Reading Inherent Vice

This is the first time I can remember I'm going to be buying a book on the day it comes out. Who else is on board?

I'm super tempted to do this too. Could save $16 bucks from buying it on Amazon tho.

i want to read it but i'll wait for the paperback.

I should be getting mine Thursday.

I thought it was coming out in September, and as a result I haven't finished my rereading of all the previous novels yet. It'll be sitting on my bookshelf, taunting me, for weeks.

will be in my hands tomorrow

Out in the UK on Thursday.

Damn, I'd been assuming it was out today.

You can read this until Thursday. It came out last week.
http://chicagoist.com/attachments/Marcus%20Gilmer/2009_6_16lucashilderbrand.jpg
Actually it does look quite interesting.

Some places in London have the Pynchon in stock now. It was for sale in Blackwell's at the weekend, and I bought a copy from the little bookshop down Exmouth Market yesterday. 50 pages in and it's very good so far. Pretty hilarious, too.

I just got mine from Waterstones in Leicester. I guess the official date is flexible.

I can walk to Exmouth Market at lunchtime. Win.

I bought Against the Day on the day it came out, but this time I'm testing the local library system to see how quick they are (I'm second in line, apparently, and copies are "processing" now). I reread Vineland last week and liked it way way more this time around (quite disliked it last time), which makes me more positive about this one.

Just bought the last copy in Exmouth Market. The dude in there seemed kind of overwhelmed by the demand, until I pointed out it was probably only in about three shops in London right now.

After reading the New Yorker review, I'm quite interested in this, even though I've only read The Crying of Lot 49 and about half of V.

Managed to pick up a copy myself too, which I wasn't expecting. The only copy in my local Waterstones.

Decided to grab a copy at my local Barnes and Noble. Ended up being one of the last three or four I saw in the store. Was like $22, which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Looking forward to diving in sometime relatively soon. Haven't read any Pynchon except for part of Crying Lot before...

I too wanted to go the library route for this one, but I'm taking a flight this weekend and wanted it for that. I always have good experiences reading while travelling.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/08/pynchon_speaks_maybe.html

The voice in the trailer is so not the voice in the Simpsons clip, even assuming that one of them is actually Pynchon.

I've been tied up and distracted by various things today but made a bit of headway. Surprisingly accessible so far. For all the noirish overtones, what makes me think we won't be getting a straightforward resolution to this one?

the Simpsons one is Pynchon!

Does it ever end, he wondered. Of course it does. It did.

<3

it looks very short, which makes it very tempting

very short compared to mason & dixon, that is

I'm only a chapter and a half in, but this is fucking funny.

finished this now

weird to read a pynchon novel with, like, an actual central reflector

can't decide if the crime novel's apparent fit with his usual 300 theses on paranoia works or not

quite explicit about his historical project being the projection of 60s counterculture us-vs-them notions onto all of time and space; but probably less new ideas about it than either of his last three; but a smoother read than any of them

sex scenes getting kind of embarrassing tho; doper comedy scenes less so but totally seen it already

bigfoot's apologising for "having interrupted some complicated stoner deduction like trying to remember where to find the glue on a Zig Zag" made me lol tho /:

I LOL'ed so much I was really annoying my wife. Pynchon is often funny, but this is the only one of his novels that's a flat-out comedy.

I was hoping he would do a more thorough-going take on the whole Hammett/Chandler tradition, but this is not quite that. The brief passage about the Santa Anas is a nice tribute to the opening of "Red Wind."

Daily Breeze piece on the setting in time and place, plus a map of the area.

Further link in that article to this earlier webreport, "Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay":

http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html

The voice in the trailer is so not the voice in the Simpsons clip, even assuming that one of them is actually Pynchon.

I was just going to say they sound alike! One sounds older than the other but maybe the Simpsons one is slightly speeded up?

would you all recommend this book to someone who admires some aspects of pynchon but is annoyed by the generally annoying ones - is an elmore leonard filter the solution - sounds like it could be

What do you mean by the annoying ones?

just got this for my birthday, will prob. start reading this afternoon

This is shaggier than an Elmore Leonard book, with a lot more characters and the usual random Pynchon shifts between realism and goofiness, but yeah, I think this might be accessible to people who like Elmore Leonard.

Our library doesn't have it yet, but it has spiked a marked increase in requests for "Gravity's Rainbow." I've tried to push "The Crying" and "Vineland" as well, to no avail.

PS: I almost checked out a collection of early short stories, "Slow Learner," that I'd never heard of. Worthwhile?

i dont really like elmore leonard it sounded like leonard + pynchon

last story in it, 'the secret integration', is fantastic and joyful — the early stuff, apart from fleshing out a buncha shoulda-never-gone-past-undergraduate-level theses on 'entropy', is of little value

the introduction, autobiographical, in which pynchon basically writes off his entire writing career of the 60s, is probably the most referenced bit of it nowadays. it's interesting that it exists, i guess?

"I counted."

I've had trouble getting a clear run at this, so I'm only 90 or so pages in, but I'm loving the shaggy dogness so far. A ridiculous lurid twist in every paragraph seems kind of fitting, I almost punched the air when Beware of the Golden Fang appeared.

I've been paused at "I counted" b/c I'm like, there's no way this can get better.

This New Yorker review tries to put the book in the Chandler context and is pretty much spoiler-free.

ehh, it's kinda hardboiled 101 stuff. which kind of makes me think there's just not that much to say about this record

1 - read chandler essay
2 - read pynchon novel
3 - quote liberally from both
4 - collect check

The friend who linked the New Yorker piece on her blog noted that its author had apparently not seen "The Long Goodbye" or "The Big Lebowski," which are both better points of reference than "The Simple Art of Murder."

tracer i would have said much the same except i have a grudging fondness for louis menand

lebowski is actually a really apt comparison, sadly /:

hey, it's really him

http://shelf-life.ew.com/2009/08/11/thomas-pynchon-speaks-inherent-vice-trailer/

swallowed this fucker more-or-less whole -- finished in about 24 hrs.

really very funny & enjoyable. the chandler reference in the new yorker review is only relevant in attempting to include IV into the formal definition of hardboiled noir via the protagonist -- there wasn't a lot of chandler here beyond the common geography. i haven't read any leonard but i imagine there's a greater similarity. i was reminded at some points of ross mcdonald, but for all the shaggy freaks and lemuria references and cointelpro shit, i kept thinking of the illuminatus trilogy, of all things.

On what page does "I Counted" turn up? I'm a bit worried I either missed it, failed to get it, or just forgot about it because I read a chunk of this while a bit drunk last week.

He says it at least a couple of times, in response to something like (to Bigfoot) "You are one fucked-up hombre" "How do you know?" "I counted."

Really underwhelmed by this so far. It feels as dismayingly weak as one of those terrible late episodes of the Simpsons. I saw one blog which suggested it would make a good film if it were entirely cast by muppets - which could work.

I can only really justify it as a book about failing memory - 72-y-o TRP trying to get down all the details of his 1969 LA idyll - the surf, the songs, the food - before his own doperhead memory finally flakes out.

Re noir - I suppose The Long Goodbye is the missing link between this and Chandler.

On what page does "I Counted" turn up?

p18 is the first time.

He says it at least a couple of times, in response to something like (to Bigfoot) "You are one fucked-up hombre" "How do you know?" "I counted."

Haha, oh yeah, I remember laughing out loud at that at the time now.

I guess I can understand how this might be disappointing if you have great expectations for this because its connection to Pynchon's own past, but I found its pulpy meanderings and self-indulgence to be extremely refreshing -- but that may have more to do with my acquired taste for pulp.

xp

As a hardboiled detective, Doc isn't much of a detective or very hardboiled, though there is one amusing scene where he is mistaken for a badass. His dope-clouded consciousness won't support the classic succession of quick scenes in which the PI detects and questions. That's part of the joke, but it means the narrative never achieves the speed or economy of the best works in the genre.

I can see a Ross Macdonald comparison both in the L.A. setting and in Doc's Archer-like compassion for the mysterious sax player and his family.

god i want to read this but my to-read stack is just out of control at the moment. someone convince me to leapfrog about five or six other novels.

do it! leapfrog!

i really can't afford a hardcover (or food) (or rent) right now, so that does make things a bit easier to take.

Have you considered petty crime? It fits nicely and inconspicuously inside a trenchcoat or other long jacket.

for what it's worth, Doc hasn't been hardboiled to the point of weary cynicism like other classic private dicks in the genre, but he's by no means soft

well, maybe a little soft in the head

The later Lew Basnight episodes in Against The Day are a lot closer to traditional hardboiled detective fiction than this. When I first heard about the concept for this book I initially thought Pynchon was going to pick up his story where he left off.

there's really no femme fatale in this, is there?

It's true that Doc does carry a gun sometimes and is not adverse to putting himself in dangerous situations (though some of those decisions come across as more befogged than brave). He's not a wuss by any means.

I'm reading the latest Elmore Leonard now and there are some comparisons to be made in terms of the weird, shady, characters and the ear for street-level speech. But Leonard's dialogue is far better.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/08/pynchon-lotion.html

by all accounts he's not any kind of crazy total recluse: he just doesn't do publicity, for the most part, and is perhaps a little cagier than most about being ex-directory

used to know someone who went to school with his niece and saw him at, like, open days and stuff

This niece?!?

I am tempted to put together a spotify playlist of these:
http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Songs_mentioned_in_Inherent_Vice

Well that's one way of rebelling against your reclusive, rarely photographed famous uncle I suppose.

(That Spotify playlist is a great idea, do it!)

Bigfoot's Fatso Judson namecheck was a nice touch, I thought.

"Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" covered by The Bonzo Dog Band"

^ now i think about it, this doesn't actually exist, does it?

Blog post about Pynchon and comics: http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2009/08/12/pynchon-and-comics/

A friend of mine has a good story about meeting Pynchon. He was working at Kim's Video (RIP) and Pynchon came in to buy Simpsons DVDs with credit card.

The Bonzo cover does exist - it's included in this Spotify IV playlist I just put together: http://open.spotify.com/user/stevietee/playlist/3FMKzyb1IUEJJtGjVqaaZL

niiiice

good luck, USA

god i love the bonzo dog band.

I was amazed to discover, incidentally, that Dark Shadows actually existed!

Oh, man, Dark Shadows was what we all ran home from school to watch in 1970.

^ old

"Japanese Replica Barbed Wire"

loooooooooooooool

god, the bonzos. thanks for that.

does anyone know the origin of it?

huh. the wikipedia page for 'the doughnut in granny's greenhouse' has it a prv. unreleased bonus track on that album's cd remaster. on the other hand, it also claims

The phrase "the doughnut in granny's greenhouse" is British slang for lavatory.

Original Soundtrack

I'm such a Pynchon novice - read Lot 49 2-3 times like a decade ago and it was rough going, got only like 10 pages into V. after buying it (still have it), borrowed Against The Day from the library but only managed a few pages (the length was daunting and I had a bunch of other things I needed to read at that time).

Maybe I'll give this one a go.

Pat Dubonnet

“In conversation, Thomas Pynchon really did seem to know a lot about Godzilla.”

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/pynchon-and-the-new-yorker-pranksters-fess-up/

Bought this last night, only read the first chapter before crashing out last night but it does seem like it'll be a quick, fun read as compared to most other pynchon i've read.

I feel a John Garfield DVD spree coming on.

is there a "vineland" thread anywhere? borrowed it from the library over the weekend since "inherent vice" hadn't arrives yet.

"arrived"

I just started it after finishing I.V.!

there's no one vineland thread, but it is mentioned on every other pynchon thread

Dark Shadows appears to be torrentable - worth a go?

this book was a total gas. funny and great and a quick read, too.

Very pleasantly surprised. Many of the reviews I read seemed unfavorable, so I thought I might not enjoy it, but it is definitely my favorite Pynchon so far. Makes me want to re-read Vineland, my first Pynchon. I picked up Against the Day at the library, but I don't think I will stick with it. Also picked up Mason & Dixon, another passed over Pynchon.

passed over Pynchon

lol.

Scored the library copy of this the other day and will hope to give it a read soon...

The guy has gotten better at writing last sentences since GR.

Read it while on vacation, laughed my head off. Great fun and sad in all the right ways too. Pretty much the book that most leapt to mind while reading it was City of Quartz.

[i]Makes me want to re-read Vineland</>

This is exactly what I am doing. I liked VL just fine the first time around but now it seems even better. I've never understood why it's not highly regarded. Is it just because it isn't GV2?

I mean GR2 of course.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/archives/paul_thomas_anderson_looks_to_adapt_thomas_pychons_inherent_vice_with_rober/

that could be cool! i am actually reading this right now -- lots of funny stuff, though the plot itself seems to be getting in the way. love all the south bay content -- the book basically takes place right where I grew up!

Yeah, this could work really well.

Blimey. Hope this actually sees the light of day.

yeah tbh, not holding my breath for it -- seems like a lot of variables that could easily fall through. does anyone know if pynchon has been opposed in the past to film adaptations, or is it that no one in their right mind has thought to try? other than the phenomenal V TV miniseries of course.

Closest thing to my mind mind was the time he was supposed to "appear" on The John Larroquette Show (which fell through):

The show made several passing references to Pynchon, but the most specifically “Pynchonian” episode was Episode 11, airing in 1994 and titled “Newcomer.” Guest-starring David Crosby, the plot had Hemingway’s new girlfriend joining Alcoholics Anonymous and swearing off sex for six months. At one point, reference was made to a “Pynchon sighting,” describing the reclusive author as wearing a Roky Erickson T-shirt[...]

wonder waht happened to pta's scientology film...

Was excited until I saw RDJ's name.

does anyone know if pynchon has been opposed in the past to film adaptations, or is it that no one in their right mind has thought to try?

Well the rights have been sold, right?

other than the phenomenal V TV miniseries of course.

Does this actually exist?

think it's a joek - failed sci-fi thing

wonder waht happened to pta's scientology film...

http://www.movieline.com/2010/09/paul-thomas-andersons-scientology-film-gets-indefinitely-postponed.php

I was really looking forward to this too.

What do you mean you "wonder what happened", pretty sure the Hollywood scientologists with the power made it not happen.

think it's a joek - failed sci-fi thing
haha yeah, just kidding.

it's been so long since i read the word 'hardon' in print, it looks like some kind of CERN discovery

so wait . . . this is filming?

http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/77484/sean-penn-might-do-pynchon-for-paul-thomas-anderson

That is an excellent cast.

Groovy set pix

Has Joaquin Phoenix ever done comedy? Feel like he's all wrong for this.

After seeing The Master and going solely on Gravity's Rainbow (only Pynchon I've read besides Lot 49), I feel like Joaquin and PTA are a solid pair for a Pynchon adapt. Don't know much about IV, so if it's a different beast entirely n/m.

so excited 4 this

Cast looks solid for the exception of Reese Witherspoon

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/josh-brolin-says-inherent-vice-goes-in-a-direction-that-the-book-doesnt-necessarily-go-20140329

I wish they had gotten unknown actors

https://31.media.tumblr.com/5a9ca5590be6f887581ff143968be338/tumblr_n49kou5MXC1s7e2fco1_500.jpg

after his performance in Her, I am confident JP can bring it

I wonder if we'll ever see a film of Gravity's Rainbow

12-hour anime

I've got it all planned out actually. It's either a 12-hour anime, or a 2-hour episode of Xavier: Renegade Angel, with Xavier as Slothrop

I'm planning a 7-season tv-series called P, combining every Pynchon-novel into one long historical saga. It combines The Whole Sick Crew with the hippie-plot from Vineland, and has Stencil searching through history for the mysterious P, with a lot of help from the memoirs of the Frenesi, Bodine, Cherrycoke and Slothrop families. It's going to be awesome!

You forgot the Traverses!

Oh, crap. Frenesi is the first name, Traverse second. You're right!

Stuck halfway through M&D, don't know how I'm going to finish it (then AtD and Inherent Vice and I've batted the cycle)

I've done all the epics, but can't bring myself to read the shorter ones, or really any other novels by anyone else. It's terrible, and great.

AtD is probably, IMO, 90% as good as GR, and superior to M&D (a controversial opinion perhaps). All three are beyond other literature I may have tried to read.

M&D is so episodic and splintered that it's surely easy to read a chapter or two a day and not lose track? ATD is much more coherent, accumulative, beastly & deranged - good fucken luck with that one ;)

I have Inherent Vice at home and will certainly read it before watching the movie.

Thanks, imago. Maybe I'll just read 10 pages at a time, sounds less daunting! Glad to hear AtD is good

so this is fun

into the inner jacket reflecting pink fluorescent light at me

my favorite parts so far are bambi and jade.

"parts"

oh and saying Denis out loud in a Butthead voice

I read Inherent Vice.

go on

was not so into this one

"It's BONKERS — weird, weird, weird," one person who saw the film told me. "It made me laugh out loud several times, but not in the ways you might expect. The humor is not so much 'Boogie Nights,' as I think a lot of people are expecting. For reals, it tips into, like, Zucker Bros.-level gags and broad humor. But, obviously, mixed with his other sensibilities. Strange, beguiling tone."

Others who have seen it have mentioned that certain moments had a "Big Lebowski" vibe. "It's a sui generis mix of broad comedy, suspense, romance, melancholy and a touch of menace — unlike anything I can think of," said another.

I'm told Josh Brolin stands out in the supporting ranks and that Martin Short's work as a druggie dentist is "batshit insane." Another compared the film to Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye," starring Elliot Gould, "but amped up to 11."

Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/in-contention/expect-a-very-different-paul-thomas-anderson-experience-from-inherent-vice#hDOkvEVrX2pKebXd.99

I wasnt even into this book but that seems perfect

First still leaked. Brolin's flat top is pretty perfect. Looking forward to how his chocolate covered banana obsession plays out on screen. Wish the trailer would land already.

Can't wait to get freaked out and watch this

Here is that flat top.

http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/i/2014/08/10/Inherent-Vice.jpg

"According to Waterston and Brolin, the director allowed the magical realism dictated by Pynchon’s novel to flow from a place of possibility and collaboration—if not freewheeling experimentation—on set."

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/08/16/inherent-vice-josh-brolin-katherine-waterston/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/movies/paul-thomas-anderson-films-inherent-vice.html

I wonder if we'll ever see a film of Gravity's Rainbow

some people say this is close enough (i haven't read GR, and p much couldn't get anything out of the film)

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/impolex

if PTA is actually trying to do really quick, sharp visual comedy, it might be the hardest task he's set himself yet. looking forward to seeing how well it works.

Filming Thomas Pynchon is an exercise of futility

I feel positively-disposed towards this film adaptation

Looking forward to TP's cameo. Or at least the detective work to track it down.

i try to exercise my futility every day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZfs22E7JmI

Yes.

oh man I can't wait. this is going to be the first movie I've seen in the theatre since Waking Life

I could tell you don't like cinema from that "futility" snob crap

Looks fantastic. Excited to see some of the darker themes of the novel work with the screwball comedy bits.

looks great

jena malone voiceover? pta mustve watched moodyssons 'container'

or uh Into the Wild

voiceover is joanna newsome, isn't it?

yea i think thats right actually

http://i.imgur.com/ieLGhzi.png

Glenn Kenny just now on Twitter: "I'm not yet prepared to write a full consideration, but my initial impression is that "Inherent Vice" is a capital-G Great Film." I asked him if it was faithful to tone/plot of the book; response: "Extremely faithful to plot and tone but with Anderson shifting the stresses at crucial points, making it his own."

Top comment from underneath the trailer on Youtube:

"SECULAR MOVIES/MEDIA ARE CORRUPTING OUR MORALS AND PUSHING US FARTHER AWAY FROM GOD, AND MORE TOWARDS SATAN. THIS TRAILER IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF EVERYDAY LIFE ON THIS SINFUL PLANET, WHERE THE WOMEN DRESS LIKE WHORES AND THE MEN ARE VIOLENT. I BET THERE IS PLENTY OF CURSING AND BLASPHEMY, TOO. BEWARE OF WHAT YOU WATCH ON TV AND THE INTERNET. PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN FROM THIS FALLEN WORLD. EVERYONE NEEDS JESUS CHRIST!

(I'd like to believe Pynchon wrote it himself)

More detail from Kenny

http://ow.ly/Cit50

NY Times profile of Anderson last weekend has him talking about Airplane! and Top Secret! as big inspirations for his approach to this (really).

Jeff Wells didn't understand it, so that's encouraging.

Opening credits are set to vitamin c apparently

http://youtu.be/foyAOoVagWw

http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/inherent-vice-review-new-york-film-festival.html

david edelstein review

it’s actually less coherent than Pynchon, no small feat.

Just excerpting at random.

And we have movie tie-in new book edition cover:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1N5EKWCIAAUoQV.jpg

I wonder if TP signed off on that, must have. Weird expression!

hey i didn't know martin donovan was in this

I wonder if TP signed off on that, must have.

Publishers usually retain control over cover art. They figure authors may write books, but covers sell books.

NY Times profile of Anderson last weekend has him talking about Airplane! and Top Secret! as big inspirations for his approach to this (really).

Maybe for about 3 seconds.

u get a screener bro?

Pleading the fifth.

This is a lot of fun. Tiny, obnoxious quibble about the names of at least three Southern California towns getting pronounced wrong by the actors (Palos Verdes, San Ysidro... one other I can't remember). It didn't seem intentional, but it's weird given that PTA is So Cal born-and-bred. Then again, at the Q&A after the film, he kept pronouncing Thomas Pynchon's name as "Pinch-ON" with a pronounced and significant stress on the 'on.' It's more "Pinch'n," isn't it? Weird. Who knows.

in simpsons episode pynchon pronounces it like anderson did

Huh. I've been saying it wrong since I first heard of the guy!

The Simpsons may not be the most reliable of guides in such matters.

i suspect thomas pynchon knows how his own name is pronounced

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1791528/keywords

i suspect thomas pynchon knows how his own name is pronounced

canning his own red herring

gr8080's link reminds me of the library subject headings for The Crying of Lot 49:

California--Fiction. Married women--Fiction. Administration of estates--California--Fiction.

whoa when i read that format i can smell the library

new trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTRMkQzFYHI

by some miracle of coincidence I am going to have babysitting this weekend and will actually get to see this in the theater

oh goddammit no I can't, the screening in Oakland is already sold out BAH

Chicago too

where is it screening in Chicago?

loled hard at that cop shove

vitamin c sounds so good in that!! i heard it playing in the elevator at the hotel where i work this week and did an eyebrow raise; would be awesome if it had a huge comeback this winter.

not opening in Austin this weekend = aarrrrghgh!!!

NY Times profile of Anderson last weekend has him talking about Airplane! and Top Secret! as big inspirations for his approach to this (really).

saw inherent vice tonight at the new beverly. one of the pre-show trailers was for top secret (there was also up in smoke, the long goodbye, and the cheech & chong "basketball jones" animation).

posting this w/ all "warts and all"/"don't shoot the messenger" caveats.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIbp5C-5WXM

going to have to finally read this before I see the movie.

It's a fun/quick read

the trailer makes it look like a must-see for lebowski fans. very madcap.

Dargis likes it. oddly did not mention Lebowski once, which it definitely seems reminiscent of.

GOOD, Lebowski agnostic here

v intentionally not reading b4 film

seeing this saturday. glad ive read the book since i'd have no hope of following it otherwise.

J Phoenix sez don't bother following it.

i read the book, but didn't follow a lot of the plot. seemed to be beside the point.
xp

yeah I should add I didn't totally follow the book either!

last pynchon i read was against the day and i'm kinda looking forward to going into this cold

my only real complaint is that all the characters talk too fast for the general stoner vibe -- i get that there's a lot to pack into the running time, but if the plot doesn't matter, maybe slow the dialogue down a bit? also, do modern-day actors mumble more than actors of the past (mumblecore jokes here)? there are a lot of lines i wish had been looped in or re-shot to make them sound clearer.

i haven't read any early reviews or interviews about the film, so maybe this criticism has already been brought up elsewhere.

I can't wait to grow sideburns and go see this

Fantastic film. A scaled down production from TWBB/The Master but amps up weirdness to some truly awesome levels. Nailed the Pynchon vibe.

i enjoyed this a lot, but im gonna have to see it again i think. i agree this def struck a pynchonian vibe at times but it wasn't really as madcap as I was expecting. i found myself missing pynchon's narrative voice, which is a really ridiculous criticism to throw at a movie. hence the need to see it again. had the book in my head too much.

but for all that this maybe the most cinematically restrained PTA film? hopefully a grower.

also yeah there was a LOT of mumbly dialogue.

Opens here Christmas Day. I've never read Thomas Pynchon; assuming that won't be a problem.

xp yeah i found it pretty hard to hear significant amounts of dialogue. i also honestly don't know how much you could follow if you hadn't read the book. a lot of critics say they like it much better the 2nd time around. i think viewing one is for letting it all wash over you, the second viewing is where it coheres more.

it's sweet that the soundtrack features a song by his mother-in-law

this one btw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1kDd6yBQZ4

I didn't know about that. What a song that is.

it's in at least one of the trailers (at the end IIRC)

and yeah it's a great song

Sorry, I meant I didn't know about Minnie being PTA's mother in law.

actually, i guess he and maya rudolph aren't married. but they are domestic partners for about a decade and have a few kids so i think calling minnie riperton his mother-in-law is spiritually if not technically correct.

they have a kid named minnie, too.

oh man i love that song

OMG I was trying to figure out how Melanie Jackson was related to Minnie Riperton for the longest time.

This is Anderson's best film imho. And it's deeper than the shtick of Lebowski, thanks Christ, as Howard Hampton writes in Film Comment.

Surprisingly, the movie’s more weirdly interiorized and not as expansively outgoing as the book would lead you to anticipate: the Inherent Vice of my dreams would have more sense of the jumbled archaeology of L.A. back then, more of the grunge-funk edifices, the leftover potluck from previous generations, the smog and the unexpected torrential rains, the feeling of reality bleeding and strobing like a cheap color TV picture in a thunderstorm. Master of Southern California light and industrial spaces, Anderson’s withdrawn from the landscape this time around, as though he caught a dose of agoraphobia from Doc.

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/everybody-must-get-stoned

Did not recognize either Eric Roberts or Jeannie Berlin in their one-minute scenes.

This one didn't really work on me, but I'd def agree with it being the best PTA v. 2.0

Hampton is also right that the 'something extra' is due in large part to Ms Waterston's two monologue scenes.

I'm with Eric in that it didn't work on me, in part because I've watched The Long Goodbye too many times, and despite its flaws I preferred The Master; but PTA gets the funkiness of the novel, and Phoenix once again deserves the credit. All the women except Witherspoon blurred, and maybe that's the point?

I just saw TLG again two weeks ago; this is not exactly the same thing.

Seeing this a second time in 70mm next week. Hoping my feelings about it will coalesce this time.

what'd you guys think of how PTA staged Shasta's seduction of Doc? Hampton otm about it's being a "slow drip of role-playing, self-revilement, vulnerability, and desperate control that’s indistinguishable from nihilistic abandon, expresses more about sex as a weapon.

loved how PTA shot Mrs. Wolfmann's pool party, complete with unshown heads of actors and LAPD cops grilling at BBQ in long shot -- a refinement of scenes in Boogie Nights.

should i read the book before seeing this or no

I read the book four years ago (liked it) and don't remember a thing other than a couple of lines.

So you are saying read it and then wait four years before seeing the film?

I just saw TLG again two weeks ago; this is not exactly the same thing.

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius),

Well, yeah, cuz TLG does cohere. IV isn't intended to. Martin Short's coke snortin' dentist is an ebullient hybrid of Mark Rydell and Henry Gibson.

So you are saying read it and then wait four years before seeing the film?

― Pigbag Wanderer (James Redd and the Blecchs),

Watch the movie and wait four days before recommending it to friends.

Thanks.

Is there a thread on the career of Mark Rydell?

wait a second, this was shot in 35mm, but it being exhibited in 70mm blowup. Not in NYC afaik.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1791528/technical

I'm in Austin for now--didn't realize it was just a blow up. oh well.

http://www.nndb.com/people/064/000115716/david-hemmings-1-sized.jpg

liked this a whole lot -- felt it hung together just enough more than the book. i def was expecting a little more slapstick though.

martin donovan was soooo.... martin donovan

no idea what that means, but nice to see him with a good role

i def was expecting a little more slapstick though.

ppl took PTA's Zucker Bros remarks a bit too literally I think...

The only gag that looked like something from un film de Zucker was Brolin in profile eating the banana.

Phoenix's pratfall after getting clubbed in the massage parlor.

It'd be difficult for PTA to "look like" ZAZ cuz he has a clue about where a camera goes etc.

also the scream on seeing the picture.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=16866

whaddaya think sterl 'zis rilly a thing

xp or the scene when Brolin eats Doc's weed

xp idk, rilly?

also the scream on seeing the picture

More subtle than either ZAZ or Farrellys

Let's accept this is not a ZAZ movie and move on.

What's ZAZ?

Zucker Abrahams Zucker (eg Airplane!). PTA claimed in an interview(s?) they were an influence on this film.

Ah ok, thanks.

this does capture the dense-ness of pynchon poss as well as a movie could & joaquin was so good, i dug it

also the scream on seeing the picture.

― celfie tucker 48 (s.clover), Sunday, January 4, 2015 10:38 AM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha this was awesome yes

I want the scene with Minnie Riperton to be online. I just want to watch it over and over. Amazing.

man what a song. that's one of the main things I remembered leaving the theater

driving me crazy

best nah nah nahs I've ever heard

Was kinda shocked at how well this nailed Pynchon. The sequence with Martin Short especially.

Phoenix was fantastic.

I don't know if this is the best PTA movie but I'm pretty it's gonna be the one I want to watch the most.

I was plastered last night

saw this last night and it was great fun! haven't gotten wrapped up in a movie so fast in a while, I totally forgot where I was. everyone was pretty amazing except for owen wilson seemed a little subdued?

Just got out of this, main takeaway at the moment is that I can't recall another movie that so thoroughly captures the entire range of experience of being stoned, rather than just the usual schticky aspects

As soon as I recognized Belladonna in her role I had to wonder how many people in the theater did as well.

Just got out of this, main takeaway at the moment is that I can't recall another movie that so thoroughly captures the entire range of experience of being stoned, rather than just the usual schticky aspects

― Simon H., Saturday, January 10, 2015 8:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM

i'd never even heard of Belladonna but y'know

Saw this last night and I really enjoyed the ride, although a writer friend I went with thought it's failure was being too faithful to the source material.

Your friend might be interested to see this article in LARB: Too Faithful to Succeed: On Inherent Vice by Anna Shechtman. Haven't read it myself, since I'd like to see the movie first.

I think it's a successful adaptation along the lines of No Country for Old Men. It doesn't try to shoehorn the source material into a new medium but realizes the cinematic elements already present in the novel. It feels in the tradition of one of the late night films that would hypnotize the book's protagonist, watching TV late at night.

Haven't seen the film yet, but doesn't it skip the whole Vegas section?

not too keen on the LARB review. feels challopsy.

It's a pretty faithful adaptation, with scenes elongated and omitted.

yeah it skips the Vegas section. other big changes are a new scene between Shasta and Doc, and I think Doc doesn't ever speak to Mickey Wolfmann in the book. some others possibly but I think those are the biggest other than making sortilege the narrator.

i liked this

not sure what I made of it! it was certainly something. really evocative use of neil young (even if it was an anachronism). josh brolin was amazing.

i actually thought phoenix might have been the weak link. he was brilliant, but maybe not ideal for the part?

also, at first it was quite weird to see martin donovan playing the rich establishment dad, but i was heartened that he still looks pretty boyish.

anderson must have known from hal hartley films that donovan could get around some really stylized dialogue

that was one of the stranger, more fascinating but also discomfiting (?) things about this film actually, the way it shifted (often in a matter of moments) back and forth between a kind of naturalistic register and something more obviously farcical and broad. there's that moment when jena malone shows phoenix a photo of her heroin-addled baby and pheonix lets out a startled scream, and then the conversation just proceeds as if nothing like that had taken place. for me it echoed the way that different stretches of "there will be blood" were pitched in a completely different register, such that it was impossible to understand (or even grasp the contours of) the main character's psychology, if indeed he could even be said to have one.

i still feel like anderson's basic MO is basically to be a contrarian, to set up certain generic expectations but systematically refuse the kind of tonal coherence and narrative rhythm we might then expect. he does it in such a brilliant and virtuosic (not to mention very particular) way that i have to admire it, but then i get the feeling that this is the very effect—indeed the principal effect—his films are meant to produce -- awe at the filmmaker's chutzpah. that's not to say the films don't have other pleasures, but there's a certain hollowness (call it callowness, even) there.

the shifts between the farcical and the naturalistic are in the novel too, and I'm impressed PTA made it work. The sadomasochistic scene between Shasta and Doc also gets deepened, i.e. it plays better and is more touching on screen.

oh yeah, i'm sure that's one reason he was attracted to the novel... but it's still something the film has in common with anderson's other work. not necessarily those kind of moment-to-moment tonal shifts, but some form of incoherence. is it contradictory to say that, in formalist terms, "incoherence" is the dominant of anderson's films since punch drunk love?

btw i also thought the way this film dealt with "l.a." was a bit shallow and unconvincing compared to the novel, although there were a few stunning moments of emotional clarity in that regard. i would have that film (as a visual medium blah blah blah) could have enhanced that aspect of the novel, but i'm not sure it did.

did i mention i basically liked it?

i would have thought that film...

(sorry for typo)

i still feel like anderson's basic MO is basically to be a contrarian, to set up certain generic expectations but systematically refuse the kind of tonal coherence and narrative rhythm we might then expect. he does it in such a brilliant and virtuosic (not to mention very particular) way that i have to admire it, but then i get the feeling that this is the very effect—indeed the principal effect—his films are meant to produce -- awe at the filmmaker's chutzpah. that's not to say the films don't have other pleasures, but there's a certain hollowness (call it callowness, even) there.

― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, January 16, 2015 8:52 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i like that take on anderson's weird rhythms. here i think they worked because they sort of mirror and interpret pynchon's high-low register voice and the twists of his narration. in most other contexts i've found them strange stylistic tics (in particular i didn't understand what people liked about punch-drunk love at all). they worked very well for me in The Master too for some reason, maybe because he just let them dominate and play on their own terms.

To a degree. The Master has more formal coherence than the films around which it's sandwiched (whether the results Make Sense has to do with, again, coherence). I don't think PTA was able to figure out what he wanted to say in TWBB; I suspect he figured an overwhelming lead performance would do the job.

xpost to am

one of my favorite touches in the novel is somewhere observing the recovery center the narratorial voice goes "zoinks, scoob" and it just has all the perfect beats for that moment. wasn't quite in the film, but there was at least one zoinks.

one thing i missed in the film was the way the novel draws out these prefigurings of the modern era latent behind everything going on. i imagine that's actually a harder job for the camera than a literary voice tho

oh yeah i forgot to mention the narrator of the film! that was the most interesting part for me, from a film-narrative POV. i like how her character is at once in the time of the story, after the time of the story (or maybe just one step ahead of what we're seeing?), in the story (diegesis), outside the story. there's one point where she appears talking beside phoenix in a car, but then there's a cut that "reveals" that she isn't "actually" there (sorry for scare quotes, but the film courts ambiguity, to say the least). i can't think offhand of another film that uses a narrator in quite this way. maybe la ronde? (anderson is a big ophuls fan btw)

god i loved this

phoenix's ability to do microcalibrations of intensity on his confused expression was awe-inspiring

yeah! that really struck me the second time around.

just got out of this and yes, a good time for sure. a couple we knew also went and were mostly baffled by the storyline, I think this is the kind of film that you need to see twice if you aren't familiar with the book, it was suitably dense. loved Joanna Newsom's narration, and the sections that were chosen to be read.

yeah, i need to see this again.

thought the cinematography was often extremely evocative of smaller hollywood films of the era in which the film is set, even in the occasional (and presumably deliberate) butt-ugliness of it all.

like "cisco pike," a modest but excellent film from 1972, set in LA, worth seeing esp for fans of harry dean stanton (and gene hackman, playing a manic variation on popeye doyle)

My fave Letterboxd review was by Simon Abrams:

That wasn't so hard to follow, actually.

