Anticipating Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza

"Life On Mars" was prominently placed in Life Aquatic, which might have been where movie people rediscovered it.

Oh, and before that it was in some versions of Breaking The Waves.

Was it a cover in Life Aquatic? I think it's Breaking the Waves I'm thinking of.

I think it had both the original and a cover

saw this in 70mm today. the first scene completely enthralled me, though I felt the middle bits were a little hit or miss (hit: bradley cooper sideplot, benny safdie sideplot; miss: sean penn sideplot). I mostly thought the music worked. honestly I was blown away by haim and hoffman

Didn't realize that was Benny Safdie (I mean, I'd never even seen him before, not that didn't make the connection).

have you seen GOOD TIME?

Nope. Think I was one of the few naysayers on Uncut Gems here.

oh, boo. boo!

I posted this in the wrong thread a few weeks back but:

speaking to the cooper performace, guy was COMEDY ACTING in a v try hard way b/w Penn and Waits scene it became a "here's this scene with a guest star in a wig!!! Now here's this scene with a guest star in a wig!" movie for a sec. like we get it you have famous friends, pta.

Meaning I thought Cooper was painfully unfunny and the " StreiSAND like sand on a beach" scene was probs good on paper but very level 1 ucb sketch class on celluloid

I often have that problem with Coop, but here PTA asked him to give a SNL skit performance, and Coop did and he was fine.

I don't know PTA asked him, of course, but the supporting performances are at that level -- except Tom Waits, who creates his own reality vector.

haven't seen the film yet but didnt cooper have to deal irl with the dude he's playing when he made a star is born

Man I love so many of PTA’s films but this does not sound promising at all.

To me, the best thing about Paul Thomas Anderson is that his dad was Ghoulardi.

It's fin *shrug*

fine too

are haim actors now and not going to make any more music

i thought alana was really good in this for what it's worth

haven't seen the film yet but didnt cooper have to deal irl with the dude he's playing when he made a star is born

He mentioned this on Colbert last night, saying he was ultimately grateful to Peters because he waived some rights he had over the ASIB property, which allowed Cooper to do the remake with the budget he had without having to pay Peters (upfront, I imagine).

Yeah, there's a new rule in Hollywood that once you act you can't make any more music. Poor Ariana Grande gave all that up for Don't Look Up.

i liked the film, but the discourse about it makes me want to dig in my heels and defend it from people who have never heard the word "lolita"

Alana H earns the acclaim; her un-actressy manner is most charming.

^ this and the supporting performances are at that level — all the Hollywoody people are magnificent slabs of ham (eg “Peters”, Waits, Penn, abusive older actress, Frasier’s agent as an agent), which not only underscores the more naturalistic perfs by the leads, it unsubtly emphasises how much fulfillment both Gary and Alana find in other work, without ever showing them make any decision to stop pursuing acting.

(In the same way, Anderson and Safdie imply that Wachs is entirely sincere about his career aims.)

one thing i thought was fun about the movie was the fact that every supporting character instantly knew gary and alana by name

All the sequences of Gary lolloping through the streets like a huge, zitty Andrex puppy made me somehow think of Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha, and occurred to me that LP is a quixotic attempt to contrive a manic pixie dreamboy, whose daft ebullience and charm are *so refreshing* compared to the maniacs, sleazebags and cynical careerists who seemingly comprise the adult male LA population of the movie. Except Gary seems like a kind of apprentice sleazebag himself, trying to cop off with any available hotpants chick as soon as the opportunity arises :/

yah gary reminded me of all the assholes i had to grow up around in the valley that lived in their little rich kid bubble and dgaf. pta was probs like this as he decided to cast exactly zero latinos in a movie about the goddam san fernando valley in the 70s lol.

sorry i know i h8 this movie for PERSONAL reasons lol. those dolly shots are beautiful though!

I had a totally different reaction to the cooper/waits/penn bit of the film, it was a tonal shift but I felt it as a move into inherent vice mode, that sense of slippage: the audition into the wait, what are you even saying restaurant scene into the stunt; the whole truck sequence which was exhilarating to me. It felt very bracketed from the rest of the film, which I also mostly loved

I never saw the trailer or anything about the film so I had no idea that the whole of haim was in this until the credits - Alana Haim was amazing imo!

Anderson is good at these supremely awkward, unhealthy relationships I would say that the “happy” ending of this pairs with that of phantom thread but that one has a better outlook

The gag of the restaurant owner and his wives felt like 70s humour, as in a joke that would actually be in a 70s film, and was a huge bum note

Oh also the agent - idk that actor but omg yes indulge that face for many seconds that is why I pay to look at a large screen

I don't get the whole criticism that PTA was trying to make these two "good/cool/refreshing manic pixie dreamboy" people. They both seem like different types of lost weirdos, in two different stages of lost weirdoness

Like it's a dogged teenage dreamer/schemer who's so wrapped up in his own goals that he hurts other people and a 20-something who everyone agrees is beautiful but has no real skills/desires/direction so she falls in with a bunch of teenagers. They're both kind of fuckup messes in different ways

alana's character in particular seemed to have an incredibly low opinion of herself, craving validation in the form of male attention. she was intensely flirtatious with everyone she interacted with, so of course she's more likely to entertain gary's puppy dog advances way longer than an emotionally mature woman of her age might have. alana haim's natural ebullience hides that a bit, and it's probably why annoying internet people are complaining because the film didn't explicitly spell out "this relationship is unhealthy and weird"

They are both fuck-ups, but the whole mise en scene of the movie views them as so much more adorkable than say Woodcock and Alma, cos PTA is shamelessly making a film with his buddies about his own childhood. It's indulgence - tho not without its charms - rather than nuance.

Not knowing anything about Anderson’s childhood I def got that the whole thing was inflected with fondness but still got nuance from the relationships - as I say the ending in particular felt heavily ambiguous to me

All the sequences of Gary lolloping through the streets like a huge, zitty Andrex puppy made me somehow think of Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha, and occurred to me that LP is a quixotic attempt to contrive a manic pixie dreamboy, whose daft ebullience and charm are *so refreshing* compared to the maniacs, sleazebags and cynical careerists who seemingly comprise the adult male LA population of the movie. Except Gary seems like a kind of apprentice sleazebag himself, trying to cop off with any available hotpants chick as soon as the opportunity arises :/

― Piedie Gimbel, Wednesday, January 12, 2022 1:07 PM (three hours ago)

FRANCES HA is my favorite film of the 2010s and I see where you’re going with this, but gary and frances are totally different characters — there is an innocence in frances, who seems younger than her age, that the rakish wannabe gary (who seems older) lacks. 7w6 vs 7w8 stuff ultimately

some of the reactions to this — lolita, really? — are so predictably bourgeois… anyway I really enjoyed this review I saw on letterboxd:

https://boxd.it/2pUpCn

otm

I'll admit that much of my wincing whenever Gary appeared rested with my thinking Hoffmann too irritating a screen presence; he doesn't have an actor's training in modulating his effects on audience. Half the time I couldn't figure out why or how a teen like him got money for his ventures.

otoh Haim I believed. She differs from Frances in her wariness; in her eyes I can see worry if not anxiety about where her life will go. With Frances, though, I can see her happily driving Haim's moving truck backward if it means she can preserve her youthful insouciance forever.

and if it means she can hang with Benji and Sophie forever too

lolita, really?

nah i wasn't comparing this to lolita, but more commenting on the annoying tendency of some to proclaim "this film has an inappropriate relationship that it doesn't condemn and is therefore problematic" as if that's the end of critical discussion and not an extension of a conversation that's been happening forever.

voodoo that wasn’t directed at you of course, completely agree w/ that

why is the only good film criticism happening for free on letterboxd

or here

I really love that review, it’s such a sensitive read

yes. thank you for that.

showing my ass here maybe but brody also gave a rapturous review

Half the time I couldn't figure out why or how a teen like him got money for his ventures.

This seemed very clear: he made money from his acting, his mother was his manager, and they collaborated on the PR business as an offshoot of that. (Her work with hospitality venues in other states presumably came first, not that the Vegas deal was a client of Gary's, but either way it shows how the pair were suited for promoting local restaurants.)

Presumably she loosened the purse-strings enough for him to sell a handful of water beds with no more cost than buying some big balloons. His demonstrated schmoozing abilities helped him move enough at swap meets and with radio reads to require the call centre staff (added at their existing office?). That did well enough that they added frames and a retail space. The second he found out there was going to be a supply issue, he dropped 100% of the costs of electricity and payroll, and moved to liquidating inventory to clients who could pay for a full installation, not $39.95 shipped. They still had 10 months or so on the lease for that storefront, so he used it again on his next scheme, which was surefire enough that Mom let him put more of the waterbed profits into the lighting.

holy shit -- you took good notes!

(The scene at the radio station is essentially the lynchpin that the cyclical relationship hangs on; Alana seems so happy in that moment to be part of Gary's life, a scheme they worked on together going right ...but the scheme was his idea, not something that drives her)

wins' highlighting of the tonal shift reminds me how episodic the film is, through the Waits/Penn sequence is the only one to change visual style to match: most of the "chapters" would feel self-contained and tonally distinct if broken up with title cards. a lot of time gets elided in the movie!

nearly all PTA's films are funny, but I don't think I've ever GOLed as much in any of them previously btw