Although we’re sure to be talking about The Master for years and years to come, Paul Thomas Anderson has his eyes set on the future — if the end of the ’60s could be held as such. After facing struggle in nailing down the essential core, an interview with The New York Times (via CigsandRedVines) shows a writer who’s really, finally moved ahead with his own spin on Thomas Pynchon‘s stoner detective novel, Inherent Vice.

Helping him along is what he’d call the “research bible,” a psychedelic ’60s comic strip called The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. The only internet resource we could really track down is this fansite — not much, to be honest — but, from some quick reading, I’ve come to learn that it’s got a strong stoner bent to it — right in the wheelhouse of Inherent Vice. (If you really want to know more about its content, an omnibus volume can be purchased here.) I doubt it’ll be as cartoonish, though some recent comments throw even that into doubt.

But it all comes back to Pynchon, whose work the writer-director admires so greatly that he doesn’t want to make any real deviations. Crafting the script has found Anderson in a position more comparable to “secretary to the author” and “a participant in [Pynchon's] mind” — which, to him, is “no less fun” than making something from the ground up. After telling what were almost wholly original stories his entire career — the only prior adaptation, There Will Be Blood, is barely even one in some traditional sense of the term — having this level of comfort room is allowing him to be “more selfless.”

With “a large stack of pages” on his desk, the plans call for a production start next year, if everything else can go smoothly. (Again, no word on Robert Downey Jr., but I’ll continue to presume he’s still to play Larry “Doc” Sportello.) So that’s, what, just under two years before we get a new Paul Thomas Anderson film? Not bad at all.

What are your thoughts on the process Anderson is undergoing for Inherent Vice?