Inherent Vice (2014) on Netflix
In 1970, hippie private eye Larry "Doc" Sportello works out of Gordita Beach. His ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth asks him to stop the abduction of her lover, developer Mickey Wolfmann.
- Netflix2.7/5
- IMDb6.6/10120,670 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes74%
Trailer
Plot summary
Shasta Fay Hepworth comes to her ex-boyfriend, the Gordita Beach private eye and hippie Larry "Doc" Sportello. Her new lover, wealthy developer Michael Z. "Mickey" Wolfmann, is the target of a plan by his wife and her lover to have him abducted and committed, and she asks Doc for help. Tariq Khalil, who belongs to the Black Guerrilla Family, hires Doc to track down one of Wolfmann's bodyguards, Glen Charlock, who owes him money. At Wolfmann's Channel View Estates project, Doc visits a massage parlor and meets Jade, an employee there. Hope Harlingen, a former heroin addict, hires Doc to find her missing husband, Coy.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Inherent Vice (2014)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Thomas Pynchon's novels had never reached the screen before: Paul Thomas Anderson's film is the first adaptation of any of them. He had earlier tried to crack Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland and could not work out how, finally making a loose version of it in 2025.
- Anderson wrote the script by adapting the entire 384-page novel sentence by sentence, which made cutting the script easier than cutting the novel. His first draft had no narrator at all; the character Sortilege was turned into the narrating voice afterwards.
- Robert Downey Jr. was lined up to play Doc Sportello and planned to start shooting in autumn 2011, having dropped out of Oz the Great and Powerful. He passed, Joaquin Phoenix took the part, and Downey later said Anderson wanted Phoenix because Downey was too old.
- For a 1970 stoner noir, Anderson's reference shelf was slapstick: he took the visual gags from Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker spoofs such as Police Squad!, Airplane! and Top Secret!, and used the underground comic strip Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers as what he called an invaluable research bible.
