Paul Thomas Ander­son: Still Smokin’

Paul Thomas Ander­son doesn’t know Thomas Pyn­chon, so stop ask­ing. Just because the famous­ly reclu­sive author final­ly allowed one of his nov­els to be adapt­ed for the screen doesn’t mean that he was will­ing to step out of the shad­ows. Accord­ing to Ander­son, the two of them nev­er so much as spoke on the phone. It’s tempt­ing to think that the direc­tor might be stretch­ing the truth in order to pro­tect his new pal, espe­cial­ly when cred­i­ble rumours per­sist that Pyn­chon appears in Inher­ent Vice as an extra. Ander­son main­tains that the two remain per­fect strangers.

“I don’t know Thomas Pyn­chon; I don’t know who he is, I don’t know what he looks like. I didn’t con­sult with him on the script. That’s all I’ve got to say. I real­ly feel like he’s like B Tra­ven. Remem­ber B Tra­ven? The guy who wrote The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre? He was this kind of shad­owy fig­ure who would come drop pages on John Huston’s desk. I don’t even know if any­body else asked [to adapt one of Pynchon’s books] and he said no. I know there have been rumours that some­body want­ed to make an opera of ​‘Gravity’s Rain­bow’ and Pyn­chon declined, things like that. But this book leant itself to adap­ta­tion more than the others.”

Ander­son has said that he thought of him­self as a sur­ro­gate for Pynchon’s nov­el, and the fideli­ty of his adap­ta­tion bears that out. Nev­er­the­less, it’s hard to imag­ine how the film would have worked with­out one cru­cial change that Ander­son made to the source mate­r­i­al. Sortilège is just an inci­den­tal char­ac­ter in the book, but he couldn’t help but latch on to Pynchon’s obser­va­tion that, ​“She was in touch with invis­i­ble forces and could diag­nose and solve all man­ner of prob­lems.” So he pro­mot­ed her to nar­ra­tor, cast faerie-like musi­cian Joan­na New­som in the role, and shot her in such a way to sug­gest that she could fath­omably be a fig­ment of Doc’s imagination.

“The spec­tral dimen­sion to her char­ac­ter is not even real­ly by design. By hir­ing Joan­na New­som, you’re hir­ing this kind of flesh-and-blood ghost who’s clear­ly been liv­ing in many mul­ti­ple eras over time. She just has that about her, that’s what she brings to it just by being there. Some­thing about her is so ele­gant, beau­ti­ful, and know­ing. She’s, like, from anoth­er planet.”

Sortilège’s pro­mo­tion might be the most sig­nif­i­cant change that Ander­son made to Pynchon’s nov­el, but that wasn’t the only thing he felt com­pelled to tweak. The sto­ry of ​‘Inher­ent Vice’ is perched at the precipice of late-stage cap­i­tal­ism, and while the film nails the book’s bit­ter­sweet tone, it offers a slight­ly more opti­mistic view of the future than was offered by Pynchon’s prose. Or not. ​“I felt like the book was more opti­mistic,” explains Ander­son. ​“Way more opti­mistic. The end­ing of the book, where he’s hop­ing that the fog will burn off and that some­how, some­thing will be there this time, instead… that’s hope­ful and opti­mistic. I think the feel­ing ulti­mate­ly is the same as the book. And that’s the trick of that book, being nev­er-end­ing­ly pulled in two direc­tions. It’s pissed off about being sad, and also sort of bit­ter about being sad. And also just sad about the way things turned out, but nev­er los­ing that sense of humour.”

