Eddie and Ben Friday Night Neo-Noir: The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) intro 20210709 shown on July 9, 2021 From TCM's Friday Night Neo-Noir (Fridays at 8pm ET in July 2021) hosted by Eddie Muller and Ben Mankiewicz.
Plus he did stints as an older Philip Marlowe in the 70’s, the period remake of FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1975) and the then modern era (1978) take of THE BIG SLEEP.
Higgins was on set and he found out Mitchum was hanging out with the Winter Hill Gang, drinking with them etc and he just kind of shook his head. I thought this was a great film too. Coyle is somewhat of a 'loser' in that he's just a low-level associate but he's genuinely trying to get out of the life. He ends up being screwed over by Richard Jordan's character and we know what happens then. Mitchum and Steven Keat's interactions for me are the highlight of this film. There is a fantastic and lengthy article from Rolling Stone mag in 1973 wherein one of their reporters hung out with Mitchum on the set for the time he was there. You can still find it on the 'net. Robert Mitchum was an interesting guy to say the least.
I don’t usually say this because it’s such a cliché here, but George V Higgins is a criminally underrated author. Anyone who likes Elmore Leonard, even just a little bit, NEEDS to read Higgins. I was so disappointed when I realized that I had read all his books, there’s just not enough.
It's too bad that the fake head they made of Mitchum didn't work out at the very end of the movie. I understand Yates wanted the gunshot scene to be graphic but either way it's a classic movie.
A really disappointing film. But then again I am not a fan of Higgin's writing either. The ending was shot as if Coyle was not dead and that Boyle had missed. If someone had not read the book they might have been confused by the setup. And certainly there was an opportunity to have Coyle show up at the back of the bar with his head wrapped in a bandage at holding one of those M16s and paying Boyle back. Now that would have been a happy ending.
