Since shooting wrapped on the film last August, pretty much the entire cast of Inherent Vice has been mum about the nature of the project. That is, everyone except Josh Brolin. A month after principal photography had been completed, we broke a story where Brolin vomited praise on the experience and process of the shoot, calling it "great" and "absolute fucking chaos." Since then, other soundbites from JB have trickled into the ether.
Well, it would appear he is back at it. Via The Independent, Brolin took an aside from discussing his film Labor Day and Oldboy to reveal, in a small way, what we can expect from Inherent Vice:
"I just did a movie for P T Anderson that I didn't understand," he says of the experience. "The writing of Thomas Pynchon is so Shakespearean. It was crazy, chaotic but really, really gratifying.
"We took it, I think, in a direction that the book doesn't necessarily go, hoping it will work." The film represents something of a risk, but Brolin is okay with that; after all, if you don't try, you won't know.Brolin recently had more candor to share with Yahoo UK Movies News:
"More than any woman I've ever worked with, I absolutely fell in love with Joaquin Phoenix," [Brolin] admits of his time on the project, which is being directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. "Joaquin is the most wonderful human being and actor."
[Brolin] cites Anderson's as an example of a situation in which humiliation breeds quality. "Joaquin and I would do these scenes together and Paul would say, "This time do it with the table upside down, and you guys get under the table and I’m going to put a blanket over you, and I want you to whisper your lines. And now this time, no lines and no dialogue at all, and I want you to just dance your dialogue. Whatever that next line is, I want you to create a movement that’s going to be what that line of dialogue was going to be if you spoke it.'
“It was just craziness, you know, but really fun. After that, we’d go back to the scene and it would be fed by all those other things that you can create something magical. But you have to do some pretty weird things.”
How any of these anecdotes will translate on the screen is anybody's guess, but hey, at least we're getting to some specifics!
Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.
A part from using the same art directors, it seems like Anderson's filming is getting closer to Malick's.
ReplyDeleteFar surpasses Malick... Just because The Master was a character study with ambient music (and fucking awesome), doesn't mean he's "getting" to TMs level.. He's as calculated as Kubrick, and as chameleon like as Scorsese in genre jumping... and there isn't any genre he wouldn't do justice to.
ReplyDeleteWhat are you even talking about? All I said was Anderson's filming is getting closer to Malick's, as in he is getting freer. Are you some kind of mongoloid who can only think in rankings and platitudes?
DeleteYou film kids and your levels.
DeleteAs much as I like Anderson I would venture to say that no American director, not even Kubrick himself, has given us as great a film as "Badlands" since after the 1960s (although I submit Barry Lyndon might be close competition). But I will agree with Huang that The Master certainly has traits of Malick's best work, while it is more grounded and less free-wheeling than TM's latest (it was sort of "in-between", kind of the way Days of Heaven was the bridgeway from BL to TM's later stuff).
DeleteAnyway, if anything PTA is a conglomerate of all of the best traits of his mentors, which Kubrick, Scorsese, and Malick all are, and he is his own man. You can only go so far with these comparisons.
I like Brolin as an actor, but he doesn't come off as the brightest bulb. I would never categorize Pynchon's writing as being "very Shakespearean." That's just odd. If anything, it's anti-Shakespearean. Perhaps he's referring to the use of puns? It seems as though he might not have read the book. Oh well. Can't wait until there's a teaser or some other non-Brolin-generated information.
ReplyDeleteThe Shakespearean comment was definitely weird, yeah. And kudos for that "brightest bulb" Pynchon reference.
ReplyDelete