Josh Brolin Talks Inherent Vice, Calls Experience "Absolute Fucking Chaos"

With the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival officially behind us, the swirl of press inevitably left in its wake is now slowly unfurling onto the internet for cinephiles worldwide to consume. As a consequence, David Poland, whose utterly invaluable "DP/30" series tracks down a major player from just about every significant film from these festivals and talks candidly on camera with them for a half hour, sat down with Inherent Vice-star Josh Brolin, who was there promoting his work in Jason Reitman's Labor Day. As you may have guessed would happen over the course of thirty minutes, the conversation meandered a bit toward Brolin's past, present, and future projects near the middle, and here's what he had the following to say about working with Paul Thomas Anderson around the 14:40 mark (transcribed (roughly) by yours truly):

Actor Michael Cotter Talks "Inherent Vice"; Boogie Nights Script Read At TIFF

An interview over at examiner.com has been making rounds today, wherein actor Michael Cotter talks a bit about his experience working with Paul Thomas Anderson & co. on Inherent Vice, and here's the nitty gritty of it:

What can you tell us about your role in the upcoming Paul Thomas Anderson film "Inherent Vice"? 

I play A.D.A. Rhus Farthington and I work in the District Attorney's office in LA, where I am co-workers with Reese Witherspoon's character Penny. It is a period piece set in LA in 1969-1970, and it's always fun to be able to play in a different decade, especially for the wardrobe and set choices which were both great.

How was working with A-listers Reese Witherspoon, the always unpredictable Joaquin Phoenix and director Paul Thomas Anderson?

It was an amazing experience! I think all three of them are brilliant at what they do and I felt lucky to be able to play in the same game as them for a few days. Once the cameras started rolling, they all welcomed me into the fold and were all very generous in the moment.

Any interesting stories from the set you can share with us?

One of the coolest things that we did was for one of the scenes we shot, PTA ended up letting the three of us basically improv through this interview scene. And once we all started to improv together, it became this really fun game of finding our way through the scene together and just feeding off of each other. It was really fun to be able to do that with Reese and Joaquin and just trust that we would find our way to the end of the scene each time, but always find cool new moments on every take.

Among other things, this should finally help put to rest any lingering suspicions you may have had that Reese Witherspoon was somehow no longer involved in the film. It also fills in a couple casting gaps that were a bit more justifiably up in the air: that Witherspoon will be playing Penny Kimball, and that the role of Rhus Farthington has gone to Cotter. Our Inherent Vice page has been updated accordingly.

News Round-Up: Venice Awards, TIFF, Interviews, Soundtrack, More

After a lovely weekend at the Toronto Film Festival, we're back and ready to catch up! Hopefully you all were following along with us on Twitter where we tried to keep up with the avalanche of news as best we could, but if not here is the rundown of what you missed. (It was a lot.) Speed round!

1. 'THE MASTER' WINS BIG IN VENICE
"The Master" picked up a pair of major awards at the Venice Film Festival for Best Actor (tie) for Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman and the Silver Lion Award (Best Director) for PTA. The film had also been selected to receive the Golden Lion Award (Best Film) but the jury was forced to revote due to some silly rules about winning more than one award. Regardless, this is huge great news for the film and both Paul & Harvey Weinstein have spoken out about how happy they are.

2. TIFF PREMIERE
"The Master" had its North American Premiere at TIFF on Friday where I caught the film for a second viewing. It was just as brilliant and enigmatic as the first time and was seemed to be rapturously received by most critics. Paul was there to introduce the film briefly (which was running about an hour behind schedule due to the previous film running over) and you can watch his intro here (taped by me).

3. WATCH THE TIFF PRESS CONFERENCE
You can watch the entire 30 minute TIFF press conference with Paul, producer JoAnne Sellar and Amy Adams. It's quite good and spoiler-free from what I recall. Just look at Paul's reaction when someone brings up Scientology. Priceless.

4. AUSTIN & NYC SCREENINGS
The film had 70mm sneak preview screenings in both Austin and New York this week. Paul was on hand to introduce the Alamo Drafthouse screening in Austin Monday night while Amy Adams and Harvey Weinstein gave introductions at the NYC showing on Tuesday at the Ziegfeld Theatre. There were of course two new teasers cut for the film which you watch below (or find on our "The Master" page as Teaser Trailer #5 & #6). Word on these screenings was (once again) dropped pretty last minute so apologies if you weren't able to get tickets.

5. LA TIMES INTERVIEWS JOAQUIN
The LA Times interviewed Joaquin where he discusses working with Paul, his acting hiatus and how he's not sure if he knows any more about his character now than when he started. Also features some great quotes from Paul.

6. HUFFPO INTERVIEWS PTA
Paul was also interviewed by the Huffington Post where he talks 70mm, cutting those teasers himself and his "natural attraction to redheads." Definitely worth reading. (We've archived it here.)

7. LISTEN TO THE SOUNDTRACK NOW
"The Master" soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood is now available for purchase on Amazon or you can stream it on Spotify. It's wonderful. Also features "No Other Love" and a little ditty by actress Madisen Beaty.

8. ODDS & ENDS
A few other miscellaneous points of interest include Indiewire's Critics Survey of PTA's Best Film, Grantland's look back at Paul and Fiona Apple's relationship, Matt Singer's essay about how "Boogie Nights" pre-explained PTA's move towards 70mm and Kent Jones' epic review of "The Master."

Interview: Toronto International Film Festival Press Conference

Transcript of the TIFF Press Conference Q&A by Martin Cohen

‘The Master' Confirmed For 70mm Screening At TIFF

Earlier today Cameron Bailey (Artistic Director at TIFF) tweeted that the Toronto International Film Festival would be adding a few more films to the already stacked lineup. So we sent a reply asking if perhaps #THEMASTER70MM would be one of the aforementioned Gala's (as rumored) and he decided to let the cat out of the bag a little bit early for us. 

@cigsandredvines You got it: THE MASTER in 70mm at #TIFF12

TIFF then confirmed this from their official account. More details will be forthcoming about the time/place of the screening but as you can imagine this is very, very exciting news for a few reasons, not least of which being that 1/2 of the Cigs & Vines team will be attending TIFF (me). Assuming PTA doesn't pull any more surprises in the next few weeks, this looks like it will also be the film's official North American Premiere shortly after its debut in Venice. So far all festival screenings have been confirmed for 70mm presentations. Are any Cigs & Vines readers going to TIFF this year? Will I see you there?

Update 8/14: The film has been added to the TIFF site with the following description, "So too does Anderson’s decision to use the cinephile’s ultimate visual palette — 70mm film. Flying in the face of the rapid shift to digital cinema, The Master was filmed in that high-resolution widescreen format, and will be presented in 70mm at the Festival. The effect is cumulative, and ultimately shattering." Can't wait.

#THEMASTER70MM 

See when "The Master" is playing at a theatre near you.

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