Anticipating Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza

That’s the title. Guessing we’ll have a trailer ASAP.

For context:

Ad for the record store Licorice Pizza, Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1983. On sale for $1 off: @duranduran's 'Rio,' plus hot new albums by David Bowie, Thomas Dolby and Bob Seger. pic.twitter.com/z7bHfCy1mP

— Annie Zaleski (@anniezaleski) September 10, 2021

Oh yeah, I remember them, maaan: heyday was really more the vinyl heyday, the late 60s,70s, early 80s---by mid-80s, video rental got to be more of a profit leader, as noted here, w backstory of LP: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-04-23-fi-1244-story.html

Though of course, after video killed the radio star, it reanimated some of 'em, like Talking Heads, abd Bowie, for a while and birthed new radio-via-video stars--before MTV and VH-1 went all "reality"--so yeah, if this is set in 80s, could still be musically vibrant.

Phone rip of the still-not online trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0L6Go4rWw4

this feels like P.T. Anderson doing Wes Anderson, something a little too cutesy about it all, and I'm really done with "Life On Mars" in movie soundtracks.

Kind of came off to me like a mix of Anderson's own style and a Linklater-esque hangout flick.

Co-sign on "Life On Mars", although perhaps they should have gone extra-meta and used the Streisand version.

If I didn't know it was PTA I would have guessed that Linklater had been watching Coen Bros movies, or vice versa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofnXPwUPENo

Proper trailer.

starring alana haim????? wow

this shit looks amazing

i'm guessing cooper hoffman is philip seymour's son

I actually am really excited about this now~~!!!

Choice of Life on Mars was a downer indeed but trailers are trailers, not going to read too much into one*

* I would be reading loads into it if it excited me.

The two leads looked totally different to me in every scene!

Reaction split along the lines of "Looks like Almost Famous - can't wait!" and "Looks like Almost Famous - how unoriginal!"

The longer this guy's career drags on the more convinced I am that his only two good movies are Hard Eight and The Master. This new one could not be more Not For Me unless it was a puppet musical.

Soon to be a campus/sleepover double feature with Lady Bird.

xp I’m convinced The Master and Hard Eight are his two worst films

The title may be a nod to Diane Kurys' Peppermint Soda (never seen it, but supposedly very good)...Trailer is promising--happy he's not in England 50 years ago--song choice could have been more imaginative.

i remember the phantom thread thread opening with a bunch of ilxors crowing "this looks boring" after watching the trailer :)

The title may be a nod to Diane Kurys' Peppermint Soda

Licorice Pizza was a 70s/early 80s West Coast record store chain.

song choice could have been more imaginative

All Streisand or gtfo...

looking forward to P.T. Anderson's Avenue Q now

The stills look like a gritty reboot of Dazed & Confused.

this can only be objectively good if she leaves him in the end

The Bowie song is doing 95% of the emotional labour in this trailer, still curious about the film.

The Master is incredible, WTF. Did not like The Phantom Thread at the time but my memories of it have softened.

the master is truly awesome

it is, and i am pumped about this new one, it looks fantastic

Now *this* is how you make a trailer. Gets your attention, bits of stuff here and there, but no idea what the plot is and don't feel like anything has been ruined or spoiled.

agree though, xp, that having Life on Mars? as the soundtrack to the trailer helps a lot.

however, imo you have to have some wonderful footage/performances to be able to hang with Life on Mars and not get embarrassed, so i take this as a good sign

Deleted Jonny Greenwood tweet:

Oh it’s a lovely film. Only wrote a couple of cues for it - the score is all 70’s source cues (and all the better for that) - you’re all in for a giant PTA-shaped treat…

feels more like adventureland than dazed and confused to me, but with added tom waits so that's cool

i know that they're both of a similar cloth.

anyway, i'm looking forward to pta's linklater film!

I'm very territorial when it comes to '70s' soundtracks. I'm wildly looking forward to the music here (looks like his first full-out pop movie since Boogie Nights), and I know I'll be excessively critical if it doesn't comport to how I, clemenza, think everything should have been done.

It's funny, this looks much more like Boogie Nights-meets-Dazed and Confused than anything else to me.

