Immediate Altman wall of sound. A poker club with a blazer-uniformed man at a huge blackboard, chalking letters, apart from the sedentary commotion below. Every scene in this film steeped in 70s attire and environment, which is painful, which is revisiting the fake wall paneling America of easy up, easy down, nothing aimed at permanence, just the dollar of the moment and this is no exception. No Las Vegas revelry, looks more like a 70’s steakhouse. Bill (George Segal) enters and passes by Charlie (Elliot Gould) in tan blazer, who’s wandering through the tables, chewing a toothpick. The impression is two people scouting, looking for something, like a team of hawks. They’re so ready for each other you might already assume they’re partners in a con.
The title “California Split” comes up with the sound of cards being shuffled.
“Hello Bill, put you on at five?” the Board Man asks.
Bill is known there. Five must be his normal table. But today he decides to go with Ten.
Charlie has perhaps not been to this club before. He steps into a waiting area and listens to an introductory video of the poker club which shows that poker is no longer the dangerous, dark sport it used to be, that it can be played in full comfort and trust, “And here is the man responsible…” Who is? Mr. Murray Shepherd, almost sounding at first like George Bush Sr. as he speaks, but just for a second. In a perfect corporate film monotone he explains the set-up as the camera returns to Bill, informing the club is there to provide a service. Charlie punctuates the brief description of “Low Draw” poker, with “That’s my baby” and you’re straining to pick up the cheeze bits of sound falling from the ceiling throughout. Our poker shepherd is telling about the Board Man who takes your name and puts your initials on the board, and the Floor Man who puts the games together. Lots of visual and audio information to absorb. There’s not a single “extra” here, everyone alive and spinning in their own world, because (1) the commentary special feature informs that most everyone of the background people in the film were Synanon members rather than actors and were absolutely unflustered by the camera, and that (2) the writer scripted not only for the foreground, the main action, but for the background, so everyone had something to do, they were involved and not just mumbling nothing sounds.
Things look low key, under control, but when Bill sits down next to an elderly woman and smiles at her, she picks up her bag and moves it away from him. How much trust can you have when you’re competing with everyone else for the winning hand?
“CW 10 blind” is called and Charlie, all confidence, swings out into the club as the peculiarly omniscient feeling Mr. Murray Shepherd explains that the club has no financial interest in what’s going on at the tables. You merely rent your chair, your opportunity to be in on the game. The house has no stake.
As the chip girl–a woman with a foot tall pile of 70s curls–hands Charlie his chips, and then Bill (who has also been called to the table), her function too is explained by Mr. Shepherd in his thoroughly business voice. A great intro to the film and the scene. Plays much the same function as the bodiless voice emanating from the loud speaker in “Mash”, from the horn on the campaign van in “Nashville”.
Now, narrow down to the table in question. Many of these players seem to know each other. There’s a guy with greasy hair and mustache, Lew. A blustery no-nonsense woman in red and purple striped blouse sits next to a man in brown plaid sport coat and a checkered shirt. An older fellow. A man with curly black hair in a brown sweater and white shirt. These were mostly real poker players who ad-libbed throughout. Mr. Shepherd talks about the social skills that are an asset in the game, such as good manners (Lew says oh shit and folds) and how no talk is permitted that hasn’t anything to do with the game.
Charlie and Lew are already in conflict. “I didn’t think you were that good” says Charlie to Lew when Lew believes he’s won a hand, and then when Lew stands to take the winnings, Charlie reveals he’s the one with the winning hand. There are more hands, and Charlie, having focused on contender Lew, keeps prodding, psyching him out. When Bill, now dealer, throws Charlie a card a bit too hard and it nearly drops off the side of the table, Charlie catching it, Lew objects. Charlie protests the card never left the table (which it appears to have, briefly). Lew insists it bounced off the floor, which it hadn’t. The Floor Man is called over. No one saw what happened, they just want to get on with the game of winning or losing. Bill says, as dealer, the card was all right. Goaded on by Charlie, Lew continues betting, things getting more heated. Charlie wins the hand with the Joker he’d caught at table’s edge. Lew insists Charlie and Bill are partners and nails Bill on the chin. Bill, who appears somewhat out of place even though one feels as Lew does, that this is a set-up and Bill and Charlie are a team, crawls through the ensuing mayhem and out of the club.
