh the brusely scenes are fun right and gratuitous yeah like they were fun gratuitous like yes james garner's butt yes impertinent and baroque honestly we're gonna have to we're gonna have to design a game around the words the tones of impertinent and broke 200 a day is a 100% listener-supported show thanks to our patrons. Now that we have an irregular release schedule,

I just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been and continues to be subscribed to the Patreon, as well as everyone who sent us an email, commented via the website, or left a nice review for the show. The Patreon remains available as an archive of this show and is where we post the screenshots discussed in this episode. You do not need to join to see the screenshots or the older main feed posts,

but if you do want to join, it will only charge you when we release a new episode, so maybe once a year. and we really appreciate it because it does take a lot of time and energy to make these episodes. If you want to hear what we're up to now, check out the Unwritten Earths Symposium over at UnwrittenEarths.com. We do a twice-monthly game design podcast, where we often talk about the lessons we've learned from doing this show. And we've continued our just-talk-and-show plus expenses as part of the Unwritten Earth Symposium Patreon. 2025 saw the debut of our first collaborative project, a system adventurous set of scenarios for any tabletop role-playing game,

It specifically includes business as we developed that term and concept through discussing the Rockford files. It's been great to bring the lessons that we did learn from this show into our new efforts. We have a lot more coming in 2026, including a new standalone fix-up edition of Epi's Sword and Sorcery Game, Swords Without Master. Thank you to all of our gumshoes, our detectives, and everyone who sent us an email, left a nice comment or a pleasant review over the years. Your support is what's made this show so much fun and why we're going to continue doing it every so often. Now, back to Marlowe.

But we are not here to talk about game design. That's a different show. We are here to talk about Marlowe. So let's, uh, half hour into our recording. Yes. Let's talk about the James Garner movie, Marlowe.

All right. This movie starts off great. The opening credits are... It's a Bond film. It's a Bond movie opening, a 60s, Bond movie opening. Yes. It's more like Dr. No than it is, like, I don't know, something that's not from the 60s.

Than a Daniel Craig one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It has, I note it has kind of a thaw bass-esque aesthetic. Yes. Which people, you know, might recognize. And it also has a theme song. This is a song called Little Sister. I believe it's composed for this.

Yeah, the credits make a deal out of that, right? Yeah. I think they say specifically. Oh, little sister, I see a white light linking. Mm, little sister, what has your brave design? Gonna give me grief. Sister, going to give me joy. And it is performed by the singer of a band called Orpheus,

which I was not familiar with. Are you familiar with Orpheus? I mean, I would say yes, but then I would expect that to be like a metal group from the 90s. Right. I mean, this is just from Wikipedia, but I'm going to send you their logo. Oh, wow.

Did you find it? Yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah. Pop rock, soft rock, folk rock. Okay. I am, yes. Oh, my God, this cover.

When did this? Oh, that's the group in 2014. Yeah, this is from the reunion. Again, yeah, I was not familiar with them. 60s and then 80s and then reunited in the 20 teens band from Worcester, Massachusetts. Oh, wow. Just around the corner. Yeah.

Yeah, this is the world they're in, right? They toured with cream and the who. All right, yeah. I got to say, if you showed me this, the photo, from the Wikipedia, if you showed me it without their logo on top, you just showed me this picture of them lined up like that. And you said, Epi, what's the name of this band? Mm-hmm. Like, this is, like, a band from the 70s that, like, this is what they look like now.

Mm-hmm. I would have told you the name of the band was Orpheus. Not because I know Orpheus or anything like that, but this is like, I was like, that seems about right. That seems about right. Anyway, yeah, it's a good song, or at least it is a appropriate for, I didn't analyze the song on its merits. But it was fun to have a theme song for this movie.

That was unexpected. Yeah. We have these color filter stills as we listen to this song. We see a couple in a passionate embrace by a pool. We see a younger guy with a camera taking photos, clearly creeping on this couple. And we get the credits of, you know, based on the little sister by Raymond Chandler. And then this was a nice, there are a lot of just like nice little. touches. I don't know. There's a lot. This is a very like,

yeah. Somebody cared about making this film. Yeah, yeah. Someone like really was like, you know, it would be really nice here. This. And so the song goes dietic as we go from a freeze frame of our snoop with the camera to a shot from the back of a convertible

with the top down and the back of the driver's head. And I'm like, that's James Garner. Yes. I recognize the back of that head anywhere. And the, and the song goes from the soundtrack to the radio, and he turns it down as he pulls into this parking lot. Yeah, it was nice. Yeah, my notes are, I'm already glad I bought this.

Like, just the opening was sequence. I was like, I'm into this. This is a... Yeah, it gave me a good feeling. I'm like, all right, things are looking good. So, okay. So in getting back into the groove, I was also taking notes kind of like I would for a regular episode of the show, which means that I took way too many notes for a full link.

for a feature, a feature film. A lot of them are dialogue, but yeah, I think I'm going to try to be a little more high level and then you let me know if there's anything you want to talk about inside these scenes. Sure. My notes, like they are

with the show, I don't know if we've ever discussed this on the seven plus years we've done the podcast, but I am bad at taking notes because I take my brain says this is the important thing, and I write down the important thing, and then I don't have content. text later on. For instance, my very next note after this is, there's the GIF,

exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. And I'm like, I know what that is. I know what you're talking about. What am I talking about? You're talking about. Oh, I know what I'm talking about. Yes. Yes. This is our powers combined. Yes. Because, okay, so Garner is playing Philip Marlowe. I had a, I never realized how convenient it was that Jim and Jim have the same name. So in my notes, I can just say Jim, because here I kept on starting to write Jim or Rockford and then deleting it and going, Marlowe. Marlowe, yeah. Yeah, so Philip Marlowe is on the case. He has come to this hippie burnout hotel that has a big hand spray painted piece sign and the infinite pad and an infinity sign painted on the outside.

The name of the hotel, the hippie name of the hotel is the infinity pad. guess, or infinite pad, yeah. And, yeah, we have, it's the GIF where he gets out of the car, he's wearing sunglasses, and they're big chunky sunglasses, and then he pulls them down and looks over them with a dubious look. And that is the, if you look up a GIF of James Garner, or GIF, if you will, that one, it's in there. You'll see it.

It's apparently from this movie. Yeah, like me for years, because, like, you know, oftentimes on social media, we want to talk about the Rock Profiles, you want a GIF, you want a GIF, you go looking, for it, you end up with this, and then you sit there, think, which episode is this from? I don't remember this episode, but, you know, like, it could be from any of the episodes. This seems legit. And so you use it, not knowing all along that this is Philip Marlowe, not James Rockford. Yeah. Well, but is it? Is it not James Rockford? A lot of my notes here, a lot of my first couple scenes here are me going, like, it's really hard not to just read him as Rockford. Like,

It's so many mannerisms that are in that character, and I'm not going to say there's a causal, like, because he was Marlowe, he then brought those into, like, I'm sure he probably does these things as Maverick, right? Like, it's, I feel like these are, like, probably garnerisms that are harnessed for these roles, but it is because of our deep, deep dive, it is hard not just be like, yeah, that looks like Rockford. Yeah, so he's looking for a missing person. We eventually learn he's looking for someone named Oren Quest. And our first clue to that is when he pages through the ledger of this hotel. The manager is passed out snoring. So he just is able to walk in. I think he uses a knife that he pulls out of a door jam that's like that he walks through.

There's something sticking in a door jam and he pulls it out. And then he uses it to flip through these pages. And then we get the closeup on the handwritten Oren Quest and the date that he checked in. So we know he's looking for someone. He can't wake the manager up just by shaking him So he ends up stuffing part of his blanket in his mouth And holding his nose until he chokes and like convulses to wake up Which effective, I'll give you that

And yeah, we get our establishing stuff there He's looking here, he's looking for Oren Quest The manager wants to know if he's a cop He gives him his Philip Marlowe business card Which very well could have printed on a hand business car printer Just saying Yeah, I was just thinking of the same thing because this manager out of disgust for any authority.

Including private eyes. Yeah, including private eyes. Lousy private fuzz. Tears it up and spits on it. And I was like, that's fine. He'll just print more in his car. That's like it doesn't matter. All right.

So in our other, in our other work, we've been getting a lot of mileage out of the idea of business, where characters in a story have business that they do that indicates more about them, more about the world, their tone, their relationship to our protagonist, just these little things. It's stuff that they do slightly orthogonal to the plot. Like, it's not necessary for the plot,

but establishes, makes everything feel more real, more lived in. This tearing up the business card, spitting on it and throwing it away, that's good business. That's good business, yeah, yeah. This guy runs a hippie hotel, and he's happy about that. Wait, I shouldn't say,

I don't think this guy's happy about anything, but like he's cool with that. He's done. So there's some banter here where Marlowe leans on this guy. He lights up, to give us a little reinforcement, he does light up a joint during this conversation. In the effort to try and give Marlowe more information about OrenQuest,

the manager makes a phone call and wants to speak to doc to doctor someone. I had a hard time with names in this one, just because, like, they would go by really quick, and I wouldn't, and I, and I didn't know if it'd be important later or not. Right. So I think he does say the name. One of the things that kind of carries over into some Rockford Files episodes is that I spent a lot of time wondering what the mystery even is. Yeah. Like, it's like, he's on the trail of something, but like, we are not given any, there's no voiceover to explain what he's up to. Right. Yeah. We just have to kind of watch and wait for it to be revealed, which is, I like that kind of. I mean, it's, it is a good tonal match

for the Raymond Chandler mystery, right? Like, you're just dropped right in the middle of a situation and you just have to, like, find out what happens when the characters do, I guess. Yeah. Yes, but he asked for a, uh, Dr. LaGuardi, and then he gets hung up on. Mm-hmm.

So that goes nowhere. And, uh, Marlowe roughs the, the pass key out of him to go check out the guy's room that he was, uh, nominally checked into. He opens this door and there is a balding man looking at, at some, okay, so this movie is full of setups for things that happen later. It's tight. It's a tight script, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's tight. Yeah, yeah. In a way where I just realized that this is a clue. Yeah, yeah. Yes. So there's a balding guy looking at some ties. This is Grant Hicks, and he was staying across the hall. But when the guy who was in this room left or never showed back up or whatever, he liked

this room more, so he just moved into it. I have to emphasize that this is such an obvious lie. There's no good room in this hotel. There's no such thing as a good room in this hotel. I think we do establish that quest left 10 days ago. Yeah. Between these two conversations. Marlowe sees a gun in the guy's suitcase and Pulse's own gun, just in case, I guess.

And there's a good banter of, I got a permit for the gun. Let me see it. Huh? Let me see it. Quest left 10 days ago. Okay, I'll tell you what you want. Yeah. So we get that he might be on the other side of the law, right?

This is not like undercover cop or something. There's a fun bit because Marlowe gets to drop on him, and this guy's first reaction is to quick put his to pay on, which is, I think, good too. Yeah. He gets Marlowe's card as well, and then Marlowe thanks him, and he says for what? Or he says, thanks, huh? We're not spitting on it.

And then we have action music as Marlowe looks around. He returns the pass key. So he's back in the like office of the burnout hotel. And he's looking through phone books. And then we see that he sees the register in the trash can next to the little like stand. Hmm, interesting. He opens it. And there's a bunch of pages torn out.

Perhaps just the pages he was just looking at. Hmm. And then he looks back over to where, so the manager was like, like, his bed is just in like a nook off of the office. So it looks back over. We get an ominous close up of the blanket under which our manager was, uh, huddling. And we know, hmm, maybe something has happened. And he goes over, pulls off the blanket and what do you know? This, this poor dude has been stabbed with an ice pick.

