First thing I want to say is that I think this movie is virtually un-spoilerable.
If someone put a gun to my head and asked me to give a play-by-play of IV’s plot I’d be a dead man. I’ll need to watch it at least seven more times with subtitles before I’ll have the vaguest idea what was going on (mod was right to see this 3 times in one day). Even beyond the plot the movie is difficult to describe. The word “beguiling” has been used and is actually pretty apt. It’s hard to put your finger on, but that’s maybe the point, because Doc has a hard time putting his finger on anything beyond his lost love for the duration of Inherent Vice’s running time. The beauty is that it doesn’t even matter if you’re able to follow the story — what was most compelling to me was the always unexpected, dissonant ways the characters Doc comes across behaved within their vignettes. A scene is moving “this way” and a character is moving “that way” instead. Their life, their full, fleshed out life, memory, experience, all that, is what you’re watching, a specific slice of it shown just because it happens to coincide with the plot’s need to show a character at that moment, but their helping to unravel the mystery doesn’t really seem to matter. We get to see them, instead. This has to have the best acting in any PT movie, often Cassavetes level, an unprecedented immediacy in comparison to his previous films, and the detective story seems more an excuse for observation, a way to get Doc mobile running around Los Angeles and into the presence of all these insane characters to fix his eyes on what’s-going-on-with-them as humans regardless of their part within the crime thread.
The Master was beautiful but visually this is another horse entirely, a step beyond. It LOOKS like a movie straight up made in the 70s even moreso than Boogie Nights, and if I was unfamiliar with all names involved and happened to see it I’d probably think it actually was. The lighting, the textures, the furniture…how did he do that? It boggles my mind. I wasn’t alive 40 years ago, but even if it isn’t period accurate it definitely doesn’t look “like now”, and it doesn’t look like a pastiche. I need to rewatch the trailer but I feel like it was color timed to appear more like a normal movie, the picture I saw up on that screen felt such a departure from it. Maybe the trailer difference was my imagination. Whatever.
Inherent Vice starts off like something in the tonal vein of Love Streams and morphs, with the momentum of a hawaiian slide guitar, into a mad, mindblowing labyrinth of cryptic doublespeak and double entendres. It’s perverted as hell, thank god (Thank GOD), and DENSE, so many things going on and to pick up on repeat viewings. It’s a slipstream of madcap antics and unbeatable melancholy. Who is who and why is why and how is what I couldn’t tell you. I don’t think I care that I couldn’t tell you. The acting is SO GOOD though, that even when you’re bewildered, when characters like Martin Short’s Doctor Blatnoyd are speaking almost incoherently but Doc seems right there with them and to have some clue what’s going on, you believe them so fully as people, their renderings feel so real, that it doesn’t feel like the scene doesn’t make sense, but that you’re privy to an actual event that took place and just haven’t cracked the code. I loved that. Even if I never make sense of it I could watch it again and again — an endless supply of deranged company to hang out with.
In some ways Inherent Vice feels like a fraternal twin of The Master, conveying similar skepticism about America’s ideals, about its skeptics alternatives, and of any answers in general, and like The Master, at its core the movie is about a love that got away - love the only thing that will save you, and love as a drug that’s worth taking because sobriety in this life without a point doesn’t seem to be worth it. Love as a drug…a loved life worth living…sobriety as a life without love…drugs as a substitute for that lacking love…something or other…
Ironic that this is the film of PT’s that has big studio backing behind it — WB is out of their minds. Yeah it has humor, but it’s his least commercial movie by a mile, and I wonder what the fuck is going to happen come day one of its wide release when word of mouth spreads. The trailer is SO OFF — I don’t even know what to relate the movie to as I’ve never seen anything else like it. Long Goodbye this Big Lebowski that — not even close. I’ll say this - the movie makes you feel like PT is the only real filmmaker out there right now making anything new or pushing any boundaries to show you something you haven’t seen before. You realize how rote everything else is in comparison, how many patterns most movies follow even in terms of “art film” style.
I bet Pubrick is going to write a book about it.
Going to have to edit this a bunch of times because my mind is still swirling and I have no idea how long it’s going to take me to wrap my head around something concrete. I know my comments are vague but atm I don’t know how to describe my feelings or really what I saw. The movie is so so original, and will rekindle your love of film and belief in its future possibilities even more than The Master, I think. IV goes into fever dream territory and never comes out.
how was michael k williams & Hong Chau in the film? also are the las vegas scenes & acid trips in the movie?There is no weak link in the cast. Everyone is great. Brolin may be a standout. Williams is only in one scene. No acid flashbacks or Vegas trip.
i really hope this film is everything in my Wilder dreams
There's a couple shots in the trailer not in the film too.
My advice: see it a second time before fully deciding. The thing with PTA films (in the past decade especially)
You keep waiting for those PTA 'things' you expect from him and he keeps finding other ways to surprise you instead of giving you the things you were expecting. Upon first view, it's always a little disappointing, in the long run it's infinitely more satisfying and what keeps him the filmmaker of his generation.
Yeah no Penn and no Kevin J. O'Connor!Anders Holm is credited as like Police Officer #2 but I don't think you can ever see him onscreen.
Also no Anders Holm or the actor they cast as Glenn Charlock.
There's a couple shots in the trailer not in the film too.
But where was this tail he was on going to take Bigfoot finally? How far in this weird twisted cop karma would he have to follow the twenty kilos before it led him to what he thought he needed to know? Which would be what again, exactly? Who hired Adrian to kill his partner? What Adrian’s connection might be to Crocker Fenway’s principals? Whether the Golden Fang, which Bigfoot didn’t believe in to begin with, even existed? How smart was any of it, right now for example, without backup, and how safe was Bigfoot likely to be, and for how long?
“Here,” Denis said after a while, passing a smoldering joint.
“Bigfoot’s not my brother,” Doc considered when he exhaled, “but he sure needs a keeper.”
"It ain’t you, Doc.”
"I know. Too bad, in a way.”
But here, out of, well, not exactly nowhere, but some badlands at least that unmerciful, came this presence, tall and cloaked, with oversize and wickedly pointed gold canines, and luminous eyes scanning Doc in a repellently familiar way. ‘As you may have already gathered,’ it whispered, ‘I am the Golden Fang.’
‘Thanks for clearing that one up, Mr. Fang.’
‘Oh, call me ‘The Golden.’
There's a scene at the end of "Inherent Vice" between Doc and Bigfoot that recalls a similar moment at the end of "The Master": two men in opposition coming to an understanding that they must remain opposed. It's emotional but in a way that isn't obvious. What are you trying to say in those sequences?
It was just an effort to make sure that made it in the translation from the book to the movie. That's where it starts. They're trying to apologize to each other for how they treated each other the night before, and Doc and Bigfoot begin to talk at the same time. It struck me so sweetly in the book. It was like Tom and Jerry stopping to apologize to each other about their behavior. What I really like about that scene, and what ended up happening when we got there, is that for as emotional as Doc is throughout the movie, you never see him break down and cry. But in truth, the most emotional he gets is bawling his eyes out while watching Bigfoot have this meltdown in front of him. Doc says that beautiful line, which is from the book: "Are you okay brother?" Bigfoot rejects it: "I'm not your brother." Doc says: "But you sure could use a keeper. Doc has become unglued along with Bigfoot. It's just stuff in the book that I shuffled around and made into one scene.
PTA standard moments.
This should be on the poster:he’s on the fucking case; he doesn't know what the case is, but he’s fucking on it
I've got a question for the majorspoiler squad. Is there a scene in this akin to the frogs in Maggie, the ending to twbb, the processing scene in The Master? I don't mean in terms of content but similar in a "holy fuck" woah nowthatssomething" kinda way.
i also think pta plucked a great line from the first chapter for the first scene of the movie "Back when, she could go weeks without anything more complicated than a pout. Now she was laying some heavy combination of face ingredients on him that he couldn't read at all."About that first scene: They put a clip up of the beginning of that and already that had a very interesting thing in it. When Shasta is telling Doc about making it look like a secret rendezvous, she has this wonderful face expression where you see it's loaded with emotion for her. In the book, Doc has several thoughts about that, but not her. I guess that's Katherine Waterston's work.
As I sat in the theater, taking in the visuals and the groove, I was struck with the simple fact that, it’s too fast. The medium of film isn’t one built for memory. The paranoiac intricacies of Pynchon’s plot demand a reader’s time, a word-by-word intake that engraves on the brain. When we approach an aside mention in the novel that may connect to another small event of personage that came before, we perk up and say wait a minute… But in the film it is too fast. We fling willy-nilly from scene to scene without much pause. Not to say that the effect isn’t in the film. It’s done well with the Golden Fang connections, but this is usually due to Doc’s own recognition of the connections. One of the joys of a Pynchon novel is the connections the characters don’t see. These, I think, are hard to pick up on in the film. Instead we feel over-saturated, soaked in plot and names and colors.
Yet, this may not necessarily be a weakness. Pynchon is known for saturation, and perhaps Anderson wanted to reflect that. However, I think it falls flat. Even with a running time of 2 and a half hours, there still isn’t room for the viewer to chill out and tune in, as Doc would have it. Instead we feel, to quote Gravity’s Rainbow once more, like we are “riding across the country in a bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide.”
There is an achievement here though. When my friends and I left the theater feeling as if we’d been knocked over the head, I had one feeling: I need to see it again. And this is exactly like a Pynchon novel.When you turn the last page, you feel you must go back to the front and begin again. There’s something you missed, something which graced the pages that held you, but at the same time you overlooked, some treasured “beach” under the paving stones you failed to recognize. Anderson’s movie leaves you with the same gut-feeling. You want to tell the projectionist to put it up again so you can have another go at it. You think that if you watch it once more there will be something different. Waiting, as the novel’s closing states:
“For the fog to burn away, and for something else this time, somehow, to be there instead.”
If this is not the measure of a good film or a good novel, I don’t know what is. After all, if you finish watching or reading and all you want to do is watch and read again, what more can the creator ask for? If nothing, it sure sells tickets.
For example, watching the party scene just about kills me emotionally. The whole conversation between Coy and Doc is fantastic until Coy says the words "Shasta Fay... Shasta Fay", the music ("Golden Fang") swells and Doc does his facial contortions and then it breaks my heart.
Most importantly, it’s hilarious, but not in the same way its inspirations are. The humor is mostly in the dialogue. Each of the three times I’ve watched it, I’m always the only person who laughs at Doc when he covertly tries to shush Sauncho in the restaurant when their waitress brings the tequila zombies.
Indeed, anyone who prizes the book for its treasure chest of jokes will be gratified by how many of them survive onscreen, including the advice dished out by the waitress at a seafood restaurant, as she takes orders for drinks (“You’re going to want to get good and fucked up before this meal”).
We've already talked about this at length in the shoutbox and have officially agreed that the cameo(if there even is one) is the guy in the background looking in on Coy and Doc's conversation at the Boards house. Anyway it doesn't even matter because no one will ever know which is why it's cool so let's move on.
Edit:had it saved
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FpaSdmU5.jpg&hash=0e6e8034588ec5c9e7ca6e7e09ee621aa3dae1c4)
We've already talked about this at length in the shoutbox and have officially agreed that the cameo(if there even is one) is the guy in the background looking in on Coy and Doc's conversation at the Boards house. Anyway it doesn't even matter because no one will ever know which is why it's cool so let's move on.
Edit:had it saved
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FpaSdmU5.jpg&hash=0e6e8034588ec5c9e7ca6e7e09ee621aa3dae1c4)
I dont believe that's Pynchon. I'm pretty sure it's Paul Dano. Seriously. I went to the premiere at NYFF and found myself standing behind him in line for the bathroom - When I saw it the first time I thought it was him too. Make of that what you will.
especially her reason for being gone (visiting family?)That's what she says initially. She later admits she was on the golden fang(she and puck have the same shell necklace or whatever) doc also checks her neck for bite marks(which puck later gives him).
Do people believe Joanna Newsom was real?She's in his head but she's real. She's never actually in the car with him
She's not a ghost. I don't think anyone believes that she's a literal booooo ku klux klan hood type ghost. It's not a puzzle movie. Calling her a ghost is just one of the ways to express a specific type of cinematic irreality that's all over this movie which I think is a natural progression from the Master(it's like calling that theater dream phone call telepathy). It's one of those things that are ok to do in literature but when you do in movies people take issue with because they're so used to movies being externally explainable and logical.
its not tearing up the box office just yet :yabbse-sad: polarized reactions from my friends that have seen the film,,,,give it time...
Is "Well Mornin' Sam" (in Sortilege's introduction of Bigfoot) a reference to some TV show? I think that line can be heard at one point on Doc's TV in the background. Thanks!
Sortilčge: [narrating] 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.
It's directly on iTunes, you scroll down on the IV page and, if you've bought the movie, you can click on iTunes extras. And watch them.
probably thomas jefferson hallucination.Oh shit, of course. That's what that is. Yep, good call.
I don't agree that this is a film where is best to not pay attention to the plot because it's so dense.
no, jenkins, I was not referring to something you said, just that after seeing it and checking out some metacritic reviews, some of the overviews mentioned an approach like that, which seems to me to suggest that since the film's plot is incomprehensible we should just enjoy the vibe. of course is possible but it's not that kind of film, like the big lebowski, where the understanding of the plot is independent of the enjoyment of the humor and spirit of the film to the point that you could almost do fine without it. this isn't the case because the basic plot of inherent vice is a representation of the film's thesis that 60's counterculture was absorbed by 70's disillusionment and paranoia, and it's not incomprehensible. it just isn't. that's an objective observation.
Not in my case. I sincerely love this film on it's own. Can't take it out of my mind. If this exact same movie had been directed by someone else, I would be seriously blown away by this new genius.
a sort of red flag for me is an interpretation grounded on conditions placed by earlier works. since we all know that ultimately we're discussing our private reactions to the movie, i must say i don't think one's expectations are appropriate grounds for a reaction. that's what leads to depression irl, and that's what leads to sloppy movie criticism i think. jb threw down on both the past and future, meohmy
There's a lot to love about this movie. It was kind of losing me until Doc arrives at the Golden Fang, but the second half is dramatically better. It's like Martin Short kicks that transmission into the right gear. The movie suddenly begins to effectively channel that alternate-world pseudo-apocalyptic energy that we felt in TWBB when milkshakes were being drunk. That's also when Jonny Greenwood's music starts working especially well. It really reminded me of his Bodysong score. (Listen to "Iron Swallow" and tell me that wasn't in the movie somewhere.)
The framing with heads being cut off actually worked quite well for me. It was a funny and effective way to introduce characters, at least twice that I remember. But I agree with putneyswipe that in general the framing seemed uninspired or intentionally plain, to the extent that I really noticed a beautifully framed scene when it arrived.
I was also deeply feeling the claustrophobia. The movie seems to take place mostly in series of rooms. When we do follow Doc outside, the few wide shots usually involve him being dwarfed by a large ominous building. Even the establishing shot outside his beach house is claustrophobic. (And I love that idea.) The camera is low to the ground uncomfortably between two buildings, and car bumpers even crowd out the shot later in the movie.
The final scene with Bigfoot was funny and wonderfully bizarre, and Doc's reaction is my favorite acting that JP does in the movie. But in retrospect I'm not sure the scene was entirely earned... the insanity or the emotional resolution. This scene was clearly meant to be more resonant than it actually is. And the way it dissolves into the next scene after the punchline kind of makes it feel a little cheap.
Likewise... I'm fascinated by some interpretations of the film, but I'm not convinced the movie itself engages those issues with much cogency. It's more like, yeah, I guess that's in there.
I feel like the way to appreciate this movie going forward is through its formal curiosities and its multitude of quirky delights. What I'm not feeling is a beating heart at the center, or a story that is screaming to be heard, or any character with a particularly rich inner life.
This just doesn't have the soul that I assume a PTA movie will have. Even The Master, probably PTA's coldest movie at that point, had full, intense characters with explosive depth, almost effortlessly. Inherent Vice just doesn't have any of that. Doc is certainly a sweet and somewhat angelic character, but let's be honest here, he has two or three distinguishing characteristics. Whatever depth might be there just isn't coming through the haze. I'm wondering if people are bringing information to this character from the book, because, while it's always fascinating to watch Joaquin Phoenix, I'm not quite feeling it.
I do think it's a good movie. Some scenes are amazing. I can sincerely accept this as a light diversion and move on with no complaints. Maybe it's like what he first intended with PDL, actually happening 12 years later.
anybody buy the Blu?Yep.
anybody buy the Blu?
my particular interest is pta having created a movie narrative without a direct center, which i think scrambles people's ideas about what a movie should be in such a way that indeed the audience was largely scrambled by this movie
i think that's very exciting and every bit a part of the most interesting cinema that's currently happening, i also think it's a progressive part of a narrative technique that pta began to install in p-dl, intensified in the master, and reached its furthest point here. in terms of disrobing the illusions of narrative that have persisted through stories for so long, and certainly through big-budget movies which try to spread as wide as they can, i admire and respect the disrobing that took place within this movie
Here are some movies to watch that I think would make a good program with IV:
Dusty Sweets and McGee
so......................has anyone seen Yi Yi?
It's funny to think that this is the only PTA film I didn't make a fuss over buying right when it came out. I still don't own the blu ray simply because I didn't see the point in revisiting it after my two theater viewings, I didn't feel the need to dig any deeper into it. Then, it just kind of came to me a second ago that maybe PTA was attempting to make the most dense stoner film of all time? Like, the go to quality those movies seem to shoot for is their rewatchability, that you can just throw it on at anytime, any scene, and have a laugh with your bros. It's probably the most universally reviled films by all his fans, though. I think what that speaks to is how adamantly he intended to make a Thomas Pynchon film over his own. That novel spoke to him so deeply, that he needed to propel it out there for us. I find that compelling. This movie is a beast to deal with, but I look forward to the day when I can sit on my couch, barefoot in the living room smoking a joint as fat as one doc would roll and really trying to get to the bottom of what this thing is about.
Invoking entropy can be a tired critical trope, but the film certainly invites it.
Maybe the most heartbreaking moment for me in the film is when Coy slips sideways and whispers this to Doc, and the way you see the name cut into him like a razor.
All we see of Shasta and Doc’s former relationship is filtered through his rosy fantasies, so we never quite know what it was like, but it's clear that those fantasies have little to do with their relationship as it is now
We simply can't contain the world in our heads, so it will always suprise us.
PTA loved La La Land
https://theplaylist.net/paul-thomas-anderson-phantom-thread-20171215/
And directed Inherent Vice. (But I'm trying not to hold either against him.) :yabbse-wink:
I hope one day your opinion on Inherent Vice changes, seems to be a vendetta (against a delightful, intricate tapestry) :oops:
I hope one day your opinion on Inherent Vice changes, seems to be a vendetta (against a delightful, intricate tapestry) :oops:
My IV butthurt dissolved in the moment Reynolds met Alma... My opinion may change one day (fingers crossed) but at least I can relight the candles on my PTA Altar now.
I don't agree. If you really dislike IV, I don't see why you would enjoy the book.
I don't agree. If you really dislike IV, I don't see why you would enjoy the book.
^^ Pretty much. Insofar as PTA's film is a successful adaptation, the book may have more "scenes" and anecdotes to the characters, but the feeling of elusiveness + Californian anxieties is the same.
