Just above is a larger, clearer look at the first picture from Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice courtesy of Entertainment Weekly who refer to the ’60s-set feature based on Thomas Pynchon‘s novel of the same name as a film that “swings between suspense and absurdity” in a story that includes “a pile-up of subplots involving conspiracies and faked deaths, heroin cartels and pimps.”
While the center of the story is Joaquin Phoenix as Larry “Doc” Sportello, the focus of EW‘s piece is largely on Josh Brolin who plays a hippie-hating LAPD detective named Christian “Bigfoot” Bjornson and he talks about working on a Paul Thomas Anderson film saying, “It’s Cirque du Soleil more than pretentious filmmaking.” What does that mean? Well…
“With this [film], there was a lack of pretense–a really strange lack of pretense,” Brolin told EW. “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?’ [..] I’m not joking about the pancakes. 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 then adds, “A piece of fruit plays a major role. It’s frozen. And it’s my friend. Even talking about it now is making me chuckle.”
Brolin’s words and that very odd picture (odd to me at least) raise the anticipation bar even higher as the film is set to play at the New York Film Festival before hitting theaters on December 12. For more info on the movie click here.
