INHERENT VICE: Coming To A Theatre Near You On 12/12/14

Voila. Just like that, Paul Thomas Anderson's seventh feature-length motion picture "Inherent Vice", has been given a release date. According to Box Office Mojo, you should set your calendars for December 12th, 2014. It is unclear at this time whether this date indicates a limited or wide release, though given the history of PTA's previous films, it might be safe to assume major cities will get a peak before it hits theatres throughout the rest of the country.

What this release date means for the film's possible contention in any of the major festivals this year is hard to tell. The film could be well on its way to completion with a December release mapped strictly for awards consideration -- an ideal status for the Venice and Toronto festivals' summer run dates -- or the December release could be budgeting some time for additional tinkering in post-production, making the Cannes Film Festival's run in May somewhat of a long shot. Or it could forego the festival route altogether, as There Will Be Blood did. At any rate, the finish line has been charted and the countdown has begun (290 days and counting, fyi).

With this development, as well as the recent news that Jonny Greenwood has completed recording his new soundtrack for the film, it's hard not to feel as though we may be closing in on a teaser. Just keep in mind: it's a long time between now and December, with still plenty of wiggle room for the ad campaign to begin. We know. The suspense is killing us too.

Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.

UPDATE: We have it on good authority from a source close to the production that, despite this official release date, Inherent Vice is prepping for three days of  pick-ups and reshoots in late March. So while most of the picture is likely locked and completed, there is some more work to be done here; something to keep in mind when analyzing possible festival premieres and trailer drops.

Jonny Greenwood Returning To Score Inherent Vice

We won't kid you guys: For pretty obvious reasons, it's been a somber week here at C&RV.

Fortunately, today some bright (if seemingly inevitable) news has arrived at our desks via Film Music Reporter to help keep our chins up: Jonny Greenwood, as suspected for months now, will in fact be reteaming with Paul Thomas Anderson to lend music to Inherent Vice, marking their third collaboration in a row. Recording sessions are expected to take place this month with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. For those not familiar with the phases of post-production on a movie, once scoring has begun in earnest, it generally means that the film has locked picture and the final edit is in place(!)

But don't get too excited: scoring/mixing can still be a pretty laborious and time consuming process, and it could very well be a while before we see any footage. Regardless, we are now a few steps closer to a brand new motion picture from Paul Thomas Anderson!

Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.

RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967-2014)

We are deeply crushed to report the passing of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Easily one of the elite and best we've ever had. Thank you for everything, sir.

Joaquin Phoenix Talks 'The Master' on Fresh Air

Joaquin Phoenix visited Fresh Air with Terry Gross to discuss Her -- his new, Oscar-ladened venture with Spike Jonze. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Five minutes in, the conversation derailed and The Master took over. Among other things, Joaquin discussed having special orthodonture placed in his mouth to give Freddie Quell his famous sneer and deleted battle sequences which more explicitly showed what was behind the character's trauma. The conversation is embedded in its entirety for your listening pleasure.

Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.

WATCH: PTA Interviews Scorsese, Somner on 'Wolf of Wall Street'

If you'll remember back in 2011, Paul Thomas Anderson conducted a Q&A with Martin Scorsese and his creative team over their film "Hugo". Paul was in post-production on The Master at the time. Now, in 2014, with Paul in post-production on his follow-up to The Master, Martin Scorsese has released his follow-up to Hugo: The Wolf of Wall Street. Wouldn't it be great if these two contemporary maestros teamed up again for another Q&A?

Ask and you shall receive.

Over at Awards Daily, Sasha Stone has kindly uploaded over 30 minutes of footage of a post-Wolf-screening Q&A with Marty, a shaggy-haired Paul, and Adam Somner, who has served as First Assistant Director for both directors ('Wolf' for Scorsese; There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Inherent Vice for PTA). The conversation that transpired is extremely insightful, and with not a little humor.

Needless to say, If you haven't seen the film, watch at your own discretion.

PART I


PART II


PART III


Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.

