Entertainment Weekly has our first look at Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin in Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice. Based on Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel, the movie is described as a 'psychedelic crime romp'.

Josh Brolin is playing a hippie-hating LAPD detective named Christian 'Bigfoot' Bjornson who is embroiled in a series of subplots involving conspiracies, fake deaths, heroin dealers and pimps. Joaquin Phoenix is a pot smoking private eye named Larry 'Doc' Sportello, who becomes involved in the case of a missing surfer girl's boyfriend. Here, we see 'Bigfoot' and 'Doc' meeting in a diner, where the P.I. is obviously infatuated with Bjornson's Joe Friday buzz cut

Inherent Vice Photo

Katherine Waterston, who plays the surfing femme fatale with the missing boyfriend, had this to say about working with Paul Thomas Anderson on Inherent Vice:

"With Paul, he's interested in what might happen, not what should happen. He doesn't walk onto set with a clear goal. That can be...surprising. It didn't feel chaotic; it felt thrilling. The set felt really vital. Like you are going into a question together."

Josh Brolin talked about his freedom in voicing his opinion to the direct, which sometimes doesn't go over well on a movie set. Here, it seemed to be par for the course:

"With this [film], there was a lack of pretense-a really strange lack of pretense. When something isn't working, you can say, 'This feels like a turd. Let's cut the middle three pages. I'll try to improvise and provide a bridge. How about some pancakes?'"

When asked about the pancakes, the actor replied:

"I'm not joking about the pancakes. Many, many pancakes. By the end of the day, you're shaking so much because you've eaten so many pancakes, you know you're going to be diabetic in the next 24 hours."

Another unidentified piece of food plays an equally important role, but Josh Brolin wouldn't exactly name what it was:

"A piece of fruit plays a major role. It's frozen. And it's my friend. Even talking about it now is making me chuckle... It's Cirque du Soleil more than pretentious filmmaking."