Anticipating Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza

My kinda review tbh ^

Hope to watch it this weekend

The age gap discourse is dumb because it doesn't acknowledge how the dynamics actually play out onscreen.

I don't think that the soundtrack does the heavy lifting but I do think the fetischistic evocation of a bygone era - which includes the soundtrack sure but also production design and plot points - does. It's almost like a video game, where so much of the appeal is allowing you to walk within a particular world. So Evan I think your about the 70's movie trope issues are valid, but I do think it's that at its highest possible level.

That being said, it's also just funny! The crazy business ideas, the weird showbiz kid behaviours, that amazing scene with Sean Penn and Tom Waits (even tho casting Penn in the first place should be a bigger point of problematic contention than age gap and supposed racism both).

A friend and I are going to do a Zoomcast on this and Zola next week, so I went to see it a second time tonight. Had two deer cross in front of me on the way home, one right after the other; I almost died for a PTA film.

It just seemed longer this time--there was a point where I thought, "Jesus, there's still Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, and the politician to go." I think the best thing about it is the ending, which is the kind of storybook thing I tend to fall for. I think the worst thing is the whole Bradley Cooper detour, which seemed pointless.

No one's mentioned John C. Reilly under the Herman Munster makeup--maybe it's too obvious, but I got a kick out of recognizing the voice.

Is Lucy Doolittle literally supposed to be Lucille Ball, or is she a composite? The song her troupe sings is "Yours, Mine and Ours."

hmm it seems as if twitter has stumbled upon the john michael higgins scene from this film

nah people noticed that a long time ago. it's the reason I'm uninterested in seeing the movie, and I consider myself a PTA fan otherwise. uninterested in seeing white guy doing an Asian accent whether he's the putative target of the joke of not, I don't really need white guys appointing themselves the makers of that joke.

I have really enjoyed in discussions with friends about it the occasional "it's only one scene!" though, like a small bite of shit doesn't spoil the beautiful auteur filet mignon

besides which it's two scenes

I miss Morbs for what he might say at this point

same

Not because he’d be right, obv. But better he say it than me, even more obv.

Finally saw this last night, I liked it way more than I thought I otherwise might. The Higgins' scenes were definitely uncomfortable and unnecessary. Like I imagine the idea was to show how this kid had some less than savory people to lean on with his unorthodox upbringing but feel like it could have been accomplished in a less awful way.

I will say I agree with Brad's (and someone else's, tbf) take on the almost magical realism of the Penn/Waits/Cooper detour. It felt like a less malicious turn of the Alfred Molina scene in Boogie Nights in the whole, "can you believe these batshit Hollywood people" kind of way. It was cartoonish to heighten the force with which Alana had been wrested from her day-to-day malaise into an entirely different universe that was overlaid on the one she usually experienced. In the comedown from this is when she connected with the political thing and found a direction.

I miss Morbs for what he might say at this point

I don't remember if Morbs was pro or con PTA but I think we definitely would have butted heads about it. Still so sad he's gone.

I rescreened before it left cinemas, and on second pass the Higgins character’s idiocy definitely seemed intended to show the level of client Gary could attract as a teenager (and his mom’s solo clients clearly a separate thing). One capable, hard-working bar/restrauteur, and one clueless oaf with a shiny white smile. Though both of them are sincere in their belief in Gary, respectful as well as indulgent!

Also cf my post about his jobs upthread, the waterbed call center is indeed the same one-room office as the PR company - no extra commitment to expenditure there.

regardless of the particular merits of that scene, the moralistic discourse surrounding this film in general has bummed me out

showing a racist person makes a movie racist.

It's not that as much as it is, if you get racist shit directed at you in your actual life, how much of it do you also want to watch in your entertainment?

I think part of what's in play here is that the movie is, despite being a period piece, very much a movie-made-today. So even if, to give PTA the benefit of the doubt, he was using a trope/joke that would've been absolutely of the movie's time period, it still cuts differently than finding a similar scene in a Hollywood movie made in 1971.

(I do think PTA was clumsily trying to introduce it as something that would've just been part of the fabric of that era. But if the movie feels like a 2021 movie in nearly every other regard, is there an expectation that the movie reflect our supposed evolution on these matters? Probably yes.)