I also haven't seen any of his more recent movies, tbh, because I stopped going to the movies for more than a decade.

gonna watch the hell outta this

kinda looks like Bradley Cooper learned to smash car windows from Frank Mackey

This looks like it's probably enjoyable but the trailer was obnoxiously trailery

i love this already GIVE IT TO ME

I guess it's hilarious that Cooper's in the role of Streisand's boyfriend after his turn in A Star is Born

Not to be a buzzkill because it generally looks great and I'm excited to see it, but am I the only one slightly weirded out by 29-year-old Alana Haim's love interest being 17-year-old Cooper Hoffman in Licorice Pizza?

— Bonnie Stiernberg (@aahrealbonsters) September 28, 2021

are people utterly unable to detect subtext anymore?

people don't know how to watch things

They could swap this trailer out for the one for the Sopranos prequel and no one would notice

huh?

I think that was meant to be supporting evidence for Brad's assertion

Oh that makes sense, I read it as a dismissive thing about it being another period piece with an actor's kid.

Awards Blogger/Movie Lefsetz Jeffrey Wells serves up the hot takes re: the casting of Alana Haim

https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2021/09/i-say-again/

FWIW, up until now I didn't know how old she is, but have people suddenly forgotten that actors (particularly those playing young folks) aren't playing their exact ages most of the time. I can certainly buy her playing younger, definitely either side of 20, which is what it looks like she's doing in the film.

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

(Audition) "JMH, we just want you to say one word for us. Just one word...Are you listening? 'Plastics.'"

Nailed it, got the part.

(Audition continues) "That was good...now try giving it a Japanese-American spin, only pretend it's like, 1957, instead of 1975."

"Big Mickey Rooney energy..."

"Mrs. Gorightree!"

Licorice Pizza (2021) Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson pic.twitter.com/ISY764JDs2

— mad men pics (@madmenpics) March 22, 2022

So. Much. Running.

I looked it at like - hey, they took all the running from that one scene in Punch Drunk Love and spread it out this time

it was the '70s, you had to run to get to places fast

It's the hot new trend dontchaknow

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/feb/07/from-spencer-to-licorice-pizza-why-are-women-suddenly-running-on-film

I finally saw this tonight

The age difference didn’t bother me here because I think it was the point of the characters - Alana is 25 and just kinda aimless & paddling in the shallow end, while Gary is 15 and harnessing every single one of his means & wringing every last possibility out of every minute he’s drawing breath, wanting to be something anything now, right now — like they’re both so extended beyond their age expectation in such different directions that they meet in the middle through emotional insecurity & escapist tendencies . she’s mature to a teenager & he’s mature to a 20-something

Haim just crushed it from the off, so perfect & funny & heartbreaking, god I loved her. And Cooper is lovely to watch, he shows so much in his eyes!, lots of real sincerity idk he felt like he really was that striver

the Holden diversion was amazing imo. swept up in a fantasy of a photocopy of Hollywood & drunk washed up old dudes reliving glory days, Haim struggling to parse ~any~ of it, god so funny/sad. I haven’t enjoyed Penn that much in a while

Anyway I loved all of it & I dont think the movie was just about him it was about both of them & i loved all the chapters & side journeys & i could watch it 10 more times

and the soundtrack was VG heaven omg.
James Gang! Wings! PEACE FROG yess.

niiice

👏

A beautifully shot hetero-boy fantasy. I guess I liked it as much as I am capable of liking such things these days.

a handful of really amazing scenes but I did not like this for probably bad boring reasons (same goes for The Master ha ha, still not seen Phantom Thread)

Scrolling through this thread, I'm reminded that there's some audio of Vin Scully in this.

I only barely finished watching this film. The person I saw it with viscerally hated it, saying afterwards that the leads were completely uncharismatic and uninteresting, that the age difference between them was gross, and that the meandering plot was unbearably bad

I appreciated a lot of the details of the story and the appearances not by celebrities but by obscure relatives of celebrities, as well as the music. I will wait a few years and watch it again. In some ways it almost seems like an updated version of Boogie Nights to me

"They're all shits, aren't they?"

Licorice Pizza as a description of a vinyl record and as a title getting at the essence of 1973 is really great

I think I posted in the "puns you took a long time to get" thread about LP, thinking for the longest time that it was just a hippie, weird combination of words thing, like Strawberry Alarm Clock.

seems you haven't gotten "Strawberry Alarm Clock" yet

jk

Ha!