LISTEN: PTA-Moderated Q&A with Jonathan Demme from Austin Film Fest

Remember back in October when we announced that PTA was going to be traveling to the Austin Film Festival to moderate a Q&A with iconic filmmaker Jonathan Demme? And remember how that was the last we heard of it, save for a few low-res phone-pics of the event on Instagram?

Well, today the convo is available for free download on iTunes via The On-Story Podcast. You can click this link for the podcast's site, or you could save yourself a few steps and just do a simple search on iTunes. The whole thing runs about 45 minutes, and it is a highly candid and fascinating discussion.

Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.
C&RV

Scott Rudin Teases Potential New Project With PTA; Scorsese Commends The Master's 70mm

Hello all, we're still here and we hope you've had a safe and happy new year.

While we don't have any Inherent Vice news for you today, we've got a couple other lovely unrelated little tidbits for you this evening.

First up, in an interview with Deadline, legendary and prolific Hollywood producer Scott Rudin, who had an Executive Producer credit on "There Will Be Blood", indicated that he currently has a project in development with Paul Thomas Anderson. The details surrounding it are scant at best, as it was mentioned within a myriad of other projects, but here is the quote:

DEADLINE: You continue to have a prolific output of high quality work on the screen, the Broadway stage and now in television. I imagine there’s a lot of producers looking at your output and wondering, how the hell does he keep up this pace?

SCOTT RUDIN: One of the things we got good at is how to protect filmmakers and play makers. We’re a very effective force field of resistance to what I would call not productive input. I think we are a good front line for the filmmakers we work with, and we’ve had a lot of success being that. I’m really proud of that. This is our third movie with the Coens, we just made our fifth with Wes Anderson, our seventh with Noah Baumbach. There’s another with Paul Thomas Anderson. We work with the same people over and over and it’s because we put a huge, huge amount of time and energy into making sure that they all get well taken care of. 

We're trying to keep our suspicions measured, given the limited nature of the comments, but it's exciting to imagine that PTA might already be scrambling to get his first post-Vice project off the ground. More to come, if and/or when the news becomes available.

In other news, Martin Scorsese took some time away from doing press on his [seriously great] new film "The Wolf of Wall Street" to pen an open letter to his daughter Francesca on how he sees the future of filmmaking. We highly recommended reading the whole thing, but the real cool part is that Mr. Scorsese singles out PTA as an especially important directorial presence in the modern era:

"I don’t want to repeat what has been said and written by so many others before me, about all the changes in the business, and I’m heartened by the exceptions to the overall trend in moviemaking – Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, David Fincher, Alexander Payne, the Coen Brothers, James Gray and Paul Thomas Anderson are all managing to get pictures made, and Paul not only got The Master made in 70mm, he even got it shown that way in a few cities. Anyone who cares about cinema should be thankful."

Couldn't have said it any better ourselves, sir.

Wanted to take a quick sec to say: Now is as good a time as any to be following us on Twitter and Facebook. We will never break a major story exclusively on one of those platforms, but sometimes we post fun/cool/old-school links/photos/etc there, which, for redundancies' sake, don't get front-page attention on this site. Things have been mega-quiet lately, as Inherent Vice is deep into post-production at this point, but make no mistake: we have been here all along, we're as alert as ever, and we're brimming with positivity over the plethora of really groovy stuff we will have to share with you this year. It's going to be a great 2014.

C&RV

Boogie Nights Almost Went Straight To Home Video

It's that time of year. Directors, producers, multimegastars are doing the holiday press push for awards consideration on their films. One of the hallmarks of this process in the last few years has been the various roundtables that The Hollywood Reporter orchestrates, and with their "producers" roundtable having just dropped, The Playlist points out an interesting anecdote shared between Michael de Luca and Mark Wahlberg on their experience making Boogie Nights. 

MDL:  'Boogie Nights' scored horribly. They recruit for these [test screenings] off a paragraph [synopsis] in the mall, and the paragraph for 'Boogie Nights' made it look like a sitcom, and then they come for this three-hour exegesis on existential crises in porn. It got to a point where Bob Shaye, my old boss, chased good scores on that movie, and that movie was never going to score high.

