Remember the “psychedelic 60s and 70s”? Nope, I didn’t think so. Of course I do. So that in and of itself is going to shade my reaction to this film. In other words, is the way in which they depict it more or less the way that I remember it? Whereas most of you will only have the Reagan era on as a frame of reference. For better or for worse.
Anyway, most of the characters reflect what [back then] was called the “culture revolution”. China wasn’t the only country to have one of those. Only our own rendition was considerably less…ideological?
In other words, what’s missing [more or less] is the part about the political revolution. The class struggle is there…just not explicitly. And this is Southern California. Everything more or less happened there first.
The plot is not exactly linear. But is a plot even necessary at all here? Some of the best films more or less let you make up your own. It’s the cast of “characters” themselves that keep you tuned in. Or not. Most of them anyway. Basically, you are never quite sure how much of this is meant to be taken seriously. Or it might be just one more love story.
Look for Neil Young.
IMDb
[b]According to director Paul Thomas Anderson, Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon “have their own language and short hand” with each other. While their natural rapport helped to show the chemistry between their characters, this led to Anderson having to constantly remind them to stop chatting so that they could film.
Fuelled by comments Josh Brolin gave to the New York Times, rumors persist that notoriously reclusive author Thomas Pynchon makes a cameo appearance somewhere in the film, which would be the first time Pynchon has been willingly publicly photographed since the late 1950’s. The most common theories are Pynchon appears as one of the following: the patient being served soup by a shaky patient in the Chroskylodon Institute (this is actually an actor named Charley Morgan), a dentist in the scene at Golden Fang Headquarters, or the man who passes by the window behind Doc and Coy as they talk at the Spotted Dick party.
Even though all the dialogue is the same in Doc and Shasta’s sex scene in both film and book, Paul Thomas Anderson changed the tone of the scene greatly. In the book, the scene is much more comedic than it is tragic.[/b]
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inherent_Vice_(film
trailer: youtu.be/wZfs22E7JmI
INHERENT VICE [2014]
Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson [from the Thomas Pynchon novel]
[b]Sortilège [voiceover]: She came along the alley and up the back steps the way she always used to. Doc hadn’t seen her for over a year. Nobody had. Back then it was always sandals, bottom half of a flower-print bikini, faded Country Joe & the Fish t-shirt. Tonight she was all in flatland gear, hair a lot shorter than he remembered, looking just like she swore she’d never look.
…
Sortilège [voiceover]: If it’s a quiet night out at the beach and your ex-old lady suddenly out of nowhere shows up with a story about her current billionaire- developer boyfriend, and his wife, and her boyfriend, and a plot to kidnap the billionaire and throw him in a loony bin…
…
Doc: And you want me to do what exactly?
Shasta: They want me in on the scheme. They think I’m the one who can reach him when he’s vulnerable.
Doc: Bare ass and asleep.
Shasta: I knew you’d understand.
…
Doc: All right, how much is the wifey and boyfriend offering to cut you in for?
Shasta: It isn’t what you’re thinking, Doc.
Doc: Don’t worry. Thinking comes later.
…
Sortilège [voiceover]: Back when they were together she could go weeks without anything more complicated than a pout. Now she was laying some heavy combination of face ingredients on Doc that he couldn’t read at all.
…
Doc: Mickey Wolfmann, what can you tell me?
Aunt Reet: Powerhouse in L.A real estate…from the desert to the sea. Technically Jewish but wants to be a Nazi…
…
Jade: Hi, I’m Jade. Welcome to Chick Planet Massage! Please take a look at today’s Pussy Eater’s special which is good all day until closing time.
Doc: How much is it?
Jade: $14.95.
Doc: Errr, not that $14.95 ain’t a totally groovy price, but I’m really trying to locate this guy who works for Mr. Wolfmann?
Jade: Oh, does he eat pussy?
Doc: A fella by the name of Glenn Charlock?
Jade: Oh sure, Glenn! He comes in here. He eats pussy!
…
Sortilège [voiceover]: Well Mornin’ Sam, like a bad luck planet in today’s horoscope, here’s the old hippie-hating mad dog himself in the flesh: Lieutenant Detective Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen. SAG member, John Wayne walk, flat top of Flintstone proportions and that evil, little shit-twinkle in his eye that says Civil Rights Violations.
…
Sortilège [voiceover]: Doc could never figure out what Shasta might’ve seen in him besides being just about the only doper she knew who didnt use heroin…freeing up a lot of time for both of them. And he wasnt any clearer about what had driven them apart either. They each gradually located a different Karmic thermal…watching the other glide away into different fates. Does it ever end? Of course it does. It did.
…
Hope: Coy and I should have met cute but we actually met squalid. Down in Oscars in St. Yesedra. Oh boy! I had just run into this bathroom stall without checking first and I already had my finger down my throat to vomit up this big balloon of dope I just scored and there Coy sat about to take this giant shit. And we both let go at the same time and there’s just vomit and shit all over the place and with my head on his lap. And to complicate things, he had this hard on.
Doc: Sure.
Hope: One thing leads to another and we pretty much started shooting up together on a regular basis…
…
Penny: Besides, maybe you did it. Has that crossed your mind? Maybe you just forgot?
Doc: What? Did do what?
Penny: Kill Glenn Charlock.
Doc: Kill him?! How would I forget something like that?
Penny: Grass. And who knows what else?
Doc: I’m only a light smoker.
Penny: How many joints have you had today?
Doc: I have to check the logbook.
…
Doc: Where you stayin’?
Coy: House in Topanga Canyon. Band I used to play for, the Boards, none of them know it’s me.
Doc: How can they not know it’s you?
Coy: Even when I was alive they didn’t know it was me.
…
Waitress: Hi, Im Chlorinda, how can I help you ?
Sauncho: Well, I’m gonna have the house anchovy loaf to start and, um, the devil-ray filet…can I get that deep-fried in beer batter?
Waitress: It’s your stomach.
…
Sortilège [voiceover]: Coy’s band, The Boards, were currently renting a place in Topanga Canyon from a bass player turned record company executive, which trend watchers took as further evidence of the end of Hollywood, if not the world, as they had known it.
…
Sortilège [voiceover]: Was it possible that at every gathering, concert, peace rally, love-in, be-in, freak-in, here up north, back east, where ever, some dark crews had been busy all along reclaiming the music, the resistance to power, the sexual desire from epic to everyday? All they could sweep up for the ancient forces of greed and fear? Gee he thought…I don’t know.
…
Sortilège [voiceover]: On principle he tried to spend as little time around the Glass House as possible. All this strange alternative cop history and cop politics, cop dynasties, cop heroes and evil doers, saintly cops and psycho cops, cops too stupid to live and cops too smart for their own good, insulated by secret loyalties and codes of silence from the world they’d all been given the control.
…
Denis [to a cop]: Man, listen, this is a Mercedes. Its only painted one color. That should count for something.
…
Sortilège [voiceover]: It was occurring to Doc now something Jade said once about vertical integration…that if The Golden Fang could get its customers strung out why not turn around and sell them a program to help kick? Get them coming and going…twice as much revenue. As long as American life was something to be escaped from the cartel could always be sure of a bottomless pool of new customers.
…
Dr. Threeply: Any questions?
Doc [in regards to Puck Beaverton]: Is that a swastika on that man’s face?
Dr. Threeply: No, it isn’t. That’s an ancient Hindu symbol meaning “all is well”. It brings good fortune, luck and well-being.
…
Doc: You didn’t get this necklace up north, hmm?
Shasta: I went on a boat ride.
Doc: Hmm…a three hour tour?
Shasta: They told me I was precious cargo that couldn’t be insured because of inherent vice.
Doc: Whats that?
Shasta [wistfully]: I dont know.
…
Sortilège [voiceover]: Inherent vice in a maritime insurance policy is anything that you can’t avoid. Eggs break, chocolate melts, glass shatters, and Doc wondered what that meant when it applied to ex-old ladies.
…
Doc: You ever run across a dentist named Rudy Blatnoyd?
Croker: The son of a bitch who until recently was corrupting my daughter? Yes I do seem to recall the name. He perished in a trampoline accident didn’t he?
Doc: The LAPD aren’t so sure it was an accident.
Croker: And you’d like to know if I did it? What possible motive would I have? Just because the man preyed on an emotionally vulnerable child? Forced her to engage in sexual practices that might appall even a sophisticate like yourself? Does that mean I’d have any reason to see his miserable pedophile career come to an end? What a vindictive person you must imagine me.
Doc: I did suspect he was fucking his receptionist but what dentist doesn’t? It’s some oath they all take in dental school…
…
Sortilège [voiceover]: The sea of time, the sea of memory and forgetfulness…the years of promise gone and unrecoverable. Of the land almost almost allowed to claim its better destiny only to have that claim jumped by evil doers known all too well and taken, instead, and held hostage to the future we must live in now, forever.[/b]