This 70s Throwback Inherent Vice Trailer Is Out Of Sight

The marketing for Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice has heavily leaned on the 1970s style of the stoner mystery, but this brand new trailer takes it to a whole other level. Check it out!

This new Inherent Vice clip - which comes to us thanks to Movie Clips - is pretty damn hard not to love, with the marketing team at Warner Bros. taking full advantage of the movie's setting and giving the film a grindhouse sort of feel. Featuring more than just bad film quality and a gravely voiced narrator, though, this preview goes the full mile by actually being {sloppily) edited in the style of movie ads that were being made 44 years ago.

There is a lot to appreciate about this new spot, but if I had to identify the part that gave me the biggest smile, it would have to be the narrator cryptically revealing that author Thomas Pynchon is "starring" in the film. This is a rather funny, given that Pynchon is famous for being reclusive and staying away from cameras - but the truth is that the writer does actually appear at one point in the movie. The cameo was confirmed by Josh Brolin in an interview with The New York Times back in September, with the actor describing Pynchon as a "kind of mercurial iconoclast" who chose to stay close to corners. So when you go to see Inherent Vice this weekend, keep your eye out for a guy who might be a 77-year-old genius author.

Thomas Pynchon Simpsons

Paul Thomas Anderson's new film first got a limited release this past December so that it could quality for Academy Award consideration in 2014, but it will be getting a wide release this weekend and I would recommend that each and every one of you goes to see it. I haven't been shy about expressive my deep love for the film - giving it a five-star review and declaring it the best movie of the year - and I'm honestly excited that now more people are going to get access to it and will get to enjoy it for themselves. It's a ridiculous adventure filled with zany characters and beautiful atmosphere clouded with pot smoke, and creates a wonderfully odd world that you really don't want to leave.

In Inherent Vice, Joaquin Phoenix stars as Larry 'Doc' Sportello, a pothead private eye who falls into a deep mystery when his ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston) visits him fearing that her powerful land developer boyfriend Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts) is in danger of being locked in a looney bin as the result of a plan orchestrated by Mickey's wife and her boyfriend. It isn't long after that both Shasta and Mickey both go missing, and Doc finds himself going further down the rabbit hole just to figure out what the hell is going on. Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Jena Malone, and Joanna Newsom all co-star, and you should see it as soon as you're physically able.

Eric Eisenberg
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Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.