Friday, December 05, 2008

Vivian: So you do get up, I was beginning to think you worked in bed like Marcel Proust.
Marlowe: Who's he?
Vivian: You wouldn't know him, a French writer.
Marlowe: Come into my boudoir.

The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946, with Humphrey Bogart, Marlowe, Lauren Bacall, Vivian).




lay on my back on a bed in a waterfront hotel and waited for it to get dark. It was small front room with a hard bed and a mattress slightly thicker than the cotton blanket that covered it. A spring underneath me was broken and stuck into the left side of my back. I lay there and let it prod me.



The reflection of a red neon light glared on the ceiling. When it made the whole room red it would be dark enough to go out. Outside cars honked along the alley they called the Speedway. Feet slithered on the sidewalks below my window. There was a murmur and mutter of coming and going in the air.



The air that seeped in through the rusted screens smelled of stale frying fat. Far off a voice of the kind that could be heard far off was shouting: “Get hungry, folks. Get hungry. Nice hot doggies here. Get hungry.”

-- Farewell, My Lovely (1940)