Great read:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/02/inherent-vice-review-counterculture/
When asked what the film Inherent Vice was about, film- maker Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA henceforth) was quick to respond, “it’s about Pynchon.” The author’s byzantine plots, poetic prose, and fantastical worlds have inspired countless forms of adoration as critique or homage, and in the case of PTA: adaptation. The same can be said of this companion, which serves as a love letter to both the author and the director.
While the book had been derided by some as “Pychon- Lite,” the film is one of PTA’s most confounding. Critics were often at a loss to make sense of the plot and audiences dubbed it “incoherent vice.” Misunderstood by many, the film resists first impressions and rewards those who spend time with it. As such, this companion is styled in the fashion of Steven Weisenburger’s A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion (essential to Pynchon’s magnum opus), but with timecode replacing page numbers and scenes replacing chapters.
I would not presume that my interpretation of the film’s deeper meanings are definitive or even relative. The compan- ion catalogs — by timecode — the film’s motifs, themes, and references; allowing you the opportunity to draw your own con- clusions. In addition, each scene is accompanied by trivia as to any cars, sampled music or location featured within it. Scenes are numbered and titled in correspondence to the final shooting script. To the observant reader, it will become apparent that some of the scenes from the script are missing. A full list of all the cut scenes is provided in Appendix B. Appendix A lists the film’s sprawling cast of characters along with notes on each. Round- ing out the companion are references and an index. The index exclusively uses timecode and is a helpful tool in identifying the film’s many motifs. All references are further categorized as such:
PROPS/SCENERY: All physical items in the film are in caps.
“Dialogue”: Spoken dialogue is in quotations.
Written words: Any text shown in the film is written in italics.
: Filming location : Music
: Automobile
There is no correct way to use this companion, but might I make some suggestions? It can be read after having watched the film or consulted while viewing it. My preferred method is to view the film scene by scene, pausing after each to read the corresponding notes and analyze what was just watched. The choice is yours; some methods reward repeat viewings while others are more appropriate for first time viewers.
Ultimately the companion’s goal is to foster a deeper enjoyment of Inherent Vice. The film is so dense with allusion and plot that viewers can feel lost, but as Doc sez, “thinking comes later.” So my hope is that the companion can shoulder the burden of making sense of it all and allow you the opportunity to just enjoy a truly magnificent film.
Happy viewing, dopers.
So, seeing as a recent picture of Thomas Pynchon was snapped by a paparazzo in January, has anybody gone through the movie again to search for a potential cameo?
That was my guess early on, too - but I feel like it was debunked...? Can anyone confirm?I can't check now but I remember that guy looks a lot like the photo of Pynchon that leaked in the 90's.
hey hey hey! guess what?! BWDR staff writer/editor extraordinaire @aHeartOfGould has a pretty amazing podcast coming your way soon—produced by @BlakeisBatman, the force of nature behind #OneHeatMinute! you’re gonna want to hear this... https://t.co/Gel7PI7E9S
— Bright Wall/Dark Room (@BWDR) August 29, 2019
PTA is doing something he's never done before.. he's working with a LOT of new people. and maya! i feel an analysis coming on..
basically what we can surmise is it will probably be a return to ensemble. this is significant. otherwise why have so many casting announcements? it would be a waste. i don't think any of his other films had this much of the pre release buzz generated by every single person who got a role in the film. we still don't know how significant these no-name actors roles will be, but there's enough actual name people that he will have to give them at least a scene to make it worth their while. how long have they been shooting now? it feels like every day they add a new actor to the film.
that may be the only relation this has to boogie nights, having such a big cast set in a fun loving era. i think a more interesting comparison can be made to PDL. that being his only other film aimed for the general "comedy" genre, which this most certainly will be. it will have to have some correlation to The Master cos JP is in it, but what is his BABY MOMA doing there? i'd be interested to see what role she's playing. the only other time she has appeared in his films was as the blurry red figure in the background of the supermarket in PDL.
the other PDL like thing i will go on a limb to say is Joaquin is wearing Barry's blue suit under his own perma-jacket
Anybody who thinks this is all about drugs has his head in a bag. It’s a social movement, quintessentially romantic, the kind that recurs in times of real social crisis. The themes are always the same. A return to innocence. The invocation of an earlier authority and control. The mysteries of the blood. An itch for the transcendental, for purification. Right there you’ve got the ways that romanticism historically ends up in trouble, lends itself to authoritarianism. When the direction appears. How long do you think it’ll take for that to happen? is a question a San Francisco psychiatrist asked me.
At the time I was in San Francisco the political potential of what was then called the movement was just becoming clear. It had always been clear to the revolutionary core of the Diggers, whose every guerrilla talent was now bent toward open confrontations and the creation of a summer emergency, and it was clear to many of the straight doctors and priests and sociologists who had occasion to work in the District, and it could rapidly become clear to any outsider who bothered to decode Chester Anderson’s call-to-action communiques or to watch who was there first at the street skirmishes which now set the tone for life in the District. One did not have to be a political analyst to see it; the boys in the rock groups saw it, because they were often where it was happening. “In the Park there are always twenty or thirty people below the stand,” one of the Dead complained to me. “Ready to take the crowd on some militant trip.”
But the peculiar beauty of this political potential, as far as the activists were concerned, was that it remained not clear at all to most of the inhabitants of the District, perhaps because the few seventeen-year-olds who are political realists tend not to adopt romantic idealism as a life style. Nor was it clear to the press, which at varying levels of competence continued to report “the hippie phenomenon” as an extended panty raid; an artistic avant-garde led by such comfortable YMHA regulars as Allen Ginsberg; or a thoughtful protest, not unlike joining the Peace Corps, against the culture which had produced Saran-Wrap and the Vietnam War. This last, or they’re-trying-to-tell-us-something approach, reached its apogee in a Time cover story which revealed that hippies “scorn money—they call it ‘bread’” and remains the most remarkable, if unwitting, extant evidence that the signals between the generations are irrevocably jammed.
Because the signals the press was getting were immaculate of political possibilities, the tensions of the District went unremarked upon, even during the period when there were so many observers on Haight Street from Life and Look and CBS that they were largely observing one another. The observers believed roughly what the children told them: that they were a generation dropped out of political action, beyond power games, that the New Left was just another ego trip. Ergo, there really were no activists in the Haight-Ashbury, and those things which happened every Sunday were spontaneous demonstrations because, just as the Diggers say, the police are brutal and juveniles have no rights and runaways are deprived of their right to self-determination and people are starving to death on Haight Street, a scale model of Vietnam.
Of course the activists—not those whose thinking had become rigid, but those whose approach to revolution was imaginatively anarchic—had long ago grasped the reality which still eluded the press: we were seeing something important. We were seeing the desperate attempt of a handful of pathetically unequipped children to create a community in a social vacuum. Once we had seen these children, we could no longer overlook the vacuum, no longer pretend that the society’s atomization could be reversed. This was not a traditional generational rebellion. At some point between 1945 and 1967 we had somehow neglected to tell these children the rules of the game we happened to be playing. Maybe we had stopped believing in the rules ourselves, maybe we were having a failure of nerve about the game.
It’s an awful nice night out here at the beach. Might announce the first five episodes tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/uABw6UoiMa
— Increment Vice (@IncrementVice) October 18, 2019
Please tell me they're not doing one scene per episode...
Yikes. A quick search says the shooting script had 114 scenes. One episode per week means they'll finish just over 2 years from now??Just finished the first episode. They alternatively used the number '50' and '45' to refer to the number of podcast episodes, so perhaps the term 'scene' is being used differently here than in the shooting script.
Actually, to be honest, it did. A bit. It took away the white-hot disappointment and betrayal I felt at my first viewing. So, now I'm at a place of agnostic, non-committal openness to hearing about it's qualities and deeper levels of meaning.
Perhaps the healing has begun.
Yeah, I'm not going to invest any more time in this one--although I would be interested any future episodes with dissenting guests.
i would listen to Reddit PTA Founder Mad Shittalks Inherent Vice...
Damn. I seriously can't stand that host. That's impressive, haha. It hasn't much to do with what is being said, it's just physical. But Johnson is a fun guest. I wish he had more opportunity to, like, say things; it feels like he's quietly nodding to the (often embarrasingly unfunny) rambling.
Chill out!
FWIW, latest episode hints that PTA himself will be making an appearance somewhere down the line.
FWIW, latest episode hints that PTA himself will be making an appearance somewhere down the line.
Do you mean the tease at the end?
What scenes would you chose, by the way? I was surprised by the most popular choices. People really want to talking for one hour about the banana joke? The Journey Through The Past is better but I always find it kind of precious, but I wonder if the corniness isn't the point: the voice-over offers contrast and, after all, there is that hauting shot of the building coming just after: the creepy future was always in the works.
Anyway, mine would be the conversation at the table between Doc and Coy.
That quote is the perfect summation of the novel/movie.
The podcast seems to put a lot of emphasis on the role of Shasta and, yes, she's more at the forefront in the movie, but she's also an embodiment of what's going on, politically speaking. "It's just about missing your ex!": that kind of statement is dubious. Why would you deprive yourself from everything connected to that thread?
What scenes would you chose, by the way? I was surprised by the most popular choices. People really want to talking for one hour about the banana joke? The Journey Through The Past is better but I always find it kind of precious, but I wonder if the corniness isn't the point: the voice-over offers contrast and, after all, there is that hauting shot of the building coming just after: the creepy future was always in the works.
Anyway, mine would be the conversation at the table between Doc and Coy.
My choice would be the final little montage after Coy is delivered home, and before the final Doc/Bigfoot scene, when the Golden Fang is seen being impounded. The narration from Sortilege is so sad and so appropriate and resonates so strongly with me these last few years:
“ “. . . yet there is no avoiding time, the sea of time, the sea of memory and forgetfulness, the years of promise, gone and unrecoverable, of the land almost allowed to claim its better destiny, only to have the claim jumped by evildoers known all too well, and taken instead and held hostage to the future we must live in now forever.”
What scenes would you chose, by the way? I was surprised by the most popular choices. People really want to talking for one hour about the banana joke? The Journey Through The Past is better but I always find it kind of precious, but I wonder if the corniness isn't the point: the voice-over offers contrast and, after all, there is that hauting shot of the building coming just after: the creepy future was always in the works.
Anyway, mine would be the conversation at the table between Doc and Coy.
My choice would be the final little montage after Coy is delivered home, and before the final Doc/Bigfoot scene, when the Golden Fang is seen being impounded. The narration from Sortilege is so sad and so appropriate and resonates so strongly with me these last few years:
“ “. . . yet there is no avoiding time, the sea of time, the sea of memory and forgetfulness, the years of promise, gone and unrecoverable, of the land almost allowed to claim its better destiny, only to have the claim jumped by evildoers known all too well, and taken instead and held hostage to the future we must live in now forever.”
*Every* character Doc meets along the way is a personification of some aspect of society. If you have that in mind, the film isn't confusing at all.
I also know that RJ, PTA and QT were the “contemporary” filmmakers at the first ever screening of The Other Side of The Wind that Bogdanovich and Marshall had after they finally finished it.Did not know that. Do you have a source/know who else was there? Need this to feed my recent bogdanovich hunger.
it definitely is a factor that RJ is married to Karina LongworthJust found out about her. Makes sense
It's really all about being friendsAww <3
cuties
it’s not much more complicated than intense movie nerds share interests
There is an amazing take at the beginning of Alphaville showing a car headlight blinking in close up. At first however, we do not know for sure that the image represents a headlight, it does not provide that specific information: rather, the screen is reduced to a surface that alternates between white and black, ultimately returning to the idea of the headlight by being one itself.