…who has flaming carrot-colored hair and several hundred freckles and who doesn’t even look like a distant cousin, and who also looks like fucking Carrot Top meets Eric Stoltz?
I’m sorry but all my life I’ve been living with a certain idea of what “twin” means. Silly me — forgive my ignorance.
I like this scene. Pure exposition, explanation, recapping for the slowboats. It helps. Alas, it was cut out of the 1946 theatrical release. Confusion ensued.
“The Big Sleep is one of those pictures in which so many cryptic things occur amid so much involved and devious plotting that the mind becomes utterly confused. And, to make it more aggravating, the brilliant detective in the case is continuously making shrewd deductions which he stubbornly keeps to himself.
“What with two interlocking mysteries and a great many characters involved, the complex of blackmail and murder soon becomes a web of utter bafflement. Unfortunately, the cunning scriptwriters have done little to clear it at the end” — from Bosley Crowther‘s 8.24.46 N.Y. Times review
From this end it feels pretty great to be living a Hollywood Elsewhere-type life — no “barbecues and ball games” or any of that onerous, sword-of-Damocles stuff but…
It is part of my burden, yes, to have to face the daily threat of slimy, slithering reptiles and hissing dragons** who radiate seething hostility at every turn, but as Pike Bishop once said, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
No sublime morning-coffee company with a Porizkova or an Antropova, true, and no THC gummies or slurps of lime-and-guave-flavored beer but I gots my George Gershwin rhythm…physically fit, mentally sharp, no bald spots or jiggling neck wattles, Italian-made black loafers, Zara T-shirts, etc.
And Lordy Lordy the profound gift of a three-year-old granddaughter who constantly radiates joyful discovery and intrigue….
Not to mention daily postings drawn from my inner well…a life of constant discipline, 4K Blurays and travel and film festivals, Cialis and Prevagen and choice Indian restaurants in London and Paris and even Westport, cinematic intrigue and occasional satori transcendence, Bhagavad Gita meditations, a bottomless chest of fond Henry Miller-ish memories and occasional secretions of Socratic wisdom…spiritual nourishment savored in dribs and drabs.
I could go on and on but it feels like a huge relief not having to please or placate or charm or dazzle a high-maintenance woman of Porizkova’s character***…no offense.
Sri Krishna, Henry Miller, Pike Bishop, Socrates or Marcus Aurelius (either or both), George Gershwin, Sutton Wells…quite the cocktail.
** Life forms who seem to actually get off on spewing alien acid blood.
*** https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/which-one-is-crazier/
