Adventures In Altman Appraisal: CALIFORNIA SPLIT (1974)

In many ways, Robert Altman’s 1974 rambling ramshackle of a comedy CALIFORNIA SPLIT is the ultimate gambling movie. It gives us a few days in the lives of George Segal and Elliott Gould as compulsive gambler buddies who live, breathe, then almost choke on gambling (well, not really - but they get mugged twice because of it).



We follow the duo as they go on a bender playing poker (the title is slag for high-low-split poker), betting on horses and boxing matches, even waging $20 on a bar bet if they could name the Seven Dwarves, only pausing to have some drunken downtime with Gould’s prostitute room-mates (Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles).

There’s not much of a plot beyond that, but with the backdrop of the gambling scene in Los Angeles and Reno in the early ’70s, and Altman’s trademark overlapping dialogue technique in full bloom (aided by then new eight-track stereo sound), the film gets you caught up in its authentic-feeling flow. And you can almost smell the cigarette smoke, stale alcohol, and sweat in the dingy dives and seedy surroundings in every scene.

Altman pulls off this effect by populating the film with real professional gamblers such as former world champion Amarillo Slim, and extras from Synanon (an organization for ex-addicts), and having them all blab at once (you know, like in real life). Segal and Gould blather on themselves, sometimes scat singing on the side, through the nonstop chatter until they settle on the scenario of making one last score.



Odd characters the pair encounter in their journey through the counter-culture of gaming for high stakes include a young Jeff Goldblum, who would also show up in Altman's next film NASHVILLE; Altman regulars Vincent Palmieri and Jack Riley, and Bert Remsen as a transvestite in possible the movie's oddest scene.

At first I would think that this almost 40 year old film would only appeal students of ‘70s cinema or mostly American or Canadian gamblers, but the citizens from today’s world of online gambling would surely take to the motion picture’s celebration or sorts of being a player, no matter where they hail from.Segal, who blows off his job writing for a magazine, finds himself with a large debt to his bookie Sparkie, played by the film’s screenwriter Joseph Walsh, due to a losing streak he feels was caused by Gould being out of town.

However, in the movie’s Reno casino-set finale, Gould, with a bloody bandage on his nose from a bathroom brawl, comes on like a “cooler” to his friend. Segal, back on a major winning streak, keeps sending Gould away from his table, which gets funnier and funnier as Gould sulks about not having any money, and even tries to get into another game with only a candy bar to gamble with.

A movie as much about the intense highs that people playing these games for a living will experience as it is the crushing lows. Segal is drained empty at the end, and it’s obvious that the gig is up for him. Gould however doesn’t appear to have anything else to do, and his half joke of living at the races for the rest of his life is probably the route he’ll actually take.

In Mitchell Zuckoff’s “Robert Altman: The Oral Biography (2009), Walsh was quoted at length about being disappointed that the director altered the final scene. Walsh: “He didn’t film the ending I wrote…They’re talking to each other at the end and Elliot finally says, ‘You’re going home? Oh yeah, where the fuck do you live?’ I didn’t write that. I’m sitting there thinking, ‘What happened to this character?’”

Reportedly, Segal felt that the character was spent, having won but “there was no special feeling.” Altman agreed and went with that idea much to Walsh’s chagrin.

I can understand the frustration a writer has with having their work changed without their input, but Altman didn’t get where he was by following the letter. CALIFORNIA SPLIT was so loose that at times that it hardly felt like there was a script at all (a lot of it was indeed ad-libbed), so a crucial change that occurred to an actor and approved by the director seems naturally in the spirit of Altman’s entire canon.



Out of print on DVD, CALIFORNIA SPLIT is overdue for a new re-mastered release on home video. It would be a perfect title for the Criterion Collection, as they’ve put out deluxe editions of many choice Altman titles in the last decade. In the meantime, it is available for sale or rent on Amazon Instant Video, and I’ve seen it pop up on Netflix Instant every now and then.



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JURASSIC PARK 3D Doesn't Quite Pop

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

JURASSIC PARK 3D

(Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993)

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, and to create franchise awareness for the big ass IMAX 3D event spectacular JURASSIC PARK IV set for Summer 2014, Steven Spielberg’s action adventure epic has now been outfitted in 3D for a theatrical re-release opening today.

That’s all well and good, but at the advance screening I attended, the image looked faded. The colors were much more vibrant in a revival screening I saw the same week of THE MUPPET MOVIE (part of the Cool Classics series at the Colony Theater in Raleigh), and that was an original 35 mm print 15 years older than JURASSIC PARK! 


I know, I know, it's digital and I can only speak for how it looked at the one screening I saw, so I’ll be curious to know if any other movie-goers experienced such a dim image. When I see TV spots for the film, the color looks over-saturated, as if to make up for the faded picture. But anyway, on to the actual movie.

I could tell from the feel of the packed auditorium (and overhearing some random chatting) that many there had not seen the original JURASSIC PARK before. It has been a long time since I’ve seen it in full, but it has been on television so often that I’m very familiar with large chunks of it.

The Spielberg sense of otherworldly awe, that shined blindingly in such classics as CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND , RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and E.T., takes its last glorious gasp here.

The scene where Richard Attenborough introduces Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and the less famous kids (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello) to the wide landscape of cloned dinosaurs still has jaw-dropping impact, but the 3D-ness present this time is only intermittently effective throughout the film (the shot with the T-rex roaring into the jeep mirror with the disclaimer “Objects may seem closer than they appear” is one effective in-your-face instance). But most of the time, I didn’t even notice it.

The storyline (based on the 1990 novel by Michael Cricton, who co-wrote the screenplay with Spielberg cronie David Koepp) hasn’t really aged well - Billionaire Attenborough brings a team of paleontologists and scientists (Neill, Dern, Goldblum), and a blood-sucking lawyer (Martin Ferrero) to inspect his new cloned dinosaur island theme park, but things go wrong (thanks to the conniving ways of Newman from Seinfeld) and they spend the rest of the movie being chased by CGI dinosaurs - but does it matter with so many genuine thrills on display? No it doesn’t.

It also has a number of entertaining elements such as a pre-PULP FICTION Samuel L. Jackson (“hold on to your butts!”) as the park’s chief engineer, the before mentioned Newman (actually Wayne Knight) providing snotty comic relief (Goldblum provides the more egg-headed kind), and a great suspenseful sequence with the kids trying to escape from a few raptors in the lavish kitchen in the visitor’s center, so the film still largely holds up.

It’s not even that dated - I only noticed Knight drinking a Jolt Cola, and Richards identifying herself as a “hacker” reminded me how new a term that was 20 years ago.

However, over and over I could tell that in this new 3D presentation, the things that got rises from the audience (many of whom were kids) came from Spielberg’s film making drive being in fifth gear, not the 3D enhancement, which, as I said before, didn’t look very good.

If your kids haven’t seen it, or only seen it on TV, a matinee may be in order of Spielberg’s crowd-pleaser, but contrary to Attenborough’s repeated boasts throughout the film, it looks to me like they did spare some expense with this re-tinkering, so brace yourself for a picture that doesn’t quite pop.

Sigh. If only a 2D 20th anniversary re-release was an option at the multiplexes.

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