MW: I remember he did his own cut and made Paul watch it.

MDL: Yeah, it was horrible. It was tough. That movie was going straight to video, and then the reviews started to come in at the New York Film Festival. If it wasn't for early reviews… 

It's hard not to consider the dazzling irony of the prospect of the film going straight to video, given its message about the effects of video production over celluloid distribution. You can watch the roundtable in its entirety below, or skip to the pertinent information starting around 44:50.



Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.

READ: C&RV Exclusive Interview With Laura Colella, Writer/Director Of PTA-Fav "Breakfast With Curtis"

We were able to grab a few wonderful minutes on the phone with Rhode Island filmmaker Laura Colella to discuss her new film Breakfast With Curtis, which Paul Thomas Anderson warmly embraced at the LA Film Festival last year. The movie follows an introverted 14-year-old boy who is enlisted to be a videographer by his eccentric bookseller neighbor, and in the process, grows a formative bond with the rest of his small community. In the interview, we covered everything from meeting Paul, to the inspiration she found in her home-town of Providence, to the precarious nature of the film festival circuit. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Enjoy!

C&RV: As a relative newcomer to your work, I have to say that Breakfast With Curtis offers a very palpable sense of location and age. What drove you to capture Rhode Island in such a light?

LC: Well, it's actually -- that's where I live. I'm based in Providence, Rhode Island. This is my third feature, and I've shot most of all of them there. My first two features were mainly shot there. It's just a place that really kind of inspires me. It has a lot of great locations, a lot of talented, interesting people. So that combined with the fact that I'm working in a sort of low-budget realm has made it a perfect place to shoot. I teach at film schools, I teach at Rhode Island School of Design, in their film program, and I'm teaching screenwriting at Brown and I've always incorporated students into my work, too, as crew. Sort of a mix of professional and student crew.

C&RV: Talk a bit about casting non-professional actors in the lead roles of Breakfast With Curtis. Having cast friends and acquaintances, mainly, were you able to write the script with their voices in mind? Did any of them have any trepidation about joining the film? 

LC: (laughs) Did you know about the background of the film before seeing it? 

C&RV: No, actually, I didn't it. I went in fresh. 

LC: Oh okay, cool. That's the fun part. That's how I like people to see it, you know? I don't know how much you know about the back story, but in reality, everybody who lives in the purple house in the movie lives in those actual apartments in real life, and everybody who lives in the pink house next door actually lives in the pink house next door. So I live in that house with my boyfriend, who plays the character of Frenchy, and then on the second floor, that elderly woman is our landlady. And then downstairs, Syd and Pirate are actually Adele [Parker] and Theo [Green]. Next door, the couple who are Curtis's parents are actually Curtis's parents and the little boy who plays Young Curtis is his little brother. So that's the full story, and all the cats and dogs really live there too (laughs).

C&RV: What would you say was the biggest challenge in getting your vision on the screen with limited resources? Were there any big compromises you had to make in order to see that vision through, given the constraints of budget and time?

LC: I was very fortunate throughout the process that things went pretty smoothly, and that it was a fairly relaxed shoot, and that I had help come in, in post-production when I needed it -- people who kind of came on board and helped with the finishing phase... really kind of pro sound mixers and colorists and things like that, kind of in the finishing process... But making it was very hands on, and I'd say the biggest challenge has been music licensing, 'cause I put in a lot of music, so…

C&RV: Yeah, I noticed that! All of a sudden Brian Eno came on the soundtrack... 

LC: (laughs) Yeah, that's been replaced. Some things have been replaced, but I'm really happy with the replacement, so it worked out.

C&RV: Well since you brought up music, I was going to ask, did you conceive the film for specific musical qualities or did you discover it in the post-production process?

LC: The big discovery for me was John Fahey's music. He's the solo guitarist whose music is throughout the -- sixteen tracks of his used in the film. And I just became really attached to those. I kept using them, and I was like, "Oh my god," he almost started sounding like a narrator to the movie. So I became really attached to that music, and I was able to license that music, so that was a really big relief, because I had grown so attached to it. 

C&RV: And he wasn't an assigned composer, you discovered him later?

LC: I discovered him later on. He's deceased actually. It was through his estate that I was able to license it.

C&RV:  It's good that it was able to actually wind up in the film because it adds a really nice touch to it.

LC: Yeah. I love it.

C&RV: One of the most immediately striking things in the film is the use of color; the big purple house, Frenchy's yellow gym shorts and exercise room, etc. Talk a bit about your process for finding what you wanted this film to be cinematically. How did you enjoy being your own DP?

LC: Yeah. I mean, I think our homes and our yards are very, sort of, visually interesting and rich. That's always been part of the attraction for me shooting there. That was always there from the beginning. I knew that we had great looking sets and locations at our fingertips. That was definitely a big draw. The combination of the characters around me and the locations around me immediately just made it a real draw, to want to shoot this project. I also wanted to shoot it myself because I really… I had a couple of people helping me -- Jake Mahaffy, who's a really terrific filmmaker who was living a block away from me at the time actually. And my boyfriend Aaron also operated sometimes, usually for Steadicam-type shots. They shot whenever I was in it, basically. My first two features I shot with a DP, but my training as a filmmaker was very hands-on. I shot all of my student films, and I've shot stuff over the years for myself and for other people, but it was really exciting to be able to shoot this myself with a 5D. Really low-tech and hands-on.

C&RV: Having made a couple feature films through this system now, and maneuvering through the festival process with Breakfast With Curtis, how do you feel about the sate of independent film? Is it harder to get your movie seen than you anticipated?

LC: Gosh, you know, that part of it was definitely difficult. I felt like it should've gotten into festivals that it didn't get into. And we had a great premiere at the LA Film Festival, and that's actually where Paul [Thomas Anderson] saw the film, so that was really great. And that's just a really wonderful festival, actually. They take great care of filmmakers. So it turned out to be a wonderful premiere, but there turned out to be a lot of -- I submitted it around to other festivals that it didn't get into that I thought it should've. But that part is such a crap shoot. I'm sure it's the hardest part for most people. I feel like I was fairly lucky with this film, and also in getting the chance to have it distributed.

C&RV: Talk a little bit about finding financing for an independent film. Was your experience at RISD helpful in getting your films off the ground? How were you able to scrounge up the resources to make Breakfast With Curtis happen?

LC: This is really a no-budget film, relatively. It was a really tiny budget. I got a couple of grants, small grants, that covered basically all of the production and post-production budget. One of those grants was from the Rhode Island School of Design where I teach, and one of them was from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and they were both just really small grants, but because I did all the work, I edited it myself -- no one was paid to work on it -- and the only person shooting was me, Aaron, and a former student from RISD who had just graduated who did the sound for most of it. And there's occasionally a few other people. The crew ranged from me actually shooting by myself to five at the most, probably. Pretty tiny production.

C&RV: Paul Thomas Anderson was a big champion for the movie coming out of the LA Film Festival in 2012. How did you two cross paths initially? Talk a bit about what his support means for the film moving forward.

LC: We met at the Sundance Lab. I was a screenwriting and directing fellow in the year 2000. He was one of the creative advisers there. He was there for the first week as one of the advisers, and he was just very sympathetic to my project, which was not this project, it was another project called Stay Until Tomorrow. That was my second feature. But he was just really helpful in giving feedback when I had a rough cut of the film. We just basically stayed in touch through email over the years. And then he came to the screening at the festival, and he liked it so much that he offered to host a screening of it at the Aero Theatre. And I was like, "Oh, great!" It was a little dream idea. And then I just kind of followed up, and he came through. It was amazing. We had a really long, nice Q&A, full house. Very generous of him, sweet.

Breakfast With Curtis opens at the Cable Car Cinema in Providence, RI, this Friday, November 22, at the IFC Center in New York, NY, on Wednesday, December 4th, and at the Downtown Independent in Los Angeles, CA, on Friday, December 20th. Seek it out!

Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.