Prepping for Punch Drunk Love in my intro class. Interesting timing that the trailer for Inherent Vice (2014) came out while I was rethinking Anderson's body of work anyway (along with the sweet reviews the book's gotten so far).
I remain excited about PTA's next film--it looks gorgeous and the source material seems like a good fit thematically with that body of work. The post-war existentialism of The Master (2012) has been replaced by the "what's it all mean?" musings of late 60s counterculture, but the existential crises--and chemical addictions--amidst the empty facades of a California consumer culture remain the same.
In reading the book recently, I was struck by this passage:
" . . . Coy and I, all we saw was the freedom--from the endless middle class cycle of choices that are no choices at all--a world of hassle reduced to one simple issue of scoring" (38).
Seems like the kind of passage that would get the filmmaker's attention (fwiw: I have no clue if this ever got anywhere near the adaptation itself).
All that said, the trailer was pretty underwhelming--its trying too hard to sell the movie as funny and quirky. I'm assuming that this is just the work of the studio itself (Warner Bros) and its uncertainty about how to sell it. (Seriously, the fact that a major studio is backing Anderson still amazes me). Following that logic, a lot of the moments in the trailer are hopefully taken out of context in so far as they don't reflect the general tone of the movie itself.
Also, some of my initial reservations were not alleviated by the trailer either--a concern intensified by the supposedly long running time. We'll see.
I will blog about it when I have a chance to see it--probably not until December.
I also hope to do a "field" trip with some Northwestern students--possibly in January. The interest is still definitely there.
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