As a fan of Paul Thomas Anderson there’s a great deal of anticipation on my behalf with the release of his films. This time around I had taken unusually long to watch his most recent work, Inherent Vice, and with this assignment I had an opportunity to engage in some analysis I don’t usually have the chance to. I can’t recall many times where a book or short story I’ve read has been turned into a film, besides maybe a few obvious tent pole franchise movies. Alternatively, I had read a number of books or short stories after having seen their film incarnations. Therefore, I chose to take the route of reading Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice before taking in Anderson’s translation of the book to film. While I wasn’t necessarily the biggest fan of either, I still found some enjoyment in them and noted several key similarities and differences between the two. These alterations from the book to the film along with the information I’ve gained from lectures allowed me to draw some conclusions regarding the choices made by producers in bringing this novel to life on screen. …show more content…
So, one can imagine that Anderson had a great deal of say and control over the decisions made in adapting Pynchon’s novel. Converting a nearly four hundred page book into a two and a half hour movie is no easy task and yet I feel that Anderson and the producers remained considerably faithful to the source material. There were obvious similarities and changes between the two and in evaluating the book to film process with these works I think it would be of interest to examine narrative, dialogue, characters, visualization, shots, and