Now a pretty dismal looking nightclub. A hurting Bill sits at the bar. You expect Charlie to enter and for it to be revealed theyr’e a team. GoGo Girls sign on the wall. A sign that reads something Split. Over to the side, a woman is begging her stripper daughter for $30 for some game of chance and here the desperation enters, that there are people who can’t give it up, who are addicted, for whom gambling is their ruin, it’s not all games. Charlie is shown approaching the club from outside. Rene Exotique. Topless girls (yet the one stripper in the club is wearing a top and is instead bottomless). Charlie, seeing Bill, offers to buy him a beer, which Bill at first turns down then accepts, and you realize that Bill hasn’t been sitting here waiting for Charlie, that they’re not a team, not yet. As they drink together they become increasingly boisterous. “Don’t sign, don’t sign!” Charlie tells the stripper when she gets $30 from the bartender and signs for it, then hands it off to her mother on the other side of the room, Lew imperceptibly entering the club in the background dark. Charlie and Bill try to beat each other naming the seven dwarfs (the commentary reveals this was improv) but neither manages. Was Snoopy one? No. Dumbo? No, not part of that cast. They’re well on their way to being good buds when they leave and Bill offers Charlie a ride, who doesn’t have a car. How much of a winner is a dude with no car? Bill’s singing, “What you going to do when the rent comes down?” “You’re a minstrel huh?” Charlie asks. And they’re attacked and robbed by Lew and some of his thugs. Does this feel good, Funny Man, Lew says, delivering a brutal last kick to Charlie. You expected the mugging, felt it was coming, but it still works, partly because you know Bill and Charlie weren’t a team at the time.
Next shot, classic Altman (it’s all classic Altman here) a number of people in bathrobes, various ages, being led into the back of a police station, cop swinging a bag of pot. Barbara enters, there to bail out Bill and Charlie (Barbara is played by Ann Prentiss, Paula Prentiss’ sister, never heard of her, seems mainly to have done 60s and 70s television and one wonders what happened to her after this film because she was great in it–oh, never mind, I see what happened to her, much later on, it ain’t pretty and she’s serving jail time for it, sad and you still have to wonder what happened to her).
Back at Barbara’s place now, talkative Charlie is anointing his bruises with shaving cream, and convinces Bill to let him rub shaving cream on his ribs, that the heat will feel good and ease the pain. They’re comfortable with each other, nearly as comfortable as if they’d been childhood buddies in an opposites attracting complementary friendship, but Bill is still more a witness than participant, on unfamiliar territory. Barbara serves up a breakfast of cold cereal, Lucky Charms for Charlie, Fruit Loops for Bill, sloshing milk around. Bill’s enjoying himself but looks also a bit in awe, this obviously not quite what he’s used to, Charlie telling him how ice cream sellers are desperate and it’s a quick way to pick up $25 for an hour, simply not returning with the ice cream truck. You have to wonder why Bill would be interested in Charlie, whose wins also seem to be balanced with consistent losses. Because he’s so gregarious? Bill is a bit uneasy about the shaving cream and Charlie assures him that it won’t ruin his sweater and no one will tell his mother. Seems perhaps a key to Bill’s personality and why he might be interested in Charlie and stepping off perhaps a too trodden, guarded path.
Charlie obviously makes Bill feel good. He likes the feeling he gets around his new friend, that anything could happen at any second.
A younger, slight woman comes in through the front door and leans against it crying. The “baby” of the house (played by Gwen Welles who also played Suleen Gay in “Nashville”). Barbara sees her into her room which is filled with well-tended plants, Charlie following and querying her on what happened. She’s talking about how she liked the guy, how he gave her a $50 when the deal was for $30, and you realize she’s a prostitute. “He liked you a lot too,” says Charlie, consoling her. Back to Barbara querying Bill on why they were picked up. For drunk and disorderly. Barbara says Charlie’s not too good with cops. Back to Charlie who is however good with Baby, cajoling her, trying to get her into a better humor and ease her pain as well. He tells her about the Big Blue Whale, no nothing to do with wrestling (as she’s supposed), that there are only a couple left in the world and their tongues weigh more than an elephant. “You’re just making it up to make me feel better,” Baby says, mascara staining her face from eye to chin, but she is feeling better. The distraction has worked.
As the birds tweet morning, everyone settles down to sleep. We’re given the impression Barbara, in leopard spot pjs, may be stealing his wallet when she goes in to where Bill is resting on the sofa and reaches her hands under him, but she’s instead looking for the TV Guide. In a rather surreal scene Baby comes back to the dining room in footie pajamas and pours herself a huge bowl of cereal. It’s Over the Rainbow land for Bill, as he looks on. And Altman takes forever with these shots. They’re beautiful. They work because he’s taken the time and the actors exploit that time with the meaningful habitual humdrum off-the-screen life of their characters. One sees in these shots of Baby, in particular, a hint of future Coen Brothers except that Baby and Barbara and Charlie aren’t freaks. The Coen Brothers often, though not always, ice the frames and characters with carnival chaos. These Altman characters are simply what they are and via Bill you’re given an opportunity to see beyond their front door.