Ander­son has always been loy­al to his actors, and he loves to show new sides to old faces. Inher­ent Vice is only his sec­ond col­lab­o­ra­tion with Joaquin Phoenix, but Fred­die Quell and Doc Sportel­lo are such fer­al and ful­ly realised char­ac­ters that it already seems as if theirs is already one of cinema’s most potent cre­ative kin­ships. Yet Ander­son insists that their shared expe­ri­ence on The Mas­ter didn’t make Inher­ent Vice any eas­i­er. ​“You get to know each oth­er over the course of the movie, so there’s a com­fort there. I mean, we were pret­ty com­fort­able work­ing togeth­er on The Mas­ter. But when you’re faced with a whole new set of prob­lems, you might as well be start­ing from scratch. It’s no less con­fus­ing or scary. You’re no less inse­cure or search­ing for some kind of con­fi­dence some­where, from some­thing going well. And then when you do, you get lucky for a cou­ple hours, if that, and then you’re right back down to want­i­ng to kill your­self. And then the movie gods come along and give you some­thing good, and it’s like that, over and over again. What­ev­er movie you made before with some­body is like a dis­tant mem­o­ry.” He con­tin­ues, ​“I think you some­times hyp­no­tise your­self before you start a movie and think, ​‘This will just be nice and fun and easy to go and make.’ Which is just a way of con­vinc­ing your­self that it won’t be as dif­fi­cult and chal­leng­ing as it always is. If any­thing, it’s about find­ing ways to talk myself out of doing it. That’s what you spend more time doing. But we were just try­ing to do the book.”

It’s strange to hear Ander­son doubt him­self. He may not exact­ly be an out­spo­ken ego­ma­ni­ac, but his myth is pred­i­cat­ed upon a care­ful bal­ance between deter­mi­na­tion and hubris. This is the same guy who, as a 23-year-old PA on a PBS movie star­ring Philip Bak­er Hall, approached the actor with a script he had writ­ten for a short film. This is the same guy who made a star-stud­ded porn epic when he was 26, and fol­lowed that up by get­ting Tom Cruise an Oscar nom­i­na­tion for yelling ​“Respect the cock!” Maybe Ander­son has just come to grips with his own lim­i­ta­tions, but he’s hard-pressed to remem­ber a time on the set of Inher­ent Vice when he was con­fi­dent that the movie was going to work out. ​“You’re just try­ing to get through the day, or the hour, or the scene, or what­ev­er… I’m try­ing to remem­ber what it was that for a few moments gave me some excite­ment. I don’t want to embar­rass him, but when I saw Joaquin get dressed I felt pret­ty good. But that didn’t last for long, because then you’re on a set and you say, ​‘Well that’s not right!’

“I remem­ber hav­ing a day that was real­ly good… he was deep into it. I remem­ber this small thing when he was look­ing out the win­dow. That was just a great mem­o­ry, because it was one of those things where you instinc­tu­al­ly came up with an idea and you just did it, and you did it quick­ly. You didn’t run it into the ground, and you got out before you ruined some­thing, which can hap­pen often hap­pen. Like stay­ing way too long at the par­ty… Ulti­mate­ly those are the scenes that don’t even make it into the movie, and you don’t know it at the time. You think you’re doing some­thing wrong, but real­ly it just doesn’t belong in the movie. And nor­mal­ly scenes that do go rel­a­tive­ly smooth­ly are well writ­ten and they’re sim­ple to shoot. I don’t mean that you don’t have to put work into it, but you’re lucky to get a few of those days. And you need them, because oth­er days will be struggles.”

Of course, Ander­son has learned a thing or two over the years, and Inher­ent Vice finds him lean­ing hard on his favourite tricks. A hip­py hand­shake between the rest­less­ness of the gid­di­ly over­stuffed ensem­ble pieces that put him on the map and the seda­tion of the pierc­ing char­ac­ter dra­mas that have made him a leg­end, Anderson’s lat­est has a style all its own. But ever since pro­duc­tion pho­tos revealed an absurd­ly long strip of dol­ly tracks down the Cal­i­for­nia coast­line, Inher­ent Vice has promised to under­score the director’s affin­i­ty for long takes. ​“I think when you show up to work each day the goal is, ​‘How can you make this just one shot?’ because when you have to edit it togeth­er, it requires way more atten­tion to detail than you’d think. You have to match things and do it over again, so it’s best if you can just get two peo­ple in the scene talk­ing and it can be more fun because you’re just going after that one thing. It gets you con­cen­trat­ed and it can be effec­tive. I like not hav­ing to edit. If you can get two good actors in the same shot then you can watch them both and you don’t have to choose where you’re look­ing, you can let the audi­ence decide. It’s instinc­tu­al moment to moment or scene to scene. It’s sim­ple and nuts-and-bolts stuff, it usu­al­ly doesn’t have any larg­er design behind it.”
A film school dropout, Ander­son is a hard­core cinephile who’s reluc­tant to explain any sort of intel­lec­tu­al moti­va­tion behind the choic­es that have shaped his career.

Nev­er­the­less, his ency­clo­pe­dic knowl­edge of clas­sic Amer­i­can noir was actu­al­ly some­thing of an obsta­cle for Inher­ent Vice, even if it meant he didn’t have to do his home­work. ​“I mean look, those movies were famil­iar to me. I didn’t have to go back to them at all, they’re ingrained in my mind. But I did get out The Big Sleep again just like, ​‘Oh, let me remem­ber that,’ and it was incom­pre­hen­si­ble and that was okay. If any­thing, it was like try­ing to shake off those movies in a very respect­ful way. Those would be rea­sons not to make the movie. But look­ing at those things, look­ing at those devices, I brushed up on that a lit­tle bit. Those movies are in my DNA, they’re in my pock­et. I didn’t need to see The Long Good­bye for the four-hun­dredth time. If any­thing, I need­ed to try to for­get it.”

Even if Ander­son was deter­mined not to repeat the past, his influ­ences clear­ly remain his first lan­guage. And even if old­er movies weren’t super help­ful in mak­ing Inher­ent Vice, they’re clear­ly his favourite way of think­ing about it. Asked about Jon­ny Greenwood’s score, and the right­eous selec­tion of surf rock clas­sics that sur­round it, Ander­son defaults to Albert Brooks. ​“Have you seen the movie Mod­ern Romance? Where Albert Brooks is the direc­tor, and he’s the most neu­rot­ic direc­tor, and after the screen­ing he’s like [does Albert Brooks impres­sion]: ​‘I know they’re going to say that there’s wall-to-wall music, but I like the score!’ That’s exact­ly how I feel right now. I think it’s impor­tant to always be con­scious of the music, like, ​‘Is there too much of it? Is it out of the way, is it help­ing, is it okay?’ And hope­ful­ly you land in a good spot where it is qui­et from time to time. But yeah, there is a lot of music, help­ing push the sto­ry along. But the score was a lit­tle more impor­tant to us than the songs. Hope­ful­ly, at its worst, it can just feel like a juke­box play­ing top 10 hits. But being able to play ​‘Jour­ney to the Past’, it’s good to hear that song. It’s a beau­ti­ful, beau­ti­ful song, and that’s a ver­sion that’s not often heard, so it was great to get that in there. Same thing with ​‘Har­vest’, same thing with all of it. The Min­nie Rip­per­ton song ​’Les Fleur‘, which is great and by Maya [Rudolph]’s mom, and the Chuck Jack­son song ​‘Any Day Now’. Any time you can get some Neil Young in there is a good feeling.

“The book was so filled with musi­cal ref­er­ences, and we used some of them. ​‘Here Come the Ho-Dads’ was sort of ear­marked from the book for when Doc goes up to Topan­ga Canyon, and that’s a great surf song by the Mar­ketts. But the oth­ers sort of fell away. I thought they’d be used, but they end­ed up not exact­ly fit­ting in. I’ve always want­ed to work with Can’s ​‘Vit­a­min C’. It has been used here and there before, so you have to get past that a lit­tle bit and realise, ​‘It is gonna fit well here, it’s gonna be okay.’ I mean look, there’s no rea­son why an Asian-Ger­man lead singer and three white Ger­man guys should play that funky. Noth­ing that funky is com­ing out of Ger­many!”
Speak­ing of influ­ences… ​“What’s that thing they take in Fear and Loathing that he’s only sup­posed to take a drop of, and he ends up drink­ing a lot and Ben­ny [Beni­cio Del Toro] is like, ​‘How much did you take?!’ Ether? I got­ta get my hands on some. And you see his face start to turn into a lizard. Mesca­line, yeah. To be hon­est, I didn’t real­ly think that much about the drugs in the sto­ry. It was like wear­ing a hat or wear­ing sun­glass­es, it wasn’t real­ly too much of a thing that we thought about or talked about.”Anderson may have start­ed off being hailed as the most prodi­gious­ly tal­ent­ed wun­derkind since Orson Welles, but whip-pan to the present and the 44-year-old fam­i­ly man is seen as a bas­tion of the old guard.

In part, that’s because his films are afford­ed a rev­er­ence usu­al­ly reserved for the auteurs who first defined the cin­e­mat­ic lega­cy of the Amer­i­can epochs that Ander­son depicts. And in part, it’s because he rose to promi­nence just before film became a ter­mi­nal­ly ill shoot­ing for­mat, and has remained loy­al to cel­lu­loid ever since. But Ander­son doesn’t seem to share the same hos­til­i­ty towards dig­i­tal that inspired Quentin Taran­ti­no to say, ​‘Why an estab­lished film­mak­er would shoot on dig­i­tal, I have no fuck­ing idea.’ Ander­son isn’t scared of the future; he’s just scared that he wouldn’t know how to use it. ​“I don’t know, because I don’t know much about those cam­eras. I know that’s been a com­plaint, but I wouldn’t know. Film is what worked for this film. I have a fear of the unknown. I’ve spent a long time try­ing to learn one cam­era, and to fuck­ing stop and try to learn anoth­er one… I would have to stop for 20 years! I’m a slow learn­er; I’d have to go through the man­u­al… it would be start­ing over. So there’s that, too.

“It’s an issue for film­mak­ers, and it’s on people’s minds, and I have to say that it’s a lot more chal­leng­ing and dif­fi­cult just to kind of get some­body to show film or to print film. It’s far more chal­leng­ing than it should be right now, and we’re just try­ing to keep it alive a lit­tle bit and cre­ate a lit­tle pock­et where it can be shown that way in var­i­ous places across the coun­try right now.”

Save for per­haps Punch-Drunk Love, which exists in the sweet synes­the­sia of its own dimen­sion, each of Anderson’s films is a time cap­sule, a peri­od piece, or both. With each suc­ces­sive fea­ture, it grows ever more tempt­ing to re-arrange his fea­tures by the chronol­o­gy of their sto­ries and look at his body of work as an alter­nate his­to­ry of 20^th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. Ander­son may not see much val­ue in such an exer­cise (“Fuck. I mean, that would be cool, I guess. That would be wild!”), but his films nev­er­the­less evince an uncan­ny abil­i­ty to recre­ate the past so that it feels inef­fa­bly present. Inher­ent Vice exists with­in a smoked out snow globe of Man­hat­tan Beach as it was on the doorstep of the ​’70s, and the movie would nev­er have worked if not for the per­fect bub­ble that Ander­son and his team built around it. When it comes to con­vinc­ing­ly trav­el­ing back in time, Ander­son swears that less is more. ​“I kin­da grew up in an era where I start­ed to notice that peri­od pieces would have too many unnec­es­sary crane shots. I was like, ​‘Why are there so many estab­lish­ing shots of streets?’ I think I kin­da got it into my head that if you weren’t striv­ing to sell that it was a peri­od film then you prob­a­bly wouldn’t do those.

“I don’t know, I think I was just reac­tionary to that stuff, try­ing not to think about it too much. And hon­est­ly, nobody cares about any­thing but the peo­ple, any­way, that’s all they’re look­ing at. They’re not real­ly look­ing at the store­fronts or your gigan­tic city streets. I have to say, when you don’t have any mon­ey, that’s where you come up with those jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. You’re like, ​‘I can’t fuck­ing do a street shot, I don’t have the mon­ey! Why don’t I point the cam­era at the actors and make a close-up?’ Unmo­ti­vat­ed crane shots are a sin.”

In Amer­i­ca, mon­ey is every­thing. In film noir, mon­ey is every­thing else. The true val­ue of The Mal­tese Fal­con, for exam­ple, has less to do with its worth than it does the price that some­one is will­ing to pay for it. As Inher­ent Vice coheres into a surfer rock ele­gy for the things that mon­ey can’t buy, it’s the story’s uni­fy­ing con­cern that most pal­pa­bly cements the bond between the film and its genre roots. You might think, deep into a career in which all sev­en of his fea­tures have had a seis­mic impact on the cin­e­ma and its sur­round­ing cul­ture, that Ander­son could trade any­one in Hol­ly­wood a new script for a blank check with his name on it. Even if his movies are not always run­away hits, they’re always crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed. That’s got to be more impor­tant, right? ​“No, the dough is more important.”