The Bizarre Journey of the Mansion Which Inspired the Opening of The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler’s debut masterpiece drew on his knowledge of Southern California
One of the opening revelations in the new annotated version of The Big Sleep is a head-twister.
The annotators note that the “Sternwood” mansion may have likely been inspired by the real life “Greystone” mansion in the same neighborhood, built by an oil millionaire Raymond Chandler may have known during his oil executive days.
They then point out this bizarre factoid: the Greystone mansion was featured in The Big Lebowski, as The Big Lebowski’s mansion. So, the real life mansion inspired the fictional mansion in Chandler’s novel and in the (above) film, which in turn inspires the parody/homage which uses the real life mansion.
[Inspired by Lebowski, Chandler, and the Los Angeles I’ve come to know today, I wrote a screenplay last year with my own take on the themes. I intend to turn it into a novel soon too…]
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Photo by skeeze (Pixabay)
About the Author
David M. Swindle
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David M. Swindle is a writer, editor, investigative journalist, and activist. He is a senior editor and the webmaster for Liberty Island. He writes novels, non-fiction, articles, blog posts, scripts, and screenplays. He edits books across genres. Some of the titles he has acquired and edited for Liberty Island include: J.P. Medved's sci-fi thriller
Justice, Inc, Quin Hillyer's satirical
Mad Jones trilogy,
Silver & Lead: A Novella of the West, the comedic
Snowflake's Chance by Curtis Edmonds, the cyber-punk sci-fi thriller
First Shot: Jin & Tonick, Book 1 by Bokerah Brumley, and
The American Blackout action-thriller series by Fred Tribuzzo.
Click here if you are interested in submitting novels or web content to David.
David also works as Director of Research for
The Israel Group and is a writing fellow for the Middle East Forum's Islamist Watch project. Previously he has worked as the Southern California associate for the Counter-Islamist Grid (2018-2020), coordinator of Islamist Watch (2016-2017), associate editor for PJ Media (2011-2015), and associate editor for FrontPageMag/managing editor of NewsReal Blog (2009-2011). His articles have been published by The Daily Wire,
The Washington Examiner, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, The Algemeiner, The American Spectator, The Daily Caller,
The California Courier, Campus Watch, Rebel Media, Big Hollywood, SmashCut Culture, Acculturated, American Thinker, Lid Blog,
The Indianapolis Star, and WTHR.com (Indianapolis' NBC affiliate). He graduated in 2006 from Ball State University with a double-major in English (creative writing emphasis) and Political Science. He currently lives in Burbank, California. Follow him on Twitter
@DaveSwindle, follow him on Instagram
@thothandmaatmarried, and visit his blog
here.
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