California Split
| California Split | |
|---|---|
Promotional poster
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| Directed by | Robert Altman |
| Produced by | Joseph Walsh Robert Altman |
| Written by | Joseph Walsh |
| Starring |
George Segal Elliott Gould Ann Prentiss Gwen Welles |
| Music by | Phyllis Shotwell |
| Cinematography | Paul Lohmann |
| Edited by | O. Nicholas Brown Lou Lombardo |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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108 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $5 million (US/Canada) (rentals) |
California Split is a 1974 film directed by Robert Altman and starring Elliott Gould and George Segal as a pair of gamblers and was the first non-Cinerama film to use eight-track stereo sound.
A friendship develops between Bill Denny (George Segal) and Charlie Waters (Elliott Gould) over their mutual love of gambling. Charlie is a wisecracking joker and experienced gambler constantly looking for the next score. Initially, Bill is not as committed a gambler (he works at a magazine during the day), but he is well on his way. The two bond when they are wrongfully accused of colluding at a casino's poker table by an irate fellow player.
As the two men hang out more, Bill becomes more addicted to the gambling lifestyle. He goes into debt to Sparkie (Joseph Walsh), his bookie. Bill hocks possessions to fund a trip to Reno, where he and Charlie pool their money to stake Bill in a poker game (where one of the players is former world champion Amarillo Slim, portraying himself). Bill wins $18,000 and becomes convinced he is on a hot streak. He plays blackjack, then roulette and finally craps, winning more and more money.
But something happens at the craps table. When he finally stops, Bill is drained, almost apathetic. After they split their winnings ($82,000), he tells Charlie he is quitting and going home. Charlie does not understand it, but sees that his friend means what he says, so they go their separate ways.
Fed up with the unrealistic dialogue he and other actors were forced to say on a regular basis, struggling actor Joseph Walsh wrote a screenplay about his own gambling addiction in 1971. He was friends with then up-and-coming filmmaker Steven Spielberg and they worked on the script for nine months. The director was fascinated by the characters and would react to Walsh’s script, offering suggestions. At the time the screenplay was called Slide and the two men had a deal to make it at MGM with Walsh as producer and Steve McQueen in the starring role. However, the studio began making unrealistic demands, like having the script be an exact number of pages and wanting the whole story to be set at the Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas because MGM owned it.
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