Empire's Damon Wise is currently at the Venice Film Festival, and it's there that he spoke to Paul Thomas Anderson about his latest film, The Master, as well as his next project, Inherent Vice.

Based on the Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name, it's a 1970s Californian detective story that sees a stoner private eye called Larry "Doc" Sportello helping a former lover with an intriguing and ever-so-complicated, shaggy-dog-story of a case involving infidelity, mental institutions and policemen called "Bigfoot".

Anderson describes it as being "like a Cheech and Chong movie. [Adapting Pychon's work is] just gonna be great and, hopefully, fun."

But although Anderson has been working on bringing the Gravity Rainbow author's most accessible work to the big screen for several years, it's not clear exactly when it will happen: “Hopefully not long. I'd like to have a few years of being more productive. But we'll see.”

As for the difficulty in adapting the reclusive writer's novel, Anderson admits it's not going to be easy. “There's so much. But it's fun too, be because they're his words, and... it's like taking your dad's car for a ride, y'know?”

Does this mean Anderson has met the famously publicity-shy author yet? "If I told you I'd have to kill you. Because Thomas Pynchon... You know who he is? Terry Malick.”

Remember, you heard it here first. The Master is in British cinemas November 9, with Inherent Vice hopefully to follow not too many months later.