His gruff yet bemused-sounding voice is a perfect match for Pynchon’s prose-he really sounds as if he lived through the hippie era that Pynchon describes. The purposely disorganized Chryskylodon feels more like a memory piece than Vice did, in part because Green’s recitations carry a sense of nostalgia. Colella devotes as much attention to the extras (all wearing vintage outfits) as to the filmmakers, implying that the genius of Vice lies in its many details. When Anderson appears, he seems focused yet casual, as if trying not to disrupt the environment that he and his crew have created. What we get are fleeting impressions of the shoot, accompanied by music by surf-rock band the Growlers (who play the surf-rock band the Boards in Vice) and passages of Pynchon’s novel read by Theo Green, the old hippie who starred in Breakfast With Curtis. Adding to the outsider feel, there are no interviews with the cast or crew or even any diegetic sound. It feels as if Colella snuck into the world of Inherent Vice and decided to have a look around. The subsequent images are grainy, the camera movements are shaky, and the subjects are typically seen from a distance. The short documentary revels in its shooting format-indeed the first thing we see is a few seconds of film leader. decided not to include her film on the Inherent Vice DVD, she declined to comment.) She ended up using the Super-8 camera to film Chryskylodon, rather than shooting it digitally. Colella recently explained to me that Anderson, an old friend, originally intended for her to play an amateur filmmaker during the scene set at the surf-rock band’s party that Sportello crashes midway through the film, and that she’d shoot Super-8 footage onscreen. Shot on Super-8, it looks like it could have been made in 1970, when Vice takes place. Chryskylodon Blues, directed by the gifted underground filmmaker Laura Colella ( Tax Day, Breakfast With Curtis), is as novel in its approach to the behind-the-scenes doc as Inherent Vice is to the literary adaptation. The movie, in short, is a gift that keeps on giving-naturally, it inspired a superior making-of documentary that’s now available to watch online. I was impressed, on one recent reviewing, that Anderson even preserved a throwaway gag at a pizza parlor wherein Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) finds he ordered a pie with marshmallows on it typical of Anderson’s approach, the detail is not commented on in the dialogue. Now that Vice is out on DVD, you can pause, rewind, and find all the stuff you missed the first-or second or third-time around. Anderson claims that for his first draft of the script, he simply typed up the entire book in screenplay form, and the finished film preserves so many details from the book one can’t possibly catch them all on one viewing. Vice is one of the most inspired literary adaptations I’ve seen-it’s so densely realized that watching the movie feels like wandering through Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel. The year is halfway over, and the movie to beat for my favorite Chicago premiere of 2015 remains Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, which opened here in January. Paul Thomas Anderson directs Inherent Vice in Chryskylodon Blues.Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreation.Best of Chicago 2022: Music & Nightlife. But never mind all that if the film is as funny and fast-paced as the trailer, Inherent Vice is destined to be a classic-or at least a cult classic. Inherent Vice is premiering this week as the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival and is already being cited as a possible Oscar contender. Anderson has been coy in the press about whether Pynchon came out of hiding to star in a cameo in the first film adaptation of his work. The film also stars A-listers Reese Witherspoon, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, and Owen Wilson. that leads him down a rabbit hole of corrupt land developers, cultist musicians, amorous dentists, and other Pynchon-esque craziness. Judging from this loopy trailer, he nailed it.Īrmed with a star-studded cast, Anderson brings to life Pynchon’s pothead private detective Doc Sportello (played by Joaquin Phoenix), who takes on a kidnapping case in 1970s L.A. Paul Thomas Anderson, director of Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, has taken on the task of adapting Vice for the screen. The Big Lebowski meets Chinatown: That’s the vibe of reclusive author Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 hippie neo-noir novel Inherent Vice.
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