Next, Bill is now William Denny the writer and is arriving at his job in a nice 70s decorated building where he works for the magazine “California Inquire”. The boss, a young Jeff Goldblum, asks the receptionist if Bill’s in and what he said when he was told he wanted to speak to him, then enigmatically smiles and that’s the last we see of him, whatever is his story plumping up the set and making it that much livelier. Everything present on the set, with Altman, is intended to invest the film with meaning, giving it landscape.
Bill’s secretary passes through and Bill notes to himself that he thinks he understands Barbara. Which Barbara, for the secretary is named Barbara as well. But you feel he’s talking about the prostitute, and realize he’s going to be someone who’s always trying to measure the people around him, to guess their game, part of his nature as a gambler. He calls Charlie, Barbara answering the phone and there’s the parallel sense of her as Charlie’s secretary as she carries the phone over to him. Bill and Charlie make tentative plans to meet at the race track if Bill can get away from work. “I can’t steal any more time from here.” He’s a thief of sorts.
Charlie rides the bus to the track. A woman in a cloche hat wants to exchange seats from him but Charlie says he can’t sit facing the rear, he never wins a game that way. The lady gets the seat of the woman next to him and starts asking about Egyptian Fem. Charlie tries to talk her out of betting on the horse, Egyptian Fem.
Bill heads to the track, saying he’s going to Chino instead on work-related business. At the track, the woman with the cloche hat asks Charlie again about Egyptian Fem and he says to go ahead and bet on the horse. She notes he has #4 underlined, and thinking he’s now trying to get her to bet on a losing horse (Egyptian Fem) she changes her betting strategy. These betters keep looking to the opposite side. If you say yes then the truth could very well be no. Charlie’s playing the role of the clown in a sense.
So Bill does show up and Charlie and Bill sling back some beers and Bill talks Charlie into betting on Egyptian Fem which is not at all what Bill had planned on doing. He doesn’t see how Fem could possibly win.
Egyptian Fem wins. The woman with the cloche hat harasses Charlie, she feeling she was tricked by him into betting on the other horse when he had, finally, told her to go ahead and bet on Egyptian Fem. Still, he is blamed for her loss, just as Lew blamed Charlie for his loss.
But in Charlie’s company, Bill has won and he’s exhilarated.
Back to Barbara’s place. Barbara and Baby are dressed up, getting ready to go out with a client. Baby, dreamy, fantasizes about getting Italian food. When there’s a knock on the door Barbara tells her “act natural.” It’s instead Bill and Charlie, insistent on celebrating their win with the women. Barbara looks out at some guy behind them and asks who he is, Charlie replying he’s a tenor. This is confusing and I find at DVD Beaver that there are a number of scenes that have been trimmed, including this one. When she had opened the door in the original, Mr. Tenor had been singing Happy Birthdday to her, Charlie and Bill appearing and joining in, Barbara insisting it’s not her birthday.
Charlie informs Baby he saw her that morning in the dining room and sits to play the piano for her, “Erastus Johnson Brown, what you gonna do when the rent comes down”, the same song he was singing when they were mugged in the strip joint parking lot (it’s a curious moment in the film and one of the few I still wonder about as the move from confiding he’d seen her to the piano seems odd). Barbara makes them leave because she and Baby are waiting for Mr. Kramer who will pay them $150 a piece for their company, but Bill and Charlie will not be deterred. They go outside and watch as Mr. Kramer, a transvestite, arrives. It’s Christmas time. There are Christmas lights outside. Were poinsettias inside. Kramer is nervous, it’s his first time out dressed up as Helen. Barbara and Baby assure him he looks great and smells wonderful. “It’s Joy!” Barbara says, guessing the name of his perfume. No, he’s wearing Shalimar and a dress made in Omaha. He’s taking them to Jason’s and then has a surprise for them. As Barbara pours daiquiris he informs the women they’re his best friends. Then Bill and Charlie bust the scene pretending to be vice and terrify Kramer with talk of taking him in. When they decide to have pity on Helen, to let her go, taking Baby and Barbara in instead, Kramer flees the house of the women he’d called his “best friends” having turned on them in self-protective fear, assuring the supposed vice that he didn’t know them, that he was instead a friend of their aunt.
The women will change into something more comfortable, Barbara removing her curly hair piece, and then they’re off to the boxing ring where Baby can’t watch the violence, keeps her eyes closed, but applauds and joins in whole-heartedly with the audience yelling encouragement. More betting and again Charlie wins, even taking the hat from the man who lost the bet. All feeding Bill’s exhilaration and excitement whereas this is routine for Charlie.
Every win for Charlie is followed by a loss. Out in the parking lot they’re held up by a man with a gun. Charlie says he can’t believe it, not two nights in a row. He gives $780 to the man, tells him to take it and go. And the robber does.