Interested in seeing Cisco Pike but it doesn't seem to be available anywhere, not even through illegal channels

i miss CP every friggin' time it shows in NYC

"Following it" wasn't the point, which made my second viewing significantly more enjoyable.

Third viewing will involve sensory-altering elements.

Odourama?

cisco pike is on DVD ... is it out of print? shouldn't be too hard to find used, i imagine...

been thinking about inherent vice (the movie) a fair bit. i still think it's partly jive, like all of anderson's films, but it certainly exerts a fascination. i'll try to see it again before it leaves theaters here.

I thought it was great. Probably my favorite movie to come out in a while

yeah, i dug it. but, there was a smallness to it that both irked and gratifed me. i wanted it to convey some of the novel's expansiveness, but appreciate the way in which, like, establishing shots and vistas would've made it overly conventional and un-weirded the weird. maybe it was SO relentlessly doc-subjective and doc-centric that i craved a parallax view?

also, the pynchon humor didn't always come across onscreen. or the humor that /i/ understand in IV as a novel. the songs, the dialogue. often in the novels i feel like TP is riffing on the idea of dialogue and indicating the general gist or rhythm of speech rather than providing a verbatim transcription of an exchange itself. like, a character might say in the text "metaphorical faeces bos taurus' and the reader should think, 'oh, the character actually says "bullshit." but not so in the film. or maybe i'm reading TP wrong.

I liked things here and there, and Phoenix and Brolin are very good. Not sure that I'd be up to a second viewing. Katherine Waterson is very willowy.

I'm with Alfred--similarities to The Long Goodbye throughout, most obviously Martin Short = Henry Gibson. And Phoenix's mumble sometimes evoked Hunter S. Thompson (or at least the Bill Murray/Johnny Depp movie version of him), and Phoenix/Del Toro reminded me of Thompson and his lawyer--who was also played by Del Toro in the Terry Gilliam film.

had a dream where the del toro character was in a wes anderson movie and each time he made a gesture there was a sudden whip pan

most obviously Martin Short = Henry Gibson

don't get this at all, bcz they're both nefarious "doctors"?

(under that umbrella there's nearly one in every noir)

I enjoyed the Martin Donovan scene the most. Such a funny dude without being funny.

that's "high comedy"

(not the Cheech & Chong kind)

cisco pike is on DVD ... is it out of print? shouldn't be too hard to find used, i imagine...

I was seeing this in sale bins two or three years ago--I may even have a second copy in a box of duplicates I have.

It's selling for $60 on eBay and $30 on half.com

Damn, glad I got my copy when I did.

Cisco Pike is great. shows up on on demand/cable occasionally

saw this movie again, liked it more, although it was even clearer that as always PTA constructs his films as a series of semi-detachable set pieces that are really tonally discordant.

also the score is great, isn't it?

btw the version of "journey through the past" used on the sdtk is a little different than the one i know best. is this from the box set or something?

I asked the same question on a Neil Young thread. Yes--Archives.

I enjoyed how much he deliberately looked like Neil Young during the Neil Young song sequences.

Saw it last night -- overall liked it a lot. H thought it indulged a little too much in the misogynistic portrayal of women it was supposed to be parodying or homaging or meta-ing or whatever. I can kind of see that. It occurred to me after she pointed it out that most of his films I've seen are very man-oriented and relatively lacking in strong female characters.

also, the pynchon humor didn't always come across onscreen. or the humor that /i/ understand in IV as a novel. the songs, the dialogue. often in the novels i feel like TP is riffing on the idea of dialogue and indicating the general gist or rhythm of speech rather than providing a verbatim transcription of an exchange itself. like, a character might say in the text "metaphorical faeces bos taurus' and the reader should think, 'oh, the character actually says "bullshit." but not so in the film. or maybe i'm reading TP wrong.

― the captain beefheart of personal hygiene (soda), Sunday, January 18, 2015 11:11 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is this line in the film? There were definitely a lot of lines that were sort of muttered/mumbled where I couldn't quite get what was said or what the joke was, and this seems like a good example of one that print serves much better than spoken language.

good point about the treatment of women -- PTA's world is very much about men-as-men-being-men, typically, even if done with some ironic distance.

I think IV was much less so in this dept than the usual PTA fare, but there certainly wan't room for anything even resembling depth in anyone more than the two leads.

i wouldn't call it misogynist but a problem—inherited from the novel i suppose—is that the main female character, shasta, is kind of written as a big Metaphor for the End of the Counterculture, and the terms of that metaphor are explicitly sexual. that's an old trope and kind of a lazy one at this point.

i'm not sure btw if PTA's films are really "lacking in strong female characters," at least not much more than most films. There Will Be Blood is almost (or literally?) completely devoid of women, of course, but Magnolia has a good part for (at least) Julianne Moore, and Amy Adams is a "strong" character in The Master, albeit a Lady Macbeth type. you could say that most of his female characters are basketcases, but so many of his characters are basketcases, period.

whenever i see folks abbreviating this as "IV" here i wonder two things:

- are we talking about the third sequel to something?
- are we referencing ignatiy vishnevetsky's review?

finally saw this, enjoyed it very much. Still haven't gotten around to reading the novel, but will now; is the banana stuff in there or was that a Gravity's Rainbow reference?

both, maybe!

bigfoot sucking on the frozen banana got the biggest laughs for sure

josh brolin should be getting awards for this

phoenix's ability to do microcalibrations of intensity on his confused expression was awe-inspiring

just saw it, came here to say exactly this

idk if shasta is as much of a metaphor as is being made out here. Frenesi Gates on the other hand...

she's a free-spirited hippie who all but sells her soul and her body to a rapacious real estate developer — hard not to read that as a metaphor given the prevailing theme of post'60s disallusionment and defeat.

Opens in the UK this weekend, can't wait.

she's a free-spirited hippie who all but sells her soul and her body to a rapacious real estate developer — hard not to read that as a metaphor given the prevailing theme of post'60s disallusionment and defeat.

― I dunno. (amateurist), Monday, January 26, 2015 4:15 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think it's even worse than that, because female sexual desire is the vehicle for the defeat.

yup--and her desire, specifically, seems to be to be fucked without regard for her self, to be treated like a "thing" (there's a definitely a hint that she finds in that form of sex what others found in heroin, and that both of those things serve a similar political end)

unless i'm wildly misreading it, the thematics of the film are pretty close to the surface. i'm not sure how seriously to take them or whether PTA (or pynchon) really cares.

That scene b/w Shasta and Doc was poignant to me – more so than in the book. I forgot if Glenn Kenny was the one who most eloquently parsed it.

it /is/ poignant, and well-played.

i do sort of wonder what appeal this particular story has to paul thomas anderson, who was born the year it is set. i mean, if this story/film had come out in the 1970s or even in the reagan years, i think it could have been considered a trenchant or at least somewhat well-turned riff on the (putative) demise of the counterculture, rise of conservative backlash, etc. but in 2014 it all feels a bit warmed-over; not without interest, but still used goods. i can see how retelling this story had appeal to someone like pynchon, who was there. for anderson, i can see how being the first to adapt pynchon appeals to his ego—he can really only be elevated by the encounter. and i do think having another author to contend with (the remnants of upton sinclair in TWBB are mostly vestigial) makes this film richer in some ways than his others. but i can't quite figure out what he wanted to bring out in the material.

yup--and her desire, specifically, seems to be to be fucked without regard for her self, to be treated like a "thing" (there's a definitely a hint that she finds in that form of sex what others found in heroin, and that both of those things serve a similar political end)

unless i'm wildly misreading it, the thematics of the film are pretty close to the surface. i'm not sure how seriously to take them or whether PTA (or pynchon) really cares.

― I dunno. (amateurist), Monday, January 26, 2015 9:27 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hmm, now that you describe it this way I can actually see how it isn't *only* about female sexual desire, because you can also reverse that -- the dope addicts find in dope what she finds in sex. The film kind of reads the culture and counterculture as wolves and sheep -- you're either a dope fiend or you're a pusher taking advantage of the dope fiends. There's no real "counter" to the counterculture at all.

well whether its drugs or free love it can all too easily become corrupted and a means of social control for (and here's the really pynchonesque part) this alliance between the forces of reaction and banality (nuclear family/nixon/"vigilant california") and a corporate and criminal world thats indistinguishable (golden fang)

maybe we're just supposed to take this all as silliness, but that wouldn't do justice to the somber notes in the film (indeed it begins and ends on two of the more sorrowful scenes)

and i definitely think there's a nostalgia in the film, which is figured both in terms of the sportello-shasta relationship (that whole scene involving the ouija), the topoography of los angeles, and even music (the musical and dialogue allusions to kennedy-era beach/surf culture as a kind of lost utopia of playfulness and experimentation).

anyway this all seems kind of... obvious to me. not necessarily in a bad way—i don't need films to have buried meanings.... but not that interesting either.

sorry i used the word "both" and then listed /three/ things. obviously i'm writing at the same speed as i'm thinking. sorry.

you know, disillusionment does not have to be tied to the historical context in which the film presents it. you can still feel it in your own way. (ie Obama did not save you and neither will Elizabeth Warren or your iPhone)

who is that last bit addressed to?

the audience

honestly i think you're giving PTA too much credit if you think he means this film to have contemporary political relevance

ultimately i think his films are generally mostly "about" managing the Paul Thomas Anderson auteur profile—they kind of turn in on themselves that way—but like I said above I do think having another author to contend with makes this one a little more generous than the others.

i'm not specifically talking about political interp. i'm talking about avoiding "oh this is about the end of the '60s, not really relevant to now."

the final scene is relatively bittersweet, not entirely down.

ultimately i think his films are generally mostly "about" managing the Paul Thomas Anderson auteur profile—they kind of turn in on themselves that way

do you mean they are self-referentially about the "auteur" process or, less generously, some kind of elaborate con job? (i guess i'd leave aside whether ego has anything do with artistic creation, since it's pretty obvious you'd need a "healthy ego" to make movies in the first place)

i suppose your'e saying that, while his films tend to avoid many of the signifiers of a typical award-bait "prestige" film, they nevertheless signal "quality auteurism" in other ways? ie, the self-conscious weirdness you note upthread.

Did anyone else find dubious PTA's claim on Marc Maron that he hasn't read Gravity's Rainbow? To me that was a good sign that he might be doing the big one

Does Inherent Vice really feel more 'warmed over' than There Will Be Blood and The Master? Also, the period def has interest for Pynchon, as he's dealt with it in both Crying of Lot 49, Vineland and Inherent Vice, but the sense of lost opportunity is also present in uncharted America in Mason & Dixon. Germany Year Zero in Gravity's Rainbow. Silicon Alley in Bleeding Edge. It's something he shows happens over and over and over, so, like Morbs, I don't see why a filmmaker shouldn't be able to make it feel timely.

Wow, what a weird lark this movie was. It's sort of weird that PTA, following in the footsteps of Altman, is sort of preemptively devising his own cult films to scatter throughout his filmography. Too bad he's not more prolific. What's with his fascination with close ups these days? Such a weird choice from such a previously "cinematic" director.

I liked this a lot more than There Will Be Blood fwiw. I didn't feel like it was literally bludgeoning me to death with a bowling pin, I mean point. Maybe some of that is the respective source material.

"The GREED, it is GREEDY. Here is the GREEDY MAN making a speech about his GREED. And now, GREED METAPHOR!!!"

closeups were invented for the cinema

I dunno, I know it has its detractors, but I think TWBB has enough ambiguity/ambition to it to offset its perceived indulgences. This one ... it's amusing, but not really funny. Well directed, but not strikingly so. Well acted, but not exceptional. Well written, but still kinda draggy, and sure, confusing (or irrelevant) by design, but that doesn't make it better, necessarily. I haven't read the book, but there was this surprising erotic haze draped over the entire thing, almost thicker than the drugs, and yeah, I was not expecting that. But this is his first since Punch Drunk Love I really didn't get anything out of. Lots of actors to look at, I guess.

