California Split

California Split follows Bill Denny, a journalist with a serious gambling habit, and Charlie Waters, a carefree man who shares his home with two women, Barbara and Susan. The two meet in a Los Angeles bar and hit it off despite their different temperaments: Bill is gloomy and perpetually short of money, while Charlie is easygoing and puts betting before everything else. They join forces and take their wagering to Reno, chasing a big score that keeps receding, and the pair's winning and losing change how each of them sees the life they have been living.

Robert Altman directed the film, the sixth of the twenty-one features he made, arriving between The Long Goodbye and Nashville. Joseph Walsh wrote the screenplay and produced alongside Altman, and also appears as Sparkie. George Segal plays Bill and Elliott Gould plays Charlie, with Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles as Barbara and Susan. Thirty-six credited performers and fifty-three credited crew members worked on the production, which was distributed by Columbia Pictures.

The film earned about five million dollars worldwide after its August 1974 release, a modest return from a wide release. On IMDb it holds a critics' rating of 7.5 out of 10 from thirty reviews, while on TMDB its audience rating is 6.5 out of 10 from 145 votes, so professional critics rated it noticeably higher than viewers did.