Reading Inherent Vice

i read the book and thought it would be difficult to follow if you hadn't, but my companions didn't seem to have any trouble.

it felt surprisingly faithful, lots of scenes exactly how i'd imagined them. kind of wish they'd done vegas and made it 3 hours, open it up a little with bigger scenery or something.

i thought it was interesting and evocative, not particularly insightful or coherent, above all entertaining, again like the book, though the book delivers more on that front imo. xps pretty sure the hatesex scene was in the book?

i think you're right--it just reads totally different? maybe i should find my copy...

yeah it does read differently iirc, less straightforward somehow.

anyway i wouldn't call it hatesex, just kinda s&m-y daddy-daughter shame sex which is pretty standard-issue afaic, felt like the book (and movie) posit the sex as sort of a hum drum reflection of everything else in any case.

I guess angry sex is a better way to describe it. It's really more the monologue I found disturbing than the sex, which I agree was nothing out there.

Just watched this earlier today - captures what differentiates Pynchon from a mere 'counterculture' type - and by turns what makes him worth reading right now, even to the extent you could map to LOL 'today'.

Many go about at capturing that world of utter confusion and anarchy that all of us fail at navigating - not a hope of bringing to order. We are all - men and women - weak, everyone anemically ambling through. This wasn't even that much about noir to me, its too distant an evocation of a few bits and pieces that Pynchon flicked through once upon a time. On weed, of course.

As for PTA I've never taken him very seriously, sure half a dozen directors could have shot as nicely as this (cor will this be the finest hour for Owen Wilson's nose!) Glad that an attempt has been to made to film Pynchon, and I hope it encourages more films of his books.

Its not about whether its faithful or boring through plot, its about capturing some kind of feel for etc etc.

i should probably remind folks that i liked this movie, possibly more than any other PTA film

that said, i was thinking about how during the production of the film PTA said he watched some zucker-abrahams-zucker films (like airport and the naked gun, i presume) for pointers as to how to stage/shoot the slapstick elements in this film.

it's quite possible that statement was semi-insincere, just another attempt by PTA to throw off the critics. (and maybe i'm reading too much into it, but there's a kind of self-aggrandizing aspect to it that reminds me of the legend of Kubrick seeing a porn film and saying "I can make that better!"). but i have to say that while i found inherent vice pretty funny at times, the framing/staging wasn't half as precise (or funny) as it is in the best Z-A-Z comedies. there's some really smart, truly hilarious visual humor in those films (side by side with a lot of equally funny, but much cruder verbal comedy and sloppy slapstick). i think the moment where Doc gets bonked on the head at the "massage parlor" was a good bit. but there's a long shot at the retreat (in Ojai?) where the doctors leading Doc on a tour through the facilities go one way, and Doc goes another, and the tour guide doesn't seem to notice. it's a funny bit of nonchalant slapstick, but the framing is too wide, and the timing is a little off.

in other words, visual comedy is hard, and while it's quite possible that the off-rhythm of that moment was by design, it's also possible that PTA just doesn't have the same facility at that kind of thing as Z-A-Z at their best.

I quite liked the "off"-ness of some of the humor, things that can play more or less straight or funny depending on your frame of mind, as if it's quoting something more straightforwardly funny without being funny itself. that sounds like some awful ironic archness but it actually plays into something tonally quite fascinating--which is why I think this benefits so much from repeat viewings.

yeah there's a possibility that he's kind of tipping his hat at the Z-A-Z style of zany visual comedy without really wanting to commit to it. which yeah could be read as arch. there's that moment in the wolfmann mansion where suddenly Doc is tip-toeing through the hallway like Peter Sellers or something. it's a very exaggerated bit of business, incongruous with how Doc moves and acts around it. it's like he's putting the slapstick in quotation marks.

yeah that's one of the moments I was thinking of.

I suspect the ZAZ references a few months ago are like Liz Phair's mentioning Exile on Main Street.

misdirection? probably. i think he was half-serious.

I laughed a lot and this and can say that I wasn't laughing "for" anyone. I barely followed the plot, didn't have a clue what was going on for the most part but I didn't mind. Actually soe themes I wasn't sure why I found it funny. E.g. The scene where doc comes out of a hotel or something and rolls into a ball on the ground and Bigfoot tries to lift him and it's just so awkward and weird.

That was a particular move that would get laughs (or not) through repetition. Goes into a place to question then wanders around (w/out say even asking to go to the toilet first, as you would typically have in such a scenario in films). First time he does this I think is where he goes to Sloane's place then wanders off to look for the tie labelled 'Shasta', which he then finds it when he wanders in the retreat, strapped to the Nazi (or guy with the swastika?)

So themes = sometimes.

id make it a triple bill with big lebowski and soderbergh's the informant.

Think I followed the plot for an hour before I stopped caring/drifted off in the fog. There was a v silly piece in The Guardian about how people were finding the plot so difficult they walked out (which I won't link right now, its piffle that takes five wasted seconds of your life to skim through). xp

the plot is not really that confusing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbcqg_70i-w

We saw it in a very small cinema, with not a lot of people attending. However the middle-aged man, who had come alone, sitting behind us was laughing uproariously all the way through; even at parts that were only tenuously funny/quirky. Maybe he'd read the book or something? We couldnt' work it out.

― oi listen mate, shut up (dog latin), Monday, February 9, 2015 3:11 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these are the people who laughed at CSNY stage banter. no one else gets what's so funny.

so coke

basically

There obviously is a narrative, don't think its necessary to follow anything.

It was quite funny, although its not obvious even at which points so diff bits will be funny to whoever.

I don't even remember the sex scene in the book, which puts it firmly outside the top 15 or so disgusting Pynchon sex scenes.

re: sex scene. I didn't find it a problem, its hardly Strawdogs or 70s Japanese 'pink' cinema.

yeah it was just a cross between sexy, comic and discomfiting. Shasta mumbled a lot and I didn't catch everything she was saying, but the whole scene (I found the whole 'foot/crotch massaging' thing a bit unpleasant really) was just a bit too eerie to be taken as a straight sex scene.

We saw it in a very small cinema, with not a lot of people attending. However the middle-aged man, who had come alone, sitting behind us was laughing uproariously all the way through; even at parts that were only tenuously funny/quirky. Maybe he'd read the book or something? We couldnt' work it out.

maybe his idea of what's funny is different to yours.

it could even be possible that every other human being has a different mind to your own.

dont see the big deal about the sex scene, other than that the nudity seemed a bit gratuitous, and forced in there.

"There obviously is a narrative, don't think its necessary to follow anything."

i dont think this film is actually stoned or at least weird enough to justify the non-interest/non-sequitur-ness of its narrative. it has a texture and atmosphere, sure, but it doesnt seem THAT powerful or enveloping. PTA is too controlling for it to ever really get out of control which it could have done with more of.

i guess that's the nub of it really. i disagree. i found each scene worked on its own merits, so i didn't care about the narrative really, it was there if a bit loose. i prob laughed more at this than i have at any movie in a long time - but there was more to it than that - it had intensity at times - the scene where they were on coke was ridiculous but also built this amazing tension - tension that was not tied to any major part of narrative. it was quite druggy in the way it manipulated you like that.

i think being familiar with the politics/culture of the era and place is as helpful to "following" as reading the novel would be. Anyone who's read a little about COINTELPRO knows what the deal is with Owen Wilson's character fairly quickly.

See I didn't know it was called that. But no one is who they say they are is something Pynchon does in a way that no one quite does. This needs a lot more thought and comparison than I can give right now.

I thought there was a lot more disintegration of narrative/loss of control in the last hour. And again, characters appearing and disappearing within a page - that was awesome to see adapted into a film.

Should check whether this has been remarked on upthread but the characters did lower their voices mid-sentence a lot, to almost a mumble? Pynchon as proto-mumblecore?

I definitely picked up on that, thought it might have been deliberate, but assuming so it really irritated me as a directorial choice.

I thought it was fine as a choice -- adds to the confusing haze the characters are in -- and certainly deliberate, deadpanning here but I can re-watch with subtitles one day.

went out to see this last night. disappointed, though i don't know why, as i've never been much of an anderson fan. it just felt so lifeless. the plot, while complex in the manner of paranoid free association, was easy enough to follow in its general outlines. it seemed irrelevant, though, mostly just a framework for stoned lurching. problem is that the stoned lurching, while kind of funny at times, was far more often dull and repetitive. lots of endless, expository conversations full of pointless detail. margin doodling carried out at feature length. performances are generally great, especially brolin & phoenix, but they weren't enough to hold my interest. a few good jokes ("something spanish"), but not many. did love martin short.

the scenes with short are among the few where the movie comes alive for a time. sportello's taxi driver-quoting escape near the end is another, along with the highly-charged seduction & sex scene with doc & shasta. loved those moments, and i can see why the latter has attracted so much commentary. it feels like the film's emotional center as well as its real conclusion. it's hard not to read shasta's self negating power kink as yet another commentary on the selling of 60s idealism, but honestly, i don't think the film really has much to say on that score - beyond dutifully rehashing the familiar complaints, i mean. whatever its politics, that scene at least manages to suggest for a moment that something's at stake. unfortunately, everything afterwards (except for bigfoot's final milkshake-drinking tray-gobbling, another standout moment) felt pointless.

I thought it was fine as a choice -- adds to the confusing haze the characters are in -- and certainly deliberate, deadpanning here but I can re-watch with subtitles one day.

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, February 12, 2015 10:40 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes - this totally makes sense. i think the stoned mind has an tendency to wander and often you'll start listening to someone before concentrating on other thoughts.

"i don't think the film really has much to say on that score"

otm. this is PTA not only channelling his 70s heroes, but the same subject matter. aesthetically magnificent but otherwise just hollow and redundant.

"stoned lurching" = 20th century history imo

i keep thinking that if this was actually made a bit more 'whimsically', or a bit more 'indie', i.e. shambolic, micro-budget, etc, i think it might have worked better. but its directed with such heft and power, and all that power kind of ends up being used for very little. its an imposing piece of filmmaking but with a feeble core.

"stoned lurching" = 20th century history imo

okay, sure, and it's certainly a potentially interesting lens through which to view the era: lots of competing interests each deeply paranoid and armed only with enough information to be dangerous. i just don't think the movie does much of anything with the idea. mostly about j phoenix looking mad rumpled while herding confusion.

I was kind of j/k but I thought it expressed the idea by the whole 'not doing'. I know it can lapse into Adam Curtis bollocks.

StillAdvance - idk for how long you've been posting on here but we don't take too kindly to ppl asking for things to be 'more indie'.

Joking aside its still a ridiculous ask.

Anyone seen Impolex?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/movies/impolex-directed-by-alex-ross-perry-review.html?_r=0

omg the BBC tried to film GR!!

http://www.pruefstand7.de/e/download/download.html

ha, im not really someone who wants things to be more whimsical or indie, its just the description you made i think made me think that was what it might be better suited to!

I think if you read and love Pynchon, it's great they made the movie but it was nowhere freaky enough to accurately capture what his books are like

not seen imipolex but besides its being long and having lots of characters i honestly think GR would be really easy to adapt. huge chunks are already a treatment and film as physical medium and language is so central to its metaphor system. (e.g. the section where the peenemunde engineer isn't sure if the daughter the SS periodically allows to visit is the same girl every time; this is already about cuts and frames and continuity.) the only thing that comes up more than movies is parabolas, plus every other scene is a chase. you've certainly got a lot of stuff to decide whether or not to include but whatever you do include barely needs adaptation.

Judging by how cagey PTA was when asked by Marc Maron if he had read GR (he said he hadn't which is frankly unbelievable), I think it's a good bet that he'll do the movie

Godard's Goodbye To Language => watching it last night and it did have a feel of "stoned mumbling" through 20th century history...

I haven't seen the Adam Curtis doc but actually would be interesting to. Its almost like the right move to have bunged on the internet.