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Bringing Up “Bigfoot”: Josh Brolin on ‘Inherent Vice’

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Having started his career in such family favourites as The Goonies (1985) and Guillermo del Toro’s sci-fi horror Mimic (1997), American star Josh Brolin has maintained a steady acting career in a wide variety of films and genres, working with a roster of big name filmmakers and remembering that versatility is the key to success.

After a Woody Allen film here and a zombie extravaganza there (Melinda and Melinda (2005) and Quentin Tarantino’s Planet Terror (2007), respectively), Brolin hit the mainstream with his award-winning turn as Llewelyn Moss in the Coen Brothers’ neo-western No Country for Old Men (2007), with George W. Bush biopic W. (2008), Milk (2008) and True Grit (2010) quickly following suit. Once again adding another auteur filmmaker to an already impressive list of collaborators, Brolin now stars in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest glimpse into a bygone era in America’s chequered past, Inherent Vice (2014).

Adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s dense 2009 novel of the same name, the film – set in 1970s Los Angeles – tells the story of Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), a dope-headed private detective hired to investigate the mysterious disappearance of an ex girlfriend and her real estate mogul boyfriend, which leads him into a tangled web of deception and intrigue.

Doc’s closest ally and fiercest opponent comes in the form of Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (Brolin), a cantankerous, frozen banana-chomping LAPD detective whose staunch anti-bohemian demeanour causes friction between the two as they work together to solve a bewilderingly complex case. Shot on 35mm, Anderson’s latest, for which he wrote the screenplay, is an authentic evocation of the uneasy time where the sixties curdled and bled into the wayward seventies, something perfectly embodied by Bigfoot, who belongs to an authoritative force with an ingrained fear of hippiness in the post-Manson period.

For an actor used to playing second fiddle to more outlandish central characters, Brolin almost steals the film from Phoenix, giving a simultaneously brooding and darkly humorous performance. But how did he approach the script and the character? “When you’re sitting talking to Paul [Thomas Anderson] and breaking down the book and breaking down the script, you see how he translated it tonally, and how he saw Bigfoot, and the fact that Bigfoot is kind of the antagonist. He’s so different and so unmalleable in dealing with this new era. He’s like an era and three-quarters behind and sees himself through this The Right Stuff mentality, yet the reality of seeing himself that way is absolutely the opposite because you see him so emasculated by his wife.”

As Doc and Bigfoot continue to collide throughout the story – sometimes literally – the chemistry between Phoenix and Brolin gathers pace, making for electrifying viewing. Brolin admits that working with Phoenix was a “seamless” process, and that the lack of boundaries between the two helped bring to life a prickly on-screen relationship. “I like doing that kind of behavioural danger while you’re doing scenes, because there’s some electricity there. So even if you’re doing nothing, there’s something being felt and that’s wonderful,” says Brolin. “You don’t know if it’s working all the time, but it’s wonderful to be around.”

It’s this relationship that grounds a purposefully incoherent story that veers off into copious narrative tangents, incorporating screwball comedy with a noirish edge. While Brolin was able to easily understand Bigfoot’s near-constant contradiction – “the idea of this character so desperately wanting to have an impact and not having an impact” – he found that doing his scenes ultimately hinged on understanding “who the guy is and what the movie and what Pynchon is or what you think it is or how you interpret it – then that becomes fun.” It’s a role that, amongst the frenetic quality of the film, Brolin clearly relishes, and one that adds a notch onto a laudable array of performances.

 

Inherent Vice is on general UK release now.

Words by Edward Frost


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