New TV Spots, Character Poster For "Vice" Arrive; PTA Talks With The Guardian; More

It's New Years Eve so we'll keep this roundup short and sweet for you all:

A couple delicious new TV spots for Inherent Vice have been made available on YouTube.

Up next, Katherine Waterston stopped by QTV for a 20-minute interview on Vice, and was radiant and charming as always. Watch!

PTA sat down and talked with Mark Kermode for an interview in The Guardian and gave some really interesting insights into the making of Inherent Vice. Here are some highlights:

[Composer Jonny] Greenwood proved a key collaborator on Inherent Vice, despite Anderson originally telling him that “I won’t need that much music – which of course equals ‘I’m going to need a lot of music’. When Jonny first read the script there was all the stuff in there from the book about the Arpanet, which was like the original internet computer. So he started out doing some more electronic stuff, as if these sounds were coming out of the computer. But then these other ideas started to present themselves – orchestral ideas. It’s now getting to the spot in my relationship with Jonny when I can maybe mention a thing or two but really just leave him to his own devices. He’s always the first viewer, too.”

PTA also retroactively defended his composer in his Oscar disqualification in 2007, saying "Oh, the fix was in, wasn’t it? They just couldn’t stand the idea of a guy in a rock band with moppy hair being that good, I suppose. But hey, no sour grapes.”

Relating the musical qualities of Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love to the musical qualities in his more recent work, PTA said the following:

“Well,” he says, “those movies you mention are musicals in the sense that the music is woven so strongly inside them. I think that’s probably true of There Will Be Blood too. But starting with The Master, I was working on things that had a little more dialogue. You know, there’s music in there, but the film isn’t structured like a musical. This was more a matter of just driving to the set each day and listening to some stuff Jonny had sent me, or listening to Can, or Neil Young [both feature on the soundtrack] over and over. That’s what we were trying to do – to make a movie that felt like a Neil Young song, that has that sweet sadness to it.”

On the subject of finding the looks for each character, PTA reiterated that Owen Wilson's Coy Harlingen borrowed a lot from late Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, and, awesomely, Zoot from The Muppets. His take on Doc Sportello was just as interesting:

"As for Doc, we really stole his look from Neil Young circa 1970, with the mutton chops. Some of the wardrobes on Doc are a straight rip of him. I don’t think you can make a movie about this period and this culture without looking directly at him.”

You can read the entire interview, which is great, here.

- Finally, Character Poster/Trailer #5 Arrives:

A video posted by Inherent Vice (@inherentvicemovie) on Dec 12, 2014 at 9:59am PST

Character Poster/Trailer #4 Arrives: Coy Harlingen

A video posted by Inherent Vice (@inherentvicemovie) on Dec 12, 2014 at 10:03am PST

Character Poster/Trailer #3 Arrives: Sauncho Smilax

A video posted by Inherent Vice (@inherentvicemovie) on Dec 12, 2014 at 11:51am PST

WATCH: Academy Conversations With PTA, Leslie Jones, Mark Bridges, Daniel Lupi & Joanne Sellar

Here's a small sliver of a talk with the Inherent Vice team: Producers Joanne Sellar & Daniel Lupi, costume designer Mark Bridges, film editor Leslie Jones, and their ring-leader, Paul Thomas Anderson. Have a looksee. 

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PTA Talks "Vice" In A 40-Minute Conversation On Studio 360

Via The Film Stage, PTA sat down for a 40-minute interview on Studio 360 on Thursday to promote Inherent Vice. You can download it and store it on your Vice playlist, which should be totaling over 2 hours in length at this point. Give it a listen below:

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Character Poster/Trailer #2 Arrives: Penny Kimball

A video posted by Inherent Vice (@inherentvicemovie) on Dec 12, 2014 at 5:08pm PST

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

INHERENT VICE: Now Playing

Today's the day, folks. Well, at least for those of you living on the East or West Coast. That's right. After whispers of a potential Thomas Pynchon adaptation first surfaced just over 4 years ago, Paul Thomas Anderson's seventh feature film, Inherent Vice, is now officially playing in theatres.   

You can find New York showtimes here and LA showtimes here.

(UPDATE) Also officially released is the second theatrical poster for Inherent Vice, and we're guessing you'll find it familiar.

