"Once Upon a Time...Inherent Vice."

*As always, I write these articles under the assumption that you’ve seen the film, so...SPOILERS. (This also applies to Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood.)

I’m still sticking with my current monthly plan of Van Damme, Oedekerk, and western, but getting a chance to see Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood inspired me a bit. That’s why I went ahead and wrote a review of that, but it also made me want to revisit Inherent Vice. Basically, I wanted to rewatch Once Upon, but that wasn’t a possibility for me, so I went with the film it most reminded me of with Inherent Vice. 

Once Upon a Time...Inherent Vice

There are some obvious connections between these two films (the setting, the Manson references, the comedic tone, etc.), but the main connection I found was both films’ theme dealing with the end of an era. It’s as if Inherent Vice’s world is what Tarantino wanted to prevent by changing history at the end of his fairy tale. That’s probably why Once is a much lighter, funnier film than Inherent Vice. 

In Inherent Vice, the overall point (as far as I’m concerned, anyway) was the death of the carefree ‘60s and the birth of the paranoid ‘70s. This is evidenced by the general tone, especially the music, of the film, but it’s pretty obvious with the plot, when you can follow it, that is. You see the co-opting of the hippie movement (Bigfoot playing a hippie in a commercial, Owen Wilson being planted within the community by a government agency), and the general fear of hippies and drug users because of Charles Manson (when the cop pulls over Doc with Dr. Blatnoyd, Japonica, and Denis he lists all the things they’re on the lookout for and Denis even namedrops Manson). You get the sense that within Doc’s own life things were simpler when he was with Shasta, but now things have changed and it seems like everything is controlled by sinister forces. So even when they seem to end up together at the end, Doc is still looking in the mirror behind him, as if someone might be following him. Things will never be the same. 

This is what Tarantino laments in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. He’s more specifically concerned with Hollywood (hence, the title) than the general culture, but it’s still about how the Manson murders helped put an end to a carefree era. You get the sense of foreboding with Once Upon anytime you see the Manson women (hitchhiking, dumpster diving, etc.), and it comes to the forefront when Cliff ends up at the ranch, in an amazingly tense, creepy sequence. Overall, things are kept fairly light because Tarantino’s film is a fairy tale, not only for the main characters of Rick and Cliff, but for all of Hollywood, as well. Tarantino’s film posits that stopping Manson’s followers could let that world stay the same. You could argue that stopping Manson’s followers would not have stopped the change in our culture, but it is a fairy tale, so in that world maybe it could have. 

This is why I think Inherent Vice and Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood make a great double feature. And it doesn’t matter what order you watch them in. If you go with Vice first, you see a more historically accurate change in the culture, and if you follow that with Once Upon, you get to what things were like before and how it could have been avoided. I think it works better with Hollywood first, though. In that order, you get to see this world and its alternate history, and Inherent Vice becomes this darker sequel about what would have happened if things went differently at the end of Hollywood. Either way, both films create a world I wouldn’t mind spending an afternoon in.

It’s weird feeling nostalgic for an era I never experienced.

Feeling nostalgic for the world of either film is strange since I wasn’t alive during this time. It’s nothing new to want to live in a fictional world that I don’t personally identify with (like, say, wanting to live in the world of Star Wars even if I would have probably just been a moisture farmer or nerf herder…), but to feel a bit of nostalgia for a real time period I didn’t experience is a strange feeling because it’s a world I almost experienced. 

I was born in 1984, so most of my childhood memories are late ‘80s/early ‘90s. To me, those were carefree times, but I’m sure they weren’t to adults who had grown up in the ‘50s and 60’s. So I think this feeling that the world changed because of one or more events is something that happens to every generation. For me, it’s 9/11. But that also happened during my senior year of high school, a common time for people to start thinking more about the world instead of their own silly lives. 

My generation is unique, however, in that we will be the last people to remember a time of landline phones, no internet (at least no internet in its current ubiquitous form[fun fact: Pynchon included a subplot about the beginnings of the internet in the book, so even that was covered to a degree]), no DVR, etc. I still remember a time when driving around was a thing, and people had to track each other down to hang out and make plans. We had to look things up the hard way, and the world could be more interesting and mysterious due to our lack of information. Now, with information both real and fake being presented at a nonstop rate, it’s easy to look back to my childhood, or an era like the ‘60s, and think, “Man, I wish things were like that again.” This is all ignoring the common issues with nostalgia, by the way, like the fact that no time period is ever as great or simple as you remember it, and odds are it was a terrible time period for entire groups of people different than yourself. But at face value, that’s where my nostalgia for an era I never experienced comes from.

That written, it’s not so crazy to feel like there was a time in my life that was similar to Inherent Vice and Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. With Vice, the main thing that comes across to me is the generally hanging out feeling I get as Doc seems to randomly wander through the story. I feel like high school was like that a bit: just living in the moment, not worrying too much about the future. As for Hollywood, I feel like the movies I grew up watching aren’t really made anymore, so Hollywood has changed for me. Once again, I think this happens to every generation, and it has a lot more to do with getting older than it does with cults and terrorists. But who wouldn’t want to live in a fairy tale where these terrible things never happened?

Why do I own this?

It’s a Paul Thomas Anderson movie.

Random Thoughts

“Someone might be watching.” The foreboding beginning is brought full circle in the final moments of the film as Doc keeps checking his mirror as if he’s checking for a tail. The era of paranoia had begun.

Brolin in that commercial at the beginning is the most subtly threatening hippie of all time.

“So while suspect, that’s you, was having alleged midday nap so necessary to the hippie lifestyle…”

Doc watching Bigfoot eat that chocolate-covered banana…

Now that I’ve seen Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, I get the joke Doc makes to the FBI guys about “missing” an episode.

“What’s a Puck Beaverton?” Reminds me of one of my favorite lines from Game of Thrones: “What the fuck’s a Lommy?”

“[F]rom a bass player turned record company executive, which trend watchers took as further evidence of the end of Hollywood, if not the world as they know it.” I think of this and Once Upon as films very much about the end of Hollywood and the world as people knew it back then.

“‘Gee,’ he thought, ‘I don’t know.’”

I kind of disliked/didn’t pay much attention to Sortilege’s narration the first couple times I watched this. Watching it now, I feel like her narration, while nonsensical at times (the astrology stuff, but maybe that’s just me), actually sums up a lot of the film’s themes.

“Are you sayin’ that the U.S. is somebody’s mom?”

The Last Supper image with the pizza is one of my favorites. It beautifully visualizes Owen Wilson as Christ-like (mainly in that he has returned from the “dead”), and I remember reading about it in the book and PTA captured it perfectly.

I never give this film enough credit for being a love story. That scene with Doc and Shasta looking for dope after calling the number from the Ouija Board is a great moment that effectively captures what it’s like to be in a great relationship during a carefree time. It is the perfect subplot (in a film that seems to be nothing but subplots) for the theme of innocence lost as paranoia sets in. In the film, that theme applies to the changing culture in America at the time, but it can also apply to Doc and Shasta’s relationship in the end. They seem to be slightly back together, but the innocent, carefree love of before is gone. Doc is driving forward, as is their relationship, but who knows where it’s headed now? And when did he start worrying about where things were headed? Perhaps that’s the real loss of the hippie culture of the ‘60s. People stopped living in the moment are started living in fear of the future. But what do I know? I was born in 1984.

“You know it?”

“Shakes a tambourine.”

I have to remember to start using that instead of “rings a bell.”

This is the first time I noticed that Japonica’s dad was with the Voorhees-Krueger law office. Of all the unexpected elements of this film, a reference to Jason and Freddy is pretty high on the list.

“God help us all. Dentists on trampolines.”

“Did I hit you?”

I guess I just have a soft spot for movies that are about an end of an era without being too obvious about it.

“So you guys been working for the Golden Fang long?”

In the end, Shasta references it being like the Ouija day, and it being “Just us.” But Doc looks suspicious of this now. 

“Under the paving-stones, the beach!” I forgot this text was at the end of the credits. I think it fits in with my general thoughts about the theme of the film, in that the corruption, drugs, and paranoia in general became the paving stones while enjoying a simpler life was the beach.

Why I Like "Weird" Movies

In my last article about NewsRadio and TV series in general, I pointed out that I liked that show so much because it was a relaxing watch. I could watch episodes out of sequence or even not pay attention to them at all and still enjoy it. I wouldn’t call the show junk food, but it’s not something I feel the need to focus 100% on. There are plenty of films I feel the same way about (and will certainly write about plenty of them on this site in the future), but for the most part, my favorite films are the ones that require focused viewing. Often, a film that needs you to pay attention to it is called “weird.” The movies I’m going to discuss aren’t exactly weird in the traditional sense (but weird is subjective, so technically, everything can be weird), but have been labeled as such because they aren’t easily digestible.

It feels a little hypocritical to write about NewsRadio and praise it because I don’t have to pay attention to it, and then turn around and write about how my favorite movies are the ones you have to focus on. It all comes down to the location of your viewing, though. TV is...TV. You usually watch it in a distracting setting: your home. When I watch TV, it’s rarely the only thing going on. I’m hanging out with my wife, watching my daughter, doing dishes, cooking, doing laundry, checking e-mail, etc. In other words, all kinds of things are going on that keep me from focusing on the show I’m watching. Hence, my favorite show is one that allows for distractions. With movies, the intended viewing location is a dark theater that prohibits (or at least attempts to) talking and cell phones. In other words, films are made to be seen on a giant screen with no distractions.

Of course, I watch movies much more often at home than in the theater, so I love plenty of junk food movies. But my favorites are the ones I saw in the theater that rewarded my attention. The best compliment I can pay a film is that it held my complete attention even though I watched it at home.

I believe this love of complex films that require focused watching leads people to think film critics/buffs are snobs who don’t like “normal” movies. But when you watch movies every day, either for fun or work or both, you tend to appreciate the more nuanced offerings. To continue the food analogy of junk food, think about eating in general. If you eat the same thing every day, you’ll be fine with it, but never impressed. But if you get a new meal, even if it’s worse than what you usually get, you’ll appreciate it just for being different. That doesn’t mean a movie is automatically good because it’s odd; it just means it’s more interesting. And when you watch movies every day, interesting is pretty damn important.

Maybe movies aren’t your thing (just like some people don’t care that much about food), and watching any movie is entertaining because it’s a rare activity. That’s fine, but just realize that critics and dorks like me are going to roll our eyes if you think the latest Transformers was awesome and you don’t even know who Paul Thomas Anderson is. Now that I look at that sentence, I realize that it is a bit snobby, but so be it. The “weird” films are simply better because they move the medium beyond entertainment into the art realm.

Before I get into a few examples, I want to focus a bit more on what weird means to me. Weird is anything that is not predictable. It’s anything that aims to be different. The movies I love that I call weird are not really all that weird. These movies are all popular among most movie buffs and critics. They are also films that are fairly easily explained if you pay close attention. I am aware that there are truly weird films out there that are meant to be more poetry than film. I don’t like movies like that. I need my weird to be entertaining, and, more importantly, I need my weird to be able to be deciphered in a slightly definitive way. That said, here are the “weird” movies and filmmakers that immediately come to mind.

Darren Aronofsky is the first filmmaker to come to mind for a couple of reasons. First, in a recent interview on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Aronofsky flat out said he makes “weird” movies. Second, mother! is a recent film that many have deemed too weird because it received an infamous F Cinemascore from audiences. I loved it, of course, because it’s the perfect type of weird for me. On its surface, it is weird. It’s a film that was marketed as romantic thriller (I guess?) but ended up being a completely allegorical film about the environment, artists, humanity in general, etc. Anything that is completely allegorical is going to be a bit weird, since allegory typically requires exaggeration to fit whatever actual point the filmmaker is trying to make. What makes mother! stand out to me along with a few other films (such as Drive, Bug, The Cabin in the Woods, or Spring Breakers) is that people wouldn’t be disappointed with these films if they hadn’t been lied to by the trailers. Of course mother! is weird if you go in thinking it’s just another Jennifer Lawrence movie when, in fact, you’re about to see a Darren Aronofsky film.

I watched mother! completely expecting it to get increasingly insane because I knew Aronofsky wrote and directed it. It’s not that he doesn’t make “normal” movies (The Wrestler is a very straightforward film); it’s that his films are so varied that you know he’s not going to repeat himself. In other words, he’s going to make something interesting. I sat in that theater expecting a puzzle, so I focused on every detail possible. This might seem like homework to some, but this is how I wish I could watch every movie. This is why the theater is such an important part of the process. I’ve watched mother! at home and still enjoyed it, but nothing compares to that viewing in the theater. Before I move on, I just wanted to point out that my favorite Aronofsky film (and his weirdest, in my opinion) is The Fountain.

Next up is Yorgos Lanthimos, writer and director of two of my favorite films in recent years: The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (I also loved Dogtooth). Lanthimos makes different movies, but his style makes them weird. His characters deliver some of the most absurd and childishly direct dialogue in such a deadpan manner I can’t help but laugh. And I think that is his intended effect. I consider his films to be comedies despite their disturbing nature. Comedy and oddness go hand in hand since they are both so subjective.

Comedy brings me to another favorite filmmaker of mine: Paul Thomas Anderson. An argument can be made that most, if not all, of Anderson’s films are comedies, despite the super serious appearance of most of them. It’s no stretch to consider Boogie Nights or Punch Drunk Love comedies, but you wouldn’t initially think There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread, or The Master are comedies. But I think they are. They are weird comedies, sure, but they are comedies. Watch the jail scene in The Master and tell me that’s not meant to be funny. Every scene that takes place in Eli Sunday’s church in There Will Be Blood is absolutely meant to be funny. And I consider Phantom Thread to a warped romantic comedy, which is to say it’s my all-time favorite romantic comedy.

Before I move on to my last filmmaker, I have to bring up David Lynch. While I love Blue Velvet and like Lost Highway, for the most part I am not a big fan of Lynch. But you can’t bring up weird filmmakers without discussing him. I suppose I’m not as big of a fan because some of his work is so impenetrable, or at least, I just don’t get it (Inland Empire was just a waste of my time). But he has his fans. I’m just not one of them.

The all-time weird filmmaker for me is Stanley Kubrick. As I’ve been writing the entire article, his films aren’t really that weird. Kubrick just has a style and a way of telling a story that usually requires close attention. Also, his films are largely open to interpretation. Eyes Wide Shut is among my favorites for this very reason. I have different thoughts about that movie every time I watch it (and I watch it at least once a year...so who’s the real weirdo, right?). Maybe that’s because I’m a slightly different person each time, but I like to think that it’s more about what a talented and interesting filmmaker Kubrick was that he was able to create a film that could seemingly evolve with each viewing.

I’ll finish with what has become a bit of a trademark for these articles: a rambling paragraph followed by a short summation. This rambling paragraph will cover other filmmakers or films that I love and are considered weird, but for whatever reason, didn’t come to mind at first when I planned this article. All of these could have easily been included in the article in much more detail. Nicolas Winding Refn. Martin Scorsese, especially his recent Silence. Werner Herzog, especially his work with Kinski (which I eventually plan on devoting an entire article to), but also my favorites: Bad Lieutenant and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. Denis Villeneuve, even though his films have become increasingly popular, I think he’s retained his weirdness. Walker with Ed Harris. Terrence Malick, though I do not care for his post-Tree of Life work. Titus. Southland Tales. The Box. A Scanner Darkly. Synecdoche, New York. A Serious Man. The Coens in general. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Ravenous. I’ll stop now, but just know that there are countless examples, and I’ll never be able to think of them all, and I most certainly left off something or someone so obvious that I will be tempted to return to this article and add it (I’ll let you know if I did that here - I added Fear and Loathing and Ravenous after scanning my collection one last time).

As I stated above, none of these films or filmmakers are actually all that weird. They just demand attention, and they reward that attention. Unfortunately, that means they are “weird.” But I’ve always liked weird. And with so many ways to get a film made today, the weirdness will never stop, and I’ll never stop seeking this weird shit out.

The Goofy Melancholy of "Inherent Vice"

Inherent Vice

Paul Thomas Anderson has never been a very mainstream filmmaker (not since Magnolia, anyway, and some would argue even that), but his last two films have been very polarizing. The Master was so complex (or disjointed or weird or nonsensical or etc.) that some critics theorized that Anderson himself was the titular "Master" and/or the film was about the acting process (click here for an article that will lead you down the rabbit hole of Master theories and criticism). Not to get too far into it, but that film allowed itself to be viewed in many different ways. I considered it an intentional comedy (the more you look at Anderson's filmography, the more you'll see that all of his films are at least partially comedic) and counted it among my favorite films of the year. Inherent Vice is equally polarizing, but for different reasons. Perhaps it's because it's so polarizing and different that it count it among my favorite films this year.

Inherent Vice, at first glance, looked like a return to Anderson's roots. A huge, talented cast, overt comedy, 1970s setting...could this be his return to the easy-to-watch-but-still-thematically-rich Boogie Nights-style? No, it is not. Not by a long shot. Inherent Vice isn't Anderson's strangest film (The Master holds that distinction), but it is arguably his least accessible (runner-up? The Master). Despite the goofy previews, Vice is a hopelessly dense film that encourages you not to understand it. I'm fine with that, but others will be frustrated. I'm okay with it being dense because this is an adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name. Pynchon is know for complex stories that don't necessarily make sense...or rather, stories that don't have crystal clear resolutions. Anderson is the perfect candidate to adapt such an author's work because both of them appear to going for the same thing: make something interesting that potentially says a lot about a number of issues without coming out and saying it, and have fun with it.

Anderson stated in Total Film in reference to The Big Sleep, an influence on the film, "I never remember plots in movies. I remember how they make me feel." It is obvious that Anderson feels this way about his own work these days. It's not that there isn't a story in Vice (if anything, there's too much); it's just that Anderson (and Pynchon) is not concerned with making sure you understand everything; they just want you to feel something. I don't take that to mean they want you to care about the characters all that much (though I do really like Vice's Doc Sportello and Bigfoot Bjornsen); I think it applies to the general feeling you get as you watch the film. When it comes to Vice, many of the film's fans will claim the movie made them feel high, and that was the whole point of it. I disagree. This film felt more strangely melancholy to me, a goofy melancholy, if such a feeling exists... I didn't take the confusion and randomness as something meant to make me feel high; I took it as intentional comedy laced with a sad realization that the world has changed. Set in 1970, Inherent Vice is more about the transition from the free-spirited '60s into the paranoid '70s than it is about the actual kidnapping/murder/drug cartel/dentist conglomerate/ex-old lady/stoner plot.

The transition of carefree to conspiracy lends itself to confusion, comedy, and sadness. The plot itself is confusing as Doc (a perfect Joaquin Phoenix) stumbles from one lead to the next adding more questions than answers. It's hard to keep up with, but Doc has a hard time to. Doc isn't only meant to be our conduit; he's also meant to be a representation of the audience we can laugh at. I wasn't trying to figure things out along with Doc, I was laughing at him grow more and more confused. He's also high throughout, so there are a few cheap laughs along those lines, as well. So the feeling is kind of goofy, but the score (by Anderson-regular Jonny Greenwood) reminds us at times that this is actually a pretty depressing end of an era. Certain musical touches reminded me of Apocalypse Now as Willard made his dark journey up the river. Greenwood created an end-of-it-all sound for some scenes that added another layer to the film.

Because of the score, soundtrack, and goofy melancholy of the film, it's tonally all over the place...kind of like the plot. This would certainly be a negative observation for most films, but most films aren't directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Some would argue that Anderson gets a pass from fanboys (like me, and I do not consider "fanboy" to be a negative term) who turn what would traditionally be considered missteps into strokes of genius. I am certainly guilty of this, but I believe that Anderson knows what he is doing. For this film, however, a bit of that is out of his hands. This is his first sincere attempt at an adaptation (There Will Be Blood was only loosely based on an Upton Sinclair book), and he remained quite faithful to Pynchon's material. The messy, convoluted plot is actually evidence that this is a faithful adaptation. If anyone takes issue with that, then the critique should really be that Pynchon books are too dense for film. I'm almost inclined to agree. I read the book twice (once when it first came out and again before watching the film), and I still had a hard time following it. I can't imagine what it's like for someone completely new to the story. But I am one of the people who think the confusion is a good choice. By the end of the film, it was kind of amusing to share the confused looks Doc made with each twist and turn.

Anderson is one of the few directors out there that I will over-analyze and (possibly) credit too much. (Darren Aronofsky is the other director whose films I find myself automatically liking.) But I believe he has earned it. If a viewer doesn't share this feeling, then they could easily dismiss Inherent Vice as a misstep in Anderson's career. I've looked into these criticisms and from a certain point of view, they are all correct. This film is a mess, it makes no sense, visually it's not on the same obviously impressive level of his other work, etc. From my (fanboy) perspective, all of those "critiques" are intentional and serve the overall purpose of the film.

In my view, the overall purpose of the film was to create the feeling of transition from '60s to the '70s and all of the elements added up to that. It was a messy, confusing time in which people didn't know who could be trusted. The film exudes that feeling. It's about a shift from (slightly) innocent times to dark conspiratorial times. There's a quote at the beginning of the novel and at the end of the film from Paris during the 1968 protest: "Under the paving stones, the beach!" That sums up the theme of both novel and movie; the real world is hidden under progress. Doc is one of those people trying to find the beach, although his search is a bit drug-impaired.

Speaking of Doc, Joaquin Phoenix portrays him in mumbling glory. I didn't feel stoned while watching this, but Phoenix certainly looked it. It's a hilarious and likable performance that I think will only get better with repeated viewings. The film and novel have been compared to The Big Lebowski, and I think the comparison is most apt when looking at Doc and The Dude. Phoenix has mastered the use of facial expressions in this role. It's not that he's good at looking stoned/confused (though he is great at that), it's his reaction to everything. His performance is really more Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson than it is Jeff Bridges as The Dude. It's still very much his own, original performance, however. But there are certainly shades of other famous stoners in there. Phoenix does his best work opposite Josh Brolin as Doc's friend/adversary Bigfoot Bjornsen. Their scenes together are by far the film's most comedic moments. Brolin is being grossly ignored this awards season.

The focus on Doc's expression actually undermines the film's look, though. The majority of the film is shot in close-ups on characters' faces. When seen on the big screen, it's almost strange how close up many of the shots are. This is frustrating because Anderson is so good at composing visuals. There are still moments in this film, but you have to really be looking for them: The Last Supper (Pizza) shot at a house party (which is actually directly taken from the book), the scene at the docks that starts in close up and almost unnoticeably pulls back into a long shot, the scene with Penny on the bench that starts as a long shot and unnoticeably pushes into a close up, and the very effective long take near the end of the film (you'll know what I mean when you see it). Anderson is a master at work, but I prefer his more cinematic moments a la There Will Be Blood. Though I must say, this visual style works for this film.

I could go on, but this is far too wordy a review as it is. There is so much more to discuss, though. I barely mentioned the supporting cast (all of which were great). There are the hallucinations that Doc has leading some to question the majority of the movie. There's the rumored Pynchon cameo that no one will confirm (some think he's the one walking back and forth behind Owen Wilson and Phoenix in the house party scene). I could go on, but I won't. To close, Inherent Vice is not accessible, but if you fully try to access it, it is an immensely rewarding experience. This is not to say that those who dismiss it or dislike it "don't get it" (at this point, that phrase should be banned from film discussion); it just means that some people will see interesting elements where others see faults. It's all about the viewer's perception. It just helps if that view is an Anderson fanboy.

Inherent Vice receives a:

That's Anderson wearing the hood...

Random Thoughts (SPOILERS)

Okay, I need to add more. First off, in defense of being a Paul Thomas Anderson fanboy. The guy doesn't make the same movie twice, I think everyone can agree. I find myself wanting another There Will Be Blood, but I really don't. That would be a waste of Anderson's time. So as long as he keeps doing something new and unique each time, I'm going to keep focusing too deeply on his movies. And I'm also going to like them for their very existence because too few directors are willing to try something new every time out.

Now for the hallucinations. Early in the movie, Doc sees Bigfoot in a commercial, and then Bigfoot directly addresses him. This is the only time it is crystal clear that Doc is hallucinating, but it opens the entire movie to that possibility. I'm always one to argue that the majority of a film is actually happening as we see it, and I am inclined to stick with that position for this film. Others have been theorizing that more outlandish moments, like Bigfoot showing up to eat a whole tray of weed, are hallucinations as well. I can see the argument for this, and it's interesting to watch the film with that possibility in mind, but I like it more believing that most of it is real. Bigfoot showing up to eat a tray of weed is a more powerful scene when it actually happens because it shows that Bigfoot is very troubled, and Doc truly cares about him (he does shed that tear while watching him eat). It's seems less powerful if it turns out Doc is just seeing things or, worse, Bigfoot is a Tyler Durden-type creation of Doc's mind (that theory is out there, check IMDb). 

What I truly love about Anderson's movies are that they do create a feeling. It's hard to define, but as I watched the film, I wasn't sure that I liked it all that much. But as I thought about it, certain elements stuck with me (the music gets me every time). I couldn't explain why I liked or disliked it, but I wanted to see it again for that feeling. Once I watched it again, I did decide that I liked it, but I still can't accurately describe the feeling it give me. I suppose this is why I'm always up for re-watching an Anderson movie. There are entire articles about whether a movie should have to be viewed more than once. I'm not saying anyone has to watch this film more than once. I just think Anderson's movies get better with each viewing. I'm not sure that's something someone can do intentionally, but it's definitely been the case with the majority of his films. Okay, I'm done now. I'm going to go watch The Master on a loop until Inherent Vice comes out on video.