I'm watching the movie a second time, and I'm halfway through the book. Among the movie's differences from the book. Sortilege starts off narrating. The movie doesn't have the school bell for the phone either, just a regular ring. It's really weird the way Doc shouts when he sees the photo of Amethyst as a baby. I guess it's to dramatize the negative impact of being pregnant and using, but the child we see looks pretty healthy. The child doesn't huff out because they're boring like she did in the book.
Superficially The Big Lebowski and Inherent Vice are similar but it's a completely different style of narrative. The Coen brothers are amazing, they have a very witty movie that I have loved for a long time. Pynchon is a whole other realm of fiction, and this conversion is fairly faithful, taking out the best lines and making it more compact. The audio book is 15 hours, the movie is 2 hours. Anyway, I like the different movies for different reasons. TBL has a kind of hip questioning mystery, and IV is an extension of a great novel--I can't separate that from the movie.
I can't help but think Joaquin and Reese from the Johnny Cash movie Walk The Line, and they play country music when they're together. In the movie she goes over to his house, in the book, he goes over to her house.
My memory isn't good enough to see what is cut from the novel to make the movie, but there's a sense that there's quite a lot.
The movie calls the insights from hallucinogens "extra sensory chops" and I think Pynchon called them secret channels of vibrations or something. When Doc and Coy meet they speak explicitly in the movie, they don't speak explicitly in the book. Not in the book, but in the movie, he speaks about his motivation for going undercover and working with the feds. Some of the light paranoid theories are peddled in the movie, that are sort of implicit in, given in spurts in the book. I like the bit (in the movie) about how people ask questions they already know the answer to, they just want to hear someone else say it outside of their heads. The vertical package idea is put into Jades mouth, in the book it's Jason Velveeta.
Golden fang is a boat, an international cartel, a tax dodge for dentists. Everyone Doc goes to has a need and an ask, a request, a mystery that is not solved for them. Nobody is ever grasping anything, got a revelation or comes to some conclusion, it's all becoming.
One thing they cut out is the build up to get the photo of the last supper scene, that they do so well in the photo stills of the movie. The movie cuts the chocolate banana explanation as well.
The way we find out Clancy is a sexual woman is the camera looks up her dress, while she's talking to Doc in his office, where he's huffing laughing gas (not in the book to my memory) Mickey Wolfmann sent Clancy to Doc? Don't remember that in the novel. We get the explanation of Wolfmann wanting to give all his money away from here. The movie has him writing down things, but usually it's super vague and perhaps skeptical and in different places than the one place where it was in the book, I think just with Tariq. A line from another scene is inserted here, the one about holding onto a joint, instead this time it's Clancy saying instead of Jason Velveeta. They don't go to the roadhouse. There's no Boris Spivey.
Shasta doesn't say she misses Doc in the postcard in the book. I guess the movie has to be more direct, less time to think about why someone would put forth a good memory.
I really wonder how they found the golden fang building for the movie. Is that a real building?
In the book Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd lays out lines, in the movie he snorts a huge spoon of it. Xandra is his love interest in the movie, but in the book it's Japonica. In the movie there's a flashback to Hope giving the information about problems with teeth and heroin. In the movie Doc is made to be cocaine crazy. Not really mentioned in the novel. With Japonica driving, she's not hallucinating, her mental state is narrated, and the cops are on them before you can see her wild driving and running red lights. He's in the diver's seat in the movie without the exchange discussion or seeing it. Instead of a chase, Bigfoot says he's dead. That's quite a big change, but maybe he turns up dead later, we're getting to the part where I'm at in reading the book. I'll have to end this close comparison.
I'm at almost exactly half way in the book and I'm two thirds done with the move. In the book he's about to go to Chryskylodon, the "high-rent laughing academy".
In the movie Shasta knows what Chryskylodon really means, golden fang. I'm amazed that given that Katherine Waterston was born in London, her American accent is so good. Why can the brits put on an English accent so easily and the opposite isn't true. Her father is Sam Waterston, of Law and Order, and more recently Grace and Frankie. She was raised in Connecticut. She went to NYU.
In the movie he's touring Chryskylodon in relation to the Japonica case, a sort of flashback. Movies are unsubtle, there's a slogan over the door: Straight Is Hip.
In the book, Doc runs into Coy at Chryskylodon, and that's when he updates him on Hope, which is put into the Spotted Dick house scene. In the movie Coy just mouths what the fuck at Doc. The Burke Stodger bit from Sloane is put into Chryskylodon and they only watch his movies. Anti-communism.
The unsubtle movie gives the orderly with the Shasta tie a swastika tattoo on his face. Perhaps that’s a reminder of Manson, who had one. It's an ancient Hindu symbol meaning all is well, says Threeply.
Something you couldn't see in the book is the FBI guys are sitting there at Chryskylodon, Special Agent Flatweed and Borderline. In the movie he runs into Mickey.
Mickey is in the photo with Sloan, book says he's not in the picture, in the ribbon cutting photo.
I could go on parsing the differences, but I haven’t finished the book.
In the end, another artistic mind took the story and jumbled it up and came up with his own narrative, that other people say was "faithful" because it really did try to preserve the best lines, even if it put them in other people's mouths or in other scenes. Part of the story is Pynchon's way of telling stories, even if you jumble it all up and spit out just a portion. About as faithful a movie as you could get, I guess that's why it's called faithful. The map is not the territory.
The movie is much more explicit, less subtle. More sensational. The sex scene is going to land differently.
Movie doesn't even go to Las Vagas, which spans several chapters. I guess that what was cut, and what in a way was the fleshing out of what was unsubtled in the movie. No chance for sexy Lark singing up on stage. No chance to play a Marty Robbins song on the soundtrack. You don't see Flatweed and Borderline escorting Mickey out of the casino. The movie doesn't get the line, "It's you hippies. It's making everyone crazy."
If there's ever another movie made about Inherent Vice, I think it needs to be 3 movies, like they did the Hobbit. One movie is the Las Vegas section. And it will include the Godzilla meets Gilligan's Island fantasy.
There are inconsequential differences. Penny's officemate is female in the book, male in the movie. Movie makes him a man so his glare is more ominous. Less subtle.
Doc unloading the heroin scene is different. The Golden Fang boat isn't repossessed, it heading out to sea. But in the end it is repossessed, and there's a story in it for Sancho, so lots more there. There's a million more scenes in the book not captured in the movie.
If you're looking for nude scenes, there should have been one for Penny. I'm sure Witherspoon doesn't do those anymore, but you could put in a body double.
Links:
NY Times has an updated surfer article.
I'm on chapter 10 where they play in the rain and it's a sweet scene in the movie.
Listening and watching the music and movie references:
Wild Man Fischer: Weird LA street musician who got a record made.
Don't Ask For The Moon Bette Davis in Now Voyager.
There's a link to the plants referred to by Pynchon in Inherent Vice.
Listening to a podcast. One guy focuses on entropy. One guy focuses on double roles. One guy wonders if Doc is black.
Something Happened To Me Today by the Rolling Stones on Spotify (p. 192 of paperback)
Came across this short film about filming the Chryskylodon scenes for the movie. Found on a fascinating website I hadn't seen before.
Found a comparison article, between the movie and the book. Not brilliant but short.
Joaquin Phoenix's parents were briefly members of the Children of God cult. Now that's intense. I didn't know that Maya Rudolph is married to the director Paul Thomas Anderson. She plays Petunia.
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