There are a couple insanely great pieces about PTA circulating out there today:
- One with Glenn Kenny over at Wondering Sound, in which PTA discusses the use of music in his films. A couple notable quotes to whet your appetite:

“A lot of the time we were shooting stuff that was silent. So there was a ton of stuff during dailies [where] there wasn’t a lot of dialogue. So it was very easy to plug the iPod into the speakers and kind of navigate around, whether it was Chico Hamilton again, or weirder stuff. A lot of the songs I kept playing, like ‘You Go To My Head,’ or ‘Two Blind Loves,’ some of which ended up in the movie, some of which didn’t. I remember particularly loving the feeling of ‘Two Blind Loves,’ and just having the knowledge of that song really was useful. There was one classical piece that I can’t remember now, that I’d play during the rushes, and even though it didn’t end up in the movie, it ended up informing how I shaped the mood of one of the beach scenes. So it’s always useful to play with material even if it doesn’t end up being used.” (One song used to startling effect is “Slow Boat to China,” sung in full by Philip Seymour Hoffman at the end of the film.) “What can I say? Nothing. Except maybe that I’d trade all my screenplays for a writing credit on that song. My ex-old lady Fiona [Apple] sings this song better than anyone.”

And when Kenny asked PTA whether Pynchon was a major influence behind the "Wise Up" musical sequence in Magnolia, the answer he gave might surprise you...

I asked Anderson if Pynchon was perhaps a subterranean influence on the “Wise Up” scene in his third feature Magnolia, in which stanzas of Aimee Mann’s mordant song are voiced by a procession of the film’s suffering characters. “I have to say, if I ever get a do-over on Vice, I would work a Pynchon song into it,” Anderson answered. “As for Magnolia, if I had a do-over for that, I might take the singing out. I know people like it but I’m not sure the movie’s better for it. I could have gotten to them frogs falling a little faster without it. I don’t know that I had Pynchon in the back of my mind when I did it, I just thought, ‘This is a good idea.’”

Read the whole interview in the link posted above these quotes.

A great interview with PTA turned up in Filmmaker Magazine, which the author was kind enough to pass along to us. Here's a great quote from the man himself:

"The only thing I ever really look at in movies is the actors. Obviously there are great movies with great production design and that kind of stuff, but… it probably comes from my first movie, where I realized early on that I didn’t have any money and I was telling a small story, but what I did have was these great actors, which ended up being the most important thing you could have. I remember talking with Jack Fisk on There Will Be Blood about needing money to do special effects, and he said, “We’ve got the best special effect there is, we’ve got Daniel Day Lewis!” And he was right. A nice two-shot with two actors performing great dialogue, that’s a staple of the movies of the ’30s that I love the most.

I don’t fetishize ’70s movies the way some people do. I love them, but my models are those ’30s films, and I’m always trying to emulate that. Sometimes you can’t – sometimes you try to get things in one shot and you realize you’re forcing the staging, and you have to own up to the fact that it’s not working. You always have to keep an eye on it to make sure that your visual ideas aren’t affectations, and that you’re not just adhering to some kind of dogma. But when you can make that kind of thing work naturally, it’s just the best."

You can read that entire interview here.

And now, kids, the countdown to Inherent Vice's wide-release begins: 27 days.

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Flashback Friday: Watch Hour-Long Press Conference For "There Will Be Blood" With PTA & DDL

Above is an hour-long press conference for There Will Be Blood from all the way back in 2008 (centuries ago, right?) featuring both Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis, for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

We'll have another post later this evening with a Vice roundup. Stay tuned for that.

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Joaquin Phoenix Receives Golden Globe Nomination For Inherent Vice; PTA Does Commentary On A Scene From The Film

The nominations for the 72nd Annual Golden Globe awards were announced this morning, and Joaquin Phoenix scored a nomination for best performance by an actor in a comedy or musical. Unfortunately, though, that single nomination was the only love the film got. You can read the full list of nominations here. (Feel free to sound off in the comments about why the Hollywood Foreign Press decided that St. Vincent deserved a Best Picture nomination more.) The awards will be handed out on January 11.

In other awesome news, PTA stopped by The New York Times to participate in their Anatomy of a Scene series, where a director essentially provides a commentary track over a given scene. You can watch that here, to rejuvenate your sense-memory of the joy it used to be to listen to PTA talk about his own shit on a commentary (Thanks, Tori!)

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IV: 1 day

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Unreleased Radiohead Song From Vice Soundtrack Debuts; PTA Says Another Pynchon Film Is Feasible

Today, Nonesuch released a cut off of the Inherent Vice Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, due out December 15, available for pre-order here.

The song, as previously reported, is a reworking of a previously unreleased Radiohead song called "Spooks" by the fellas in the English band Supergrass, with dashes of Joanna Newsom's narration from the film (and the book) tossed in to make a tasty mix.

We seem to be having an issue embedding the track, but you can find it here.

In other news, PTA did an interview with Metro, wherein he was pressed about the supposed Pynchon cameo in Inherent Vice. As usual, PTA played it pretty cool but it did lead to him offering up his own artistic rendering of what the famously reclusive author looks like. This excerpt brought to you by xixax:

I know it's impossible to really know, but is Pynchon in the movie? There was rumor of a cameo.

Can you put a dollar amount on how many tickets might be sold to Pynchon freaks who have to see? Chances are they could come back 50 times, buying a ticket each time, and that, you know, that's a lot of money that we can't just throw out the window, so we have to keep … (laughs) He's absolutely in there somewhere! You just have to keep coming back to find it! I wish you all luck.

Well, could you draw me a picture of him? 

There you go. (laughs)

In the same interview, PTA discusses attempting adaptations of Pynchon novels before Inherent Vice:

It was two things at once. It was, "I don't know how to do this and I can't do this, but no one else is going to be allowed to do this but me." I love and have loved his work for a long time. I flirted with trying to do "Vineland," I certainly thought for a second "Mason and Dixon" could be done — and maybe someday still will. But this presented itself as doable, as a great lead character weaving through many other great characters. And I loved how many girls there were in it, too. There's so many great parts for girls, and getting your hero to interact with all of them — and most of them are half-clothed. That just seemed so appealing. I was like, "OK, there's enough," but all the while convincing myself that I shouldn't do it, that I shouldn't make another L.A. movie, that I don't need to do this again, but as you're typing, it's kind of like a drug addict who's just like, "I really can't have another drink" while reaching for his glass. It was too hard to resist.

So there you have it. After the release of Inherent Vice, PTA and Pynchon may not be parting ways forever. Time shall tell.

There's plenty of other great stuff in that interview, including one particularly sweet anecdote about the decision to include a song by Maya Rudolph's mother Minnie Riperton on the soundtrack. Read the rest of it here.

- In other news, the wonderful Grantland article we posted yesterday about the Los Angeles locations used by PTA thus far is actually only but a single installment in an entire week of PTA appreciation leading up to the release of Inherent Vice. Today's piece is an [exquisite] oral history of Boogie Nights and it can (and should) be read here.

- Finally, this dropped on YouTube a few days ago and a few of you have been kind enough to pass it along. That's right: the FULL PTA/Robert Carl Cohen Q&A that followed the screening of Cohen's documentary Mondo Hollywood at the AFI Fest last month. Watch, watch, watch:

In addition to any Vice-related news that might pop up between now and then, we will have a pretty cool Flashback Friday for you (we have not yet made the full conversion to #tbt) so keep your eyes peeled for that this weekend.

(One last thing: I (Bryan) am STILL composing a piece about my experience at the Ace Hotel screening of Inherent Vice last week and I will be dead if it's not posted sometime this weekend. You'll forgive the delay, the whole ordeal was the best kind of whirlwind and it gave me a lot to think about.)

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IV: 2 days

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

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Inherent Vice To Screen At Castro Theatre This Thursday; Joaquin Does Letterman; More

We've got a pretty healthy-sized news roundup for you all to sink your teeth into, as Inherent Vice prepares to open in New York and LA this weekend.

- Top of the heap, Inherent Vice will be having a special advanced screening this Thursday at the world-famous Castro Theatre in San Francisco at 8pm, with all proceeds going to the John Burton Foundation, a wonderful organization which helps homeless children. You can find more out about that organization here.

Tickets are still on sale and can be purchased here.

- Next up, Joaquin Phoenix went on David Letterman last night, and Good Morning America to promote Vice. You can watch those both right below. On Letterman, Joaquin reveals he is engaged to a yoga instructor, and on Good Morning America, he reveals that was all fun and games.

-Moving right along, there is an absolutely delicious piece in The California Sunday Magazine that delves into the production design of Inherent Vice with interviews and even early conceptual sketches provided by long-time PTA collaborators Ruth De Jong and David Crank. Read that here, if you're so inclined.

To that end, there's an outstanding article in Grantland which breaks down Paul Thomas Anderson's use of Los Angeles locations throughout his whole career, including pictures of the locations as they are today. Remarkable stuff.
- Finally, here's an interview PTA did with Indiewire. He touches on his relationship with both Joaquin and Thomas Pynchon. Some highlights:

Tell me about working with Joaquin Phoenix. It's such a particular performance. In the book, we get a real clear sense of his thoughts, but in the movie, much of that has been relegated to his expressions. How much of that did you coach out of him?

I'm not shoving off credit, I love to get credit, and I know he'll say something opposite. But you have to listen to me: It's him. It's really all him. Sure, he read the book and he would do things, and I would say, "That's good.” But it's him presenting it. It's all him. Don't listen to anything he says. He'll just shove stuff off, like, "Oh, I just did what Paul told me,” but that's his horseshit way of not accepting a compliment. All those little things he does, there's nothing I ask for, I swear to you. 

Here's one thing you have to take credit for: Making a completely bizarre movie with studio money. Warner Bros. is releasing your version of "Inherent Vice” on thousands of screens. How do you get away with that?

Look, I love seeing that Warner Bros. logo at the beginning of this movie. It's so perfect. You're used to seeing that logo in front of all those old detective movies and stuff. I love that this has got that. It's just a good-looking logo. They've been wonderful to work with and we stayed within a budget that I think they were really happy with: This movie cost 20 million bucks. I think their pockets are really deep, so they seem OK with that. It's a great relationship.

What sort of relationship have you had with Pynchon over the years? There are so many books out there that could have been made into movies but haven't. 

I don't know if it's a case of nobody asking, or what, but my relationship to him and his work has been intimate. I love him and I love his work. It's constantly nearby. There's a stack of books I haven't read yet, and yet I find myself constantly re-reading "Vineland.” It's borderline pathological. But I think that I had a kind of possessive feeling that if anybody was going to do this — if anyone was going to fuck it up, I would prefer that I would be the one to fuck it up. When you find writers you like, you get possessive. You get that kind of one-on-one relationship sometimes, this imaginary relationship you have with some writers you really enjoy. You feel that you're connected somehow to these words. It's this intimate exchange of sitting down to read somebody's book. If you do it enough, you feel connected to that writer, to that voice.

- Finally, 3 new TV spots for Vice have turned up on YouTube, strung all together in one video. One of the spots is almost exactly the same as PTA's "Spotted Dick" trailer for the Prince Charles screening last month.

Oh, and then there's this little cutie...

We're sure there will be much more to share in the next couple days/weeks/months. Stay tuned, dudes!

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IV: 3 days

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

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Don't Live In NY or LA? Check Out An Advanced Screening of "Vice" On December 13

Warner Bros. has just announced a big batch of advanced screenings for Inherent Vice on December 13th for those of us who don't live in New York or Los Angeles for its limited debut on the 12th.

If you live in the following cities, there will be a screening of Vice in December 13th that you can attend for free:

Austin, TX

Boston, MA

Chicago, IL

Columbus, OH

Dallas, TX

Denver, CO

Kansas City, MO

Miami, FL

Oakland, CA

Philadelphia, PA

Phoenix, AZ

Seattle, WA

Toronto, ON

Vancouver, BC

Claim your passes HERE. Seats are first come first served, so arrive early to help guarantee you actually get into the movie. Good luck!

UPDATE: In support of this promotion, Warner Bros has a released a new trailer for the film, where paranoia runs rampant.

(We have a round-up of some news-related odds&ends coming later tonight, so stay tuned for that.)

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IV: 3 days

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

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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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A Whole Slew of New Stills From Inherent Vice Arrive

A whole bunch of new official stills from Inherent Vice have surfaced this morning as well as some awesome behind-the-scenes stills showing PTA at work on the set. Many of the other stills are from scenes that aren't in the trailers, so we'll include those after the jump if you want to go in fresh. (pics via The Playlist.)

More pics from the film below the fold: