This superb poster for Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye—one of my very favorite films—was illustrated by the great Richard Amsel (1947-1985). Amsel was a prodigy whose career hit the ground running when, aged 22 and still a student at the Philadelphia College of Art, he won a nationwide contest sponsored by 20th Century Fox to design a poster for Hello Dolly. For the next 15 years, until his untimely AIDS-related death at the age of 37, Amsel illustrated some of the best loved posters of the '70s and early '80s, including, most famously, those for The Sting and Raiders of the Lost Ark. His poster for The Long Goodbye is one of his more elegantly spare designs, conveying Elliott Gould's rumpled, tough guy charm as Philip Marlowe, as well as a hint of mystery in Nina Van Pallandt's robed figure in the doorway. Just the elements...