“This town is full of boys who thinks they’re pretty wise, just because they know a thing or two…there’s con men and there’s shooters…” is sung as they drive off, Charlie mourning that their winnings have been cut in half.
And the camera returning to the poker club.
“The way they get their dollars is they all have an ace stuck in the hole,” the song goes.
Charlie sits at one table playing against a number of women. Bill is at another table also playing against women. It’s not working out. Charlie shrugs it off, acknowledging there’s nothing to be won here. The camera returns to Bill several times who’s looking depressed, worried. Why? The exhilaration hasn’t lasted. He’s disturbed. What’s up.
Next shot is Bill’s office. He’s talking to “Spark” on the phone, a bookie who is demanding his money. “How many times have I told you I don’t want to be interrupted when I’m in conference with Mr. Waters,” Bill yells, gesturing to Charlie, when his secretary enters. Bill tells Spark that if he doesn’t cut him off for ten days then he’ll have the money for him. He tells him he has a source, he just hasn’t wanted to tap it. When he’s off the phone, Charlie encourages Bill to bet on the Lakers but Bill says he’s scared of it as the Lakers have been playing crappy and the Suns are hot. Charlie goes so far as to tell Bill to bet his house on it. “You’ve been saying this for three weeks, I’m lucky I’m not much of a property owner,” Bill retorts.
Barbara and Baby are working on their red VW when Bill drives up in his yellow Pinto, says he just was driving by and wanted to say hello. They’re cleaning out the car, taking down the Christmas tree lights. Where’s Charlie? “I don’t know, he got up so early I couldn’t believe it,” Barbara says.
If Bill had bet on the Lakers, which he likely had, you know he’s lost, in even deeper trouble, and Charlie’s disappearance disturbs him.
Bill walks into a hardware or paint store and calls out to a man named Harvey. Harvey asks him what he came for, then stops him from replying, says he’s getting a flash, has ECP, is blessed with it and wants to guess. “I get that you’re probably back with your old lady and that you want to paint your garage door, perhaps even the whole front of your house. I’m getting the color, it’s a greenish color.” Is he close? No, Bill tells him he needs a loan.
For the first time we know Bill is married but he and his wife have split up. Perhaps over his gambling. His interest in Barbara and Baby and Charlie makes even more sense. He’s had some empty space to fill in his life.
Next shot is Bill entering a seedy storefront painted with Live Nude/Massage enticements. He gives his name as Larry to a woman who leads him to room 211-212. “I know you’re going in here to win a bundle. Why don’t you come see me when you get out?” He’s admitted into an apartment where a card game is taking place in the living room. He looks distraught, all confidence gone. Indeed, the next shot is of him leaving at daylight and being reassured that next week he’ll win. We now see “Fun and Games” painted on the side of the strip parlor.
Bill is shown to a table in a restaurant, seated before a stained glass window. He turns down a menu. He’s not there to eat. (After the scene with the Fruit Loops I’m not certain he’s seen eating again in the film.) A man on a crutch in a brown leather coat enters and sits opposite him at the table. It’s Spark, the bookie. We learn he used to be with the Pirates, but doesn’t play ball anymore. He orders hot chili. Bill tells him how the guy he’s working for had a great Christmas and has created a slush fund out of which he can draw money. Leather jacket protests. “I carried you one year! Was there any pressure on you at all?” The conversation covers how he’s kept extending Bill a line of credit and how he can’t do it anymore. “Come pay off day you don’t have dollar one, plus you owe me more. Man I’ve heard it before. You must think I’m some stupid schmuck. In my line of thinking you took an out and out shot at me…” Bill, all desperation, insists he’s will have $700 for him the next day. And you know it won’t likely happen. He’s past the brink of catastrophic ruin, his family and financial security laid waste.
“What about my other $1500?”
“One week.”
Spark leaves before eating his chili.
Now to another bar. “Hey Sport, you wanna fill this up?” a woman is saying. “You now Jennie Carr? She’s shacking up with my old man.” A guy in a white suit, black turtleneck sits next to her, eyeing her intently, on the make. She’s drunk, talks about her neat dog, asks what she’s doing in this dump. “You should have seen where I was last night, it was really classy.” What do you about a dog that shits on the floor, she wonders. The man in the white suit seems to have finally had enough and leaves via a hall by the restrooms. Everyone has had enough with the woman who goes on about how all the men there are faggots and probably can’t get it up. “Fuck you faggot,” she says to Bill as she passes him on her way back to the restrooms. Down-on-his-luck Bill looks like he’s in danger of staying at the bottom from now on.
