• Introduction
• Method and Process
• The Music
• Data Visualizations
• The Films
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

Introduction

Paul Thomas Anderson’s signature filmmaking style is characterized by thematic reoccurrence, camera technique, his undeniably engaging sense of humor, and, most importantly for the present essay, his musical choices. There is a throughline of sonic worldbuilding present in his narratives, both sprawling and intimate. As part of his auteurist approach to filmmaking, he has a long history of consistent musical collaborators, most notably Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead fame. Prior to the genesis of this particular partnership, he also worked with Jon Brion and Michael Penn on his three nineties projects and the 2002 rom-com Punch-Drunk Love. The scores produced for his films are every bit as committed to storytelling as the scripts, actors, and production design, and while an in-depth exploration of Greenwood, Brion, and Penn’s contributions to the world of PTA would surely deliver engaging analysis, that is not my focus here. Instead, I was drawn to the less consistently utilized but equally engaging soundtracks of licensed, pre-existing songs in a few of his films. Boogie Nights first sparked this interest for me once I recognized that the mesmerizing effect the story had on me was due in part to the near-consuming count of (incredible) songs. Then came Licorice Pizza and Inherent Vice in my PTA education, and their soundtracks solidified a pattern of intense engagement with music history in his filmography. Furthermore, these three films which heavily utilize non-original songs are all set around the 70s: late 70s to the 80s, 1973, and 1970, respectively. Therefore, their contrast and comparison proves even more fruitful; not only are they similarly using music, but they all revolve around interconnected music histories.

This feature project approaches the songs of these films—Boogie Nights,Licorice Pizza, and Inherent Vice—both with great distance and proximity. The diversification of perspective that the music-first analysis brings hopefully sheds new light on PTA’s films, aided by the multimedia inclusions of song embeds and data visualizations. The data visualizations serve primarily as a tool for seeing how these films’ soundtracks differ in their genre usage, movement in and out of the diegesis, and so on. The analysis below then functions as a looking glass into the specifics of each film, both building on and moving beyond the patterns displayed in the visualizations. From the glitz of disco to the blood of political violence, the music of these films holds history, meaning, and mood in its grasp.

Method and Process

My process for this project took two distinct phases: data collection and data analysis. The “data” consist of the songs that play across the three films, and myriad metadata categories accompany these data points, including artist, release year, genre, status in the diegesis, and various quantitative scores measuring the technical aspects.

The first step in data collection was compiling my own comprehensive and chronological playlist of the music featured in each film. Because official soundtracks are often neither complete nor in order, this step allowed me to obtain the accurate aggregate of music I wanted. I first did as much research as possible across crowd-sourced sites such as Tunefind and IMDB. While these existing efforts were incredibly helpful in identifying tracks and generally finding my way through the collection process, there was too much discrepancy between sources to make any sure conclusions. Therefore, I decided to take the most laborious and manual route and go through the films myself. This process also allowed me to record each song’s diegetic status to the best of my ears’ ability. “Diegetic” refers to music that plays within the world of the film—the diegesis. This could be music from a car radio, speakers in a restaurant, a live band, and so on. The opposite, “extradiegetic,” is then music only the audience can hear. The least common occurrence is transdiegetic sound, meaning the music travels from being diegetic to extradiegetic, or vice versa. At times, it was difficult to decipher where the music was coming from and if changes to a track’s volume pointed at movement in and out of the diegesis or was simply a sound design choice. I typically took a sudden and extreme change in volume, which I only came across a few times, as a sign of transdiegetic movement.

Once I completed the playlist, I used Exportify—a web application that accesses the Spotify Web API for users via their account login—to get a CSV (Comma-Separated Values) of the available metadata. The Web API (Application Programming Interface) is an interface that allows for data retrieval and sharing, often meant to be a sort of steering wheel in applications that deal with Spotify data, such as the music social platform stats.fm. There were some aspects to consider, however, given my method of metadata collection. For one, the genre labels attached to each song were up to the discretion of Spotify—a categorization process whose logic I am not privy to. Given this project’s interest in cultural context, I wanted to emphasize this possible pitfall, as there might be much nuance lost in Spotify’s genre labeling. Beyond this larger consideration, I came across a couple of smaller issues. For one, during my playlist compiling, I was not thinking about the automated metadata process and therefore added a few remastered songs in place of their originals. Because of this, some of the release year metadata reflected the remastered dates as opposed to the original releases; this was an easy fix, though, as I simply scanned the dates in the spreadsheet and replaced them.