I really don't understand where the disconnect is happening. Everyone got what they wanted: PTA made his movie and it got widely distributed. People who thought that part was racist got to air their complaints.

It's like arguing over Rotten Tomatoes scores at this point or writing PTA fan-fiction to own Twitter users. Even in the criticism I've seen, it's not like saying the pinball movie is Birth of a Nation

People interpret movies differently! That's OK!

I'm a big fan of the movie but wholeheartedly agree it was completely unnecessary to the fabric of the film. It was super jarring, though probably less because I knew about it in advance. If I didn't know about it, it probably would've been angering because it seems so sudden, stupid and hateful? But yeah, I get the intent of it.

Can't hate on anyone who considered this a brickstop. I guess I'm lucky that all the idiots I've met who spoke in a racist accent were just traditionally racist as compared to... whatever this is supposed to be

...and it wasn't half as funny as Josh Brolin's "MOTO PANCAKU!" bit from Inherent Vice, so this is definitely some kind of weird, specific bugbear for PTA

regardless of the particular merits of that scene, the moralistic discourse surrounding this film in general has bummed me out

like chinese american in a theater full of laughing whites bummed?

Chinese?

did the scene draw laughs? not at my showing.

oops japanese! i jk but yah my showing had lotsa laffs

lol….

the first instance drew a genuine, completely bewildered laugh from me. as it went on, and the second time around, it was more just cringey

I felt like it took the film like 15 minutes to get the audience back at my Oakland screening. It was a big mood killer.

I'd already read Walter Chaw's one-star review at that point so I was anticipating that scene tbh.

Finally read that review and it’s very OTM and I do not lament the moralistic tone of the discourse, and also I think Licorice Pizza is probably one of PTA’s two or three best movies. Lean into the cognitive dissonance, et al.

^otm

no laughs at that line when I saw it, just people looking understandably uncomfortable, which I assumed was the desired effect.

It’s based on a real guy who acted like this. If you were aware of it you might think it strange enough to put in a movie you were making about the time period but I agree in execution it goes over like a lead balloon.

I feel like breaking the gag up into two separate scenes made it more confusing and awkward. It takes most of the movie to find out everyone thinks this guy is an asshole.

Did everyone take a fucken poll of the audience after the movie or something to know exactly how everyone in the room felt

I meant everyone he interacted with in the movie

Yeah, I’m just saying more of the “in my screening…” stuff

There was a person in my screening who laughed loudly at the scene under discussion but I feel comfortable thinking that person's an idiot and I'd rather directors didn't tailor their films to idiots.

Same in mine. He made sure to signal the six of us that Xmas morning he found the scene very amusing.

Scene felt consistent with the rest of the movie to me

In terms of moralistic discourse, I was pretty disappointed that PTA gave Sean Penn a job. He's good in it and everything but.

Finally watched this last night, was kind of disappointed. Felt like the movie never really lifted off. I think making it ultimately about the dynamic between the two of them was limiting, for a while I was interested in the possibility of it being about the two of them kind of learning from each other but going their own ways, which would have been less predictable and awkward. Some very good scenes, plus obviously the bad/miscued racist scenes, decent use of music (tho yes "Life on Mars" very much needs to be for another decade or two), he's a stylish filmmaker. A solid 3 out of 5 for me, like some of the other PTAs I haven't fully connected with (e.g., The Master, Punch Drunk Love).

(As a study of a somewhat aimless young woman trying to sort herself out, I found it less engaging than The Worst Person in the World, which we happened to watch the night before.)

Sorry, should say "Life on Mars" needs to be retired for another decade or two, as a soundtrack reference point.

Yes. Think the first and maybe last time I liked it in a soundtrack was Breaking the Waves although I have since gone off that movie for some reason.

Did like the television show though.

I liked the show too. (The original version anyway, never saw the U.S. remake.) But surely that should have been enough of the song as soundtrack material.

Yes, exactly. Never watched the US version either, maybe it had an intriguing casting choice though, the guy from HBO's Rome iirc.

Ha, no, not at all, not sure what I was thinking, except there was an episode of Grey's Anatomy called "Life On Mars?" and he was in that, not that I was aware of that show too much.

Saw John Michael Higgins in this and thought, how did they resurrect Murray Hamilton?

Hadn't thought about that--absolutely, that's Murray Hamilton all the way.

kinda eerie