Arnold Strong

Adaptation
Read my post about this week's Cinema Criticism Writing Class before you read this post because something similar happened in this class. This week we discussed The Long Goodbye with Elliott Gould, directed by Robert Altman. One scene late in the film features Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of a gangster's hired thugs. It's a very minor role and Arnold filmed it long before anyone outside of the bodybuilding community had any idea who he was. In fact, he's billed as Arnold Strong in the film. Yet, there were at least a couple of students who couldn't seem to understand that he was not cast for his star appeal because, at the time, he didn't have any. I guess I have to acknowledge that in certain extreme cases a star's image can work retroactively.

Birds, Cars and The Long Goodbye

Adaptation
We've moved into the period in my classes when we're focusing on final papers. That means I'm having individual conferences with all my students, which cuts into class time a bit. In this week's class, for example, we only had time for several students to share some of their favorite passages from Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, which we'll discuss at length next week. One student pointed out the importance of car imagery in the novel; another noticed the bird imagery. For such a short class period, I'd say we accomplished a lot.