Back to Barbara’s place. Baby is lying reading in Barbara’s bed. Down-on-his-luck Bill knocks on the door. Barbara’s out on a date. What’s Baby doing? She’s reading a book in Barbara’s room because she doesn’t like to stay in her own room when alone. Bill’s been curious about Baby from the beginning, when he looked up to see her climbing up on a chair in her footsie pajamas to pull down a big bowl for her breakfast cereal, and now he’s found Baby alone and he’s hesitantly going to take the opportunity to explore this train wreck of an attraction to Baby, who’s played with the fullest, frailest, gentlest conviction by Gwen.
Baby informs Bill she and Barbara are off to Hawaii for two weeks and are excited about it. “Charlie never did come back. You know what happened to him?” she asks. No. She invites Bill to come in and sit down. She asks him if he’s married, his marriage brought up a second time (we never will see his wife, out of the picture). They converse about the guys she and Barbara are going to Hawaii with. She doesn’t know them. Bill asks what if she doesn’t like them and Baby says those are the chances you have to take. She asks Bill if he wants to make love with her and he says yes but he hasn’t any money. She says it’s all right, that she really likes him. “It’s different.”
“Why is it different?”
Because he took her on like a real date the night he and Charlie won at the track, and she really likes him a lot. A good bit of clumsy fumbling and anxious comedy as they start to undress. Barbara unexpectedly comes home, talks about what an evening she’s had, the man she was with almost throwing up on her. She says it’s fine if they use her bed but she wants her TV Guide which is under it. While the two women look for the TV Guide, Bill, disoriented, stands and looks at them with seeming dawning revulsion. What’s he doing here? He doesn’t get it himself why he’s there with Baby; the moment of curious exploration interrupted, he leaves and we guess we’re not likely to see these two women again, which we don’t.
Barbara cradles Baby in her disappointment. “He didn’t really like me,” Baby says.
“Of course he did.”
“No he didn’t, not really.”
Barbara tells her she’s met the guy she’s going with to Hawaii. Dark, with a five o’clock shadow, young and good looking.
“You really think I’m going to like him?’
“I think you’ll love him.”
Bill now at his home office, he’s working, listening to a game you know he’s likely got a losing bet on and you know too that he’s still in deep, owing his bookie a lot of money. Knock on the door. A voice asks if a William Denny lives there. It’s friends of Spark. Bill protests he checked with Spark and they’re straight. He moves to sneak out the back door and is surprised by Charlie standing at the window in an outlandish Mexican hat and holding a parrot pinata.
“I had this incredible dream, I was in Tijuana at the dog track,” Charlie says. And every dog he was betting on won. What does he know about dogs? But he was feeling a winner. Bill says why didn’t he take him along, that Charlie doesn’t know what it’s been like there. And Charlie reveals that he didn’t win, not one race.
“If I had been there you would of,” Bill says.
“You weren’t in the dream, William. A parrot was in the dream though. Bet #4, #4…he doesn’t eat nothing…” Much like Bill doesn’t eat much either. I’m reminded of Persephone’s plunge into Hades where she doesn’t eat much in the land of the spirits, except for the one pomegranate seed, like Bill’s bowl of Fruit Loops.
Frustrated, Bill goes to the table and starts figuring something out on paper. He says he’s going to Reno. Reno? Charlie argues they’re going to want cash at Reno, not his typewriter.
“Why Reno?” Charlie asks. Why not Vegas? Bill insists he’s going to win. Charlie argues it’s a tough game with a lot of lumberjackets going there, tough action.
“I don’t like you coming here with all your pessimistic shit…” interfering.. “I’m going to win!” Bill exclaims.
Charlie insists he wasn’t interfering and Bill says he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Because I know how I feel! Baby, I’m going to win!”
“I believe ya,” says Charlie.
How to make it up with disgruntled Bill? Charlie conceals his right arm in his jacket and picks up something off Bill’s desk as he enters his bedroom. Asks Bill if he’s ever shown him his one armed piccolo player. “The man is a classic. World-renowned. The man is known all over the world. When I reach my crescendo you’ve got to give me a little hand. A little applause, William.” Bill’s got to respond, got to congratulate, got to involve himself. Charlie pretends to play one of the dances from the Nutcracker Suite. Asks Charlie for his applause then puts the piccolo down to his pants where a finger reaches out his fly to hold it, looking briefly like a penis. Bill is first taken aback, then cracks up laughing at the trick.
“You need a partner?” Charlie asks.
“Yeah, I think so. You going to take it away now?” Pointing to the piccolo which is some kind of dagger that Charlie now pulls out of its sheath and jokes, “I’m gonna stab myself with it!”
Next shot Charlie’s out trying to play some basketball with some younger guys (you know there’s going to be a bet in it somewhere) while Bill goes to a pawn shop with signs on the outside reading, “Music instr. typewriters, radios, stereos, 11517”. Carries in a lot of merchandise, wanting a lot of money. He sells it all outright as it will make him the most money. Back on the ball court Bill appears to have lost and the boys talk about him being an old man. Now he proposes a bet. The boys are convinced they’ll win and pool their money. They’ll play 11 hoops. Charlie wins every one, of course.