Tons of parallels to the Big Lebowski, which makes sense, given they are both druggy shaggy dog detective stories. But still, pretty impressive overlap even beyond the most obvious stuff.

It was sort of a dark flipside of lebowski though, it didn't leave you with warm fuzzy feelings about its protagonist's tao

Oh, sure, the mood was totally, tonally different. It was almost as if they were each given the same outline and sent to work,

laziest comparison since Clockwork Orange: Fight Club.

Oh I don't know, it's lazy but it's so clearly there, much closer than those two

It's totally lazy, so lazy that I don't even have to struggle to make the comparison.

Speaking of struggle, seeing this was my first experience with reserved seating movies, and it was kind if strange. Felt a lot like hanging out in an airport.

comparison is valid (as are comparisons to long goodbye) but all three are very different movies in terms of tone...
IV is super thorny and I'm not even sure what exactly i think about it, but i want to see it again! so that is something.

One thing that really confused me about the Mickey Wolfman plot -- I thought the idea was that he had "seen the light" and decided to do something philanthropic, but then the conspiracy of powers (FBI, Vigilant, Golden Fang, etc.) tries to stop him. But then when Sportello finally comes upon Wolfman, Wolfman appears to be brainwashed or zombie-like when he says "I realized it should all be free," as though THAT'S what he was brainwashed to do/think.

so if this does well I guess we can count on a flood of Pynchon adaptations huh

If this made $300 million, we'd see one of these a year.

I agree, Walid Foster. I read in an IV review that Hawks wrote to Chandler (when filming Big Sleep), asking him if the chauffeur was murdered or killed himself, and Chandler said he didn't know, either.

What's with his fascination with close ups these days? Such a weird choice from such a previously "cinematic" director.

that's a weird comment, not sure if one particular shot scale is more "cinematic" than any other. Jean Epstein and friends would take particular issue with you (they're the guys who privileged the close-up as emblematic of the cinema's power to magnify/reveal reality.)

but in any case, yeah it's true that particularly starting w/ punch-drunk love anderson seemed to start favoring more distant framings with less camera movement (and longer takes, although there are plenty of showy, mobile long takes in his previous films). i think this was his kind of personal attempt to hit a "reset" button on his aesthetic—to remake himself as a more mysterious, Kubrickian, arty director— after he took a different approach as far as it could go in "Magnolia."

but PTA is nothing if not restless and i think he's deliberately sort of smudging or complicating the Kubrickian control of his previous films not only with looser, messier (in terms of framing, focus, grain), lengthy close-ups. i also think that as with the other Anderson—wes—all of his stylistic choices have a kind of citational aspect, and in this case much of what is happening in "Inherent Vice" seems (as i mentioned above) kind of a reference or homage to Hollywood films of the early 1970s.

IV is super thorny and I'm not even sure what exactly i think about it, but i want to see it again! so that is something.

yeah, i def. wanted to see it again (and i did!). i'd even see it a third time. whereas i'm sort of dreading ever having to watch "Magnolia" or "TWBB" again, honestly.

i should say that the "smudging" i referenced is evidenced even in "Punch-Drunk Love" and "TWBB" but esp. in "The Master". so it's not like he made several films that were completely of a piece aesthetically/stylistically and is only now altering that approach. but i def. think this film represents a significant step away from the approach he really began employing in the early 2000s.

I was thinking specifically of this and "The Master," where so many of the scenes play out in tight close-up, virtually no camera movement, or at least very subtle movement, which is the opposite of pretty much everything he'd done beforehand. Like, there are barely any shots in this new one that seemed particularly composed, as such. I mean, of course they are, but it's so low-key, not a lot of look-at-me (which is what I meant about cinematic, the camera calling attention to itself). I think it was the redlettermedia review that made me pay attention. They hated it, for various reasons, and I liked it more than they did, but they pointed out how many scenes basically start with a quick establishing shot of Phoenix walking into a room, or lobby, and then play out in a tight-framed conversation between two characters. (They also likened it to watching a book, which can be both good and bad).

Dunno if I'd want to see this one again, which would be the first I've stuck to one screening of his since PDL. I enjoyed myself fine in the theatre, but at one point I did peer down at my watch, at which point I realized there was almost an hour left, which blew my mind, since it's the only film of his that's made me conscious of my exhaustion watching it. Save perhaps the first time I saw "Magnolia," which is self-consciously long and overblown, and which I have more or less come around to, because at the very least I like how the movie is filmed/lit/acted. And this one again didn't quite do it for me on that front. It's this weird conflation of fog and haze, a cross between McCabe and Mrs. Miller and, I don't know, the look of '70s TV, with the same giant close-ups that marked "The Master." Except I felt "The Master" justified the giant heads on the screen, given it was essentially about the relationship between these two larger than life characters.

I'd love to figure out exactly what PTA was up or aiming for with this. For example, there are a number of characters, iirc, who are introduced with their head cut off at the top of the frame, or their face just out of frame, and often they stick around for hunks of dialogue before we even learn what they look like. Doc's friend and erstwhile drive, he's almost always shot to obscure his face, which I can't tell if it's a coincidence or not. And Joanna Newsom's character also bears at least a fleeting resemblance to Shasta, and I can't tell if that's a coincidence or not.

I also don't remember why Owen Wilson faked his own death to begin with, or if he even did, and if he did, what he was doing storming a Nixon rally on TV. Etc. Not that any of this matters, because I sort of like how impenetrable the plot is.

So people not cool with the end of TWBB were cool with Bigfoot kicking down the door and chowing down on handfuls of pot like a big cow? I've got no problem with it, but it certainly raised a few BS alarms for me, though I assume it's in the book.

not seen this yet but the trailer just makes me think of soderbergh's the informant! in its wackiness and possibly not actually all that funny-ness.

So people not cool with the end of TWBB were cool with Bigfoot kicking down the door and chowing down on handfuls of pot like a big cow? I've got no problem with it, but it certainly raised a few BS alarms for me, though I assume it's in the book.

well, there's a number of things--in the dialogue (sportello actually wonders at one point why bigfoot called him and didn't just bust down his door) and in bigfoot's somewhat deranged behavior--that prepares us for it. unlike the ending of TWBB, which IMO comes nearly out of nowhere.

kinda think the abrupt ending of TWBB was like the mask dropping, pure rapacious capitalism or _insert master concept_ emerging or whatnot.

the bigfoot ending was different than the book, if i recall right. the dialogue is mostly the same but there's no eating of pot. one thing im not sure if i like about the movie (which i agree is way more re-watchable than usual PTA, thought i've come around on the Master) is the foregrounding of the shasta/doc relationship--perhaps simply because, as noted above, it foregrounds some of the more regrettable tropes. also i thought the end of the book was beautiful.

as a book it doesn't amount to 1st tier Pynchon but there are absolutely breathtaking passages, including the ending

I wonder if I would have preferred a PTA Mason & Dixon. Or, hell, Crying of Lot 49.

Mason and Dixon does seem strangely PTA-esque, come to think of it

(sportello actually wonders at one point why bigfoot called him and didn't just bust down his door)

actually IIRC that's the newsom narrator who "speaks for" sportello in wondering that; just another example of how she seems to have access to his (and others') consciousness.

btw i have the soundtrack (which is pretty great) and it includes a few lengthy samples of the voice-over narration some of which i'd swear is actually different from that in the film (wouldn't be surprised if the soundtrack was put together before the final cut of the film was completed). and in some cases the voice-over in the sdtk is accompanied by music that doesn't accompany it in the film. i'd have to be able to directly compare the film and sdtk to be sure but it struck me that there were some slightly telling variations, e.g. stuff that was dialogue in the film is voice-over on the sdtk, etc.

i mean it's pretty common to have a narrator record numerous different versions of stuff so that there is some flexibility re. when and how the voice-over can be used.

I also don't remember why Owen Wilson faked his own death to begin with, or if he even did, and if he did, what he was doing storming a Nixon rally on TV. Etc. Not that any of this matters, because I sort of like how impenetrable the plot is.

The Nixon thing is explained -- it's a deliberate move to give him "credibility" so he can be a more effective undercover op for the powers that be. I believe he faked his own death so he could work undercover, but I forget if that was out of his own desire or under pressure. I think the latter.

As for the ending, I thought it was supposed to be a deliberately over-the-top moment showing the tightly-wound square going completely overboard the moment he lets go. Return of the repressed or something.

i tht that the owen wilson character faked his death b/c he believed that he and his wife were enabling each other in their heroin addiction and she had no chance of going clean w/ him around. it doesn't make 100% sense but that's the overt explanation given in the film.

As for the ending, I thought it was supposed to be a deliberately over-the-top moment showing the tightly-wound square going completely overboard the moment he lets go. Return of the repressed or something.

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Friday, January 30, 2015 11:36 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, i think both sportello and bigfoor are kind of paired as being too good for this world, in a sense. bigfoot is more obviously an anachronism (john wayne walk, etc.) but has a kind of sincerity and morality (despite him being a "walking civil rights violation"!) that both pairs with sportello's basic goodness and clashes with the enveloping conspiracy between the marginal (drug runners, white supremacists) and mainstream (vigiliant California, Nixon) elements.

again, i feel kind of dumb relating this stuff because i don't actually think it's all that interesting. but i don't think the film is nearly as cagey or as unreadable as some claim. it helps to see it a 2nd time, because you realize that the plotting and thematics aren't really that complicated, it's just that the presentation is so tonally disjunctive (?) that it obscures the coherence at its core. wow, that sounded pretentious. i hope you know what i mean anyway.

right I agree that the sportello/bigfoot "more alike than they seem" thing is pretty clear, and Bigfoot being sincere in his morality unlike vigilant California or whatever as well.

right; the same conspiracy that "took" shasta from sportello took bigfoot's partner.

the pot-eating thing is like a deranged moment of would-be communion b/t the two, in a sense. sportello even sheds a sympathetic tear IIRC.

ha, that's because Bigfoot ate all his stash and there's none left!

imo

The Nixon thing is explained -- it's a deliberate move to give him "credibility" so he can be a more effective undercover op for the powers that be. I believe he faked his own death so he could work undercover, but I forget if that was out of his own desire or under pressure. I think the latter.

I meant, what is the point of (apparently successfully) faking your own death if you're just going to get splashed on national TV in a bid to get credibility? Iirc he first says he faked his death to, yeah, get out of the spiral of drug addiction/enabling, and that in the Topanga house he was hanging out at no one recognized him as the sax player (despite toting around his sax?). But how and why did he fall in with the vigilant California reactionaries in the first place, especially if he was supposed to be dead?

And yeah, I thought Doc was crying because Bigfoot ate all his pot!

i think the implication is that faking his death was part of his agreeing to become a kind of counter-insurgent; sort of wiping the slate clean, so to speak (and pun not intended). but that the reactionaries for whom he was working would then "plant" him in the very same milieu from which he came is one of those pynchonian absurdities for which the film provides a non-explanatory explanation.

I understood a lot of the film, especially the Newsome V/Os, as attempting to portray Doc's stoned-paranoid subjective reality. The pot-eating was just an end point to a particularly nettlesome period in Doc's life, a stoned-paranoid riff on the idea of getting yr. weed taken away by The Man.

doper's ESP, doc. doper's ESP.

which is a funny moment because what's happening is so obvious you wouldn't really need ESP to figure it out. if anything the haze of marijuana makes it harder to doc to grasp the situation.

What I don't get is HOW did/does Pynchon write these books when he is by all accounts getting high all day every day on very fine weed...

demiurgy!

Just read David Edelstein's review, linked to above. Mostly a rave, but he does sum up succinctly why I haven't been enthusiastic about a PTA film for ages, while continuing to find them all of interest:

I wish it were a little more enjoyable — an arty coldness has seeped into Anderson’s filmmaking since the heady days of Magnolia, and I liked it better when it was more down-to-earth.

