The Late Show

I'm pretty sure I saw Robert Benton's The Late Show (1977) at some point in early adolescence, because I remember the standout performances from Art Carney and Lily Tomlin. Carney plays Ira Wells an aging gumshoe private dick with a bum leg and hearing aid. while Tomlin plays Margo Sterling, a loopy, quirky new age Hollywood-type who hire Wells to find her cat. They find themselves caught up in a larger murder-robbery conspiracy and the films skewers the film noir conventions with carney teaming with Tomlin to solve the case. Wells is an anti-hardboiled in some ways -he rides the bus and boards in the house of a kindly old woman, but he uses the old school hardboiled lingo and can look after himself when needs to with his gun and his fists.