Bigfoot Character Poster/Trailer Arrives; Listen To An Hour of PTA Interviews on NPR

PTA visited NPR's All Things Considered recently for a brief chat about his new work Inherent Vice. The conversation chiefly discusses the struggles of adapting from such a major literary voice.  Listen:

PTA also talked for nearly an hour on KQED Radio to promote Vice, and that conversation is much more wide-ranging. He discusses his earlier career a bit more extensively than he has recently, and compares the process of adapting Thomas Pynchon to the process of adapting Upton Sinclair for There Will Be Blood. It's a great listen.

Finally, a really cool new character-themed poster and instagram-video-sized trailer for Inherent Vice via the film's social media outlets. One would think these are the first in a series, but it's hard telling. Anyway:

Josh Brolin as Christian "Bigfoot" Bjornsen

A video posted by Inherent Vice (@inherentvicemovie) on Dec 12, 2014 at 10:00am PST

WATCH: Six New Clips From Inherent Vice; New Cast Interviews (Updated)

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IV: 5 days

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 

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'Vice' Makes National Board of Review's Top 10; PTA Wins Best Adapted Screenplay

Looks like the awards race for 2014 is officially underway, with The National Board of Review recognizing its favorite films of the year today. And guess who made the cut.

The Top 10 Motion Pictures of 2014 as voted by The National Board of Review, in alphabetical order, are....

American Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood

Birdman, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu 

Boyhood, directed by Richard Linklater

Fury, directed by David Ayer

Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher

The Imitation Game, directed by Morten Tyldum

Inherent Vice, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

The Lego Movie, directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller

Nightcrawler, directed by Dan Gilroy

Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie 

To make the good news even sweeter, PTA also scored an award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work bringing Thomas Pynchon's book to the screen. PTA is no stranger to NBR recognition in the past, with both Boogie Nights and Magnolia getting some love in their respective years.

In other news, Josh Brolin sat down for a 40 minute interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air in support of Inherent Vice. The interview opens with an audio clip of one of Brolin's scenes in the movie, as well as other tiny details of the film sprinkled throughout, so, as always, listen at your own discretion.

What's more, full scans of the promotional booklet distributed at Vice's NYFF and AFi Fest premiere have found their way online, so we'll post them for you here.

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IV: 7 days

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 

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WATCH: 30 Minute Interviews With Brolin and Waterston on "Vice"

So far, Inherent Vice stars Josh Brolin and Katherine Waterston have sat down with David Poland for his (excellent) series DP30, where actors, filmmakers and artists get candid for 30 whole minutes, uncut, about their latest projects. The interviews embedded above are very illuminating. Spoilers are very minor in both cases. Nevertheless: watch at your own discretion. (Thanks @chambalvarado!)

Brolin, who has been among the most primary spokesmen for the film (even last year), also did a brief Google hangout with Gold Derby editor Tom O'Neil. It is generally spoiler-friendly as well:

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IV: 18 days

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 

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PTA Gives First Interview On Inherent Vice, Hints At Pynchon Cameo, Ending Change

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

A splendid read found its way over to The New York Times today, and it has Paul Thomas Anderson speaking out publicly for the first time about his work Inherent Vice. 

The piece, among other things, asserts that the notoriously elusive author behind the film, Thomas Pynchon, will actually have a cameo appearance in the picture. PTA remains coy about that fact, while other sources (including Brolin) maintain its truth.

In discussing what drew him to the project, PTA said he had been aspiring to adapt Pynchon for a while.

Years ago, Mr. Anderson considered adapting [Pynchon's 1990 novel] "Vineland," but ultimately couldn't figure out how. When "Inherent Vice" was issued in 2009, he was drawn to it - and wrote the film concurrently with his script for 2012's "The Master."

"I thought, I don't need to make a movie about California in the late '60s, early '70s!  Didn't I already do that?" Mr. Anderson said, referring to his 1997 breakthrough, "Boogie Nights," "Well, I didn't. Like gravity, it didn't pull in any but one direction. And I just couldn't help myself."

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

On the process of adapting the novel:

To get a grip on the project, [PTA] adapted the entire 384-page novel sentence by sentence. "I basically just transcribed it so I could look at it like it was a script," he said. "It looked like a doorstop. But I can understand this format. As big as it was, it was easier for me to cut down."

Along with The Long Goodbye, PTA was also inspired by Kiss Me Deadly and The Big Sleep, film noirs whose "plausibility rarely mattered as much as the pleasure of the filmmaking."

“ ‘North by Northwest’?” he said. “Tell me again how he gets to the middle of the field with a plane after him? I can’t. How does he get to Mount Rushmore? I don’t know, but it’s great.”

Mr. Anderson said his adaptation came into focus when he recalled an old quote from “Chandler or Hammett or one of those guys who said the point of a plot in a detective movie is to get your hero to the next girl to flirt with.” After that, he said, his approach became, “When’s the next girl or funny bit going to happen?”

On top of those more formal influences, PTA turned to the sight gags and physical comedy of Zucker Bros. films as a filmic equivalent for the humor in the book.

“I thought,” Mr. Anderson explained, “What’s something I’ve seen that can get close to that amount of great visual information and all these things going on in the frame?”

“ ‘Police Squad!’ and ‘Top Secret!’ are what I clued into,” he said, referring to collaborations by the slapstick maestros David and Jerry Zucker. “We tried hard to imitate or rip off the Zucker brothers’ style of gags so the film can feel like the book feels: just packed with stuff. And fun.” 

The piece goes on to verify that musician Joanna Newsom, whom we reported was participating in the film many months ago, is playing the part of Sortilège, also narrating the film. According to the interview, PTA also wrote a new ending for the movie, its biggest difference from the book.

There are some nice quotes from Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin in the piece, as well as PTA discussing the underlying sadness of the material. Read it in its entirety RIGHT HERE.

Wilson Webb

P.S. If you take a wander over to this page, you'll see that information regarding the first trailer for Inherent Vice has been disclosed in Alberta. We've had some correspondence with the ratings board there and can verify that, in Canada at least, the Inherent Vice trailer is very real and runs just over two minutes in length. What we are not quite sure of yet is when or how it will drop. We imagine it will be sooner rather than later.

IV (theatrical premiere): 77 days

IV (world premiere at NYFF): 8 days (!)

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 

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First Look At Reese Witherspoon In "Inherent Vice"; Bigfoot Speaks More

The New Yorker

Hey there - few things to take care of, so let's get right to it.

-Above is a pretty groovy illustration from the most recent issue of The New Yorker for a piece about the New York Film Festival, which begins this Friday, September 26. Some critical thinking has led us to conclude that the two blue figures are from Gone Girl while the two green figures are from Inherent Vice.

- The one star of the film that has spoken rather freely about his impressions from the set is Josh Brolin, who plays Bigfoot Bjornsen, of course. He had some interesting things to say in a piece about the film found in The Los Angeles Daily News recently. The bullet points:

"I read the book as fast as I could before I saw Paul, which means I might as well have not read it," Brolin, 46, admits, "I was so confused by the time he came, I was like stuttering through the whole thing. It was like trying to have a meeting after you've taken a bong hit or something.

Brolin describes the story's vibe as something in "Manson territory."

"It's during the time of of the shattering of the ‘Right Stuff’ mentality into whatever revolution that conjures in you, whether that’s the assassinations or the sexual revolution or drugs, all that. It’s that transition," he says.

"This guy Bigfoot is one of the favorite characters I’ve ever played... He’s a guy that, five years earlier, would have looked like one of the ‘Right Stuff’ guys. But because of his refusal to adjust to any future that doesn’t look like he wanted it to look, he’s kind of pathetic.” 

"It’s a really circus experience,” Brolin says of the production. “It feels like traveling from city to city and putting together skits. You never really know if it’s going to work when you finally do it. And then if you’re doing something like Pynchon, which just naturally has that structure anyway, it’s sort of double wacky.” 

- Last, but certainly not least, The Film Stage has obtained our first look at Reese Witherspoon as Penny Kimball in Inherent Vice. Click below the fold and see at your own discretion.

Empire Magazine Posts First Look of Benicio Del Toro in "Inherent Vice"

The October edition of Empire Magazine has the first image of Benicio Del Toro as Sauncho Smilax in Inherent Vice, alongside Josh Brolin and Joaquin Phoenix, seen above.

Things are starting to get exciting, folks!

Thanks to @SamHaines94 for bringing this to our attention.

IV (theatrical premiere): 110 days

IV (world premiere): 41 days

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 

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Waterston, Brolin Talk More "Inherent Vice" In Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly has a couple more exclusive scoops on Inherent Vice from two of the stars of the film, Josh Brolin and Katherine Waterston, and here they are:

"With Paul, he's interested in what might happen, not what should happen," Waterston recalls of filming in Los Angeles last summer. "He doesn't walk onto set with a clear goal. That can be...surprising. It didn't feel chaotic; it felt thrilling. The set felt really vital. Like you were going into a question together."

For his part, Brolin was particularly struck by the un-Hollywood tenor of Anderson's filmmaking process. Exhibit A: the actors' freedom to lodge constructive criticism (a no-no for so many Serious Auteurs) and course-correct using all means of unusual props. 

"With this [film], there was a lack of pretense--a really strange lack of pretense," Brolin says. "When something isn't working, you can say, 'This feels like a turd. Let's cut the middle three pages. I'll try to improvise and provide a bridge. How about some pancakes?"

Pancakes?  

"I'm not joking about the pancakes," he confirms. "Many, many pancakes. By the end of the day, you're shaking so much because you've eaten so many pancakes, you know you're going to be diabetic in the next 24 hours."

Brolin went on to add that was movie was like "Cirque du Soleil more than pretentious filmmaking."

(Thanks to SuperGnodab for the heads up!)

IV (theatrical premiere): 118 days

IV (world premiere): 49 days

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 
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First Glimpse of Josh Brolin in 'Vice'; Film Clocks In At 148 Minutes

At last! We have a rough first glimpse of what Josh Brolin will look like as Bigfoot Bjornsen in Paul Thomas Anderson's forthcoming Inherent Vice, via a small piece on the film in the most recent edition of Entertainment Weekly:

Following the Oscar nods and "Is it really about Scientology?" innuendo that greeted his 2012 film The Master, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson takes a left turn into '70s noir - and a cloud of marijuana smoke - with his psychedelic crime romp Inherent Vice. Adapted from Thomas Pynchon's gonzo 2009 novel, Vice stars Joaquin Phoenix as Larry "Doc" Sportello, a shambling SoCal PI investigating the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend's wealthy boyfriend. Along the way, he uncovers a pileup of conspiracies and faked deaths, heroin cartels and pimps. The cast includes Josh Brolin as a hippie-hating L.A. cop, Owen Wilson as a surf-band saxophonist, and Reese Witherspoon as a deputy DA and Doc's part-time squeeze.

Anderson draws inspiration from a certain hard-boiled Raymond Chandler classic as well as the stoner stalwarts behind Up in Smoke. "Paul said it has elements of The Long Goodbye and Cheech & Chong," says Katherine Waterston, the newcomer (and daughter of Law & Order's Sam Waterston) who plays the femme fatale. "It's hard to explain tonally." (Maybe The Bong Goodbye?) And in a film that swings between suspense and absurdity, prepare for a bit of magical realism. "A piece of fruit plays a major role. It's frozen. And it's my friend," teases Brolin. "Even talking about it now is making me chuckle."

In announcing its full slate lineup, The New York Film Festival provided a nice writeup on Inherent Vice, which will be the fest's centerpiece screening in its world premiere.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s wild and entrancing new movie, the very first adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel, is a cinematic time machine, placing the viewer deep within the world of the paranoid, hazy L.A. dope culture of the early ’70s. It’s not just the look (which is ineffably right, from the mutton chops and the peasant dresses to the battered screen doors and the neon glow), it’s the feel, the rhythm of hanging out, of talking yourself into a state of shivering ecstasy or fear or something in between. Joaquin Phoenix goes all the way for Anderson (just as he did in The Master) playing Doc Sportello, the private investigator searching for his ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston, a revelation), menaced at every turn by Josh Brolin as the telegenic police detective “Bigfoot” Bjornsen. Among the other members of Anderson’s mind-boggling cast are Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Owen Wilson, and Jena Malone. A trip, and a great American film by a great American filmmaker. 

 The fest also verified a 148 minute run time for Inherent Vice.

There you have it. It's done and it's coming.

IV (theatrical premiere): 119 days

IV (world premiere): 50 days

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 
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Brolin Says 'Vice' Will Stray From Book; Greenwood Calls Film "Romantic"

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.”

In other news, a source of ours caught up with Jonny Greenwood recently and was able to confirm that the score for Inherent Vice was indeed recently completed, with Greenwood describing the film as "more romantic" than his other two collaborations with PTA.

How any of these anecdotes will translate on the screen is anybody's guess, but hey, at least we're getting to some specifics!

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Brolin Has More To Say About "Vice"; McConaughey Loves The Master

So far, the only two actors to come out and speak publicly about the experience of making Inherent Vice with Paul Thomas Anderson have been a stealthy Eric Roberts, and Josh Brolin, who (by our count) has just made his third set of public remarks on the matter. Our very attentive readers pointed us toward a sound bite from Mr. Brolin last week where he referred to the making of the movie as "the craziest, most brilliant experience of [his] life."

Now, as he begins press for Spike Lee's "Oldboy" remake, Brolin seems to already be waxing nostalgic on the process of working with PTA . Via The Playlist:

“My dad said recently, and I really appreciated it, 'There's a lot of directors out there but there's very few storytellers.' And working with these extreme geeks like myself who are very much these film fanatics is so nice. You're in this kind of iconic awe, and then you get to the set and you go, 'Okay, I actually have to work, we actually want to make this as good as I can be.' Like with Paul: he was taking stuff out of 'Inherent Vice', whittling away at what was in the book, and I was saying wouldn't it be great if we could bring some of what was in the book back," Brolin said. "Who the fuck am I to say that, you know what I mean?”

He added, “But then we start collaborating and putting stuff in there, and realizing, 'Okay…let's take it out, let's colorize it even more with something else, and then how are we going do this on set?' You realize all the work you've done around a table was meaningless, but it fed something. You don't know what it was, but you're always looking for that elusive thing.” 

With "Oldboy" and Jason Reitman's "Labor Day" both set for release this year, it seems fair to assume Brolin will be doing quite a few more of these interviews in the coming weeks, so rest assured we'll have our eyes and ears out for more anecdotes. Perhaps the real question is, which cast member will come out of the woodwork next?

Also in the news recently, Matthew McConaughey listed "The Master" as one of his five favorite films for Rotten Tomatoes, stating:

A fictional screenplay with fictional characters made so well it felt like a biographical nonfiction drama, like a considerately staged documentary. Identity of place and people. I could smell and taste it.

Finally, last week we spoke with Laura Colella, the writer/director/star of PTA-favorite "Breakfast With Curtis." We covered everything from the nature and difficulties of making a micro-budget independent feature to how she and Paul got connected in the first place. We're aiming for that interview to go live by the end of the week, so be sure to check back for that in the next few days.

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"The Master" is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.

Josh Brolin Talks Inherent Vice, Calls Experience "Absolute Fucking Chaos"

With the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival officially behind us, the swirl of press inevitably left in its wake is now slowly unfurling onto the internet for cinephiles worldwide to consume. As a consequence, David Poland, whose utterly invaluable "DP/30" series tracks down a major player from just about every significant film from these festivals and talks candidly on camera with them for a half hour, sat down with Inherent Vice-star Josh Brolin, who was there promoting his work in Jason Reitman's Labor Day. As you may have guessed would happen over the course of thirty minutes, the conversation meandered a bit toward Brolin's past, present, and future projects near the middle, and here's what he had the following to say about working with Paul Thomas Anderson around the 14:40 mark (transcribed (roughly) by yours truly):

Actor Michael Cotter Talks "Inherent Vice"; Boogie Nights Script Read At TIFF

An interview over at examiner.com has been making rounds today, wherein actor Michael Cotter talks a bit about his experience working with Paul Thomas Anderson & co. on Inherent Vice, and here's the nitty gritty of it:

What can you tell us about your role in the upcoming Paul Thomas Anderson film "Inherent Vice"? 