Yeah. He has been murdered. I will say, I didn't try to like, travel. timing and stuff like that's not what this kind of mystery really requires everything in this movie is very much happens at the speed of plot right right so there is but there is a little bit of like hmm why do you get murdered right then yeah it is awfully convenient for the story which is why that's why it happened then but uh there are some movements of principal characters that are arbitrary uh in order to like make the story work at this pace and you just kind of have to

to accept that with this kind of narrative, I think. Yeah, like the, um, there's something about the, the one to be also, like he comes, he encounters Grant Hicks. They have like a conversation, but like it doesn't feel, uh, like anything comes of it. Because again, at this moment, I don't really know who he is, why he's important, or if he will be important later. Yeah. Our biggest clue as the readers, as the viewers, as the viewers,

is the opening sequence of the person taking the photographs and like not even entirely sure if that pertains to what's happening in the story yet so that interview that interrogation or whatever with grant hicks ends not it's not an entirely natural ending it just kind of ends and he moves on to the next beat and in that short amount of time somebody has gone through the register found the information they want stole it and killed the the the manager, or the other way around, but either way, I guess when I was watching it, I was just assuming somebody was following Marlowe, and Marlowe is like in grave danger right now, but that's not quite exactly how it all pans out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we continue to follow

Marlowe. Back to his office, which is next door. So it's in some like office, like some kind of commercial building. And his office is next to a school of, uh, I said cosmology. Cosmetology. Yeah, not cosmology. That's different. Yeah. Um, cosmotology. And apparently the hairdresser, uh, teacher guy, Chuck takes his messages for him when he's not in the office. Speaking of good business. This good business. Like I, to check my messages, my messages, I go interrupt Chuck's class and ask him if I have any messages. It's great. Um, but she, back the lady from kansas oh it's i think kind of important to note there's i think a little bit of a thing that happens throughout this movie uh the class the cosmetology class all women

they react very well to philip marlowe as played by james gardner he yes throughout you'll encounter two or three different gagles of women who are all like well hello this guy This guy, yeah. Like, we're happy that he's our next door neighbor, right? Yeah, that's funny, because it's not a plot thing at all. Like, it doesn't matter for story stuff. But, yeah, there is that undercurrent of whenever he shows up in just a situation where there are women, he gets the eye. Yeah.

But it's a little low-key. It's not, like, I don't know. Yeah. The other two that I could think of off the top of my head are, like, when he goes to meet with, I guess, his girlfriend. Yeah. And she's teaching a dance class. And all the girls there are like, ooh. And that might just be because, like, oh, our teacher has a boyfriend.

So that's fine. And then there's the one, I mean, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. But there's the interview with Rita Moreno at the burlesque club where the other dancer is just all over and needs to be fought off. Right. Which is fun. It's all fun. There's even, he goes to the girls club.

Again, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. But he goes to the girls club later. and there's like just the woman at the desk who asks one question and walks away and she's like, well, hello there. What can I do for you? Yeah.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. It's Marlowe is sexy. I don't know if he's sexy in the books, but in this movie. I mean, he's as a, as we've established, an impertinent and baroque butt. That's true.

Anyway, yes, she's back, the lady from Kansas. So we have a, here's what's going on kind of establishment scene here. where we meet again a lot of these names I didn't like they're not even said until like way later in the movie but his client is uh orpha may and it turns out she is the sister of Oren so she has come to the big city which I think is supposed to be San Francisco they talk about the Bay City newspaper at some point um anyway she's come to the big city uh because she's concerned about her brother he's lost he's she doesn't know where he is a little Spoiler for the end credits. Orfa May is all one word. Yes. And not like Orpha May. Orpha May. Orfa May.

That is a hell of a name. I can only assume the names are from the novel. Yeah. And they're good. So Marlowe is returning her money. She paid him $50. And he's saying, it's all shadowed, no substance. But no satisfaction, no charge.

And he returns for money. Yes. The good line. This is while he is on the phone. He makes a joke about all of his expensive electronic devices, and he's holding up this phone, just regular old landline. While he's talking to her and saying, I'm not taking your case, here's your money back.

He's also calling this doctor that the manager had called and got hung up on. Asked why that guy was cut off and says it's quite the coincidence in what it was your ice pick. Yes. And he's asked who he is. He uses Hick's name and says it's not a shakedown. I'm just a cat looking for a connection. And then the doctor hangs up on a vague. Well, call me anytime you need a consultation.

And that conversation happens while he's also telling Orfame, I'm not taking your case. You should go home. And it's like, fine. It all just flows. It's great. Yeah, it's great. We're not complaining about this scene. But I think this is another, this is a good example of how this movie plays very well after the Rocker Files.

Because this plays like a parody of how. Jim is constantly trying to reject his clients, and yet we'll end up working for them. He's rejecting her while still doing the job. Right, right, yeah. It's wonderful. I mean, that's a big theme that we'll come back to about, like, why is he working on this, right? Yeah. Yeah, Marl gets his pipe.

He apparently has a signature pipe, which, he's told it's a filthy habit, and we get some exposition about Orphame, growing up poor. their dad had a stroke, her and Ma, Ma on the porch, et cetera, et cetera. Marlowe, here's a retainer, take it back. The town's full detectives, and she starts to meltdown. She's used all her vacation time. She has to go back to Kansas soon and just knows that something is wrong. So the only thing he's turned up is that Oren was in the hotel 10 days ago, but around here, that's just last minute.

He'll turn up and you won't even recognize him. He'll be so famous or something like that. It's like he makes some reference to like, oh, maybe he's just getting. into show business or something. Who knows? They are then interrupted by another phone call and it is in fact Grant Hicks who is looking nervously out a window

at a, the young man that we saw in the opening like credits who was taking the pictures is in a car and Grant Hicks is looking at a window at him on the phone talking to Marlowe saying you in the market for a quick hundred. Marlowe, I'm in the Alvarado Hotel Just five minutes from your place. All I need, a couple minutes in your time and your home free, okay?

Maybe. I'm in room 22, but hurry, huh? It's the two minutes with you where your story breaks out. Look, I give you something to hold. And 100. Tomorrow, next day, give it back to me. Strictly legit, nothing hot. And we get an ominous zoom down to the man in the car.

So he's on the phone having this conversation when we go back to Orfa May going 50 bucks is all I got, but I guess it's not enough to keep you interested. He responds with, it's not the money that bothers me. It's ice picks. Oh, that's such a, that's such a Rockford angle on it. Like, yeah. Yeah, so I guess he kind of like

leaves it vague with Hicks as well. And we get a final play where she says, if you won't take my money, what will you take? She like gives him a slow turn and he says a simple goodbye. Yeah. And then she awkwardly reaches out and

asks if he minds if the woman makes the first overture, and he turns her down. He's like, I'm not interested. And we end the scene with her being like, well, what am I supposed to do? And he's like, try the missing persons bureau or the FBI. So, yeah, there's an element here where he just seems like he doesn't find her someone that he wants to spend time around, right? Yeah, the question is, he's clearly still on the case. Right.

Everything around this scene is the case still happening at him. He has had two phone calls directly about this case. While he's telling her, I'm not on it, take your money, leave. Yeah. Some possible reasons why he's doing this. One is just that this is a fun send-up of a trope of rejecting the case, even though you're still on it. Two, he doesn't want her around. That might be like a personal thing, or he might think she's in danger.

He's witnessed a murder already. Yeah, he knows there's been a murder already. So that's part of it, too. And again, a very gym kind of thing where it's like, well, I think this would be dangerous for you. So you should just leave. You're not involved anymore. And even if I tell you why I think you're in danger,

that itself will put you in danger. Or, and this is maybe the more noiric, is that he already has an angle on her intentions are not pure. Right, that she's not being straight with him. Yeah, yeah. And so he's like, I just need to keep her, like, Like, keep rejecting her until I can figure out what's happening and what she's trying to do. Yeah.

Once we get to the end of the movie, I think that Reed holds up where he's like, there's something here that she's not telling me or that I don't think is straight. And he doesn't want to get too entangled, right? He does go to the Hotel Alvarado. It's now night, so I feel like time has passed. So I'm assuming that he did not hurry over like Grant Hicks wanted him to immediately. Yeah. He has some dialogue with, there's like a woman who pops up behind the desk to talk to him when he comes in. And there's conversation here that I did not understand because I think it's referencing something that I don't know about.

It seemed like there was being a joke made, but I couldn't tell what the joke was. It's fine. It doesn't matter. He eventually tells him that he can go see the manager whose name is Haiti, Oliver J. Haiti. Uh, great business here where Jim goes to this guy's. room office and he's building a model ship. Yes. I look at a big one. A huge model ship

and there's a joke a running joke where he has Marlowe's like, hey, hold this. So Marlowe puts his finger on something while it's like drying so he can go and get something and then give it to Marlowe and Marl's like hold this and then he puts his finger back on it. So good. It's a tall ship right? Like it's a ship

with sails and it's the rigging so it's clearly like just like a little dot of glue holding a crossbar or something like that and And it's just, you have to hold it until it dries. And this moment of business is so quintessentially Rockford in my mind. You know, it's fun looking at Jim's earlier stuff and seeing the progression of all the ways the characters point at Rockford.

And they do, like the Nichols character points at Rockford quite well, too. And like, but like there's just something about this that like... But it's also like this moment is constructed in a way that feels like a Rockford moment. Yeah, yeah. If you show me this clip, much like that gif, I would be like, what episode is that from? Yeah. So he wants to know who's in room 22, which is where Hicks told him he was going to be, because this could be a setup and he doesn't want a case of rigor in his motel, does he?

You know, he gets the room card. There's nothing particularly helpful there. So Marlowe approaches the door, gives it a little knock. it's already open. He goes in. We have ominous camera work as we see him seeing feet on the bed that's across the room. And then a woman wearing a black hat and coat and white gloves and a white scarf that she's holding wrapped around her face and dark sunglasses jumps him. She pops out of the like little bathroom stall, I guess, or a little closet. And she's holding a gun and tells him to turn around. And this is good dialogue here. Now, if that were 45, I wouldn't argue with the 32, I can get in a couple of words. And she points at his face. I've set them off. It's so good.

I don't know how a reviewer sees this moment and thinks to themselves, this movie, this, like, what is wrong with your heart? You don't love this. He does turn around. He tells her that he likes her perfume, and that's when she hits him the back of the head with the gun and runs. So it doesn't take him out totally. he's just he's stumbling but he can't follow her so she runs down the hall the manager sees her leaving follows looks out the window and gets the license plate number of her little yellow convertible so there was a moment here where i was like oh is this like a buddy like is this

one of marlowe's like friends or something so i think there's a little bit of a correction we need to make it's this guy's at the manager he's the hotel cop oh right yeah because i mentioned that later he's the hotel detective yeah because they mentioned that later and I was like oh I guess that was that guy I didn't catch it first later he's called the hotel detective or whatever yeah but like there's a line that the receptionist says like oh yeah when he's not keeping in transoms or something like that's what I didn't understand like that was like I don't understand what this references yeah yeah because I think that was like uh more of a thing sure it's definitely in the noir noir noir as that I've read private detective make friends with hotel cops because they're like, or hotel detectives. For just situations like this. Like Motel 6 doesn't have a hotel detective. So I don't, I've never had any experience with a hotel detective. So I don't immediately think, oh, there is one.

But yeah. Yeah. No, I think you're right. That makes this all make a lot more sense. Because then that's why he, like, he sees her run. It's suspicious. So he takes down the number. And he knows that Marlowe is there.

Like, he just talked to him and got his card. Yeah. Yeah, that all makes a lot of sense. Good, good call. Back in the room, our poor friend Hicks has an ice pick in his neck. I guess Marlowe didn't make it in time. Marlowe looks around. There's a bunch of cash on the bed and we see it's like a bunch, like a wad. He frowns and then he looks down and he pulls off the man's toupee because you'll remember when he first saw him, he was bald. Yes. And inside the toupee is a ticket that's been taped into it, a claim ticket for something at Benson's camera shop. Yes. I was like, oh, he just notices a toupee. Until we went back to that scene, I totally forgot that he had seen him bald.

Yes. So, classic detective maneuver, he puts the ticket in an envelope and mails it to himself so that it is not on his person when the cops come and are talking to him about this murder that he has discovered. They talk about how it's a pro job, a direct blow to the spine. This ice pick thing is the signature of a, of a, I don't know, a crook. A boss, a gang named Steelgrave. But that's a thin connection.

They list out that the deceased's effects include $14 and some change. And we see Marlowe exchange a significant glance with the, yeah, the hotel cop. Yeah. Haiti. We should mention that the lieutenant in charge here is Carol O'Connor. Yes. This is where we meet our lieutenant and his sergeant. So, yeah, Carol O'Connor, who's great in this.

Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful. Lieutenant French and Sergeant. I think he's just named Fred. Like, they just call him Fred, but his character name is Beefus, Sergeant Fred Bufus. So, Christian Fred, or Lieutenant French and Sergeant Beefus. Yeah, that's good. There were a couple scenes, good scenes with Carol O'Connor and James Gardner in this. And it made me wish that they had gotten them for the Rockford.

Oh, yeah. Their chemistry is incredible. This is right before all in the family, because that starts in 71. Yeah. So, yeah. So he was busy. Yeah, yeah, making TV history and all that. Yeah.