Now to the Paul Hart Co. where Bill is trying to sell his yellow Pinto. He’s offered $2200.
Charlie is at the race track, tosses away his ticket having obviously lost. “I’m getting buried here.” We see Lew who’d mugged him at the beginning of the film. Charlie hides his face as he passes. Lew has a little altercation with the bartender over a drink he’d left there and then having another drink gives him a tip. When he leaves the bartender asks Charlie if the guy is a friend of his and Charlie replies (curiously) it’s a cousin. He follows Lew back to the restroom, which appears empty, and the moment he begins to confront Lew, Lew punches him good in the nose, laying him on the floor.
“That’s the greatest punch I’ve ever been hit with,” Charlie concedes, then despite the blood and his apparently broken nose is up. Fighting, Lew and Charlie burst in on some guy seated on a toilet. Finally, Lew lies on the floor, beaten. Charlie gives back to him what he got, kicking him in the ribs and takes his money. It’s kind of a painful scene, the eye for an eye retribution and after I blogged the film I listened to the commentary and Altman said he did it for the audience, that they needed this with Lew. I’m not convinced the audience did, but apparently the character of Charlie did and it added an extra dimension to the Funny Man. As he leaves, he tells some men entering, “You better call an ambulance. The man lost the last race and tried to kill himself.”
Now Charlie (his nose bandaged up) and Bill are on a bus headed for Reno. Bill says he’s putting in 18 and Charlie will put in 11. It’s the last time they’re going to hear anything about losing. Running into Lew was a good omen. They arrive at Reno, “Biggest Little City in the World”. More good omens. The rain could have been snow. Good vibes. Good signs. Things feel good.
Another odd moment where they’re crossing a street because in the commentary Joseph Walsh (the script writer) describes the moment as a “miracle” when Charlie raises his arms before a car he’s passing in front of and yelling, “There ain’t nobody there” synchronizing with the music. DVD Beaver points out that the original songs in the track for the Reno trip were “Goin’ to Kansas City” and “Me and My Shadow”, and that the lyric “We never knock, ’cause there’s nobody there” and coincided with Charlie’s “There ain’t nobody there line”.
Charlie tells Bill he’s got to give a smile every once and a while during the game, that it won’t break the concentration.
They enter the casino and Charlie, seeing an elephant statuette, asks Bill to rub its trunk for good luck. “Have you ever seen an elephant fly?” Referring back to one of them having erroneously, drunkenly named Dumbo as one of the Seven Dwarfs toward film’s beginning.
Charlie’s going to fly, like Dumbo.
They come to the red-carpeted hall leading down to the high stakes poker game. Artificial jungle plants and stuffed rams adorn. “I don’t know if these are past winners or losers,” Charlie says. There’s a $2000 buy-in. Bill’s there to play. Seated at a small bar in the room, Charlie gives Bill the run-down on the personality types of the other players. The bald guy is a percentage player. The guy with the cowboy hat is Lyndon Johnson, a haberdasher. The Kid, the one with the curls, has been trying to play the game since before he was born. An older man with glasses has the personality of the Dr., going to lose patience losing hands. Red Coat, a former cha-cha dancer, is falling out and Charlie anticipates that’s where Bill will be sitting next. Then there’s the empty seat in front of which is a mighty high stack of chips. Who sits there? If it’s the Invisible Man and you see the chips rising up on their own the game’s too tough and they’re leaving, Charlie says. Then there’s the Mississippi man. And the Chinaman? If he starts yapping he’s cracking. The bartender, who’s been listening in, says Charlie’s done very well in his analysis.
Out goes Red Coat, “Mr. Cha Cha”, and a man named Huey gestures Bill to enter the game. Bill lays out the money, shoulders hunched, and you’re not overly confident in Bill. Charlie tells the bartender Bill’s dynamite, the bartender replies that he needs to be in that company, and the camera goes to the long red hall and a man in a brown suit and cowboy hat entering, walking down it, the man with the big stack of chips. It’s Slim. He pulls out a hunk of cash and asks the bartender to place a bet for him on Old Blue out of Chute Number Two down at the race track. Charlie asks if it’s reliable info and says he’ll lay down on it too. Slim asks if Charlie wants to get involved in the poker game and Charlie says he’s playing right now.
“You’re playing right now?”
Bill turns to look back at them.
“That’s me, the good looking fellow in the brown coat.”
Slim wishes him luck and takes his place at the table. Charlie asks the bartender if he’s for real.