I play A.D.A. Rhus Farthington and I work in the District Attorney's office in LA, where I am co-workers with Reese Witherspoon's character Penny. It is a period piece set in LA in 1969-1970, and it's always fun to be able to play in a different decade, especially for the wardrobe and set choices which were both great.

How was working with A-listers Reese Witherspoon, the always unpredictable Joaquin Phoenix and director Paul Thomas Anderson?

It was an amazing experience! I think all three of them are brilliant at what they do and I felt lucky to be able to play in the same game as them for a few days. Once the cameras started rolling, they all welcomed me into the fold and were all very generous in the moment.

Any interesting stories from the set you can share with us?

One of the coolest things that we did was for one of the scenes we shot, PTA ended up letting the three of us basically improv through this interview scene. And once we all started to improv together, it became this really fun game of finding our way through the scene together and just feeding off of each other. It was really fun to be able to do that with Reese and Joaquin and just trust that we would find our way to the end of the scene each time, but always find cool new moments on every take.

Among other things, this should finally help put to rest any lingering suspicions you may have had that Reese Witherspoon was somehow no longer involved in the film. It also fills in a couple casting gaps that were a bit more justifiably up in the air: that Witherspoon will be playing Penny Kimball, and that the role of Rhus Farthington has gone to Cotter. Our Inherent Vice page has been updated accordingly.

Casting News, Production Updates and More for 'Vice'

-

Howdy howdy

Lots of odds and ends this afternoon, so let's get right to it.

First off, you'll notice a slate of fresh new names added to the Inherent Vice IMDb page. We caught wind a week or two ago that Jeannie Berlin, daughter of comedy legend/writer/director Elaine May, had possibly joined the cast as Aunt Reet but weren't able to verify until now. Alongside Aunt Reet, the characters of Luz and Jade have been filled by Yvette Yates and Hong Chau, respectively. They are two up-and-comers who, it would appear, are best known for their television work of late.

Another small but substantial tidbit we picked up from our man @TheInSneider recently is that Josh Brolin appears poised to nab the pivotal roll of Bigfoot for the film. We obviously can't wait to see what he (or any of these folks) will do with the material.

Moving right along: A cherry article from Variety this week has divulged some specifics about where the production stands right now, in addition to discussing the status of some other pending Warner pics. The good stuff: Inherent Vice is just completing its second week of principal photography and scheduled to wrap on August 2. The article notes several areas -- PTA's native San Fernando Valley, a storefront in Slauson Blvd (presumably the Dr. Tubeside set?), driving set-ups in Malibu and Canoga Blvd, and a warehouse in Chinatown -- as the first covered in the production, but our on-the-ground source says that the man himself was seen operating camera (!) in the Long Beach area as well. Others are sure to roll out in the coming days, weeks, blah blah blah.

Next up: there's a beautifully written article on the work of PTA by a gent named Jack Welch out of the University of Tulsa. Make sure to give that a read before kneeling at your Ghoulardi altar before bed tonight.

Finally (I think finally, anyway), an Inherent Vice wiki-bible of sorts has been unearthed from the interwebs and we have been assured that it is spoiler free. So if you want to know everything about the book without actually reading the book, give that a peek here (via xixax).

We're also planning on having a super fun Flashback Friday for you this week, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

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"The Master" is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. 

Josh Brolin Added To Inherent Vice Cast

Attempting Succeeding at becoming the Miami Heat of upcoming films, Inherent Vice has reportedly added Josh Brolin to the growing ensemble cast-list. See the comment section below in approximately an hour for all your character & plot point speculation needs.

 Brolin's 2013 also has him in Labor Day with Jason Reitman, Robert Rodriguez/Frank Miller's sequel to Sin City, "A Dame To Kill For" and a remake of Oldboy for Spike Lee.

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"The Master" is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.