Wow. Anyway, again, this is good writing where we get through the dialogue, all the kind of, like, lead up of like he's told them his story. And like, we don't need to like rehash the things we just saw, which is good, good stuff. One of the cops points out that the deceased did not have a hundred bucks on him. Like he said, he was going to give Jim a hundred bucks for whatever his favor was going to be. But the hotel cop says, you don't need to go past the desk to go in or out. So anyone could have visited him.

So he could have been killed and had that money stolen or he could have paid someone else for the thing or who knows. There's a beat. And then Marlowe, I believe, shows them that he's wearing a toupee. I love this. So, yeah, Marlowe picks the two pay off, and immediately the two cops are like, oh, that's, uh... Oh, that, it's that guy. Yeah, we know him. He's some, like, mob runner guy.

It's astounding. It is, it is Superman taking his glasses off. Or, like, like, Ted, taking his glasses off, right? Yeah, it's so good. It's great. Well, that takes the pressure off. This punk won't be a 24-hour day job. How'd you know about that, too?

I'm a trained detective. That's your exit line model. Follow it out. This dialogue is great, and Carol O'Connor is great. Like, I'm sick of you. Just go. Oh, that feels like that's from the book, right? I don't know.

But like it feels very noir. There's an element here where because I was in the like Rockford zone, I was kind of expecting the dynamic with this lieutenant to be like more like a Chapman or a deal or something. And it's not. It's actually pretty different. So there's a little bit where it was like, Oh, right. This is a different kind of character. Yeah. There's a tension between them, but we'll get to like where that boils over much later in the movie.

But there's also this whole, this trust. Like, you're often in this murky stuff. You go do what you do and bring to us what you find. Yeah, I think that's what, that is a distinction from the Rockford stuff where like in this, with Marlowe, it's kind of like, we don't have anything in particular. hold you for or whatever. But if you scare something up, you can find stuff out that we don't find out because you're a P.I. and we're cops.

Yeah, like you said, there's a bit of a trust dynamic or a bit of a you scratch my back, I'll scratch you one of this kind of thing where it's like, we can help each other, but we don't have to like it. Yeah. But when it boils over, it's good. Marlowe confronts the hotel detective

about the missing 150 bucks. Great banter. Are you accusing me? I'm just checking for conscience. He offers a split at 50-50. Once he finally admits that, yes, he just stole that money. Yes.

But Marlowe doesn't want the money. He wants information. He knows that that other guy would have followed the girl. What makes you so wonderful? I'm a trained detective. It's good. And then much like Jim getting information out of Angel, he peels off a bill from the role for every detail

that the guy tells him about the girl, the license number, her description, etc. And then finally, he's like, that's all I saw. Like, blah, blah, blah. And she was built like a model. Like, what do you want for me? And he shoves the rest of the money into his hand. This definitely gets mirrored in the Rock Profiles with Angel many times. But, like, this feels like Marlowe is volunteering to pay for this information.

Like, he asked about it. The guy gives him something, and Marlowe just hands of money. Yeah. It's not, the guy's not like. Holding out on it. Yeah, he's not like, and then once he starts doing it, the guy starts spilling more. Marlowe is not expecting to hold on to this money. Yeah, he doesn't want the money. That's the whole thing.

He doesn't want this money. Yeah, he never wants money. What would he use money for? Yeah, exactly. Oh, you know what, here? I do have a screenshot of the wooden ship. Oh, nice. Oh, yeah, that's a good shot. Mm-hmm. Yes. And the room, the set dressing is great. He has ships on the wall. This is clearly his hot. Everything. Yeah. Like, this is clearly the hotel. detective's office and he's bored enough with his job that he could just be building these.

This looks like his most massive, but like intricate models, you know, like that's just the thing that he does with his time while he's being paid to be the hotel detective. That's good. Love a lifestyle where he's wearing his hat indoors underneath a, like a spot lamp with a cigar in his mouth and two more cigars in his shirt pocket. Yes. Anyway. Living the life. Living the life.

We go to the dance class that we mentioned. We meet Marlowe's girlfriend, I guess. I don't think they ever say her name. Her credit is Julie. Julie. Yeah, I think at one point the name does come up, but it's not. Like, he goes on a date with her at one point. This is another echo into the Rockford files.

There's like an understanding that kind of exists that's like. Let's talk about that. When we get to that scene, because I think it's where we see it most. Here, I think, like you mentioned, so she's teaching a dance class. The students are all women. And they basically, like, cat call him when he, like, comes in and gives her a kiss. But it does seem like this is a thing that happens. Like, they know who he is.

But he's there specifically to ask for her if she can scare up information on this, to go with this license plate, because he has a license plate number. To go with the license plate number by tomorrow morning. She's in some position to do that. We learn she works at the DMV. but he begs off from a date later like when she's done because he's still he's still working he still has other stuff to do next morning he's getting his messages from chuck including the letter from the alvarado with the ticket in it he compliments chuck's new leather pants and he says

yeah they really turn the chicks on mm-hmm and uh yeah i feel like this guy has to have been in the rockford files Christopher carry oh there it is oh he's in the queen of peru he's the british guy with the bad accent. Oh. Right, because there's like the gang of guys. So he's Ginger from Queen of Peru. And then he's also in the Hawaiian headache. What's his name in the Hawaiian headache?

The guy who's also in Queen of Peru? Yeah, Ken Swofford. Kent Swofford. The great Ken Swofford. He's not in this movie. But he could be. He was in something else that I saw recently. It must have been Scarecrow and Mrs. King.

This is just a complete aside. but I remember at some point watching and going like, oh, I know this guy. And then like Ken Swofford, the name showed up. And I was like, oh, it's Ken Swofford. All right. That's neither here nor there. Good to know. Good to know.

Yeah, good to know that actors acted more than one thing. But that, I mean, honestly, if there's any lesson you could take away from 200 a day, it's that actors are in more than one thing. That's a thing that we discover over and over again. Okay. I just looked up the woman who plays. Julie, Corinne Camacho, and I was like, I've definitely looked at her IMDB page before. Yeah.

There's more evidence here for my quickly articulating theory of the secret past of Jim Rockford. Oh, okay. Get to that when we get to it. I'm excited. This is a mystery, the mystery. All right. So you might not think that the scene will be very exciting because our friend, Philip Marlowe, is simply calling the camera shop to call in this claim ticket to say that he's going to come pick up whatever it is. So we go to a split screen for this combo.

You know, 50-50, Marlowe on one side, this guy on the other. Here's the thing. I would say they don't do stuff like this anymore, but I haven't watched a movie that was made in the last five years. So I don't know. Maybe they do this stuff, and I just don't know about it. They don't. So he claims to be Grant Hicks. He reads off the claim check.

While he is doing this, his other phone rings. Did you know that he had two phones on his desk? I didn't, but he does, and we get this. Oh, oh, I'm going to get a screenshot. Julie at the DMV is calling him with the info that she turned up on this license plate number. I just want to state for the record that this is my flag. So what happens when he answers the second phone is that another split screen pops up with Julie. So now it's a third, third, guy at the camera shop, James Garner on two phones, Julie.

This is three Zoom calls on a window manager. It is. That's all this is. It's so good. Okay. So the content here is that Marlowe arranges to come to the camera shop to pick up their photos that they're developing. So to pick up the photos. And that Julie tells him that car is registered to this actress named Mavis Wald.

Yes, yes, the Mavis walled. So she's not happy about it because this is a famous pretty woman and what is Marlowe doing, getting entangled with this kind of person? Julie hopes that Mavis flips him off of her balcony when he goes to see her. So a little good-natured, but like with an edge kind of ribbing here from his girlfriend. It's not delivered with complete venom. Right. It does feel a little, like, a little flirting, if anything. And there's also an air of like, yet again, you're going to go see a beautiful woman as part of your job.

Yes. Those are the things that we learned. However, how this is staged is that Marlowe is on both phones at the same time and he's crossed his hands. So the right hand phone, he's talking on his left ear and the left hand phone. he's talking on his right ear and he's having simultaneous conversations he doesn't want either of them to hang up so we start getting like who's on first style yeah gags of him responding to one of them but the other one answers i will cut in some of it marlow i figured it had to be a girl why mr hicks yes this mr hicks your order's ready sir who's mr hicks it was something i've been working on

why did you figure it had to be a girl are you kidding i'm sorry i'm talking on the other line Shall I call back? No, no, no, no. I need the information now. Sir, are you speaking to me? Yes, I'll be in before noon. Oh, that'll be fine. I don't get off to one, but I can try and change with Louan.

How's 12? I can't make it. Well, but any time until six, we close at six. I'll definitely pick them up by noon. I'm sure it was a pain to shoot. Just the pace and the confusion. Like, it would have short-circuited my brain. But it's just really funny.

It's so funny. Yeah. And, like, it didn't have to be here. Right. One thing about this movie is that the tone does shift. So the first half is, or the first third, is more, you know, there's ice pick murders, does have more, like, gags and bits. And then once you, like, get into, like, what's happening, it does get more serious. But, yeah, it's just a good scene.

It is. Whoever thought we should do it this way. Well done. It's great. There's a goofball comedy element to this movie that's not. It's not a goofball comedy, but it draws a little bit from that aesthetic from time to time. And I think it's good. And that plays to Garner's strengths because he has a goofy energy that he can bring to things.

This is also a scene that like has to have been for the movie because you couldn't like this would make absolutely no sense. Like it would not mean anything in print. Maybe it's in the book. Maybe I'll rate it and find out. But like the gag here only works because it's visual and yeah and like the frenetic pace. I don't know. It's good stuff. Love to see it.

So he picks up these pictures from the camera shop. They are indeed the candids that we saw getting shot in the intro credit sequence. So he looks at them, puts them back in the envelope, and tells the camera clerk to keep the change and mail them to this address and gives them his office address to mail the photos to. So I love Marlowe's prime detective technique of don't keep anything important on my body. Right. Something that Jim Rockford could learn from, I will say. Yes. Jim Rockford should mail his groceries home.

Like that's... That's a good question. Does he... Oh, he does get mail. He gets mail. Yeah, of course, because he gets bills. Of course he gets mail. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a cute bit here at the very end where he says, you know, mail leaves to this address and the clerk is like, all right, Mr. Hicks. And he's like, Mr. Marlowe. All right, Mr. Marlowe. He pretends to be great Hicks to get at the photos. Like just in case it matters. Yeah.

And then when he's got the photos and he wants them mailed to him, he's like, no, no, my name's Marlowe. Well, and he also tells him to keep the change, right? So he's like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's bribing. Yeah, bribing him. And this guy's like, whatever you say. All right.

So Marlowe goes to these fancy apartments where a doorman has to call up for him. His claim here is that he has the stills from the Alvarado Hotel. So she's going to want to, Mavis is going to want to talk to him. So he goes up to the. penthouse. And this is where you'll remember we were talking a lot about how Rita Moreno is in this movie. Yes. She is not Mavis. No. He does meet her first. She is playing a woman named Dolores Gonzalez and a young, vibrant, not that she's ever not vibrant. Right. Uh, Rita Moreno with James Garner. So here's the thing, right? The chemistry that we see here,

we are well used to because we've seen it not only in the show, but in the 90s movies. So there are elements here of how they physically interact with each other that remind me of stuff from the movie, the last movie that she's in. And that continuity is wild. Yeah, they are comfortable with each other. Like they work well together. Like you said, it's wild.

Like, I do have to remind myself that I'm watching a Philip Marlowe movie and not seeing Rita and Jim just doing their thing. I will say that this is, I feel like, I mean, I would have to look at, you know, go to the tape. But I feel like this is pre-Rita Moreno as a name, right? She's not in what I think of as her more natural speech. Right. It is before the electric company. It's before the electric company? Okay. Yeah. And before the Rita Moreno show. Yeah. So this is like before she's a personality necessary.

She does have a lot of credits before it though. Yeah, I know. She's clearly very good and experienced. But there's there's something about the Rita character and Rita Marino. I know her from stuff later in the, later in the century where she, it feels like she doesn't have to act. like as white to be precise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As she does in this in this. Like her, I mean, her name is

Dolores Gonzalez, like, but she's, she doesn't, she doesn't code, she doesn't do any code switching or anything. She's just acting with a certain kind of character the whole time. And that seems distinct to me just because of the phase of her career. That's all. She was in 780

episodes of the electric company. Workhorse. Yeah. Anyway, she is, Mavis's friend. I go way back. Mavis is off making panicked phone calls and asked her to keep him occupied. Are you hard to occupy? It was hard to get his haircut. Hey, has anybody ever told you that you have a sensuous underlip? Everybody mentions it. Do nice, fleshy, uncomplicated girls turn you on. I come all unglued. Again, the chemistry is just so instantaneous and it just reads so clearly on the screen where it's like, yeah, they're attracted to each other, but they also

both know what the deal is right now. Yeah. There's this good business with her getting him sugar for his tea where she licks the spoon, which is, which is like both, both like flirty and rude. And I think my favorite bit about it is that they have this scene that is very flirty. Just watching it, you think, oh, she's trying to seduce him or like, there's, there's something happening here or whatever. And then when Mavis shows up, she says its name is Philip Marlowe. It's private heat.

Like, dehumanizes him immediately. And it's interesting. It's a very interesting. They do this a couple times where like they're kind of flirting, but then as soon as one of them turns it off, the other one's like, yeah, we're done. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

And there's an element here, actually, with that specific interaction that now that we've seen the whole movie is a little bit also maybe about Dolores and Mavis's relationship and how Dolores acts when Mavis is interested in a man

right? Like she how she can change how she acts might come up later. Anyway, she leaves them alone so that Marlowe can talk to Mavis. She starts off with, what can I buy you with? And he says, money to start.

What am I buying? Um, so yeah, this whole thing is kind of a bit of a talking about something that we don't know what is happening still, right? Yeah. He's saying, I don't think you killed that guy Hicks, but you were there when he was dead. I need to have a reason not to tell the police that you were there because he thinks she's in a king size jam and she just doesn't respond. She just doesn't give him anything, right? Like, doesn't really acknowledge that that happened, doesn't say that she doesn't want anything to happen. And she's just like, you don't have anything I want.

He's not shaking her down. Like this, so here's the thing, right? Like, uh, this could be blackmail. But what it's happening is he's like, I can't, I won't reveal my client. I need a client. If we have this working relationship, then I won't, um, right. I am motivated to not reveal things if you are my client. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. But if you're not, then I have no reason not to. And she's just like, I'm, I'm not interested. I'm kind of in the realm of I'm denying that any of this is happening. Yeah. Kind of ostrich style. If I put my head in the sand, it'll all go away. It's her reaction.

He does leave it in the elevator as he looks at himself in the mirror and straightens his jacket. He says, you're out of work again, Philip. There's a moment between them during their negotiation that I think is important for our show. What can I buy you with? Money helps. How much? Oh, say a hundred to start. $100 money to you.

You make a $200 and I'll retire. yes so there's this is like maybe the most vulnerable moment we see philip yeah right in this elevator where he's like you're out of work again and you get that sense where he's like he's just kind of he doesn't have a client he doesn't really have a case he has these photos he's having a moment where he's like what am i even doing you know there was kind of this long shot that maybe she would hire him just you know just to kind of protect herself but she doesn't want to do that and like yeah why is he supposed to to do. Thankfully, once we get

outside, he's intercepted by a mustache d'oon who just says, car, and then in a very rockfordishness moment, we just goes, beep, beep, and pushes him to get past him. Unfortunately, there are two more goons, and he says, car again.

He says something like, for someone with such a limited vocabulary, you really can be convincing. So these three guys walk him over to this car. I was really expecting a Rockford escape here, like stepping on one of their toes, and like running or something, it doesn't happen. But the physical situation was when I was like, I'm very familiar with this.

Yeah, my notes literally say this is so Rockford. So he goes to the car, they roll down the window. He's not getting in the car. And this is where we first meet Mr. Steelgrave. We may remember this name from earlier when Marlowe was telling the cops that the Ice Pick is a signature murder implement of the Steelgrave gang from back east. Yes.

So Steelgrave wants to know where the picture. are he responds with who makes your ice picks these days mr steelgrave uh the goons search him they end up ripping out the lining of his coat and all his pockets and he's like hey and then they just sucker punch him and give them some serious body blows uh to remember them by yeah it's a good shakedown uh one we've we've come to enjoy uh yeah i agree with you though like i was i think i was expecting some upper hand here. But what we're getting here is a dissent. He can't get a job.

Right. Now he's getting beat up and we get the third beat of that descent in just a moment. Yeah. So here's a question. Because, again, we've only kind of seen them in flashes and I'm taking notes and I'm not great with faces. Had you noticed or put together that the photos were Steelgrave and Mavis? I don't know when I put it together.

Like, it becomes clear in the dialogue pretty soon, but... Yeah, here's the thing. I think at this point, I wasn't too worried about that. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was more like, what's the deal with that doctor? Right. There's like this whole other angle to this that isn't...

We haven't touched in a while. Mm-hmm. That I, like, my brain kept going. Thumbs up with that. Right, right. Yeah, we'll see how that comes back together. Mm-hmm. All right.

So now we get to the part that is highlighted by the I&B auto playing video, the part where Bruce Lee shows up. There's a great little, again, beat here where Marlowe walks into his office, pulls off his tattered coat that's been all ripped up and throws it at the waistbasket and it misses and he just leaves it on the floor. Either that happened and they left it in or that was the choreography, but either way or the blocking, but either way it's a great point. great touch. We see that his little mini fridge by his desk has exactly one bottle in it, and that is what he pulls out to get a drink. And that is when Bruce Lee appears.

Yes. On Marlowe's saying, what can I do for you? He just starts kicking in the walls. This attracts the attention of Chuck from next door, because it's a joining wall. Shared wall, yeah. And he comes in, followed by a bunch of

flabbergasted students. And Marlowe says, we're just redecorating. But he uses that distraction as enough time to pull his gun out. So now he's sitting behind the desk with his gun, and Bruce Lee is standing in front of him. And so they now start talking, as he says, you won't need that. The word is you, I, cool cat. Well, the word is wrong. I go all to pieces over nothing.

You take that coat rack, for instance, spend of my family for years. How would you like it if your granny's coat rack was chopped up for Kenley? The coat rack that he had just kicked down. All right, so he has a proposition. He has a five crisp $100 bills to offer to Marlowe. For what? You're not looking for anybody. You can't find anybody.

And you're too busy to take on any new jobs. And if you do nothing for long enough, there's another five that'll join those right there on your desk. And for whom am I doing all this nothing? Winslow Wong, that is I. I like a man who uses good grammar. You impress me, Mr. Wong. Whombe sent you.

A man. who would rather spill money and blood, but also a man who would not mind spilling blood if he has no other choice. That's a good line. When I was making those notes, I had this thought that this would be a good ready, willing, able thing for a character. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's good. Ready to spill money rather than blood, something like that would be very good.

But willing to spill blood. Willing to spill blood if there's no other choice? That's good. Of course, Marlowe gives him. the money back. Take it back to your leader. Tell him you met the last of a dying dynasty. King of the fools. Unassailably virtuous.

Variably broke. So the important thing about this scene is all the things that Bruce Lee breaks in his office. So many things. He kicks the light fixture on the ceiling. That was the part where I was like, okay, this is why we did this. This is why we brought a baby. Basically, he destroys the office. on his way out, including, yeah, he kicks

the light off of the ceiling. It's shattered. It's made a glass, right? So it shatters his glass everywhere. He kicks the glass panel that's in the door. Chuck comes back in, looks around and waves the girls right back out. Yeah. All this destruction has attracted to crowd outside the office because this is like a

public building. Wong pushes his way through it while the lieutenant, Carol O'Connor, is coming to see Marlowe. Lieutenant French. Lieutenant French. Thank you. And he comes in, and Marlowe's still sitting in his chair.

The table is up on its side. There's broken glass everywhere. All the furniture is in matchsticks. And he says, termites, lieutenant. Now, I have written here, Carol O'Connor is a revelation. Now, my question is, what did he do in this scene that made me write that? His mannerism is just like, yeah, this is about what I expected. Yeah, yeah.

There is no way in which. which me asking Marlowe what happened gets me anything right here. Yeah. So I'm just, yeah, this is just what happened. We'll be surprised to hear. He has great screen presence.

He's very fun to watch. So, yeah, maybe it's just some of the blocking or something, but it's good stuff. So French wants to talk to Marlowe. He asked him about this other ice pick case. Do you see this other ice pick case in the Bay City newspaper?

Two, is that a trend? This will come up a couple times. This is becoming like a thing, like the ice pick murders because there's these two bodies that were both found with ice picks in them that are seemingly unrelated. That's kind of what the cops are doing.

They're trying to figure out, they're trying to find this murderer. Right. So we get into a, do you have anything else you want to tell us, Marlowe? They found his card on Hick's body. It was folded up and put it in his watch pocket.

So it would have been easy to miss if you'd talk, you know, if you'd search the body before we got there, right? And Marluck says, you know, it would have been really easy for the hotel cop. to get in there before you guys were still all the money that the guy had that we know he was insane and planting my card to make it look like it was me lieutenant french just goes it's possible marlowe asks if he would recognize steel grave um so we get some dialogue about how like they know him

he's a known like mobster but they can't get him for anything is kind of the vibe right and he owns a place called the dancers club cross cut to marlowe and julie entering a the Dancers Club as the voiceover continues, sometimes he takes a little chicken broth up there. Booth number one and we pan up and he's sitting there at the booth with a bowl of chicken broth. So, okay, sometimes he takes a little

chicken broth up there. It's such a Rockford line meaning something else. Right, right, yeah. We don't know what, but like we'll find out, well, you know, seeing it like maybe he brings a woman up there and they're just referring to the woman as chicken broth.

Or maybe that's where someone like gives him bribes and yeah yeah exactly like who knows but it turns out he says this fancy restaurant with a bowl of chicken bra it just enjoyed that it's so good like a starfleet captain's border so this is another thing where i expected because of my rockford framing i expected this to be a like all right you're not being straight with us we're going to get you for something kind of thing but it really is kind of a like So how about this? Okay, I'll accept that story. Like, accept it on the sense of I can't disprove it. So if you want to make a point of not rising to the bait, fine.

And also, I can give you an answer about this thing you want to know, because we're talking about it anyway. We're going to see where you go and what you get out of this. Right, right. Yeah. It's time for us to take our traditional intermission as we all need a little break to head out to the lobby, take a little stretch, get a snack, a drink. Reflect on what's come before and anticipate what's to come. in this episode of the model. We also like to take this time to remind you of where else you can find us on the internet.

Epi, where can our listeners find you? Well, you can find me at my website, dig 1000holes.com. That's 1,000 the number. Or you can find me as Epidaia on the Macedon instance dice.com. Where can our listeners find you, Nathan? All of my games, zines, podcast projects, and other work. are at nDPdesign.com. And of course, you can always find this show 200 a day

at 200 a day.fireside.fm. And now we return to the continuing adventures of... Philip Marlowe. Marlowe has a reservation he's expected, and we get the bottle of champagne sent to his table. Who is he? Looks rich. Oh, he is. Even his tax bracket is on the list.

as previously discussed it's important you might say Baroque I love it absolutely love it before they can even order the waiter comes over and says that there's a phone call for Mr. Martin

there's a beat and Julie says you know this is just a way to get you alone and he says well I'm not here for the cherry's Jubilee so she tells him to take care of of himself because she doesn't like going home alone. So I think this is, yeah, where we really get that sense

of... She's aware. She knows. This isn't her first rodeo as one would say being in this kind of situation. She's, she's, you know, she's made her peace with this is how her relationship is with this guy, right? Yeah. That's like, this kind of comes

with the territory. Earlier, I was saying that, yeah, looking up Corinne Camacho gave me a little more evidence for a theory I've been starting to put together. Okay, here we go. The starting point for this theory happens later in the movie. But I will say that this actress was in four episodes of the Rockford Files.

She was Janet Carr in Exit Prentice Car. Ah. She was Tracy Marquette in a deadly maze. So I think she was the woman that the guy claimed with his wife. Oh, yes. Right, who I think ends up getting murdered. Yeah. And then in season six, she's literally.

Linda in lions, tigers, monkeys, and dogs, and the no-fault affair. If you'll remember, Linda, was Jim's squeeze. Yes. Who came with him on some dates and then would get, like, he would have to, like, put it on the back burner because he now gets involved with the case, right? Yes. Much like Julie here is involved with Marlowe. I'm just saying, just saying that maybe there is some correspondence between,

the 1969 character of Julie and the 1979 character of Linda, similar to how there might be some correspondence between the 1969 character of Marlowe and the 1979 character of Rockford. We'll talk about more of that later. Yeah, I'm down for this theory so far. I'd like to see where you take it. Okay. Of course, there's no one on the phone, and we have a great shot in the reflection of the photo booth of Wong coming up to wait for Jim to notice him. Yes. Oh, yeah, such a great shot because it's like reflection in the glass. Yeah.