With a completed playlist and metadata sheet, I began experimenting with different modes of visualizing the data. I most wanted to represent proportional comparisons—which patterns exist in the data, and what were the trends in genre, diegesis status, and so on. Because of this particular visualization goal, I went for the ever-classic donut chart to highlight percentages, as opposed to the specific song counts (plus, the donut charts look a bit like LPs). I used the data visualization templates from the tool Flourish to create my graphs, as this was an easy way to create embeddable and, most importantly, interactive visualizations. Given the number of graphs I wanted to incorporate, I thought it best to utilize a no-code platform as opposed to tinkering around with my own coding. That way, I would have the space and time to easily create new visualizations as they felt relevant to what I was writing. At the heart of this process was a desired mobility; I wanted the steps to blur together a bit to really capture a conversation between the visualizations and the writing. For this reason, while the writing portion was theoretically “last,” the completion of the project was more akin to a see-saw movement than any linear progression. I conducted research, took notes, wrote blurbs, and returned to the visualizations in varied succession.

View data for these visualizations

The Music

Embedded below is the complete playlist for the non-original songs played in Boogie Nights, Licorice Pizza, and Inherent Vice, in that order. The songs also appear in the playlist as they chronologically feature in the films. Happy listening!

Together with the playlist, I’ve also included a searchable table which offers a clearer picture of the music that appears in each film, with some foundational metadata shown. This dataset also provides the basis for the visualizations below. The search function filters text, and therefore can be used to look for specific songs or to search for key descriptors such as genre or release year.

Data Visualizations: Across the Films

Broader Genre Categories Across Boogie Nights, Licorice Pizza, and Inherent Vice

As the Methods section describes, the genre data from which these graphs are drawing from is the metadata Spotify provided for each song. While this does not necessarily mean the songs are labeled wrong, it does mean that it was not a person—a music historian, preferably—who made these decisions. Each of the labels might be exactly right in a technical or algorithmic sense. However, the distinctions between genres such as pop and rock, disco and funk, soul and R&B, can be tenuous. The Beatles are undeniably a rock band—and yet also one of the most pop-ular bands of all time. The idea of pop music is ultimately so reliant on context, time period, and audience that it becomes impossible at times to define. However, if you keep this all in mind, the graph is still helpful in visualizing a general breakdown of the different sounds across the three films.

A More Granular Breakdown of Rock Sub-Genres

The specific categorization of rock subgenres is rife with individual historical lineages, and, simultaneously, the specific categorization of rock subgenres is a bit of a headache and ever so slightly a joke. Progressive rock and art rock are two separate labels here, with so much overlap definitionally and aurally that I am very curious about Spotify’s decision process. Similarly, yacht rock and soft rock are near-interchangeable terms, whose biggest differentiation might simply be connotation.   And yet, similar to the broader genre chart, this information still proved incredibly useful. Since part of my process was practically rewatching all three films and immersing myself in the atmosphere of the music, I took this information and combined it with my firsthand experience listening to the songs to get a fuller picture of each film. Much of the analysis in the body of my feature is grounded in the data—such as the section on disco for Boogie Nights and surf rock for Inherent Vice.

Movement In and Out of the Diegesis

Alongside the discussion of genre, I also include here a visualization of the music as it appears in and out of the diegeses of these three films. While not always the center of my analysis, it remains important to examine where music is coming from and how that affects its role in a narrative. The graph, though, is integral to my analysis section on Inherent Vice.

A Closer Look at the Films

Mixtape Side A: Boogie Nights

Boogie Nights might be the most salient example of music’s significance in Anderson’s filmmaking. The entire film is steeped in music, both in its near ceaseless soundtracking and in the thematic importance of disco to the world of the characters. The title even comes from a 1976 disco track of the same name by the band Heatwave. This song was originally intended to feature in the film; however, the devoutly Christian lead singer, Johnnie Wilder, Jr., didn’t want his music to be used in a film about the porn industry¹. Beyond the genre of disco, though, the significance of music in Boogie Nights centers around the sociality of the film: the workplace culture intertwined with partying (boogie-ing!) and, ultimately, the formation of an alternative family unit.

Disco, or, “The Politics of, Ohhh, Feeling Good”²

Both visually and aurally, the opening of Boogie Nights establishes disco as fundamental to the film’s sound, aesthetic, and sub-cultural sentiments. The iconic tracking shot that introduces much of the ensemble cast in the Hot Traxx nightclub spans almost three whole minutes of disco-entrenched glitz, glamour, and gallivanting. By means of the three consecutive disco tracks overheard in the nightclub, the film does not simply first show the characters, but rather, this musical choice introduces them within this specific cultural context; their narrative grounding and social involvement in this space, and therefore association with the sounds of disco, frame their lives. Hot Traxx as a social and business hub for the characters is more than simply setting the scene of the era. Instead, it speaks to an inherent thematic correlation between the world of disco and the world of the adult film industry. While certainly separate spheres of life with individual origins and governing ideologies, there exists ties between disco and the porn industry given their shared explorations of the body, sexuality, and counter (or not)-culture—despite, perhaps, divergent successes in these explorations, and their societal consequences.

Disco’s inherent sexuality is expressed through various modes. Like much of popular music spanning the past many decades, romance and sex are simply common topics for this genre’s lyric. The explicitness of the sexual references, however, greatly ranges. Overall, disco probably isn’t any more explicit than rock of the era, and certainly not than modern pop and rap. The essentiality of sex and the body to disco is founded instead on its purpose as dance music and its subcultural roots in queer and POC-lead dance spaces. In the 1979 article “In Defense of Disco” in the London-based socialist journal Gay Left, the queer theorist and film studies professor Richard Dyer offers an argument about disco as a vessel for a liberatory re-formulation of music’s sexuality ³. He posits that the rhythm (or lack thereof) of rock music is inherently phallocentric, based in a strained aggression which is physically expressed in thrusts. In turn, the way disco asks you to dance is a more fluid connection to the body, regardless of gender or what body one might be occupying. The difference between disco and other forms of popular music boils down to an allowance and embrace of physicality, in Dyer’s argument. How one should exist in and use their body is a question that is, of course, massively relevant to the world of adult films and sex work. The historical ties between homosexuality and prostitution ground the societal disapproval of sex work in more than a question of exploitation or feminism and remind us to examine taboo not as objective immorality but as the product of a culture’s prejudices.

However, the question of exploitation is nevertheless incredibly important—for the disco industry, not only pornography. A 1979 New York Times article discusses the complexities of agency in entertainment: “Disco music, like the ‘girl group’ sound perfected by such producers as Phil Spector, is ultimately a producer’s music, which means men’s music, which means the exploitation of women to suit male fantasies…”⁴ While this article ultimately falls a bit into the very misogyny it is trying to examine, it offers a perspective published by media of the time that acknowledges the layers present in any commercial form’s attempts to disrupt perceptions of female sexuality. Like with sex work, the conversation on agency versus the male gaze—what is truly possible under such comprehensive patriarchy—clearly existed in the disco industry since its heyday in the 70s. And like the theme of changing technologies and consumption in Boogie Nights, it is the intense commercialization and mass-production of something that exacerbates these issues.

We Are Family! I Got All My Porn Stars and Me!

Alongside its sexuality, disco’s origins as an underground subculture and the functions of that sociality are connected to Boogie Nights’ thematic interest in family. Before a time that knew Saturday Night Fever, early disco was danced to and heard primarily by queer, Black, and Latino people in LA and NYC clubs. The dance floors in these spaces weren’t just dance floors but a means of safely connecting with those in your own community and having ownership—literally or spiritually—over a public place. As explained by an organization called International Disco Day, dedicated to preserving disco culture and history, “[I]n a time before social media, the dancefloor was a communication network. News, emotions, politics, and trends flowed through bodies and speakers. The DJ was the messenger. The club was the commons.”⁵

Even beyond this tangible experience of sharing the dance floor, there is an abstract sense of an alternative family or domesticity imbued into these spaces. Grounds for subcultural cultivation owned by and catered to marginalized people—particularly queer people, given their complex relationship to family and domestic life—take on a somewhat familial air in how they offer safety and community. 250 years before discotheques, the subcultural phenomenon of the molly house in eighteenth-century London was an expansive, radical space where gay men socialized, drank, and engaged in a whole array of gender-subverting behaviors such as drag, family roleplay, and even the acting out of birth scenes.⁶ Despite the years (and ocean) between the molly house and the early disco club, there exists a shared relationship to queer agency and the creation of an accepting, replacement family unit.

Now, Boogie Nights is not exactly engaging so directly with queer culture. First, the film takes place once disco has risen drastically in popularity.⁷ While the characters are somewhat marginalized—or, more so, looked down upon—for their involvement in the porn industry, I would hardly classify that as the same position queerness places one in. However, as mentioned above, there are thousands of years of history interlinking sex work and queerness. This bridging of seemingly separate entities is predicated on both behaviors’ perceived sexual “deviance,” simply meaning anything non-normative. Furthermore, this relationship is explored explicitly in the film via Scotty’s infatuation with Dirk as well as Dirk’s assault. The violent gay-bashing Dirk experiences in the latter half of the film, which follows a set up where a man asks to watch him masturbate in a car, expressly depicts this connection between sex work and queerness and their shared responses of disgust and violence.

It is both because of this parallel and despite its varied truth that the theme of the alternative family rings extremely true. Even when queerness is not expressly invoked, the characters define themselves with the vocabulary of a family more than a “friend group” or circle of colleagues. This pattern of identification is especially true for Amber Waves and her relationship with both Dirk and Rollergirl. A recognition of this pattern doesn’t mean a validation of this dynamic though, as the “motherly” role Amber plays in their lives is perverted by their sex work, drug use, and general toxicity. But despite all this, it would be discrediting these characters and the work of the film to not acknowledge the significance their built community—a community that truly is more than just a work environment—has for their lives.

Ultimately, it isn’t even a disco track which ends up encapsulating the theme of family at the close of the film. By the time the end of the story arrives, disco as a defining sound of the film has mostly faded away. The audience has been whipped back and forth by the competing energies of glam rock, Motown, yacht rock, and everything in between; the chaos of the music follows the chaos of the characters as they dissolve and reform, fail and succeed. And now, as the story is ending, everything is beautifully—almost daintily—bunched back together by the butter-smooth harmonies of the Beach Boys. “God Only Knows” is famously one of the most sentimental, heartwarming songs of all time (maybe a statement influenced by some personal bias, but Pet Sounds is also just one of the best albums ever). The harmonies the band is so known for feel representative in this moment of the montaged scenes the song plays over: Rollergirl returning to school, Amber helping Buck shoot a commercial for his finally-opened store, Dirk preparing to return to the spotlight. The song cements these characters’ inextricability from each other, reuniting the happy family.

Mixtape Side B: Licorice Pizza

Licorice Pizza, same as Boogie Nights, is star-studded with fantastic needle drops. Both films distinguish themselves in PTA’s filmography due to primarily using non-original music, cementing the period aspect of the film. Besides its purpose of capturing the early 70s, the soundtrack is deftly used to match—and define, at times—the mood of both the romance and the business in the plot.

“You’re Not Real Pretty, but You’re Mine”⁸

Licorice Pizza is, of course, a romance film. A rom-com, a cringe-rom, a controversially-aged rom, but a rom nonetheless. Much of the soundtrack follows Gary and Alana’s relationship through its ups and downs and ultimate turnaround. The film features a pop-y love song by Sonny and Cher, as well as the equally romantic “Let Me Roll It” from Wings. One of the most prominently romantic aspects of the soundtrack, though, is the recurrence of jazz tracks. At the start of the film, the first four songs are all jazz: Nina Simone’s “July Tree,” followed by three diegetic tracks heard in various restaurant settings. While the rock ‘n’ roll might define the era of the film, the introductory haze of jazzy melodies initially sets its romantic tone.

Beyond solely the romance, the choice to begin the film with jazz speaks to the themes of maturity and adulthood integral to the romantic storyline. Jazz evokes a grown-up, developed, and somehow “official” feeling—perhaps due to its long history, overlap with classical music, and technical focus. However, in the earlier days of jazz, the genre was seen as scandalous youth culture, something actually opposing the refined structure of classical. Especially given its roots in the Black community and subsequent exclusion from many establishments, the genre was greatly looked down upon as an affront to “civilized” society. This shift in jazz’s perception over time only exacerbates its thematic connection to the story, though. Both Gary and Alana are caught in bizarrely fluid states of maturity, in such a way that ultimately makes them both seem childish. While Gary is a literal kid who acts older and exerts himself as a businessman in the world, Alana is a literal adult who is stuck feeling motionless and still lives at home (a much less common occurrence in the 70s than now.)⁹ Using jazz to frame the narrative and color their eventual romance feels like a satirical wink at the duo’s rather multifaceted relationship to growing up.

“Blood on the Streets …”¹⁰

Hand in hand with the central romantic plotline is Gary and Alana’s relationship as business partners. The film follows what feels like a frenzied journey of venture after venture, even though the audience really only witnesses two of Garys’ businesses. Instead, it constructs this “frenzy” through Gary’s personality and his approach to these business ideas (each idea is the next best thing!). Whether it be attention or money seeking, or most likely a combination of both, the film centers around this chaotic and performative relationship he has to his own life. What intrigues me most about how the music is following this subnarrative is the grimy and violent underbelly of the American economy and materialism it accentuates—though this is hardly a difficult task.

The Doors’s “Peace Frog” accompanies the beginnings of Gary and Alana’s business as they deliver waterbeds. As a piece of the soundtrack, the song infuses the montage with infectious energy, reflecting this new potential for success. However, the violent lyrics are pointedly opposed to the excitement of the scene (“Blood in the streets, it’s up to my knee… Blood will be born in the birth of a nation/Blood is the rose of mysterious union”).¹¹ The choice to feature a song whose very prominent lyrics do not match the mood is an express choice to introduce a tension, a reminder of something. The exact meaning of the lyrics, however, is not entirely straightforward.

Robby Krieger, the Doors’s guitarist, claims that the lyrics to “Peace Frog” came from three poems by lead singer Jim Morrison: “Abortion Stories,” “Dawn’s Highway,” and “Newborn Awakening.”¹²¹³ “Abortion Stories” was supposedly based on an abortion one of Morrison’s girlfriends had, however I am not confident in the accuracy of such a statement.¹⁴ As with much of Morrison’s life and persona, the song’s exact meaning remains enigmatic. However, many of the lyrics, specifically the mention of Chicago, have garnered the song a very concrete meaning in the public’s imagination: a protest song based on the police violence outside the 1968 Democratic Convention.¹⁵ The lyric goes, “Blood in the streets, the town of Chicago,” and, especially given the song’s release in 1971, it is hard not to assume inspiration.¹⁶ The use of the song ends up invoking this public perception regardless of intentioned meaning. Given the protest’s focus on the Vietnam War, the audience is being reminded of the violence inherent to America’s foreign affairs in this moment of Gary and Alana’s economic prosperity. The commentary here is bolstered by the film’s representation of the 1973 Oil Embargo, a result of the Arab-Israeli War in which the US was heavily involved due to their economic and military relationship with Israel.¹⁷

Once “Peace Frog” is established as accentuating the political contexts of the film, a couple other songs from the soundtrack join this conversation about American imperialism. Most obvious is “Life on Mars?” by David Bowie, which the film directly links to the Oil Embargo. The song comes in as extradiegetic commentary when Gary jogs down a street lined with cars who cannot drive because of the gas crisis. Jogging, though, is not nearly a dramatic enough description—rather, he is holding his arms out, yelling “It’s the end of the world, Greggo,” as if a prophet or messenger. The exaggeration of the statement doesn’t even feel out of place alongside the scene of these machines we rely on so much suddenly not functioning. The sequence in the film truly captures this crescendoing sense of doom, a crescendo then made audial by the addition of “Life on Mars?” Bowie’s slow build of lyric and melody and volume acts as the perfect scene partner to this dystopian moment. The song may not be explicitly telling the story of war or economic crisis or political instability, but at its heart is the disillusionment caused by the monotony of life, the inability to escape reality. The film then reminds us that this reality is one not simply tinged but controlled by global systems of violence. It is the feeling that nothing makes sense anymore, and that even the idea of “anymore” is just a phantom, because it never did.

While barely noticeable in the film, Paul Revere and the Raiders’s cover of “Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)” is also entangled in this conversation. Put simply, it is a reminder of the violence that has underpinned the American identity from the very beginning, contextualizing our modern imperialism as an extension of Manifest Destiny. However, the song also relates more specifically to “Peace Frog,” which similarly—though less centrally—mentions violence perpetrated against people indigenous to the Americas: “Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding/Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind.”¹⁸ Morrison’s lyrics are more geared toward a personal experience witnessing violence (as speculation surrounding the lyric suggests it stems from a childhood memory of a car crash), but in the company of the greater music-driven commentary, they especially take on this pervasion of violence.¹⁹ These musical connections across the film fashion a sense of concealment, mirroring how, despite its constant presence, the bright and shiny façades of waterbed stores and the endless choices of capitalism veil this violence.

Mixtape #6C: Inherent Vice

While maybe not as immediately obvious as with Boogie Nights, Inherent Vice similarly engages with a period of music history from which its narrative is informed. I’d even argue that the music history being referenced in this trippy neo-noir is uncomplicated—more staunchly at the thematic forefront—in comparison, as Boogie Nights’ focus on the adult film industry ultimately obscures the theoretical “takeaways” one could make on the film’s alignment with disco. With Inherent Vice, the very heart of the film’s narrative is in direct and undisturbed conversation with music history; that is, a story about the 60s being over is a story contained within and chronicled by music.

Goodbye, Hippiedom

There are countless ways Inherent Vice simultaneously mourns and pokes fun at the hippie subculture and its related ideals, using the year 1970 to claim (or forcefully initiate) the official end of such wide-eyed, flower-crowned, ever-stoned nonsense. Doc’s opponents constantly throw around the word “hippie”—namely, the detective “Bigfoot” Bjornsen, whose scathing “Congratulations, hippie scum” in front of a line of police cars in the desert first made it abundantly clear to me what this film was really getting at.  Beyond the vocalized taunts and jokes, though, is a cast of characters all caught in a push-and-pull relationship with hippiedom; each person is either seeking out the vestiges of the hippie life or being reeled away by 70s possession (or both). While Doc spends the film with a strong allegiance to his hippie lifestyle, he is shown now dating Deputy D.A Penny Kimball with her buttoned-up suit jacket, a far cry from the dreamy wisp that is Shasta Fay. These two contrasting romantic partners represent the changing of the decades and, from a bit of a despairing perspective, the inevitability of it all. For if even Doc Sportello and his long, messy hair can find himself having an affair with the establishment, what hope is there for the rest of us? However, their relationship is not necessarily only a concession on Doc’s part; Penny’s desire for the freedom (and drugs) of the hippies complexifies this clash of worlds.

Apart from the music the film features, this moment and its ideological upheaval is reflected in music trends and the shifting artistries of many musicians of the time. This is only natural, as music was a large part of, and communal space for, the hippie subculture; political folk and psychedelia were crucial in defining, leading, and gathering the hippie aesthetic and lifestyle. So, with the end of the 60s and its containment of everything from the Summer of Love to Woodstock to the Manson family, a reaction to hippie music was to be expected. This is not to say that rock didn’t continue building on itself and that the hippie staples of the 60s didn’t continue to be driving inspirations, but that disillusionment with the characteristic optimism and sentimentality of the hippies found its way into rock music. The Who’s famous “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” released in 1971, greatly captures this sentiment: “We were liberated from the fold, that’s all/And the world looks just the same/And history ain’t changed./’Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war.”²⁰

These lyrics, along with the rest of the song, reflect a loss of hope in one’s ability to enact change beyond their immediate and like-minded communities. An NPR review of Inherent Vice speaks to this disillusionment within the context of the beach community in the film: “Based on a 2009 novel by Thomas Pynchon, the action — an endless round of one step forward, two steps back, and wilting in place — rambles along in one of the countless beach towns that spread along the coast of Los Angeles. Such places, Manhattan or Redondo or Huntington Beach, became a haven for a backwash of refugees from a counterculture that promised freedom and creativity, then collapsed into apathy, disillusion and paranoia.”²¹ Of course, there is also a lot to be said for the white, middle-class foundation of the hippie movement and the aspect of performance in choosing this lifestyle that ultimately led to the birth of the yuppies. In a less directly political sense, David Bowie’s artistic trajectory also speaks to changing musical sentiments around the turn of the decade. Some of his earlier, lesser-known work in the mid-late 60s had a more sentimental air and was obviously Beatles-inspired lyrically. By the early 70s, though, Bowie’s music and aesthetic veered towards a rejection of the 60s—his whimsy suddenly more celestial than small town.

While Inherent Vice engages this history solely by virtue of its narrative, the soundtrack helps to flesh out the hippie nature of the film and its discussion of a changing time. First, the rock subgenre with the most recurrence is surf rock, which has intrinsic ties to the hippie movement geographically, aesthetically, and ideologically. Inherent Vice is also the only film out of the triad which features surf rock, which drastically differentiates its sound from that of the later 70s Boogie Nights and less distinctly subcultural Licorice Pizza. Especially considering the specificity of these tracks being instrumental surf rock, their use accentuates the unreality of the film via the experimental instrumentation meant to invoke the sounds of waves.

Neil Young’s “Journey Through the Past” is the individual song most clearly in conversation with this shift in hippie culture. The song plays over a romantic flashback with Doc and Shasta running through a rain-soaked LA after a Ouija board told them where to find weed—an almost satirical “Day in the Life of a Hippie,” though I’m sure staunchly in the realm of reality. There are so many levels to this song’s engagement in the film with time and demise and nostalgia that it is almost a microcosm of the whole narrative. It opens with the lyrics, “When the winter rains come pourin’ down/On that new home of mine/Will you think of me and wonder if I’m fine?/Will your restless heart come back to mine/On a journey through the past?”²² The song is a straightforward, in-your-face (as folk tends to be) plea to be remembered; it doesn’t help that Young’s raspy but gentle voice practically bleeds vulnerability. The scene, in turn, abandons the film’s sharply humorous approach to social commentary and fully succumbs to sweet, sentimental sadness.

Young was also explicit inspiration for Doc’s costuming throughout the film: “Bridges so [sic] in him something of a ‘Neil Young iconoclast—scruffy, laidback, a bit frayed and almost accidentally cool,’ as the production notes have it. Bridges said Young’s influence ran through all of Phoenix’s costumes. ‘Many times when I needed an idea for Doc I would look at Neil’s choices during that era and often find a unique period look that was great then and still looks great today,’ he said.”²³ This connection between Young and Doc further solidifies the significant role this song plays in the film’s narrative development.

Certain photos of Neil Young are so similar to Doc that it feels like you are just looking at a shot from the film. For photo references, see Henry Diltz’ photographs of Young, or this image from Discog’s entry on Yesteryear Of The Horse.

An Experimentation with Reality

In addition to the lyrical importance of “Journey Through the Past,” the song plays a further role in the film’s conversation about time as fluctuating and unmooring. In what does feel like a joke, somewhat undermining the uncomplicated nostalgia I claimed earlier, the song came out two years after the film takes place. Given the title and scene placement of the song, this anachronism is a reminder that the past is over, and that this flashback is more ghost than human in the present the characters find themselves in.

Throughout the film, there are a couple of other times in which the soundtrack contributes to a dissolution of reality. Inherent Vice, out of this triad, is the film with the most transdiegetic tracks. Moments like this blur the line between the world of the film and the world of the audience. Therefore, the “reality” of the film is being tampered with—disrupted, reflecting the paranoia and mass-conspiracy of the plot. Similarly, it further entangles the musical choices in the dream-like, drug-induced atmosphere. There is an erosion of reality happening, much like the erosion of the hippies’ subcultural ideals; while playful and humorous, the unreality ultimately ends up just feeling macabre. We always knew everything would fall apart, though: “How the hope of the 1960s blinkered out is right there in the title: inherent vice is a legal term that means everything contains the seeds of its own downfall.”²⁴

Conclusion

Disco was commercialized and US imperialism is shrouded in its mists and all along The Who was right: we keep getting fooled again. However, that is only the dourest of messages to take away from this. Remember, just like in the end of PTA’s films, there is a whole world of people connected by their humanity and their complexity and their shared loneliness—and, maybe (just maybe), a fighting spirit. There are still people writing political folk songs, even if Woodstock is in the past. There are more people than ever who recognize the inhumanity in the world. There are queer people dancing more visibly than they have ever been allowed. Ultimately, the goal of this project was to highlight music as a foundational aspect of humanity, not just filmmaking. By understanding what music can offer a film—from sonic effect to cultural context—it becomes clear how inextricable music is from the collective experiences of daily life; suddenly, you aren’t just talking about a car radio in 1970s LA, but about the whole span of American history and those who lived it.

Bibliography

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Notes