Robert Elswit Talks Working With PTA; Songs From "Vice" Revealed

PTA's long-time cinematographer Robert Elswit did an interview with Hitfix.com to discuss his upcoming work in the two prominently Los Angeles-set movies Nightcrawler (which looks phenomenal) and Inherent Vice. Elswit talks quite a bit about the process of working with PTA over the years, including his more free-form inclinations as of late. Then the interview turns much more directly about Vice (Thanks, Timothy):

HITFIX: Let's talk a bit about Inherent Vice. The design elements are so striking and it all just sort of pops.

ROBERT ELSWIT: It's very vivid.

HITFIX: Given that the film is obviously part of a certain tradition, did you look at things like The Long Goodbye to help inform any of the visual language you were working with? 

RE: We did. We looked at a whole bunch of Altman movies, a whole bunch of old LA, lots of photos from that era, a lot of music, a lot of books that were inter-reference sources. More than anything else there were these marvelous sort of Kodachromes and Ektachromes that these little music groups that lived in Topanga and the other canyons — you know, the Joni Mitchell era of the singer/songwriter, album books — we got a bunch of them. And Mark Bridges is a wonderful costume designer, so we kind of went through a lot of that to find wardrobe for all these people. We looked at the kind of photographs that people took in the '60s and '70s living in Laurel Canyon, living in Malibu Canyon and living up in that canyon along the beach that you drive up, just past Sunset. What is it…

HITFIX: Topanga?

RE: Topanga, yeah. Topanga Canyon. It's kind of the people who lived in that world in the '70s. I went to the place that Pynchon lived in Hermosa Beach — that's [Gordita] Beach in the movie — and in those days it was a very low-rent neighborhood. It was a lot like Venice only not quite as charming. It has a hill that leads down into the water and there are lots of these kind of lovely old homes from the '20s and '30s that have all been torn down, all been turned into condos and apartments and very, very expensive homes. But back in the '70s it was people who worked at the airport, a lot of stewardesses, a lot of flight attendants, a lot of maintenance personnel, pilots who weren't married. And it was an absolute party town with a mix of hedonistic hippies and surfers and airline people. I went to Venice High and Santa Monica High and when I graduated, when I was in college, I would go at least once a month to some party at some stewardess's apartment in someplace in Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach. It was a crazy, crazy time back then. And that's when Pynchon went there. That's when he wrote the book, about that period, about that place, and that was kind of the inspiration.

So Paul and I spent a lot of time driving around in those areas trying to find what little was left. Venice has kind of changed a little more in its character than Hermosa Beach. Hermosa Beach could have been bulldozed. Everything south of the airport is just completely changed. I mean there's just nothing left. Not what it used to be when I was younger. But he found a little bit of it and also to feel what it was like to live that sort of weird, hedonistic, kind of crazy lifestyle back in those days.

HITFIX: It sounds like an electric experience. And again, it's a unique world to capture on film. It's kind of anthropological or something.

RE: Altman, I think, came the closest to finding all of that when he made California Split and, you know, even his homage to Philip Marlowe when he made The Long Goodbye. Pynchon's book is really a riff on Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, except it's a stylistic orgy in which nothing pays off dramatically. They don't really solve the mystery. A lot of remarkable events happen but you don't really get any closer to what's really beneath it. Just figuring out what to adapt from that book was a really complicated process for Paul. It was really living on the edge for him.

A source close to the production told us recently that Elswit used a device called panaflasher on Vice, which helps capture a retro old-school look by flashing the film stock with small leaks of light.  If you own the DVD of The Long Goodbye, you can find a special feature with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond talking about inventing and using that technology specifically for that film.

In other news, The Film Stage did a round-up of all the songs that can be heard in Inherent Vice. While we don't yet have details on when the soundtrack album for the film will arrive, this is PTA's most pop-song-laden soundtrack since Boogie Nights, and could probably justify its own record alongside the album of Jonny Greenwood's score.

1. "Dreamin' On A Cloud" by The Tornadoes

2. "Rhythm of the Rain" by The Cascades

3. "Vitamin C" by CAN

4. "Soup" by CAN

5. "Simba" by Les Baxter

6. "Spooks" by Radiohead

7. "Burning Bridges" by Jack Scott

8. "The Throwaway Age" by Bob Irwin

9. "Gilligan's Island Theme" by Sherwood Schwartz and George Wyle

10. "Harvest" by Neil Young

11. "Here Comes the Ho-Dads" by The Markettts

12. "Electricity" by Cliff Adams

13. "Never My Love" by The Association

14. "Les Fleur" by Minnie Riperton

15. "Journey Through the Past" by Neil Young

16. "Sukiyaki" by KYU Sakamoto

17. "Adam-12 (Themes and Cues") by Frank Comstock

18. "(What A) Wonderful World" by Sam Cooke

19. "Amethyst" by Jonny Greenwood

20. "Any Day Now" by Chuck Jackson

Join the film on Twitter at @seeinherentvice
On Facebook

And at www.inherentvicemovie.com

IV (theatrical premiere): 65 days

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

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FLASHBACK FRIDAY: Robert Elswit & Helen Ostenberg Elswit Talk Filmmaking at Principia College

Hi there

What we have for you today is a somewhat unconventional Flashback Friday in that it doesn't directly involve PTA, and it's only three years old. But make no mistake. This is a relentlessly wonderful 80-minute conversation with PTA's long-time, Academy Award-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit and his wife, Helen Ostenberg Elswit, who is a special effects supervisor in the industry. The Q&A took place in 2010 at Principia College, where Helen is a trustee and an alum. What transpires is a candid, charming, and extremely fascinating back-and-forth between two seasoned veterans of the industry. Enjoy!

Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.
"The Master" is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. 

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros. Financing ‘Inherent Vice' Which Begins Shooting This Month; Robert Elswit Returning As DP

Lately we've been inundated with requests to find out what exactly is going on with Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice." The project -- which was first announced back in 2010 -- centers on a pothead private eye named Doc Sportello and his hazy adventures in late 60's Los Angeles. PTA had supposedly been interested in Robert Downey Jr. for the lead but ultimately decided to reunite with his "The Master" star Joaquin Phoenix instead and those who have seen the actor lately know that he's certainly been looking the part these days. But other than Phoenix's impressive sideburns, we had no real indication as to whether the film was still on track for the "late April/early May" dates pegged by producer JoAnne Sellar during our interview earlier this year. Since production has been so quiet recently we decided to do a little digging and have some great news to share with you all. What have we learned so far? Read on.

American Cinematographer Looks Back At ‘Boogie Nights' & ‘Magnolia' With DP Robert Elswit

The latest issue of American Cinematographer has an interesting little article called "Tales Of Ordinary Madness" in which cinematographer Robert Elswit looks back at the making of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" with Paul. No real news but a good fun read anyway and as you can see above, an excellent picture of PTA in his pajama bottoms. Highly complimentary quote from Elswit below:

“Paul is one of the few people I’ve worked with that has a poetic temperament. That allows him to do things in his films where you know the result will be more than the sum of its parts. It’s a combination of the way we shoot it and light the picture, the way it’s performed and edited, the way everything resonates with everything else.Each scene is doing more than just telling a story; it’s doing something you can’t put into words. And that puts him, I think, in the land of people like Bergman, Kurosawa, Ozu and Ford.”

 You can read the whole thing if you're a magazine subscriber. (Thanks to our readers @jblots, @damitago, @mertsrocket for their help!)

All quiet on "The Master" front except for this nifty fanmade poster that recently came across our desks by illustrator Alex Fellows... unless someone closer to production than we are wants to drop us a tidbit. Our inbox is always open. 

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Exclusive: PT Anderson Shooting on 65mm, Without Elswit?

It seems as though one of the two projects we keep hearing rumblings about is getting substantially closer to coming to life. A photo, we unfortunately cannot publish, was sent to us showing PTA shooting tests and operating a 65mm camera used by Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey on the backlot of a place we also cannot mention. Fear not, I have re-created the photo here to whet your appetite:

The e-mailer suggests that perhaps Paul was inspired by Nolan/Pfister's usage of the format on The Dark Knight & Inception. It's worth noting, though, that Nolan shot 65mm in a square, IMAX format whereas Kubrick kept the format at 2:35.1 to contain as much detail as possible for the optical effects. (thanks JZ) The last line of the e-mail also gloomily claims that whichever film Paul is shooting camera/format tests for will not be shot by Robert Elswit. More as it comes...

As always, you can get the latest news on Cigarettes & Red Vines on Twitter and Facebook.

Robert Elswit Talks PTA & How He Almost Didn't Do ‘Boogie Nights'

A bit of new old news here while we wait for new news. Robert Elswit, cinematographer on all of PTA's films (who won the Academy Award for "There Will Be Blood") and his wife Helen (a visual effects person) gave a talk in 2009 at Principia College and thanks to Youtube that hourlong talk has now surfaced. (It was actually put up about a year ago but just now made it's way to our site.) The interview ranges from topics like exactly what a Director of Photography does to how to break into the business ("write a screenplay") and naturally Elswit brings up Paul several times during the talk. He calls Paul a "luddite" when it comes to technology and says that even though he's a young guy he likes to work with very old fashioned methods. He also says Paul is "a director who hopes that movies will come to life if accidents occur. There's a certain amount of planning, but some of it, he hopes will be serendipitous." He goes on to say that even though he liked Paul, he almost passed on "Boogie Nights".

Interview: Behind The Scenes With Robert Elswit

Background
Adam Sandler and the French New Wave are not often discussed in the same breath, but according to cinematographer Robert Elswit, they both figure in his new collaboration with director Paul Thomas Anderson. Elswit explains that Anderson's latest feature Punch-Drunk Love, which stars Sandler and Emily Watson, takes some of its visual cues from the early color films of nouvelle vague director Jean-Luc Godard. That is not to say that this new Anderson release attempts the heavily intellectual approach Godard was known for. Punch-Drunk Love, promises to be lighter and more straightforward than anything Godard, or even Anderson, has done in the past.

Elswit, who shot all three of Anderson's previous features, explains that the content of the film is more like an early Peter Sellers comedy centered on a main character that we love despite his extensive eccentricity. But the inspiration for the look, he adds, came from Godard's early color films, particularly A Woman is a Woman starring Jean Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Anna Karina.

Interview: Behind The Scenes With Robert Elswit

Background
Adam Sandler and the French New Wave are not often discussed in the same breath, but according to cinematographer Robert Elswit, they both figure in his new collaboration with director Paul Thomas Anderson. Elswit explains that Anderson's latest feature Punch-Drunk Love, which stars Sandler and Emily Watson, takes some of its visual cues from the early color films of nouvelle vague director Jean-Luc Godard. That is not to say that this new Anderson release attempts the heavily intellectual approach Godard was known for. Punch-Drunk Love, promises to be lighter and more straightforward than anything Godard, or even Anderson, has done in the past.

Elswit, who shot all three of Anderson's previous features, explains that the content of the film is more like an early Peter Sellers comedy centered on a main character that we love despite his extensive eccentricity. But the inspiration for the look, he adds, came from Godard's early color films, particularly A Woman is a Woman starring Jean Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Anna Karina.