I mean, that has to be some like movie magic, right? Like they had to like mat, mat that in or something. But yeah, it's so good. So there's like a cover to the phone nook. That's just a frame with a piece of glass in it. And so you have to open that to get to the phone. And so that's open. Marlowe is standing behind it.

He hangs up the phone and we see the reflection of Winsel Wong in that glass. Yeah. As Gardner turns around. So he's behind the glass. And then the shot is the two of them looking like they're standing next to each other, essentially. He's giving the thumbs up. Yeah, with one giving a thumbs up. That's so good.

Yeah. We're definitely, again, this will go up on the still existing 200 a day Patreon with these screenshots. If you want to see them there. Okay. Then we get to like on it. So unfortunately like the the weakest scene in the movie, I think. They're good together. They are good together.

But the scene is bad. They're good people in a bad scene. He ushers them out to this balcony. I noticed that there's like a comedically loud wind. Like the wind effects are make you make you know that it's very, they're very isolated out there. It's very windy. Wang tells him to take the money It's his last chance

Marlowe turns him down and we get some action Some martial arts action Wong keeps advancing and kicking Marlowe is retreating while hitting him with wisecracks to provoke him One of them is you're good But I've seen better from dogs on TV Yeah that kind of thing

And so we end up with Marlowe hopping up On the edge of this balcony So there's a big they're high up He's on the edge of this balcony Yeah And he does give him a final taunt that is a homophobic

he's like you're light on your feet a little gay huh okay yeah similar similar to there's that one in the I thought of the same thing too in the first in the pilot in the pilot with the same situation where he's like taunting a martial arts

guy yeah so that's kind of a weird little resonance also yeah the result of this of course is he's so so enraged by this taunt that he leaps at him with a flying kick and Marlowe dodges aside and he plummets over the edge and falls presumably to his gory demise. A couple things.

Like obviously, we don't need the homophobia. But number two, this is uncommented on the rest of the film. No one's like, oh, about that guy who fell off a building. Like, that's just not. Right. Yeah. Yeah. This is the most Bond-esque part, going back to the Bond.

movie intro or it's just like a henchman who just like dies and we never talk about it again. Yeah, I think it's just one of those things where it's, the reason this is a weak scene to me is just that we spend the first scene with Bruce Lee showing what

a badass he is and how he was total command of the situation. Sure, he's in someone's employ, but he's like, seems pretty threatening. And then this scene, he's so dumb he would jump off a balcony. Yeah, it's not plausible. or yeah yeah not that i need this movie to be plausible and but like i just wanted better i just wanted

better for bruce lee yeah uh yeah and the slur in there isn't great uh either so i would say this is my uh my weak point of the of the film would be seen and then marlowe goes back in and catches steelgrave's eye and then just makes this little hand motion of like going down walka walka and then that's it that's all we ever hear about that yep and then Then we move on. Presumably, they have the rest of their dinner, actually, I guess. Yeah, it does seem like he just sits down and they, because we cut to the next morning. Yes.

So we have coffee boiling on Marlowe's stove. There's a knock on his door. There was this, I had this weird moment where I was like, oh, right, he has like a house. Yeah. The office is such an iconic noir detective, specifically Philip Marlowe or Philip Marlowe derived. media thing that being like oh there's there's a place he goes that isn't the office is actually like a little

surprising but yes there's a knock on his door and it is Alpha May she is returned as she says don't worry I'm not here to seduce you I think he's in his bathrobe during this conversation yeah also and I think extremely important

yes he's eating Oreos well yes so that's where I'm going okay I apologize I didn't mean to stop on that. No, no. You're, you got, you, you are correct. I was just saying that she says that she's heard from Orrin. He's staying with this doctor, Dr. Legardi, and some gangsters are after him. And that is when Marlowe takes an Oreo out of, he's, there's an open pack of Oreos on the counter, and he takes an Oreo out, and he just starts slowly munching on it while holding the rest of this conversation. Yes. Her the screen shot. Quisting the top, you know, one side off. Like, like,

classic Oreo business. Right. Classic Oreo business. Clearly, James Gardner likes Oreos. Yes. Fine. But yeah, in this moment, I'm thinking my, I'm going into my mind palace. I'm, things are spinning. I'm doing the web, the Charlie Day red yarn on the, on the wall meme. Imagine, if you will, that in the late 60s, there's a detective somewhere in a major city in California, this PI, who gets into some trouble, perhaps through tangential involvement or a frame job of some kind, with an armed robbery, say.

And what if he goes to jail? And what if in jail, he decides to reinvent himself? His life hasn't been so good. He's not making money. He has all these principles. But they're not serving him. But he still wants to be a PI and have his freedom. And what if he just tells everyone his name is, I don't know, Jim?

Jim's a good name. Come up with something innocuous for a last name. I don't know. Look at a map. See Rockford, Illinois. That's a good one. Rockford. Okay.

I'm just saying the timeline matches up. It's good. His love of Orios is a tell. His girlfriend comes back 10 years later. Somehow finds him. Yeah, they need a new name for her just in case. Yeah, I'm in. Admittedly, Rocky is a sticking point.

We do need to figure out how Rocky fits into this. Well, he hires. He hires a rocky. Well, no, or Rocky is legitimately his dad, but they were estranged until he, maybe his real name has been Jim Rockford the whole time. Right. And Philip Marlowe has been his persona. He operated under the name Philip Marlowe because of the Raymond Chandler detective stories. Right.

Yeah, because this story doesn't really have a sense of time. Like, it's not like the 30s. It really just seems contemporary to what it was made to me. so it's not like it's a period piece really I think the story does did come out let me see when the story came out oh 1949 okay

so yeah it's 20 years after it yeah it is contemporary so yeah it could very well be it is kind of a shame that someone in this movie does refer to him as Philip it's actually even I think commented upon there's like a moment where he's like

it sounds weird or something like that Alpha May calls him Philip I think It would have been nice if it was just Marlowe throughout and he could have just been like the Marlowe detective agency and not told anyone that his name is actually Jim Rockford, but he calls it the, you know, that kind of thing. I'm just saying, could happen. Yeah. Could happen. Anyway, back to the actual story here. Yeah.

So she has this news that he's with this, that her brother is with this doctor and some gangsters are after him. So obviously, Marlowe needs to go help him. She says that, I paid you. And he says, I gave it back. Yeah. She's like, well, I offered it to you again. And she also makes a play that her proposition to him meant something, even if he turned her down. But before this can escalate farther, he says, look, I already have that address.

So fine. I can check it. Like, he already knows where the doctor is. He already looked at it up. Yeah. As she leaves, Julie comes out of the bathroom in a towel in time to see Orfa Mae, who's like at the door, turn around and go, you don't know me. and gives Marlowe a kiss on the cheek, and then she leaves. And then Marlowe and Julie have a little bit of banter.

I forget exactly what the content is. But again, in the vein of like, you're just getting another girl, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. And we end on a care for some breakfast as he motions with his half-eaten Oreo. He clearly has been pursuing his own line of investigation, as our next scene is at the Partridge and Crowell advertising agency, where William Daniels is Mr. Crowell and I guess they're like he's like

Mavis's agent I guess a little unclear exactly what the deal is and Marlow is saying I have these compromising pictures of your star it turns out she's in a top rated sitcom of the time so that's why she's like famous it feels very James Gardner too where he like he has this weird

thing where he's like he prefers her like there's a footage of the sitcom and the old movie he prefers the old movie I don't know if that's her or just like a movie that's a little unclear I wasn't sure there was a comment about him that like implied that like he preferred the movie to the sitcom

and that was putting him above this is also I think a man who doesn't have a television right? Yeah do you ever see the show? No no I have it's the top rated sitcom in the country he's like huh Situation comedy Can you imagine what would happen

If it got out that our pure little married Was shacking up with public enemy number one This whole thing is basically Marlowe Trying to convince this guy To take him on as the client Because that way He won't have to show these pictures To homicide in relation to these Ice Pick murders

Which would start connecting Mavis to the murders And then that could have a knock-on effect To the network and the show et cetera, et cetera. She did call Crowell about it, but did not mention exactly how close she was

to this murder occurring, how inconveniently close she was. And Marlowe just wants to get out of a jam, but his star and show aren't a bigger one. There's a pause. Carl says, What are you doing for the next hour? Marlowe says,

counting my Trump's pause. Let's count them together. And we have a triumphant music swell. Yeah. We then have a couple scenes. It's a little bit of filler, honestly. The banter is good. You can clearly see that he thinks that there's used to having Marlowe around.

Like, you can get Marlowe to do something. We see that Marlowe does convince him that he can be, that this is in his best interest. Yeah, yeah. In the car, we get the specificity where Marlowe, where Marlowe's like the man in the picture, this is steel case, kraals, like, oh, you're making me, you're making me unhappier by the minute. Like, he knows who that is. They go to the studio. We have the reference of the film thing back in the car.

The darling of millions has put us in one hell of a mess. Can you imagine what would happen if the news gets out? She's shacking up with the number one gangster. If those pictures get out, when lose or draw, the public is going to tear her to pieces. And the sponsor in the network will not be happy. What does Marlow want? Same thing I've wanted from the beginning. Or she wouldn't give me the right to act in her best interests.

And so I think that is the core, right? Why is he in this? Why is he still involved? And it's like he sees someone, a woman specifically, in trouble. He wants to help her, even though she won't help herself. I think that's the like Philip Marlowe guarantee. Speaking of guarantees. What you're priced.

A hundred a day and expenses. Yes. Perfect. You love to hear. Now, when he changes his name, 10 years from now, he doubles there, right? Which makes sense. There's inflation. It's five years from now when he starts his new life.

Right. So five years from now. Maybe he realized that if he wants to be, if he wants to not work all the time, he needs to charge more for when he does work. Yes. But then he doesn't over the course of the next 20 years change it at all. Right. Which is not a good 20 years to stay at the 200 a day.

I'm just saying. Yeah. Like, we can't, we can't second guys. the man. He makes his own houses. The other thing that he wants is a letter that he's employed. So that he is employed by this agency to investigate

the attempted blackmail of one of their stars. So he has a dictaphone in the car, which is great. So he dictates a letter and then pops the little tape out and hands it to Marlowe. And then he has to get on a plane. So he's sending

his driver to take Marlowe back to the office to have his secretary transcribe the letter. and then they'll be off to the races. And it's hard to like overstate just how hypnotic this man's voices. The dictation of the letter, it was just soothing. I was just like, yeah, I could watch this for a while. It's good. I could listen to this be the voice of a car.

Right. Yeah. Like if I had to have a voice in my car, which apparently I do nowadays, this is the voice I'd like to constantly tell me that it can't do that. We then have another triumphant musical sting of Marlowe sitting in the sitting in the back of this limo, the driver taking him back to the office. He successfully has gained a client, and he lights up one of Carl's cigars that was in there. But then he makes a face like, ugh.

It does not like it. It's good. Again, good business. All right. Marlowe tracks down Mavis on set, shows her the letter showing that he is now employed to act in her best interest. She tries to get him to leave her alone. and he shows her one of the photos. So they go back to her dressing room so they can talk privately.

He asks if she loves Stilgrave and she says she's not willing to give him up. So what's the difference? Which is a very noiry bit, I think. Right, yeah. Like love, I don't know about that, but I'm not letting go of him. And that's what's important. She says she doesn't know who took the pictures. She doesn't know who's trying to blackmail her.

He asks if Steelegrave killed Hicks and she, She says that Steelegrave didn't know that there were even pictures until Marlowe came to her place to ask her to tell her about it, which is after Higgs's death. So that leaves the blackmailer being the theoretical suspect for that murder. He asked her to put her cards down on the table. It'll make this whole thing a lot easier. And she just says, goodbye, Mr. Marlowe. That's all he's going to get out of her for now. Then we go to the doctor.

My note here is remember him? Yeah, I was like, what, do we finally get his deal? Yeah, kind of played by Paul Stevens, who has also been in the Rockford Files. He was George Wells in the Girl and the Bay City Boys Club. I think that's the... That was a very early one place, I think. I don't remember what character. Maybe that's the brother, because isn't it that where, like, the brother is kidnapped or something like that?

And his sister to get, hires Jim, something like that. And then he's also returned to the 30th parallel. he's he's a main character in that one too again i recognize these names but not the character yeah but not the role uh john stabila i think he's like the the heavy or the gangster or whatever in that one anyway yes so another recognizable face all right so marlowe has gone to his office dr vincent lagarty he's looking for oren quest uh lagarty says the name is unfamiliar the deal there's like an observation room of like little kids yeah we keep getting that when we see So he kind of explains.

He's like a child psychologist, essentially. It's like his deal. Marlowe lays out some of the info here, says that Orrin's sister said that he's hiding out here and the doctor doesn't know these people. I think you're wasting your time. There's a good beat. And then Marlowe, you don't mind if I call you a liar. Do you, Doc?

It's a good line. And we have a classic, Jim tells us what he knows, scene. Yes. I had the same thing. I was like, okay, this is where we spill it, we spilled the, the plot here. So that the audience can get a recap of where we're at, because we're like two thirds of the way through the movie. Yeah, we're about to start act three, I think, or something like that, yeah.

I think he says something like I, you know, I deal with children who have disruptive attitudes or something like that. Sometimes you just have to let them scream it out. So scream away. Yeah. Okay, so Hicks and so Claussen is the manager that was the first one who was killed. Right. Hicks and Klausen have both been killed. Klausen because he probably can't keep his mouth shut. He's a junkie. If he knows something, he can't be trusted to keep it secret. Hicks

because of some schick. All right. So what was the schick? So some, some con, some action. Hicks had some photographs that someone could make a fortune from. Who took the photographs? Let's say Orrin Quest took those photographs. Maybe he knew the girl. And then he says, maybe it's his sister. This is something that I felt was like, is he fishing? Is he trying to get the doctor to say something? I don't think there's been anything about... Yeah, yeah, we haven't connected. He hasn't seen the picture yet, right?

Because there's a picture he sees that reveals... Right, but he hasn't seen that yet either. Yeah, yeah. So I think it's maybe just to get that into the plot. Yeah, that could be. They say the Steelgrave gang was taught this ice pick technique by a young medical intern in Brooklyn. And then we get these buzzing... sounds in the soundtrack, and we realize that the cigarette that he's accepted from the doctor,

which he almost rejected and then decided to take it anyway, which is a great type. Yes. Is laced with something. Oh, no. This is, again, this is very rockford. I don't think he's ever been drugged via a cigarette, but like, he does get drugged from time to time. Like, there's, I mean, it's a noir thing. But, yeah, yeah, for sure.

And, like, the craft of this scene where, like, we get the buzzing in the soundtrack and we start to get the wobbly camera. It's good. It's like really, it's not too, it's not like cheesy anymore than that kind of thing ever is. I think the sound design in particular is very affecting. So, yeah. You're onto it before he is. You're onto it right before he is.

Yeah. Yeah. That's great. What happens to a bright young medic like that? Does he come west when they do? Does he? Open up a legitimate clinic for kids to cover illegal activities. And we get wavy camera work while this doctor just smiles and then takes the cigarette from his

hands where he's kind of like woozy and starting to sway back and forth. And he says, don't worry, Marlowe, it's not fatal. I just need a little more time. And then we have a great camera shot of Marlowe falling, and then we switch to an overhead shot, and we see him sprawled on the floor. Orange carpet. Orange Shag carpet. Yes. Yeah. It's good.

It's good. We cut down to close up to see him twitching and struggling to get up. And then we cut back to the same overhead shot, and it's night. Office is empty. Great way to indicate that he's been out past time. And he's woozy. He's getting to his feet. Then we hear two gunshots.

And he sees and here's something being dragged behind a door on like the second floor that's over the where there's like a walkway around where he's at the like reception area or whatever. He makes his way up there. He opens it. And the young man we've been seeing who took the pictures who was lurking outside of Hatch's place has blood all over his shirt and he falls forward on to Marlowe. And then his hand, which is up high out of the frame, swings down and it's holding a nice pick. Yeah. And stabs into Barlow's back. That was surprising.

That got me. I was like, ah. It's a very horror movie kind of, yeah. So it kind of like shoves him down the stairs, painfully pulls this pick out of his back. It clearly just fell. He wasn't, he's already dead, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

And he goes in to check out the room. We see a camera. We see a telephoto lens. And we see a picture stuck on the mirror. A big black and white that has Mavis. It has this kid. his this is indeed orrin quest and alpha may and stuck on the mirrors you know we see his facials as he responds to noticing it and then understanding what it is so so the the picture

doesn't have orin in it oh right it doesn't have oran in it you're right it has the ma it has their mom yeah their mom alpha may and uh mavis right because earlier alpha may part of her exposition was about ma on the porch and that has come up a couple times as like a phrase. Yeah, so I apologize. But we put it together and he explains it for us also. I just realized as I looked for that, that I did in fact have an earlier screenshot that I did not send you that I'm going here we go. Oh, good. A little chicken broth. Takes a little chicken broth up there. It's a little chicken broth up there with his two glasses of various liquors. Well, it's like one might be ice water, but the other one is clearly like he has like a red wine with this chicken broth and like two rolls.

and like flowers on the table. Like, he's, he is wearing a bow tie, a black bowtie to have chicken broth. They don't make him like this anymore, you know? Wow. Just wow. Anyway, uh, yeah. So our plot has really thickened. And I got to say at this point, I'm like, I have no idea what's going on.

Yeah. So we have the revelation that Alpha Mae and Mavis are sisters. This is their brother. He was the one taking pictures of his own. own sister, right? Mm-hmm. And also presumably murdering these other guys, because he's holding the ice pick. He's hiding with the doctor.

The doctor is connected to the steel case gang. Yeah. Presumably, but not with anything we've seen in the text, just from what we've been told. So, sure, fine. There's still, like, stuff that we need to discover. We don't know the story yet. Yeah, yeah. There was a certain point earlier in the movie where I was kind of expecting, like,

the mysterious third concern. concern to come in. Yeah. You know? Like, I was like, there's one too many people here for this all just to be about, like, steel case and his gang. Steel grave. Sorry, steel grave.

I keep saying steel case because steel case is a furniture company. Yes. And they're like a very designery company. So I have art school holdover brain damage. And so it's, I keep saying steel case. Still grave. Like the steel of the grave. You know, a thing that people say.

Yeah, that common phrase. Right. Yeah, so I was like, is the doctor, like a different, like, vector? Like, is there another gang that's going to be involved? Is there something else? Like, I was waiting for, like, another element that we hadn't seen yet. And so here I'm like, okay, so now these are tying together. So I guess there's not going to be another left field.

I mean, they're kind of is. But, like, we've met everyone we're going to meet. We don't need, we're not going to meet any more people. All right, we go to a nightclub with a big marquee for Dolores Gonzalez. Yeah. She is a exotic dancer who is apparently the headliner for this whole burlesque review. Yeah. So he goes backstage, finds Dolores.

Well, there's, like, business about her coming off stage, changing costumes. Like, we have a lot more, like, just watching some stuff happen at the beginning of the scene in this part of the movie. We're going to be talking long enough. We don't need to go through all of that. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, so Marlowe comes backstage and has Dolores tend his wound? Yes. She's like, you should get a tetanus shot.

This looks deep. So this is where her and this other girl are in the room, and the other girl is helping tend Marlowe's wound and also making eyes at him and being like, ooh. They keep making jokes like, nurse so-and-so you wanted elsewhere, or like they keep trying to get her out of the way. He wants to find Mavis. She wants to know, why should I turn her over to you?

And his response, because under those pasties, you've got a size 40 heart. They have some flirty banter while he gets patched up. Will you come back tonight? Am I under oath? Sure. Probably not. She'll be shooting late at the studio.

We're done. Like, the flirting is done. Okay, we're moving, you know. And then the other girl gives him, like, some kind of banter on the way out as he leaves. And we end the scene with Dolores telling her, Honey, that's a no-no. Yeah. Like, back off.

Yeah. All right. We are getting into it now. The studio, Marlowe appears to tell Mavis that her brother is dead. Someone shot him a couple of hours ago. He shows her the picture that he found and says that he has to tell Orfame, her sister, as well. Do you want to come along? She's very non-committal.

He asks where a steel grave is. And she says, not to blame him. I talked to him an hour ago, and he's some remote location, you know, implying he could not have been the one who killed Orrin. And Marlowe has a good, he's never around on the shooting starts. Maybe that's because he always knows when it's going to start. Mm-hmm. Good line.

Marlowe goes to look for Orfamay at the girls club. I think I mentioned this earlier, just this business where the woman at the counter is like, oh, hello, how can I help you? Like, it's very specifically. She's already checked out She got a ticket back to Kansas There's another bit where the doors to like a gymnasium are open And there's a volleyball game going on in there

So the volleyball comes sailing out And he like fields it and tosses it back to them And all the women are there like ooh wow The Philip Marlow Just got giggling at this handsome devil tossing their volleyball back to them Like it didn't strike me as weird Like I mean it's clearly a theme

Yeah But it is kind of funny going back over it and how often that's just like, and we'll have a bunch of women giggling in this scene, too. I love this next scene. He finds Orfamay at the train station. She's run out of money and friends, and her train leaves in an hour. So leave her alone. He is being nice to her as she's trying to get to, you know, get him to back off.

So it's an inversion of their previous dynamic. There's like a little counter like in the train, in the like atrium of the station where they go, they order hot chocolate for her and coffee for him. And the staging of this. This is amazing. So they're sitting on either. So it's just like a counter with like a bunch of people sitting around it and they're getting snacks and drinks. There's a woman who's sitting there with a drink and a cigarette.

Her sunglasses are on at night. And she's just kind of like waiting for the train or whatever. Marlowe and Orfa May sit on either side of this woman. She's leaning down a little bit. So they're talking literally over her head. I'm sick of this stupid city. It can be a meat grinder. How come you're being so nice to me all of a sudden?

Oh, I get an attack of the nicest every now and then. You're getting ready to tell me something, that's it, isn't it? Yeah. It's about orange, isn't it? Yeah. They killed him, didn't they? Yeah. This woman's like, huh?

And they continue talking, and she continues sitting there. You're saying he was alive when Marlowe got there with an ice pick in his hand. Do you know anything about these ice pick murders? And she says, why shouldn't I? They're all over the papers. And that's when she yells, there's a beat cop sitting across on the other side of the counter enjoying a hot dog. Halfway through his hot dog. Hey, officer, this man knows about a murder.

Take him downtown or arrest him. And this cop is like, what? The most naturalistic, like, I'm on my break lady. You know, kind of response. It's so funny. you need to arrest him. And he says, she putting me on and Marlowe says,

I was just about to go to homicide. Yeah. It is a very Rockford scene. The woman in the middle, as this conversation boils up, and it just gets more and more alarming. Like, serious. Yeah.

Wait, do you see somebody was murdered? And then it turns out that Rockford was there. And like, it's, or not Rockford. Oh, man. Marlowe was there. And she just starts getting, like, more and more concerned. And then the inclusion of this cop, which, like you said, didn't, it was like, I don't,

I don't need to be involved in whatever argument you're having. And then, oh, now I have to be involved in whatever argument you're having. And we have a joke in the cut. There's a joke in the cut. I was just about to go to homicide, cut to at the station, Marlowe's sitting down in the chair with Lieutenant French coming in to talk to him. Oh, it's so good. We have some banter before getting down to business.

Marlowe's like, you ask the questions, I'll answer them. If you don't like the answers, book me. And then I get a phone call. This is a little more like conversation so we get more idea of what's going on. He went to the clinic. He got stabbed by the dying oar inquest. I don't know why. Maybe he thought I was the one who shot him.

He was dying. And a man like that is acting from instinct. And his instinct was ice pick. I think he committed those other murders. He asked if they have anything on the doctor. We're checking, and he says, well, he could have killed me and didn't, which means he probably didn't kill anybody, fair. And finding an ice pick in his place made me think of Steelgrave.

Oh, now, that's pretty wild, Mala, that connection, you know. Or would I do myself any good if I went out and tried to tighten it up? I won't leave time. Yeah, and they cut him loose. Yeah, that's the kind of relationship they have. We don't have any particular reason to keep you, and maybe you'll shake something up doing what you're doing. He does ask for a last favor to keep.

Orfamay around for a day or two. I forget exactly what he says. Something about, like, waiting around to see him get his comeuppance in some way. Right. Okay. Back to his ruined office. I mean, because, yeah, of course. Yeah.

He's going to fix it up. I think this is the most noir, noir, noir, qua noir scene, right? It's still carpeted and broken glass. He's crunching as he walks over it. Who actually goes into the desk in the Chuck's room. Again, he doesn't keep anything important on him. So it goes to the desk in Chuck's room that he can. unlock with the key and takes the photos out.

That's where they've been. That's where he got mailed. Yeah, yeah. Goes back, since behind his overturned desk, gets the waistbasket, tears the photos up, throws them in, pours in a little bit of his half full glass that was still sitting there from when Bruce Lee was there. And then gets the negatives.

And there's a moment. And then he lights the negatives and then throws the whole thing in the, in the waist basket so that everything goes up in flames. I have a screenshot. Of course. Might be one of the all-time grades right here, if I do say so myself. I mean, it's not the chicken broth, but, oh, that's a good one. Yeah.

Pulls out his gun. So he's poured himself a fresh drink. The flames are going. He hears a noise, so he turns and pulls out his gun. So he's his gun in one hand, glass of liquor in the other with the fire in the waistbasket. And his desk at a sick ankle because it's broken, like along with everything else in the room. Absolutely. incredible. Just realized that like part of his office is, it's like underneath a staircase or something.

Yeah, the ceiling is slanted down like he's underneath. Yeah, like he's in a crawl space almost. Okay. All right. And who's coming in? It's Dolores. It's the party over. It's an average day in a detective's life. I've been stabbed, snubbed, and generally snookered. That's good. It's a good line. This is very rock pretty to be. Like, this is a very, uh, cannell or chase kind of line, I think. Mm-hmm. I'm almost afraid to ask why you're here. I'm almost afraid to tell you. It's Mavis. She tried to call Marlowe, couldn't find him, called her. During this conversation, she comes around the desk and starts giving him like a neck rub.

I'm like, it's a Rita Jim back rub. Like, it just, it's a beautiful thing. I got a little worried because he was stabbed in the back not too long ago. All my clients are in trouble. That's why they come to me? And she says, why bother? What do you get out of it? stock options pension plan so she's like next to him kind of laughs a little bit and then her head

is like sideways next to his head and then she kind of comes in and he turns and they go in for the kiss that we know they've both been waiting for it is an uncomfortable situation but they clearly are like going for it right yeah so it's awkward in terms of the physical staging but they don't need to change how they're sitting to like start getting into it because that's how they're feeling right now. So it's good. Good for them. Or truly. And then we cut to an overhead shot

of the two of them leaving this building. And I think it was the doctor we see on another level above watching them leave. I wasn't sure if it was him or Steel Grave, but I think it's the doctor. Yeah, given how this whole thing ends. Yeah. They are

in Dolores's convertible. They're talking. It was a message that got left for Dolores because she was on stage that was saying, get Marlowe, I need him now. We get some more mention about her and Mavis go way back. And she drives Marlowe out to Steelgrave's place up in the hills as the sun sets. This is like they've driven away from the movie Marlowe and into a Hitchcock film. It does look like a Hitchcock film. Yeah, it looks like it kind of looks like the cabin area in North by Northwest is what it reminded me.

Yeah, yeah. The lights are on. He's not alone in there. She's there, too. Yes, we're all his troops. And she says that now and then he likes to be alone. Are you speaking from experience? We learned that once upon a time, Steelegrave was hers until Mavis came along.

Mavis. Mavis. She tells Marlowe to be careful in there. She'll wait. And he says, no, no, go home. Get out of here. And she drives away. So, you know, fair enough.

No romanticism from Dolores, I don't think. Yeah. Walks up to the house, we see Mavis' car, and we have a very dramatic sequence here of him pulling out his gun. So he goes in, and then we have a dramatic shot through a glass door, where again, we see the reflection. So we see what he's seeing next to his face. And he's seeing Mavis sitting in a chair, not moving. She doesn't respond to him. She's in this big white fur coat.

He goes over to her finally. And we have this moment, I think, on purpose, where it's like, you know, is she dead? At least I had that moment. I don't know if you did. Yeah, yeah, I did too, yeah. But he's more in shock, I guess. He gets her to take a drink. It kind of brings her out of it.

And the first thing she says to him is, you're rather nice for who you are. I don't know for what you are. Yeah, you're rather nice for, I think that, I mean... That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. I do want to point out the fireplace. The fireplace, I think, is the star of the scene.

It's a giant... It's like a fire pit. It's like a fire pit. Yeah, circular pit in the middle of the room with the chimney coming down over it. I love it. Very 60s. He calls her out that she's stalling for time, either for someone to come or someone to go. Where's Steelegrave? And she responds with, I liked him. I liked him a lot. And she hands him this little pearl-handed revolver of hers, perhaps a 32. He says he's in the other chair in the corner. It's been one hell of a day. And so he turns the chair around. And sure enough,

there's Steelegrave dead in the chair. What did you expect? He killed my brother. So they have this whole back and forth about what happened. Did you tell Steelegrave? Of course not. Well, someone did. Steelgrave was only trying to protect Mavis. So there's this weird kind of, not really inversion. There's this kind of weird dynamic where he's like, you went overboard.

And she's like, he killed my brother. And I'm the one who went overboard. And he's like, he was just trying to protect you, which I think is a, an impulse that Marlowe finds noble. Right. Right. sitting here today I'm like I don't know man I don't think like that's not an excuse they're equally culpable here he says it'll cost a lot to fix this and she says I'm not worth it he asks if she intended to kill him and she says why not I thought I meant something to him I guess I was a little vain and he fooled me I guess he is still acting you know in her interest right he's still working for her essentially so he hustles her out tells her to go home says she's his client Right. You're not, you're my client. Get out of here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

My official advice is get out. We have some music come up as she, as her car pulls away. Marlowe cleans up, cleans prints off of things and empties out glasses. He takes the little, the revolver, puts it in Steelgrave's hand, shoots it out the window so that he has powder on his hand or whatever. It falls to the ground. And that's when Marlowe calls for homicide. So there's a thing that goes on in the scene where he's wiping everything down. but like getting his fingerprints all over everything that like I was like what is going on but right when he made the calls when I realized oh he's getting rid of evidence of her being there right right but he's here like there's no need for him to wipe his fingerprints off of things we cut to a close-up on the revolver and the sergeant picking it up like the pencil through the trigger guard sniffs it and goes oh yeah this baby's been working yeah oh this scene Marlowe is snacking on nuts while Lieutenant French asks him the story.

We have a good sparring of trying to get the story out of Marlowe. He clearly is holding something back. And we get to, okay, Fred, put the cuffs on this guy behind him. Yes. So sure, okay. They're finally going to take him downtown. You know, like, I'm, I feel like this, I've been waiting for this beat where, like, the cops, like, arrest our detective. But then we get into a.

Portrait of a man under too much stress. Yes. With poor Lieutenant Christy French. Oh, that's so good. And it starts off with, you know how I spend my days turning over dirty underwear? My nights, I spend sniffing rotten teeth. Which is like, I wonder if that's in the book because that is so it's good. Yeah, I just say that he works himself into a hell of a rant.

I'll cut in some of it. I get a confession from some guy. They swear I beat it out of the bastard. See, nothing I do is right. Never. Not once. And I make one mistake. I'm back in uniform. I'm out on the streets with the hook is yelling at me. I'm taking tire chains away from tough kids. And that's not enough on my plate, though. I gotta have you. I got to have me a Sharpie with a private license, suppressing information, concealing evidence. Framing setup that wouldn't fool a baby. You wouldn't mind Marlowe? If I'd call you a cheap double-crossing keyhole people, would you? You want me to mind? I love it. I love it. Okay, then I'm mine. Your license is dead as of now. This encounter with Marlowe is, I guess, is bringing to a head all the frustrations that he has with, like, having to abide by the law in the pursuit of justice. He talks about, like, he's going to get in trouble no matter how the outcome, you know, like, you can't play it right. He's a very frustrated person.

I think it's, it's fun to think of him in contrast with Chapman and Deal. Chapman and Deal are contrasted with each other as well. like Chapman is Chapman has a personal distaste Yeah and Deal is like I don't I can't believe I have to deal with this

Yeah This one French and Marlowe have a relationship That is a working If not friendly relationship That boils to the head So it's like

I can't imagine this scene Playing out between Deal and Rockford Or Chapman and Rockford Yeah Because they get to release This all the time French doesn't

Like, he works with Marlowe. Like, he lets Marlowe get away with things or whatever, like, because you know it's going to be helpful. But, like, at this point, he's, yeah, hit his edge. Clearly, something's happened, and you are lying about it. And I know you're lying. Like, he knows that this, like, oh, maybe he shot himself with this little gun. Like, that clearly didn't happen. But, you know, so that's been, been manufactured.

But what, he's supposed to believe that. Framing setups that wouldn't fool a baby. Oh, and then. So he starts getting in Marlowe's face and he's like, your license is dead. So they have like a confrontation. And Fred, the sergeant, yes, Sergeant Beefus, gets in between them and starts to try to talk French down. And you kind of get the sense that he's seen this happen before. I'm waiting for this bird to crack wise.

He hasn't cracked wise yet. The bright repartee. You're not so fast on the quick stuff. Will you set the hell up? You need an excuse to break me in a half. I don't need any excuse. This gets to a fever pitch. The sergeant's like pushing him.

back, telling him to calm down, and then he throws a punch, and he punches the sergeant. Yes. And there's a pause, and then the sergeant goes. Well, yeah, it's a new type of third degree. The police beat the hell out of each other, and the suspect cracks up from the agony of watching. It never fails. Oh, so good. And then we have this great...

I knew I hit for it. Nobody hit me, Christy. Nobody I can remember. Yeah. We're just going to let this go. I know it's not about me. Yeah. And we end with him with French keeping tight control of himself saying, all right, Marlowe, you leave right now.

You get your ass home and I'll be in very close touch. And Fred grabs his arm and is like, yeah, go right now. I don't have a car. Try hitchhiking and don't push your luck. It's good. It's like, it's good. It's kind of isolated from the story. Like this could be in lots of different kind of, I guess, movies.

But we've seen enough of their interactions. to, like, kind of see where this all came from. Yeah, it's nicely woven into the whole thing, right? Like, it just, yeah. But it's, like, mostly just a character moment. Like, again, there's no, like, plot relevant stuff. So in that sense, it's kind of, like, padding, I guess. But I don't know, it's kind of like, here, do some acting.

Like, let's see some acting happen. It's a great little excuse for that. It does serve a certain purpose because we need Marlow free at the moment. And so the couple of times that Lieutenant French has let Marlowe go off and do his own thing, this moment where Marlowe is found with the dead body and it's a clear frame up, you know, like it's a clear, clearly he set the stage or whatever. Yeah. He cannot be let go free. Like, they cannot look away from it. So what they do is they have this, he blows up in a way that means, like the blow up makes it possible to get Marlowe out of there and not put.

put them in a cell right like it becomes a uh yeah that's a good like fictional excuse for why marlowe it's still at large and it and it's a good way of escalating and not just being another like all right we'll go see what you find because we've already done that yeah exactly i think right so like yeah doing that a third time starts to feel like what is what are we even doing here uh yeah why is this cop even in this movie yeah uh so that's a good point all right we go from that emotional high to another one where Marlowe is going home there's a bottle of milk on his doorstep

a classic classic touch I love to see it but he goes inside and his place has been tossed but Orfamay is there and she's asking where are they? He responds now that your brother's dead you're going to blackmail your sister huh so she's looking for the pictures well I burned them and they made a pretty

flame and that's when Mavis appears this gets to be a very chaotic scene very quickly but this is our first conference of the two sisters, as we know that they're sisters now. They both know that their brother is dead. Mavis wants Orfamay's purse and rests away from her and pulls a big wad of cash out of it, tosses it to Marlowe and says, you told Steelegrave, I mean, she calls him Sunny,

you told Sunny where Orrin was hiding, I smelled your little girl smell in his place. Like, she has like a lavender scent that, uh, that Mavis recognized. How much did he pay you to tell? And Marlowe riffles sort of looks like an even thousand. Tensions are running high, but we also get exposition about, like, what actually happened, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. And the perfume was set up because Marlowe comments on it early.

Yeah, Marlowe comments on Mavis's smell. He's like, I like, like, oh, that's right. Right. So it's thematically set up. It's not set up as a clue. Yeah. Yeah. So what we learn here basically is Oren took these pictures of his sister and this gangster and was planning to use them to blackmail her, told Orfamay about it and was going to split whatever the proceeds with Orfamay.

But I'm a little unclear amazed from my note taking. I guess Oren like went back on it or like never sent her the money, right, or something like that. And that's why, like, he dropped out of contact. And that's why she came to find him and ended up hiring Marlowe. Then she saw Oren. He said he'd lost the pictures so he couldn't execute on the plan, which I guess is the other guy stole them, I guess. Yeah, Grant Hicks must have stolen them. Like, Grant Hicks is the one with the pictures.

