Josh Brolin Talks Inherent Vice, Calls Experience "Absolute Fucking Chaos"

With the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival officially behind us, the swirl of press inevitably left in its wake is now slowly unfurling onto the internet for cinephiles worldwide to consume. As a consequence, David Poland, whose utterly invaluable "DP/30" series tracks down a major player from just about every significant film from these festivals and talks candidly on camera with them for a half hour, sat down with Inherent Vice-star Josh Brolin, who was there promoting his work in Jason Reitman's Labor Day. As you may have guessed would happen over the course of thirty minutes, the conversation meandered a bit toward Brolin's past, present, and future projects near the middle, and here's what he had the following to say about working with Paul Thomas Anderson around the 14:40 mark (transcribed (roughly) by yours truly):

[Reitman] always seems to get these performances out of people--

Which is incredible... Because I can't go back and say, "Oh Jason does this thing," whereas like Paul Thomas Anderson, having just worked with him... [it's like]  let's go this way, or let's whisper the lines, and let's actually take out all the lines and we'll do it like charades once. Or, you know, like, hold him -- put him on your shoulders and let's do the whole scene like that. He's all over the place. It's just absolute fucking chaos every day, all day. Which is great, 'cause you feel like you've done something. But, you know, we'll see how it turns out.

Do you have a preference for all of that --

No... they're isolated experiences. They just are what they are, you know? I appreciate Jason's just as much as I appreciate Paul's. I think I'm more attuned to Paul's...even though that was crazy and nuts and created insecurity and this and that, this created a different, very much deeper insecurity and vulnerability... 'cause you just wanna hide.

Later in the interview (around 17:40), Brolin brings it back to PTA.

I see Paul, after this movie that we just did, and he was just exhausted, man. Exhausted. Like, he just took off and died somewhere, you know? Not literally, but figuratively. 

Crawled into an editing room somewhere --

Crawled into an editing room. But he was into it. He called me in the middle of the night, goes, dude I'm working on this thing, it looks amazing, it's so cool. It's like a kid. It's like being around a bunch of kids. That's fun.

It's exciting that he's working so quickly.

Yeah.

For him, that's a big deal.

I know, right? It is a big deal. I know, I know. Yeah. No, it was a lot of fun. Joaquin's amazing. Amazing. I love him.

Damn skippy. Have a happy Monday, everybody.

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