My other biggest reservation is that I found the film's weirdness rather predictable. (Haven't read the novel.) I don't think there was a single moment that surprised me; I had an idea of what the film would be like going in, and everything was exactly as I thought it'd be.

hmm, in any of his modes i wouldn't describe PTA as "down to earth"!

it's true that he went arty with punch-drunk love. as i mention above.

"Down to earth" might not be the best way to phrase it, but there's a generosity, at moments even a sentimentality, in Boogie Nights (and to a lesser extent in Magnolia) that, for me anyway, is long gone. And I'm sure many people prefer it that way.

Well, his first few movies were about real people, however hyper stylized. The last few, love them or hate them, are about kind of overblown cartoon characters, based in reality, more or less, but distorted into fantasy. Often to great effect, but still.

in the scene in the cafe where johanna newsom's character convinces him to change his hair, are they eating pizza with marshmallows on it?

i thought it was buffalo mozarella

that makes more sense.

talked to a departed ilxor today who's see it twice:

"the second time i enjoyed it more and understood it less."

probably was both

'Denis came back with his pizza. "I forget what I asked for on it." This happened at the Pipeline every Tuesday or Cheap Pizza Nite, when any size pizza, with anything on it, cost a flat $1.35. Denis now sat watching this one intently, like it was about to do something.

"That's a papaya chunk," Slim guessed, "and these…; are these pork rinds?"

"And boysenberry yogurt on pizza, Denis? Frankly, eeeww." It was Sortilège, who used to work in Doc's office before her boyfriend Spike came back from Vietnam and she decided love was more important than a day job, or that's how Doc thought he remembered her explaining it. Her gifts were elsewhere, in any case. She was in touch with invisible forces and could diagnose and solve all manner of problems, emotional and physical, which she did mostly for free but in some cases accepted weed or acid in lieu of cash. She had never been wrong that Doc knew about. At the moment she was examining his hair, and as usual he had a spasm of defensive panic. Finally, with an energetic nod, "Better do something about that."

i understood about 65% of this. enjoyed it 95%

think i must have dreamt about this film a lot last night. i would happily watch an HBO series done roughly in this style, i think, like the peculiar adventures of doc or something.

that would be fun news, actually. PTA doing a mini-series with pynchon.

i think i liked this more than any other PTA film just because it seemed less impressed with itself, not that it wasn't impressed with itself

think i must have dreamt about this film a lot last night. i would happily watch an HBO series done roughly in this style, i think, like the peculiar adventures of doc or something.

this post makes me pine for John From Cincinnati

i'm finally reading bleeding edge (it's good!) and it'd make an excellent miniseries. pynchon even makes some casting suggestions.

So many questions. Why was there an erotic massage parlour aka brothel in the channel view estates portacabin, instead of y'know a sales office? Why was everyone wary of even mentioning golden fang when they had a giant office block shouting their name to the world? What was meant to be going on in the band's house where doc talked to Owen Wilson? Who was Wilson working for anyway, i thought it was the government but then he got the golden handshake from golden fang. What did the nazis have to do with anything? Who killed Glenn and why, anyway? Why exactly did doc have a shit-hot lawyer girlfriend, I kinda missed her introduction it went so quick, it can't have much more informative than "oh by the way doc has a shit-hot lawyer girlfriend".

I'm sure the book would answer some of these, less sure a second viewing would clear things up.

I'm sure the book would answer some of these

Don't hold your breath on that.

So many questions. Why was there an erotic massage parlour aka brothel in the channel view estates portacabin, instead of y'know a sales office? Why was everyone wary of even mentioning golden fang when they had a giant office block shouting their name to the world? What was meant to be going on in the band's house where doc talked to Owen Wilson? Who was Wilson working for anyway, i thought it was the government but then he got the golden handshake from golden fang. What did the nazis have to do with anything? Who killed Glenn and why, anyway? Why exactly did doc have a shit-hot lawyer girlfriend, I kinda missed her introduction it went so quick, it can't have much more informative than "oh by the way doc has a shit-hot lawyer girlfriend".

I'm sure the book would answer some of these, less sure a second viewing would clear things up.

― ledge, Wednesday, February 4, 2015 4:09 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm usually terrible at understanding noir/detective-style films, but it's reassuring to read this and know these are roughly the same questions I had. pretty much from the moment he went into the massage parlour and i glimpsed military manoeuvres in the background, i knew it was going to be a bumpy ride. oh well.

i take it you guys have never read pynchon :(

that sounds snotty, i just mean that the book is kind of a rearrangement of detective-fiction tropes mixed with pynchonian riffs on vast conspiracies and countercultural paranoia, and it isn't really designed to hang together with any kind of accountable logic.

i guess it's probably best to approach this film as a series of semi-detached scenes that establish kind of vivid moods. obviously that's not /all/ it is, but if you expect the genre elements to pay off i think you're crusing for disappointment. i'm not sure if this PTA's intention or not, if it matters.

btw re shit-hot lawyer girlfriend, i thought reese witherspoon was kind of made up to seem much plainer than she is. of course you might mean "shit-hot" as in "extremely accomplished.'

i think that's what he means.

i have tried to read gravity's rainbow but pfff...

This point may have been made earlier in the thread, but that kind of loose or episodic narrative construction is also part of a lot of canonical noir, even if Pynchon takes it to much further extremes in almost all his fiction--didn't Jameson or someone argue that in Chandler the central mystery is typically a device to motivate the detective's mapping out a complex, stratified, and internally antagonistic social space?

xp to amateurist, I've read enough Pynchon to know he's not really for me, although I think a lot of the film probably works a lot better on the page (regardless of logic). Much of the humour, e.g. the slapstick in the dentist's office, seemed to me really forced and out of place, I can imagine it being not so tonally jarring in the book.

Re: shit-hot reese, yeah high-flying was more what I meant.

xpost

i think that's probably true of /some/ detective fiction but just as surely there's a tradition of storytelling that puts a lot of emphasis on the way that information about a mystery is unpacked. i mean that's a big part of the challenge the genre presents for a lot of talented writers. so i wouldn't dismiss that aspect of it.

and dog latin & ledge: yeah i'm not really a big fan of pynchon. i find his stuff kind of... cutesy. i know that's a weird thing to say.

sorry, first part was to "one way street"

goes without saying that this was definitely a post-modern noir film, firmly rooted in the genre's conventions while pulling them apart. I liked that instead of the typical private eye monologuing, the film was narrated by an external, female voice.

and an omnisicent female voice

don't let's tell kaja silverman, though

Yeah, the gender politics of the novel's hijinx somehow felt a lot queasier to me onscreen, but making Sortilege the narrator was a brilliant move.

wtf Magnolia and Boogie Nights have about three "real people" between em.

The sooner he ditched the '70s copycattism, the better.

thought this was great. hilarious start to finish - some amazing scenes. the plot didn't get in the way much. the scene where they take the cocaine and get in the car just had this magical rising energy. it was a bit like altman's the long goodbye as far as you can compare that to a modern pastiche. every scene kind of stood alone, and that was fine.

i think I.V. and long goodbye are similar in that they both have an underlying seriousness and melancholy even though for much of their length they are basically jivey and funny. though to be honest i think the ideas fueling the long goodbye are kind of shallow in the end, and that's probably true of the thematics of I.V. (inherited from pynchon).

i think magnolia goes further than 70s copycattism. way further, in fact. i still basically hate the film, but i have a weird sort of respect for its stylistic and narrative excesses. but i think the aesthetic strategies PTA began employing w/ Punch-Drunk Love are his response both to those excesses and the mixed critical responses they engendered.

Saw this last night. It definitely has some blowback from the Long Goodbye - particularly the scene where Doc is interrogated by the feds - but while watching, the film that it reminded me of most strongly was Rivette's Out 1, another hazy dream movie set in 1970 with a dense, cryptic mystery/conspiracy at its core. There are very similar scenes where Phoenix and Leaud, respectively, write out all the components of the puzzle that they're trying to piece together. So I was pleased to see today, on the Wiki entry for Out 1, that

Few people have seen the full-length version, though it is championed by Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, who compares it to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow

Good timing - I watched the four hour cut of Out 1 between xmas and NY.

i really wanted to love this, but just found it completely impossible to navigate.

a few people (less than 10 out of a 100 or so) in the cinema were laughing as if to reassure themselves they were getting the joke (or maybe they really were) but i found the whole thing a bit too zonked, unwieldy, and fuzzed out to get anywhere with it.

i was aware before sitting down that i was meant to simply 'enjoy the ride' rather than figure anything out, but even that was testing. the 'ride' in this case wasnt nearly as enjoyable as any film purporting to be a ride should be.

obv from a filmmaking perspective, its all typically masterly, but there was nothing to really hold the interest. doc was sort of a non-character. and after a while i found myself more interested in examining how good it looked as a film shot on film and waiting to see the next name actor (like im watching a wes anderson movie) than anything else, but they all seemed to float in and out with no real purpose.

ive not read the book but wondering if PTA was doing for pynchon fans what the hunger games and the harry potter movies were doing for fans of those books - making something all too faithful to the text. or maybe this is just his latest part of the battle against the dumbing down of US cinema, against the idea that films dont challenge anymore, to show the US can still do great artistically sound moviemaking. either way, i keep reading critics saying to see it twice (which sounds suspiciously like theyre saying 'i didnt get it the first time.. but im SURE there is more to get that i just am not... yet...'). i think PTA is trying a tad too hard now to make GREAT films, but i think hes fallen for the idea that great films mean being virtually impenetrable. might just be as i think i enjoy visual experimentation more than narrative experimentation on the whole, but i enjoyed the last godard film more than this. and that had opposing 3d scenes overlaid on top of each other. and if you want to watch something for a 'wild' cinema experience, id recommend goodbye to language every time over this.

its funny to read the comments on magnolia - the other thing that bothers me about PTA now is that while i like his commitment to cinema, i also find hes burrowing further into the past, and less away from the present. ive seen more than enough films about the 60s/70s, so i would actually be more interested in him making something modelled on his beloved 70s auteur canon but about TODAY. way too easy to just keep on drilling further into the history of america (though i did love there will be blood, the master less so). but i suspect hes a bit like tarantino. for someone who is obviously so fascinated with america, i wouldnt mind seeing something from him on america in the present, not that of decades past, which his heroes have already covered. or maybe hes just going to be doing historical movies forever now, i wouldn be surprised.

a few people (less than 10 out of a 100 or so) in the cinema were laughing as if to reassure themselves they were getting the joke (or maybe they really were) but i found the whole thing a bit too zonked, unwieldy, and fuzzed out to get anywhere with it.

We saw it in a very small cinema, with not a lot of people attending. However the middle-aged man, who had come alone, sitting behind us was laughing uproariously all the way through; even at parts that were only tenuously funny/quirky. Maybe he'd read the book or something? We couldnt' work it out.

It made me think yet again that stoner comedy and slapstick is harder than it looks. I thought those sequences fell a bit flat.

On the plus side, I liked the photography and overall look of the film a lot, and enjoyed the pleasant, hazy relaxed feel.

the stoner humour just seemed so done to death. and like a shabby, too-knowing-to-really-be-effective attempt at injecting the film with some entertainment in between all the hazed non-progress.

"Down to earth" might not be the best way to phrase it, but there's a generosity, at moments even a sentimentality, in Boogie Nights (and to a lesser extent in Magnolia) that, for me anyway, is long gone. And I'm sure many people prefer it that way."

brilliant as hoffman and JP were in the master, his films seem to have become very much about what PTA is doing, rather than anyone in the actual films.

def not seeing it again though, fuck the reviews. cant imagine anything will become clearer, and dont imagine there is anything that interesting to make clearer anyway. its more about how its told, than what its telling. so who really gives a shit about anything happening to anyone in the whole thing?

for some reason i don't agree with calling this a 'stoner comedy'.

i found it as clear as i found hawks' 'the big sleep' tbh i.e. not very but adequately, but then i am a bad viewer of films

def not a stoner comedy. its not harold and kumar (who are a 100 times funnier than anything brolin and phoenix do in this).

this film was really, really problematic and i'm not sure it justified why it had to be

i've not read the book, nor am i likely to now

pynchon has still written my favourite two books of all time but this was like the bummer closing chapter of against the day part 4 (lew basnight shagging his client etc) expanded into a feature film

am sure part (or even most) of the blame for the presentation (especially of female characters) can be ascribed to PTA - yes, this is a film about the men of power who delocate the counterculture, but where was the counterculture - where was its agency? i suppose in its absence this is a horror movie

it was still utterly beautiful & had a brilliant soundtrack. as a sensory experience it was great, but its ideas felt, weirdly for pynchon, more like poison than light

by problematic, i take it you mean sexist/misogynist?

p much. maybe some racial stuff too. hard to know where the line is in portraying/revelling in fetishisation

i don't think it's necessarily fair to criticise the director on these grounds if you haven't read the book. a big part of this film seems to be that it's a stoned, ribald chronologically-located quasi-fantasy based on a novel by a guy who is known for a provocative brand of surrealism. i found the saucier moments in this film unsettling, comedic in places, but not really arousing or wish-fulfilling on the whole.

