Without question, the Thomas Pynchon character that most persistently arouses reader fascination is Pynchon himself. Already, we are seeing reports that Pynchon makes a brief cameo appearance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of his 2009 mystery novel (for lack of a more precise term) and attended the New York Film Festival’s press screening. Of course, it is difficult to verify any of that, since nobody knows what he looks like.
Regardless, Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” is guaranteed to be obsessively analyzed and debated after it screened as the Centerpiece of the 52nd New York Film Festival.
A woman furtively walks into stoner-detective Larry “Doc” Sportello’s beachfront crash pad, but this is no lady. She is Shasta Fay Hepworth, the ex-girlfriend he still carries a torch for. She has need of his professional services but would rather their meeting look like an assignation.
Currently the kept woman of real estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann, Hepworth has been approached by his wife, Sloane, to co-conspire in a plan to have said sugar daddy committed. Soon thereafter, Sportello is serendipitously hired by Black Panther Tariq Khalil to collect a debt owed by Aryan Brother Glenn Charlock, who now works as Wolfmann’s bodyguard.
Unfortunately, things really get complicated when Sportello is waylaid in a brothel, waking up next to Charlock’s dead body and surrounded by a circle of cops, most inconveniently including his old nemesis Christian “Bigfoot” Bjornsen.
“Inherent Vice” has more name characters than “Gone with the Wind” and “Berlin Alexanderplatz” combined, nearly all of whom have backstories. As Sportello works his vaguely defined case, he crosses paths with a missing musician forced to be a federal informer, his presumptive widow, a maritime attorney, a sex worker, the sexpot daughter of a former client, a lethal loan shark, a shady rehab clinic, multiple G-Men, and the drug-addled Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd, played by the scene-stealing Martin Short.
