Coffee and Noir: INHERENT VICE
every instance of coffee in noir: 039
You learn a lot about a noir character by their coffee: sugar? cream? more whiskey than caffeine?
I’m cataloging every noir scene where coffee plays a role — rote and ritual, soul-dark or cream and sugar, served from dingy diners to shiny penthouses.
It’s fitting a film which puts us fully in the actual feeling of a PI’s drug-laced world would involve the most popular drug in the world (and the one you can always show no matter how strict the production code!): coffee.
Doc’s everpresent weed-and-anything-else-handy habit may drive his need and desire for consumption of constant uppers.
But coffee is also an easy, accessible way to chat people up: the waiter at the local cafe has a tip he delivers along with a bottomless refill.
Coffee lubricates (or at least attempts to) other social and investigative interactions containing various amounts of friendliness.
You can’t — for social reasons, but also monetary and continued-existence reasons — snort a line every single time you want to avoid eye contact, or try to cover up your facial expression, or need time to consider your response . . .
but you can take a sip of coffee, indefinitely nursing that low-impact buzz.