Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix Reunite in a Hair-Raising Shot From 'Inherent Vice'
Get ready to get your Pynch-on: Next month, film fans will finally get a look at Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, the eagerly awaited, super-secretive adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s ’70s-set detective novel. Though the film — which stars Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, and about 367 others — will make its premiere Oct. 4 at the New York Film Festival, there’s still no trailer for Vice, and only a handful of images have been released. Which leaves fans of the director of such films as Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood with nothing to do but parse photos like the one above, which appeared in yesterday’s L.A. Times.
The shot reunites Walk the Line stars Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, who play a zonked-out private detective and a deputy district attorney, respectively; the duo’s unlikely romance make for one of the book’s numerous loopy subplots. Both stars sport era-appropriate hairdos: Witherspoon has a bunned-up beehive that looks stronger and sturdier than a roll of barbed wire, while Phoenix’s face is flanked by muttonchops the size of porkchops.
Though the two performers haven’t worked together since 2005’s Oscar-winning Walk the Line, Witherspoon told New York that they were able to pick up where they left off: ”It’s like we have a shorthand with each other, to the point where Paul was like, ‘Uh, can you guys stop chatting? You’re supposed to be working here.’” We’ll see if all that fun translates to the screen when Inherent Vice opens Dec. 12.
Watch a quick video history of the New York Film Festival below:
