Post: #1

I saw the movie a few weeks ago, and did an ROK post on my initial thoughts.

Anybody read the book or see the movie? I would be interested in your thoughts.

Post: #2

I really wanted to like this movie because I like PTA and I like the time period and people the movie represented.

But just in the first 30 minutes there was too much mumbling and the story jumped in a hundred different places that I just couldn't follow along and I turned it off.

Post: #3

The movie was a very enjoyable, highly crafted... silly comedy.

Here is the perspective that I took that really helped my experience while watching it:

I have read a lot of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James Ellroy. I have tried my hand at writing a PI/crime/noir story. The convolutions become so great that at one point you find yourself going mad, and you search for a way to plausibly tie up a plot string, only to realize it opens the seams of your story in a whole bunch of other places. When you look to the greats of the genre, you find out a secret -- they cheat! There is a famous story about the shooting of The Big Sleep, during a scene where they fish the body of a driver from a river, someone asked "who killed him?" and the director couldn't answer, so they called the screenwriter. He didn't know, and suggested they call the author, who didn't know either. But he knew he needed the driver to die so he could move the story forward.

I'm not sure about the book by Pynchon (haven't read it), but this line of thinking took me over pretty much from the beginning of the movie as I began to see every scene as just a way to move the story forward (or sideways). When Doc gets knocked out, I'd already been conditioned to ask "what will he get framed with?" rather than "who knocked him out and why?". All of a sudden the movie became quite easy to follow because it was sure to tell us what we needed to know when we needed to know it, and the real surprise/joy of the experience then came from the way Brolin would provoke, Phoenix would react, and from what kind of human flotsam would bump into them along the way.

I'm a huge fan of PTA, though I still prefer Boogie Nights and Magnolia to everything else, but it seems like he's drawn to this type of construction lately (not sure if consciously or not). I really enjoy The Master, but upon first watching I was so intent upon it being about scientology, and looking for the rub on scientology, that I was initially very confused with the film. Upon further viewings, it unfolded so simply that it was apparent everything was right on the surface, and the scientology was no more or less important than the type of fabric the characters wore.

I'm excited to see Inherent Vice a few more times, but at home, on my own now. It's a real actors' orgy, and for those who like to just live with a bunch of unique people for a few hours, it's a pleasure.

TL;DR, the less sense you try to make of it, the more it makes sense. I don't mean that to be clever; he literally has to meet X to go do Y so that he finds out about Z... just because the story demands it.

Post: #4

(02-05-2015 05:09 AM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:  The movie was a very enjoyable, highly crafted... silly comedy.

Here is the perspective that I took that really helped my experience while watching it:

I have read a lot of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James Ellroy. I have tried my hand at writing a PI/crime/noir story. The convolutions become so great that at one point you find yourself going mad, and you search for a way to plausibly tie up a plot string, only to realize it opens the seams of your story in a whole bunch of other places. When you look to the greats of the genre, you find out a secret -- they cheat! There is a famous story about the shooting of The Big Sleep, during a scene where they fish the body of a driver from a river, someone asked "who killed him?" and the director couldn't answer, so they called the screenwriter. He didn't know, and suggested they call the author, who didn't know either. But he knew he needed the driver to die so he could move the story forward.

I'm not sure about the book by Pynchon (haven't read it), but this line of thinking took me over pretty much from the beginning of the movie as I began to see every scene as just a way to move the story forward (or sideways). When Doc gets knocked out, I'd already been conditioned to ask "what will he get framed with?" rather than "who knocked him out and why?". All of a sudden the movie became quite easy to follow because it was sure to tell us what we needed to know when we needed to know it, and the real surprise/joy of the experience then came from the way Brolin would provoke, Phoenix would react, and from what kind of human flotsam would bump into them along the way.

I'm a huge fan of PTA, though I still prefer Boogie Nights and Magnolia to everything else, but it seems like he's drawn to this type of construction lately (not sure if consciously or not). I really enjoy The Master, but upon first watching I was so intent upon it being about scientology, and looking for the rub on scientology, that I was initially very confused with the film. Upon further viewings, it unfolded so simply that it was apparent everything was right on the surface, and the scientology was no more or less important than the type of fabric the characters wore.

I'm excited to see Inherent Vice a few more times, but at home, on my own now. It's a real actors' orgy, and for those who like to just live with a bunch of unique people for a few hours, it's a pleasure.

TL;DR, the less sense you try to make of it, the more it makes sense. I don't mean that to be clever; he literally has to meet X to go do Y so that he finds out about Z... just because the story demands it.

So basically, shit happens just because...?

That is...an interesting perspective, to say the least.