The Anderson tapes

Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film is a very different beast from the lurid flourishes of Boogie Nights: a sprawling attempt to film the almost unfilmable Thomas Pynchon drug novel Inherent Vice.

Joaquin Phoenix and Benicio del Toro in Inherent Vice.

‘Do you smoke?” asks the publicist, outside the hotel room where Paul Thomas Anderson awaits. Given we’re about to meet for the writer-director’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s pot-soaked novel Inherent Vice, ...