Like every writer or almost every writer, who goes to Hollywood, I was convinced in the beginning that there must be some discoverable method of working in pictures which would not be completely stultifying to whatever creative talent one might happen to possess. But like others before me I discovered that this was a dream.
Too many people have too much to say about a writer’s work. It ceases to be his own. And after a while he ceases to care about it. He has brief enthusiasms, but they are destroyed before they can flower. People who can’t write tell him how to write. He meets clever and interesting people, and may even form lasting friendships, but all this is incidental to his proper business of writing.
The wise screenwriter is he who wears his second-best suit, artistically speaking, and doesn’t take things too much to heart. He should have a touch of cynicism, but only a touch. The complete cynic is as useless to Hollywood as he is to himself. He should do the best he can without straining at it. He should be scrupulously honest about his work but he should not expect scrupulous honesty in return. He won’t get it. And when he has had enough, he should say goodbye with a smile, because for all he knows he may want to go back.
There are even tours of his locations
“Introducing Chandler’s Bay City: Crook town, run down, shabby town, gambling town. Novelist Raymond Chandler gravitated to sin and debauch, so Santa Monica in the 1930s was a frequent stop for Philip Marlowe. From doctors feelgood to second wives with pasts to crooked cops with a loathing for a mouthy PI, this tour has it all. Chandler’s canonization of sin, wealth and sunshine on L.A.’s Westside fed the abiding myths of the American hard-boiled genre and play into the popular conception of the region.”
Santa Monica !
Reading Chandler’s books is a joy mainly based on his ability as a wordsmith and his characters. OTOH, his plots tended to be a bit of a mismash. I can see where he would get grief from Hollywood.
I would imagine when a screenwriter starts he learns to bite his lip when others from the producers to the director to studio people start making suggestions on what to change.
Always remember something Ernest Hemingway said on selling your book rights to a studio: “You drive to the Calif border, give your book to the studio rep – he gives you the money – and you leave”
Or something like that…
Raymond Chandler is as much a historian of old Los Angeles as Dashiell Hammett is of San Francisco. The big difference is that Los Angeles has changed more. I can find locations from The Maltese Falcon in San Francisco. One time I was saying in a hotel across the street from the spot where Sam Spade’s partner was killed. At least the spot in the movie.
The Chandler locations are harder to find these days. Somebody could write a book about them. RJ Wagner’s memoirs have quite a bit of that information.