The meaning of the ''Rip Van Marlowe'' title is that it is the nick-name given to Elliott Gould's character in 'The Long Goodbye' (1973) by the film's director Robert Altman. Screenwriter Leigh Brackett and Altman spent a lot of time talking over the plot. Altman wanted Marlowe to be a loser. He even nicknamed Elliott Gould's character Rip Van Marlowe, as if he had been asleep for twenty years, had woken up, and was wandering around Los Angeles in the early 1970s but "trying to invoke the morals of a previous era".