Cut to a rolling wheel of chance and a woman playing piano and singing before it, the same woman whose voice has been featured all along in the film, like a siren drawing them down to Reno. “Look down that lonesome road before traveling on it…”
Bill tells Charlie he can’t settle down with him there. Tells him he’s got to go. Charlie insists he’s got to stay. “You’re telling me I’m interfering with your game?” He asks Bill for at least a little money but Bill gives him nothing. Charlie wanders down the red carpet to the tune of “Look down that lonesome road…look up and seek your maker before Gabriel blows his horn.” DVD Beaver points out that the song here originally was “You’re Nobody ’til Somebody Loves You.” (In order for the film to be rereleased, costs for music use had to be cut, thus the changes.)
Relaxing, Bill smiles and returns to the game.
Charlie asks for a $1000 credit out where the slot machines are. Realizes he’s not getting any credit and gets a roll of nickles. “I got 2 cherries and nothing happened! Let me have a pit boss!”
After a while Bill goes to find Charlie at the bar and informs him they’re up $11,000. Charlie insists they pack it in. Bill insists he keep on playing. Still he won’t give Charlie any money and returns to the game.
Oh, I don’t want to watch.
Bill comes back in with $18,000. He’s stoked. He’s going to play his winnings at another one of the games. Charlie begs for some money but Bill still gives him nothing. Charlie goes looking for credit.
The next time Charlie comes up to Bill, he’s lost almost all the money. Bill yells at him to get out, that he’s going to kill the streak.
Bill wins with number 26. Now they’ll play craps. “I got it Charlie, I got it.” And he seems to. They’re working as a team now. Bill throws the dice, Charlie bets or calls the numbers (I forget which) and the chips pile up. 3 11s in a row. The crowd gathers around. 4 11s in a row. 9. A hard 6. They say they’ve got to make it the biggest win the dealer’s ever seen. A woman lays down a dollar on 7 and Charlie throws her a hundred. She wins. Bill, seemingly dejected, leaves the table. Starts pouring chips out of his jacket pockets onto the bar in a side room. Charlie looks for him and fills a bowl with the chips he’s carrying. Bill says he’s tired and he looks exhausted, as if he’s about to fall over. Charlie talks about all they’re going to do. “We haven’t even started yet.” He wants to rest up and now do some betting himself.
Strange feelings as Gould goes to cash in the winnings. Bill at the bar, sitting by himself, looking exhausted, lost. The camera keeps cutting between Charlie’s exuberance and Bill. They’ve won $82,000. Charlie returns and divides the money between them both. Security stands by the door. “An even split,” Charlie says. “You always take winning this hard?”
Bill laments there was no special feeling.
“Doesn’t mean a fucking thing does it?” Charlie acknowledges.
Bill says he has to go.
“Oh yeah, where do you live?” Charlie asks.
Bill leaves.
Charlie takes the money out of his shoes in which he’d stored it, spins the roulette wheel and walks out of the scene. “Bye-bye Blackbird” is sung.
* * * * * *
And thus ends the friendship. It’s a satisfying end to the film, about the only satisfying conclusion one can imagine, though you’re seriously kept in suspense to the end wondering if Bill or Charlie will blow it. Had Bill or Charlie blown it, the film would have been wrong. Had Bill won and all was up-up celebration and cheery fireworks then the film would have been wrong. But it’s not a morality play, a film on the evils of gambling, because most of the big players have had a different temperament from Bill, playing being their business, their work, whereas you always have the feeling that Bill is at the hem of it all despite his catastrophic losses, it’s not his job, he’s looking for something more in it. The film has been described as being one in which nothing much happens, not having a lot of plot, just the two guys playing poker, there’s a documentary feel to it and thus you come away knowing a little more about how gambling’s done in a big way. The assessment is wrong as there’s quite a lot going on in the film under the surface, that’s not explicit, but which is summed up by Bill winning, bewildered by still feeling lost, not having found the meaning that he anticipated would come with being a winner, spiritually bereft, and being able to walk away from this friendship, nothing to hold him there any longer.
I don’t think it’s inappropriate to think of Bill as traveling a land of spirits with Barbara, Baby and Charlie as underworld guides. There’s no less substance allowed the chracters of the trio as versus Bill, but they are endowed a sense of mystery that is punctuated by the scene in which Segal believes the card shark is at his front door, turns to sneak out the back and is surprised by Charlie suddenly appearing at the side glass door. One of those moments where it seems not enough time has passed for Charlie to be found standing there, the dangles on his hat hanging idle rather than swinging from a quick dash around the corner, and Charlie too physically composed as well. We’re never asked to wonder too much about Charlie and his devil-may-care lifestyle, whereas we’re confronted with Bill’s anguish and the threat to the security of his “real life” as he’s sucked under by his financial losses.