"Saucier moments"? Were you expecting the 'Carry on' crew?

some of it was very Carry On actually.

Not to excuse him but his sexual politics are pretty 50s for all his countercultural cred...towards women and there's some cringeworthy gay characters in his books as well. So I guess given Vineland, TP sees women's Achilles heel vis a vis the end of the 60s is being seduced by power? So what's the male equivalent, then, the men get laid out by drugs? Hardly equivalent in his theorizing of how the counterculture went wrong but he's a complicated guy...

also, I missed the race thing--based on what, that one guy who Puck owed money to? Seems much flimsier to chastise him on race as opposed to women's issues

Not Puck, Glen Charlock, sorry

The Doc/Shasta reunion/hatesex scene was definitely disturbing, admittedly sort of arousing too but the disturbing element of it far outweighed anything. Her monologue in that scene definitely made me wonder about Pynchon's views of women.

definitely arousing, in a way i can't help but find depressing

One thing that was sort of interesting about it was how long the shot was -- you never really see that long a nude shot with no cuts, made the whole thing much more confrontational and uncomfortable.

dont know about pynchon but IIRC PTA does have a lot of that kind of thing in his films, or the last two at least. the sex scene in IV reminded me of the in the master that took place in the bathroom. kinda arousing, kinda disquieting, pretty aggressive, pretty male/70s movie male in how its about aggression/self loathing. PTA i think has a weakness for that kind of sex scene, those kinds of sexual politics that are more to do with male self loathing/ideas of masculinity/power than much about women.

"this film was really, really problematic and i'm not sure it justified why it had to be"

ive been thinking that for all its apparent deconstruction of noir/detective tropes, it doesnt really establish them enough for you to ever really enjoy seeing them dismantled, and TBH, im not even sure thats what it was doing anyway - its just a pretty obscure, sprawling story, that happens to have a sliver of a noir/detective narrative holding it together. it has no real interest in genre, either to bend the conventions or otherwise. i remember reading the start of the novel in a bookshop a while back when i heard PTA was making it, and im not exactly qualified to comment, having not read it, but theres a certain tone in how the novel is written that i think seemed to get lost in both PTA's grip on the movie and the general fug that you cant ever seem to break through.

also dissapointed that despite drinking while watching this film (as advised by some critics), it still didnt open itself up to me.

drinking?

sipping some shiraz.

i don't follow complex plots particularly well.

i did not have much trouble following this plot.

did you enjoy following this plot?

it wasn't my primary task, but sure.

xxxp I meant, why would critics rec drinking when smoking a bowl is the obvious choice!

The Doc/Shasta reunion/hatesex scene was definitely disturbing, admittedly sort of arousing too but the disturbing element of it far outweighed anything. Her monologue in that scene definitely made me wonder about Pynchon's views of women.

it's worth pointing out that this scene is not in the book. and similar scenes in other Pynchon novels tend to be rather more comic/playful (if still grotesque) that whatever is going on in the movie.

i read the book and thought it would be difficult to follow if you hadn't, but my companions didn't seem to have any trouble.

it felt surprisingly faithful, lots of scenes exactly how i'd imagined them. kind of wish they'd done vegas and made it 3 hours, open it up a little with bigger scenery or something.

i thought it was interesting and evocative, not particularly insightful or coherent, above all entertaining, again like the book, though the book delivers more on that front imo. xps pretty sure the hatesex scene was in the book?

i think you're right--it just reads totally different? maybe i should find my copy...

yeah it does read differently iirc, less straightforward somehow.

anyway i wouldn't call it hatesex, just kinda s&m-y daddy-daughter shame sex which is pretty standard-issue afaic, felt like the book (and movie) posit the sex as sort of a hum drum reflection of everything else in any case.

I guess angry sex is a better way to describe it. It's really more the monologue I found disturbing than the sex, which I agree was nothing out there.

Just watched this earlier today - captures what differentiates Pynchon from a mere 'counterculture' type - and by turns what makes him worth reading right now, even to the extent you could map to LOL 'today'.

Many go about at capturing that world of utter confusion and anarchy that all of us fail at navigating - not a hope of bringing to order. We are all - men and women - weak, everyone anemically ambling through. This wasn't even that much about noir to me, its too distant an evocation of a few bits and pieces that Pynchon flicked through once upon a time. On weed, of course.

As for PTA I've never taken him very seriously, sure half a dozen directors could have shot as nicely as this (cor will this be the finest hour for Owen Wilson's nose!) Glad that an attempt has been to made to film Pynchon, and I hope it encourages more films of his books.

Its not about whether its faithful or boring through plot, its about capturing some kind of feel for etc etc.

i should probably remind folks that i liked this movie, possibly more than any other PTA film

that said, i was thinking about how during the production of the film PTA said he watched some zucker-abrahams-zucker films (like airport and the naked gun, i presume) for pointers as to how to stage/shoot the slapstick elements in this film.

it's quite possible that statement was semi-insincere, just another attempt by PTA to throw off the critics. (and maybe i'm reading too much into it, but there's a kind of self-aggrandizing aspect to it that reminds me of the legend of Kubrick seeing a porn film and saying "I can make that better!"). but i have to say that while i found inherent vice pretty funny at times, the framing/staging wasn't half as precise (or funny) as it is in the best Z-A-Z comedies. there's some really smart, truly hilarious visual humor in those films (side by side with a lot of equally funny, but much cruder verbal comedy and sloppy slapstick). i think the moment where Doc gets bonked on the head at the "massage parlor" was a good bit. but there's a long shot at the retreat (in Ojai?) where the doctors leading Doc on a tour through the facilities go one way, and Doc goes another, and the tour guide doesn't seem to notice. it's a funny bit of nonchalant slapstick, but the framing is too wide, and the timing is a little off.

in other words, visual comedy is hard, and while it's quite possible that the off-rhythm of that moment was by design, it's also possible that PTA just doesn't have the same facility at that kind of thing as Z-A-Z at their best.

I quite liked the "off"-ness of some of the humor, things that can play more or less straight or funny depending on your frame of mind, as if it's quoting something more straightforwardly funny without being funny itself. that sounds like some awful ironic archness but it actually plays into something tonally quite fascinating--which is why I think this benefits so much from repeat viewings.

yeah there's a possibility that he's kind of tipping his hat at the Z-A-Z style of zany visual comedy without really wanting to commit to it. which yeah could be read as arch. there's that moment in the wolfmann mansion where suddenly Doc is tip-toeing through the hallway like Peter Sellers or something. it's a very exaggerated bit of business, incongruous with how Doc moves and acts around it. it's like he's putting the slapstick in quotation marks.

yeah that's one of the moments I was thinking of.

I suspect the ZAZ references a few months ago are like Liz Phair's mentioning Exile on Main Street.

misdirection? probably. i think he was half-serious.

I laughed a lot and this and can say that I wasn't laughing "for" anyone. I barely followed the plot, didn't have a clue what was going on for the most part but I didn't mind. Actually soe themes I wasn't sure why I found it funny. E.g. The scene where doc comes out of a hotel or something and rolls into a ball on the ground and Bigfoot tries to lift him and it's just so awkward and weird.

That was a particular move that would get laughs (or not) through repetition. Goes into a place to question then wanders around (w/out say even asking to go to the toilet first, as you would typically have in such a scenario in films). First time he does this I think is where he goes to Sloane's place then wanders off to look for the tie labelled 'Shasta', which he then finds it when he wanders in the retreat, strapped to the Nazi (or guy with the swastika?)

So themes = sometimes.

id make it a triple bill with big lebowski and soderbergh's the informant.

Think I followed the plot for an hour before I stopped caring/drifted off in the fog. There was a v silly piece in The Guardian about how people were finding the plot so difficult they walked out (which I won't link right now, its piffle that takes five wasted seconds of your life to skim through). xp

the plot is not really that confusing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbcqg_70i-w

We saw it in a very small cinema, with not a lot of people attending. However the middle-aged man, who had come alone, sitting behind us was laughing uproariously all the way through; even at parts that were only tenuously funny/quirky. Maybe he'd read the book or something? We couldnt' work it out.

― oi listen mate, shut up (dog latin), Monday, February 9, 2015 3:11 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these are the people who laughed at CSNY stage banter. no one else gets what's so funny.

so coke

basically

There obviously is a narrative, don't think its necessary to follow anything.

It was quite funny, although its not obvious even at which points so diff bits will be funny to whoever.

I don't even remember the sex scene in the book, which puts it firmly outside the top 15 or so disgusting Pynchon sex scenes.

re: sex scene. I didn't find it a problem, its hardly Strawdogs or 70s Japanese 'pink' cinema.

yeah it was just a cross between sexy, comic and discomfiting. Shasta mumbled a lot and I didn't catch everything she was saying, but the whole scene (I found the whole 'foot/crotch massaging' thing a bit unpleasant really) was just a bit too eerie to be taken as a straight sex scene.

We saw it in a very small cinema, with not a lot of people attending. However the middle-aged man, who had come alone, sitting behind us was laughing uproariously all the way through; even at parts that were only tenuously funny/quirky. Maybe he'd read the book or something? We couldnt' work it out.

maybe his idea of what's funny is different to yours.

it could even be possible that every other human being has a different mind to your own.

dont see the big deal about the sex scene, other than that the nudity seemed a bit gratuitous, and forced in there.

"There obviously is a narrative, don't think its necessary to follow anything."

i dont think this film is actually stoned or at least weird enough to justify the non-interest/non-sequitur-ness of its narrative. it has a texture and atmosphere, sure, but it doesnt seem THAT powerful or enveloping. PTA is too controlling for it to ever really get out of control which it could have done with more of.

i guess that's the nub of it really. i disagree. i found each scene worked on its own merits, so i didn't care about the narrative really, it was there if a bit loose. i prob laughed more at this than i have at any movie in a long time - but there was more to it than that - it had intensity at times - the scene where they were on coke was ridiculous but also built this amazing tension - tension that was not tied to any major part of narrative. it was quite druggy in the way it manipulated you like that.

i think being familiar with the politics/culture of the era and place is as helpful to "following" as reading the novel would be. Anyone who's read a little about COINTELPRO knows what the deal is with Owen Wilson's character fairly quickly.

See I didn't know it was called that. But no one is who they say they are is something Pynchon does in a way that no one quite does. This needs a lot more thought and comparison than I can give right now.

I thought there was a lot more disintegration of narrative/loss of control in the last hour. And again, characters appearing and disappearing within a page - that was awesome to see adapted into a film.

Should check whether this has been remarked on upthread but the characters did lower their voices mid-sentence a lot, to almost a mumble? Pynchon as proto-mumblecore?

I definitely picked up on that, thought it might have been deliberate, but assuming so it really irritated me as a directorial choice.

I thought it was fine as a choice -- adds to the confusing haze the characters are in -- and certainly deliberate, deadpanning here but I can re-watch with subtitles one day.

went out to see this last night. disappointed, though i don't know why, as i've never been much of an anderson fan. it just felt so lifeless. the plot, while complex in the manner of paranoid free association, was easy enough to follow in its general outlines. it seemed irrelevant, though, mostly just a framework for stoned lurching. problem is that the stoned lurching, while kind of funny at times, was far more often dull and repetitive. lots of endless, expository conversations full of pointless detail. margin doodling carried out at feature length. performances are generally great, especially brolin & phoenix, but they weren't enough to hold my interest. a few good jokes ("something spanish"), but not many. did love martin short.

the scenes with short are among the few where the movie comes alive for a time. sportello's taxi driver-quoting escape near the end is another, along with the highly-charged seduction & sex scene with doc & shasta. loved those moments, and i can see why the latter has attracted so much commentary. it feels like the film's emotional center as well as its real conclusion. it's hard not to read shasta's self negating power kink as yet another commentary on the selling of 60s idealism, but honestly, i don't think the film really has much to say on that score - beyond dutifully rehashing the familiar complaints, i mean. whatever its politics, that scene at least manages to suggest for a moment that something's at stake. unfortunately, everything afterwards (except for bigfoot's final milkshake-drinking tray-gobbling, another standout moment) felt pointless.

I thought it was fine as a choice -- adds to the confusing haze the characters are in -- and certainly deliberate, deadpanning here but I can re-watch with subtitles one day.

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, February 12, 2015 10:40 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes - this totally makes sense. i think the stoned mind has an tendency to wander and often you'll start listening to someone before concentrating on other thoughts.

"i don't think the film really has much to say on that score"

otm. this is PTA not only channelling his 70s heroes, but the same subject matter. aesthetically magnificent but otherwise just hollow and redundant.

"stoned lurching" = 20th century history imo

i keep thinking that if this was actually made a bit more 'whimsically', or a bit more 'indie', i.e. shambolic, micro-budget, etc, i think it might have worked better. but its directed with such heft and power, and all that power kind of ends up being used for very little. its an imposing piece of filmmaking but with a feeble core.

"stoned lurching" = 20th century history imo

okay, sure, and it's certainly a potentially interesting lens through which to view the era: lots of competing interests each deeply paranoid and armed only with enough information to be dangerous. i just don't think the movie does much of anything with the idea. mostly about j phoenix looking mad rumpled while herding confusion.

I was kind of j/k but I thought it expressed the idea by the whole 'not doing'. I know it can lapse into Adam Curtis bollocks.

StillAdvance - idk for how long you've been posting on here but we don't take too kindly to ppl asking for things to be 'more indie'.

Joking aside its still a ridiculous ask.

Anyone seen Impolex?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/movies/impolex-directed-by-alex-ross-perry-review.html?_r=0

omg the BBC tried to film GR!!

http://www.pruefstand7.de/e/download/download.html

ha, im not really someone who wants things to be more whimsical or indie, its just the description you made i think made me think that was what it might be better suited to!

I think if you read and love Pynchon, it's great they made the movie but it was nowhere freaky enough to accurately capture what his books are like

not seen imipolex but besides its being long and having lots of characters i honestly think GR would be really easy to adapt. huge chunks are already a treatment and film as physical medium and language is so central to its metaphor system. (e.g. the section where the peenemunde engineer isn't sure if the daughter the SS periodically allows to visit is the same girl every time; this is already about cuts and frames and continuity.) the only thing that comes up more than movies is parabolas, plus every other scene is a chase. you've certainly got a lot of stuff to decide whether or not to include but whatever you do include barely needs adaptation.

Judging by how cagey PTA was when asked by Marc Maron if he had read GR (he said he hadn't which is frankly unbelievable), I think it's a good bet that he'll do the movie

Godard's Goodbye To Language => watching it last night and it did have a feel of "stoned mumbling" through 20th century history...

I haven't seen the Adam Curtis doc but actually would be interesting to. Its almost like the right move to have bunged on the internet.

yes, i've seen Impolex -- i was lost, never having read TP.

On seeing IV twice:

I found myself finding whole scenes funny that I didn't even realize were comedy the first time. Again, I didn't not enjoy the film during my first go, I just had a whole different part of my brain switched on. Furthermore, once I kinda-sorta knew what the characters were all about (and where they'd end up), I found a richness to the third act's more somber tone. (Here's a tip for first-timers: this movie is basically a tragedy.)

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/01/inherent-vice-second-viewing

Great article.
I cam think of a few films - 2001, Children of Men to name but two- where I've enjoyed it a lot more on second viewing. often a film blindsides me the first time because I'm expecting something slightly different that never delivers. second time I'm more likely not to worry about that and feel comfy in its universe.

this movie is basically a tragedy

otm. i love that death of the era shit

finally saw the 70mm print at the Castro last night, really impressed. couple random things - where are they in the last shot? I couldn't tell if they were in a parked car or what, with the light occasionally flashing across Sportello's face. And the last scene with Doc and Bigfoot, it seemed to me the culmination of Bigfoot always being shown easting and now he comes to Doc's place, nothing to eat, might as well eat the weed lol. so many great little moments, expressions, and throwaway lines. easily his best or at least most enjoyable since Boogie Nights.

the only TP i've read is the crying of lot 49 (about 4x), so i knew to expect that i've have no idea what was going on plot-wise. this movie really felt like TP - not that i have much authority on his style, but it felt a lot like lot 49 - so i found it to be a really... admirable film, but i'm still not sure if i actually liked it. joaquin phoenix and josh brolin were absolutely amazing.

i dont think a 35mm print has shown in NYC.

Looked like a 'stylized' moving car to me, ie probly a studio shot.

yeah that was totally a fake moving car without bothering with a process shot. fits with the almost complete disinterest in place or setting through the rest of the film - you'll take faces and like it!

this disappointed me compared to the book, which is so concerned with the travel between places, the tedious* futility of returning to the same settings over again, and the general concern with being immersed in (an impression or memory or construction of) the 1970s

*in a gumshoe / shaggy plot sense

I'd guess Anderson didn't want to be tagged as repeating himself w/ Boogie Nights' glorious 70s production design and location exploitation - but the locations and environments his characters exist in have been such a significant part of ALL his other films.

after seeing the long goodbye this evening (which is SO brilliant), i am now thinking that obv that is the kind of film PTA should have made, but also, that this is the very film he was *trying* to make and had in mind, but couldnt as the source text was different, but also because hes trying to actively resist the altman comparisons, which is a healthy thing for anyone as cinephilic as he is, but at the same time, its like he stripped out all the parts that might have made it more altman/TLG-ish (ie made it more accessible and more openly enjoyable) but didnt put anything much back in to replace it, so youre left with this somewhat obtuse, difficult film, but one with little reward beyond its own self-aware challenge that it is posing for the viewer. might also have helped if IH's lead character was half as likeable/amusing as elliot gould's marlowe.

didn't find this obtuse/difficult at all

i felt like it was PTA's version of an old RPG like monkey island - main character walks around having pointless conversations with other characters, repeat, repeat...

picaresque is the more appropriate term. I didn't find any of it pointless, it all fed back into the film's themes of corruption, misdirection, the blurring of cultural and ethical lines - which involves disillusionment to some extent - but then has a really obvious redemption arc (he's JESUS do u c) with Owen Wilson's character. Plus everyone is funny and engaging and diverting during there little turns. Couldn't ask for more afaic.

I don't think this was at all obtuse or difficult for viewers. It was obtuse and difficult for doc sportello

heyoooo

I think maybe I was too, um, sober for this movie.

extry

http://thefilmstage.com/news/watch-the-deleted-and-alternate-scenes-from-paul-thomas-andersons-inherent-vice/

We saw it in a very small cinema, with not a lot of people attending. However the middle-aged man, who had come alone, sitting behind us was laughing uproariously all the way through; even at parts that were only tenuously funny/quirky. Maybe he'd read the book or something? We couldnt' work it out.

maybe his idea of what's funny is different to yours.

it could even be possible that every other human being has a different mind to your own.

really going out of your way to be a patronising shit, ronan. do you always project this much?

really enjoyed this, difficult to hear the dialogue but not difficult to follow (inasmuch as following mattered)

A cinema in London that does overnight film marathons is doing one of films that influenced Inherent Vice: Chinatown, The Big Lebowski, The Naked Gun, The Long Goodbye, Zabriskie Point, and ending with the film itself. Not sure of all the through lines, but there are worse ways to spend 12 hours (if I was a younger man).

Finally screened on the 4th. Kind of loved it, if not to the degree of the prior two PTA's. Really enjoyed how un-jerked off the homages were in addition the neat balancing act of capturing the feel of 70s Burnout cinema while neatly sidestepping the obvious moralizing inherent (tee-hee) in same.

One seemingly obvious influence that's gone without mention (unless it has) is "The Rockford Files". Doc's visit to Mrs. Wolfmann, and some of the interactions between him and both Bigfoot and Penny felt like Rockford through a Psychedelic filter.

Absolutely, yeah - unannounced drop-ins at humble beachfront homes, creeping around recently-constructed office buildings, fistfights in platted deserts.

That said, I also noticed the "almost complete disinterest in place or setting through the rest of the film" sic mentions upthread, at least outside (aside from the empty development and the Golden Fang block) - some of the blocking and framing was so weirdly tight that I started wondering if they were shooting around non-period details. But it's more fun to try to cram it into some grand thematic vision - I'm still trying, tbh.

This was such an embarrassment of riches--the narration, "does he eat pussy," Brolin and the frozen banana, Phoenix's scream at seeing the picture, "Harvest," Short, the fake anti-Commie movie, that aching Ouija board flashback sequence--that I feel kinda guilty for not out-and-out loving it. I stopped giving a shit about the plot after a certain point, but I didn't really consider this a flaw; if anything, always barely knowing what the fuck was going on adds to the whole stoned and confused vibe of the thing (I should add to the things I liked about the movie those little notes that Phoenix was always making to himself when he was faking detective work). But the looseness of the thing + the 2.5 hour running time just meant that I got really restless and fidgety after a while, so much that I didn't even delight as much in seeing Martin Donovan again as I should have. I dunno, maybe reading the book first would have had me more invested in it?

TWBB still my fave Anderson, and by far my fave Anderson 2.0 (as someone referred to his recent work above). This one and The Master both had a roughly similar effect of dazzling me for a good chunk of their running time but ultimately leaving me wanting when all was said and done.

I finally saw this a couple of weeks ago & enjoyed it so much I'm entertaining the notion of reading Pynchon

but in terms of the film, Phoenix & Brolin were to me at their absolute peak of perfection. Could not stop watching every single moment of them both, and I thought Phoenix was amazing in The Master so I'm
kinda thrilled that he upped his game even more

saw this less than a year ago and already time to rewatch
= the sign of a great film

xp VG the book Inherent Vice is quite fun and imo similar to the movie, not as dense and knotty as other Pynchon. Crying Of Lot 149 is also great, and short.

joaquin's vast array of confused expressions was something to behold

i think if you enjoy the movie you should enjoy the book even more. (the book is actually funnier imo) now if you hate the the movie you should stay the hell away from the book...

movie gave me a Chinatown/Lebowski vibe, more w/r/t futile investigations & red herrings etc

joaquin's vast array of confused expressions was something to behold

really loved the opening, with doc running a hand lamely along shasta's departing car, sloooooooowly succumbing to an expression of total paranoid dread, and getting hit in the face with the neon title

also iirc some v good faces as eric roberts (also slooooooooooowly) describes his bad hippie dream. for free.

i thought this was wonderful. joanna newsom is a totally great actress! the woman playing jade was incredible! yeah PTA has woman problems but he does cast well. god knows what he was up to casting belladonna but she was great too.

I really like Pynchon, especially Vineland and Lot 49, and I /hated/ this. We rented it on iTunes and couldn't be bothered to watch it to the end. Just felt way too forced and dull. Phoenix is fascinating but he's super annoying to watch art length. That sense of meaning being just out of reach, which works so well in Pynchon's prose where there's goofy jokes and all those amazing sentences to keep you going - Phoenix making googly eyes is not a substitution for that.

(Sorry)

Re reading this shit. So good.

A game of "drink whenever someone rolls their eyes at how dumb Doc is" would be fun.

"there's a problem with Ouija boards" - best part of the movie for me. A little joyful moment in the middle of the madness, a little (valid) paranoia still there tugging at you. Brilliant realization of a distinctively Pynchon moment, good job PTA.

yeah PTA has woman problems

Yeah.