Well, he's the one with the receipt to get the pictures. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's. So that part's a little unclear. But anyway, yeah, so Orrin's like, I don't have the pictures anymore. She thought that he was lying and it's like, well, I'm going to tell Steelegrave unless you do that, you know, cut me back in and he doesn't. So she takes a taxi to see Steelegrave and she says, and you know how expensive that was to tell him where Orrin was that Orrin's hiding with this doctor. And then she told Marlowe because that's, I guess, when she came to his place, right?

But she didn't know he's going to take so long to. get there. Things just got out of hand, right? Right. So she wasn't like, I wanted my brother to die, but she did sick the mobster on him. She got her money from the mobster. And she got her money, right. She got the thousand from the mobster. Yeah. So her gamble here is... And then by telling Marlowe, that would save Orrin. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Which explains her attitude to Marlowe throughout, right? In the beginning, she's very angry that he won't do it. She gets very desperate to get him to try and find.

And he just absolutely won't. And then after Oren has been killed, she has wants nothing to do with Marlowe. She just wants to go back to Kansas. Yeah. But then Mavis says that. And then you killed Sonny. You took the pistol out of my apartment. Who else could have done that?

And she says that I didn't know anything about that. And they have a big knockdown brawl. Clearly these two sisters have had this tension over years. Kind of like, you think you're better than us. Well, I always tried to take care of you. like that kind of stuff. Yeah. And they start fighting.

And Marlowe ends up literally pulling Orfame off of Mavis, tossing her out onto like the sidewalk or the little steps outside of his place. And she's like sobbing. And he tosses the wad of money after her and goes, Kansas is due east. Closes the door. Exit Orfame. There's a wonderful moment. And I do not remember it's between Marlowe and one.

of them. And I, it might have been Orphama, I think it's Orphemy, where she's like, and you, who are you? And he said, nobody. And she's like, that's right, a nobody, a cheap nobody. And she says, I said it first, which I love that exchange. Like, I just like, like, no, you're not insulting me. I already said it. I earned, I, uh, I own that. Back inside, he kind of comforts Mavis. She really thought that Orphamay killed Steelgrave. So she staged that whole thing last night for Marlowe's benefit, right? Yeah. Like to protect Orphamay.

Orphamette, yeah. But Marlowe knew that she didn't do it because she didn't have like graphite on her hands from the pistol or whatever. So she thought Orphamay did it. Orfamay denies doing it. They both know Mavis didn't do it. So who did? Marlowe says to just forget it.

You have plenty of time and he has some lines here about like, You have all these advantages. You're a star. Everybody loves you. Make it work for you. Basically, like, just walk away. Yeah, yeah. And her final line to him is, you're something else, Philip Marlowe.

And then he gets a frowny thinking face. Yeah, I said, you got that. Rockford doesn't like what he's thinking. Look. Again, it's Marlowe, not Rockford. Cannot separate the two of my head. That look is iconic. All right.

So like him, we're sitting here. going, okay, so if neither of the sisters killed him, who did, who else is still in our story? Obviously, it's beefish. Beefs, it was definitely beef, and this baby's been doing some work. So we cut to Marlowe at Dolores's show. He walks through the audience and up towards the stage, and so she does in his side, so she's performing, she's on stage in her, at the beginning of this, of this, of this, tripties routine.

Yeah. They're like, we have Rita Moreno. Let's use Rita Marino. Right, right. Yeah. We don't waste a Moreno if we can help it. What follows is like a Marlowe interrogation of Rita, of Dolores. While Dolores is putting on her burlesque show.

So she's on stage stripping things off. And then making comments to the backstage and answering or replying to things that Marlowe is saying from, you know, stage right or stage left or whatever, you know, like, uh, and he is also like taking her costume pieces and handing out props. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's amazing business. It's great. Yeah, the scene is, is really, really fun to watch well staged.

Um, there's an aside from the stage while he walks up to it where she goes, our night. And he replies, all ours. And she gives it, gets a big grin. Yeah, my note is we get to enjoy some stage show. during this um so yeah this conversation again it's impossible to replicate you just have to watch it but the yeah we're not going to do it justice because neither one of us is rita morano doing up our i mean you sell yourself short um all right so there's one piece missing to this whole story and that's lagarty it would help if he used to be your husband say back in brooklyn young doctor

with a mob a wife like you and a man like steel grade it makes a tidy fact The streets are paved With forgotten husbands One of my new top 10 favorite lines in cinema The streets are paved with forgotten husbands That's so good So good She must have loved him a lot

My husband? No, Steelgrave So whoever killed him Had to be someone who knew both him and Mavis Had access to Mavis's apartment And could get her a gun Because he was killed with that gun Yeah And that comes

up you. So we've gone through the flirty banter part and now to be like, okay, this is what happened part where we get a little more, I think, real emotion out of Dolores where he's like not playing around. I mean, like, as you pointed out, this is a nice echo of like just about every interaction they had where it starts with this flirty thing. And then there's a moment where it's like, okay, now we're serious and we drop it. And we keep doing it again. Except while this is happening, she's still on stage partway to her burlesque. Yeah, she still has more to go, but yeah, she's down to pasties. She's down to pasties and like, yeah.

Beads of some sort. Like I said, Mabas is a nice girl, but why should she get all the goodies? You went through a lot of trouble. And there's nothing you can do about it is there. Unless you want to destroy her. And you wouldn't do that. Would you, you dream of those great big eyes of hers? And so I think just in that exchange, we get the whole, like, Mavis swans in and takes the thing that Dolores wanted.

She did it with Steelgrave, and now she's done it with Marlowe. And Dolores just can't, you know, was driven past the brink, I guess, by that having this all being happening again. And that is when we see the doctor. her husband sneaks backstage ominously. Marlowe leaves. So he goes out into the crowd and we have a moment where part of the act that she brings this big picture frame, she's behind a scrim and she brings this big picture frame.

And so she's like a shadowed figure. A silhouette. A silhouette taking off the rest of her stuff in this frame. It's a literally framed center stage. And then the scrim goes up and she comes out and it's the big finale of the act. While she finishes this, Marlowe walks across the audience area to a phone. A pay phone, yeah. He calls for homicide.

And that's when the doctor walks out of the wing right where Marlowe had been standing and shoots Dolores, two shots right in front of everybody, and then stumbles back into the wing and over to a wall. And then we hear another shot and see his face. And so he has also killed himself. as part of this act. They're screaming. Everyone's running around.

As he collapses, he drags his fingernails down a chalkboard. Uh, yeah. Anyways. Yeah. As his phone calls being answered, Marlowe just drops it. He doesn't even hang it up. He just drops the phone. And walks away.

And we end our movie with the credits playing as we watch Marlowe get his car from the valet and drive away into the night. So is it his car? or is it Dolores's car? That was the thing we were trying to figure out when we were watching it. Well, he was driving his own car in the first scene.

So, and it was a top-down convertible. So I just assumed that he was his car. Yeah, yeah, it was his car. It'd be awesome if he just got into a firebird. Yes, that would be more evidence of my theory. Yeah, end a movie. The trailer ends with Rita Moreno getting shot. Oh.

She gets shot in the trailer. trailer and they do like a red outline of her body yeah and that flies like an animation of the red outline of her body flies towards the camera like in a very 60s like yeah almost hcockian kind of thing you know but it's like you just showed the last shocking moment of the film yeah i think as soon as uh the doctor appeared i was like oh this isn't going to go well yeah yeah this is not nobody wins Yeah, no one wins here. Yeah, it definitely has the bummer ending that I think only the rare Rockford Files would embrace. Stylistically, this is a noir ending.

No one gets what they want. I guess Orfamee, maybe, but like, I guess her brother's dead. She got some money. But other than that, yeah. I mean, presumably Marlowe gets paid by the agency. Yeah. So his $100 a day plus expenses. Kept her out of it.

so yeah well done so good there i guess um but yeah uh good movie yeah i really enjoyed this film i enjoyed it this is a recommend for me mm-hmm like i said i went and like looked at some of the reviews from the time just because i was like looking up other things about the film and i was like a little taken aback by how generally they just didn't care for it like and i'm like do you not enjoy fun things like what's what's your problem i mean i guess I would have to look at some of them, just because, like, it wasn't noir-y enough or... Yeah, all I saw was, like, the summary of them in, like, the Wikipedia. So it was, like, I think it was they were looking for more of a noir.

Also, like, as James Garner pointed out in his biography, Philip Marlowe is a character that was played by Humphrey Bogart, right? Like, they had already... I was trying to think of, like, an example of a character, you know, like, I guess Bond is a good example. Like, you know, sometimes somebody steps into the role of a bond and you're just like, that is not exactly the person that was in it previously. So I'm not going to enjoy that. But, yeah, this I did enjoy very much. I think this is fun. I think that like doing these once every six months, you know, fitting it into our busy schedule.

Yeah, we'll do what we can. my only yeah just kind of doing the whole like thinking back over it thing the i guess the idea is that what kicks off the whole thing is that oren has come into the orbit of steel grave and is like yeah a hitman for him basically because the whole thing with the ice pick thing is like the signature thing of his gang yeah and then the actual murders that happen are directly because of the pictures that oren has been taking and thus is going to use them because he finds out about it because it's his boss, I guess. And then he murders the first guy to cover up where he was before he goes to hide with the doctor. Right. And then he murders the second guy

because the second guy knows where the pictures are being developed. Right. Got the, yeah. Right. So okay. All right. Yes. Orin's a bad person. Orin's a bad person. But like those murders are on, as far as we know, are on his, he's trying to cover his. own trail. It's not on behalf of the gang or whatever. Yeah. It's a lot of people with personal interests that are at odds with each other. Which are our favorite thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That works for me. I'll buy that. Yeah. Yeah. Not that we need to solve the puzzle, but that's always what my brain wants to do. Yeah. The style of this movie was unexpected. It has a lot more flair to it than I was expecting in a really fun way.

It just is really well made. You know, there's some stuff where it's like this was on a soundstage, like, sure. But, yeah, yeah, I really enjoyed it. I liked almost all of the gags. Yeah. Like, I think those are fun. If you're not looking for gags, I can understand why that would, you know, frustrate you. The run times in hour 36, which is just a few minutes longer than the perfect movie length.

Yeah. of 80 minutes so that's good yeah definitely doesn't drag the pacing's really good no it doesn't there was some stuff where I said there's some filler here but more so that we would have more to visually enjoy

not because they I don't think because they had to like pat out runtime in particular it's good recommend worth renting if you're a DVD person I think probably worth getting the DVD just to have the nicer quality version maybe I'll definitely watch it again

Like, I don't think this is a thing that's going to sit on my shelf unopened. It's a fun kind of, like, deep cut. Like, if you're into this kind of thing, oh, have you seen the 1969 Marlowe with James Garner? And the person says, no, and you go, well, you're in for a treat, borrow my DVD. Yes. I literally just did that this morning. So, yes, that's exactly what it is. Well, I'm glad we watched it.

It's a nice triumphant return. Yeah. Welcome back to 200 a day. We'll see you in another six months. Another six months maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think like we said, wrapping up our main show, just stay subscribed to the feed. And one of these will drop every so often and it'll be a fun surprise. Until then, I'll try to keep a closer eye on the email. But if you want to see what we're doing elsewhere, the hub for all of our elsewhere stuff is unwritten earths. com. Yeah. Look at that. We're something else now.

Yeah. That has our new podcast. Our new podcast, all about game design and our projects we're working on. It has links to our Discord, where we have an active Discord talking about games, and also media. We have plenty of non-game media discussion over at the Discord. Yeah. You can check that out if that interests you. And also links to our websites and our other stuff.

Do you have anything else to say about Marlowe? No. I did not spend any time learning how to play Little Sister on my recorder, so I can't, like, that would have been a... We'll have to have a special bonus episode once you figure that out. Well, this is certainly long enough, so we'll sign off now, and I believe how you signed this show off? Was it? We'll see you next time. We'll be back next time. That's how we do it.

All right, and so we'll get to our traditional sign-off for this show, where we'll be back next time to talk about another non-episode, but related. to either the actors, characters, or themes of the Rockford Files. Yay! I should have grabbed my recorder for that. Do you want to grab it real quick? I don't know if I could do it well, but we'll see.

Okay. Oh, I messed it up several times there. But that's good. That was good. Good enough. You literally love to hear it.