Salon.com > inherent vice

Reese Witherspoon, post-arrest, keeps signing onto movies

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:20:00 +0000

Reese Witherspoon, the actress known of late for underperformers like "This Means War" and "Water for Elephants," has all of a sudden been announcing a whole bunch of new projects. She's more busy than she's been in years! Could it be the critical buzz around her tiny indie "Mud"?

Well, probably not. Witherspoon may be trying to get some good news out there after her arrest in April for disorderly conduct. In the past month, she's signed on for or has circled several new projects:

"Depth of Field," a comedy about a sports journalist
"Passengers," a "sci-fi romance" costarring Keanu Reeves
"Three Little Words," a drama about a child-services volunteer
"Inherent Vice," the Paul Thomas Anderson film based on a Thomas Pynchon novel (Witherspoon had reportedly been offered the female lead role in "The Master," Anderson's last movie. So we'll see what happens with these movies.)

Thomas Pynchon to write pre-9/11 novel

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:49:00 +0000

Thomas Pynchon isn't wasting any time.

The reclusive novelist, who took a 17-year break after "Gravity's Rainbow" and nine years off after "Mason & Dixon," is set to publish his third novel in seven years. "Bleeding Edge" is to take place in New York's tech-industry haven Silicon Alley, in the period between the so-called dot-com boom and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In approaching Sept. 11, Pynchon follows novelists like Don DeLillo ("Falling Man"), Joseph O'Neill ("Netherland") and Ian McEwan ("Saturday"), all of whose novels alluded to or took as their focus the events of that day. One might speculate that Pynchon's novel is to be, in its allusions to 9/11, more like O'Neill's, using Sept. 11 as one of many events forming the backdrop of the book, than DeLillo's, which makes the attacks the very premise.

Either way, Pynchon has been especially interested in period pieces of late: 2006's "Against the Day" took place in the 1890s and 1910s, while "Inherent Vice" was a noir-y mystery set in 1969 and 1970. With the attacks of Sept. 11 reportedly looming ahead of his tech-world characters, it's yet more proof that 2001 is a part of history, yet more removed from our lives today.

Paul Thomas Anderson on upcoming Pynchon adaptation: Screenplay is “more secretarial”

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 20:20:00 +0000

In a profile issued online today by the New York Times, preeminent director Paul Thomas Anderson, who researched Scientology extensively to portray the relationship between the cult leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a veteran (Joaquin Phoenix) in 2012's critically acclaimed "The Master," also elaborated on his upcoming project, an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel "Inherent Vice." Although news of the project has been around for a while, Anderson revealed new details about its vision and hinted at a possible collaboration with the reclusive author: