A Literary-Cinematic Wet Dream: Paul Thomas Pynchon (Inherent Vice) - from 2014
I'm predisposed to like, no, fucking love , this film. The idea of adapting Pynchon to cinema has been around for years. Like a lot of people, I would have assumed "Crying of Lot 49" would be themost likely candidate. Until three years ago when I read "Inherent Vice." Accessible, funny, and entertaining, it still holds Pynchon's themes and vision of the United States as a complex of power waning toward empire's fall. Setting that aside, I started a short list over the years of who would be the best to direct and/or write the adaptation, any adaptation. While he was alive, Kubrick. But I would have voted for the Coen brothers, maybe Spike Jonez, possibly Terry Gilliam, possibly the Nolan brothers, but oddly, Paul Thomas Anderson didn't occur to me. In retrospect, it's a no-brainer. Like his mentor, Robert Altman, Anderson has a similar multivalvent interpretation of the "American Dream"; "Boogie Nights" and ...