Something which may be overlooked about the character of Bill is that though at the end he seems to turn his back on gambling, realizing there’s nothing in the win for him, Charlie acknowledging that it is without meaning, there’s no assurance that Bill’s going to find a resolution for that lack of meaning in his life. We project past the story when we assume that he will. And still it’s a satisfying finish.
I don’t know why this film isn’t better known than it is. Remarkable performances (as Altman has said, Segal should have been nominated for an award), great story, great cinematography, and Altman at his best. What else do you want?
Update: I read that Atlman was a recovering gambler. I had been wondering why the Synaon people as extras instead of actors. As he said of them and the life they added to the screen, they had been through it all, seen it all, the cameras weren’t going to phase them. So what’s going to be the difference between them and the general public? Perhaps the addiction being itself a training in acting, individuals who’ve led double lives, and in the process of recovery have had to confront and synthesize these aspects? But that’s a fairly expectation of self-awareness of every individual. Perhaps Altman–himself a recovering gambler–believing that in every addict there was a con that would add more life to the screen.
If you read a bit on Synanon (which I recalled as having some unfavorable publicity, but didn’t recollect anything on it), it’s interesting to find these recovering addicts and alcoholics, with Synanon, had entered into a program in which, as part of their therapy, they played something called The Game:
The transition from therapeutic society to alternate society was initiated by two key decisions made in late 1968 and early 1969. The first move was to eradicate rehabilitation to the outside world and to instead expect ex-addicts to stay at Synanon forever. The second decision implemented was to allow members of the game clubs to join the community and experience the lifestyle. They were thus called “lifestylers” and donated several hundred dollars or more a month for this privilege.
It was during this era when much of the organization’s expansion occured. It developed into a “hustling” operation in which it solicited donations from businesses or individuals across the nation. Synanon also began to acquire substantial real estate holdings in Oakland, San Francisco and Badger, California and was successful in the business of distributing advertising gifts and specialties. In 1968, Dederich moved the headquarters from Santa Monica to Marshall…
…
Encounter Groups have less stigma than orthodox psychotherapy because they emphasize the idea of perfecting oneself rather than solving problems. Synanon therapeutic ideology focuses on behavior not the fundamental cognitive structure.The Game
The Game was group psychotherapy for the whole community and served as a way to discuss organizational change. Members were grouped by a Synamaster, usually an older member tried to achieve a balance of female-male participants and a varying range of Synanon membership seniority. A basic game consisted of ten to fifteen members and a Synanist to facilitate the activity. The Synanist was someone who had shown the ablility to either control the symptoms of his addiction for a considerable time or seemed to be progressing at a faster rate than his peers.
The Game was an emotional and aggressive group meeting in which members attacked each other verbally. It was an open arena for voicing and airing problems with one another en route to finding a solution. Members were free and encouraged to be honest with their feelings and frustrations. The “attack” was seen as an expression of love. It presumably helped people to see themselves as others do and compelled them to examine their own thoughts and actions. The Synanist acted as moderator and tried to help the participants find themselves and would use such tactics as ridicule, cross-examination and hostile attack to further the session. It was estimated that the typical resident participated in three to four three-hour games per week.
Role-joining was a very important aspect of the Game and was used to progress the session. Role-joining was an agreement between two or more game members to combine their efforts to place an individual on the “hot seat.” Once the plan was evident to the other members, they supported and aided in the scheme. Role-joining was essentially like joining a bandwagon and would result in all the session members joining forces against one of their own.
The Game was also the cornerstone around which the Synanon community was formed. It was key to Synanon government and created an in and out of game dichotomy. When “in the game,” one was expected to criticize others and reveal any personal conflicts one might have with whoever was in the “hot seat.” On the other hand, when “out of the game,” one was supposed to portray a happy, pleasant, and helpful manner.
Members were also expected to follow the rules and standards established during Game sessions. Compliance to the norms expressed was rewarded by material and social goods such as personal prestige or occupational mobility. Wealth and status symbols were regulated by the small group.
Source: Religious Movements
So, all these Synanon members, the extras, were living this thing, The Game, as part of their daily lives, and seems an interesting footnote to the film. Given the above description, the opening scene of “California Split” seems not so different from the practice of “The Game”, perhaps the social structrure at every table not too dissimilar than what is experienced at Table Ten where Lew ends up on the hot seat.
The Game adds yet another dimension to Charlie’s personality–the combatitiveness while in The Game and the helpful and friendly demeanor when outside it–such as with Bill, such as with Baby.
I have to believe that Altman was aware of all this, and it would be interesting to know if his awareness of the structure of Syanon was a reason that he used members of Synanon as the extras in the film. Was “California Split” also a commentary on Synanon? Or was he a believer in Synanon at the time he made the film?
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