Anticipating Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza

Good interview w Anderson on The New Yorker Radio Hour---he knows how to sell it of course, but mainly about backstory of plot and what it's like to direct Hoffman and Haim, both of whom he's known for quite a while---Hoffman's character seems based or fusion of his own persona and that of 15-year-old Anderson, pestering and then (as he remembers it) bonding with a couple of his sister's friends (18, 19, had cars omg, though of course Haim is still older)https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL2ZlZWRzLndueWMub3JnL25ld3lvcmtlcnJhZGlvaG91cg/episode/ZTg4MDMyOWEtY2M5ZC00ZDRkLThhMz

Oops--not on there yet, sorry.

It's playing now (while I'm signed in to Google, haven't tried otherwise)

Best movie of the year, ridiculously good

Dang, and I was looking forward to this one too.

Lol

I don't know what to think, a promising sign. The time line confused me: Gary's a high schooler who in the course of the film opens a water bed store and pinball joint? Alana Haim's a natural, though, and those tracking shots adore her. Most tolerable Bradley Cooper work in a long time -- I hope Babs was thrilled.

I can tell you I don't care much for the Valentine character and Hoffman performance, especially PTA's insistence that we adore him. The ending irritated the fuck outta me.

So maybe I didn't like the film after all.

That we adore Hoffman or Valentine?

both!

Ah, I don’t think the character was supposed to be adored! I got Max Fischer vibes.

Honest to god, the whole film I thought I was watching Gandolfini's son in the lead role...I liked the ending--a Google search on the film turns up a piece complaining about the ending; didn't read it, baffled as to what they wanted--liked the restaurant scene with the closeted mayoral candidate, and the music was better than I expected from the advance song list (without ever being outstanding). And that's about it, I'm sorry to say--and the trailer had me in a very receptive frame of mind. Without going on about specific scenes that dragged on forever, I'll just sum up by saying the two leads fell woefully short for me, and the marquee cameos weren't much better. (Embarrassed to say I didn't recognize Penn for the first couple of minutes.)

Minor thing: Vin Scully on the radio, post-season underway, making reference to Garvey's 111 RBI and Jimmy Wynn's 108 for the season. The first isn't especially helpful in ID'ing the moment, but the second's automatic: October 1974, Wynn's one great year with the Dodgers. That's early on; much later in the film, Nixon's still president, two months after he would have resigned. I cut films a lot of slack with regards to music--if you need to cheat to work a specific song in, like "Come Sail Away" in The Virgin Suicides, cheat away, it's worth it--but I don't know, that felt sloppy. Of no consequence whatsoever, just the kind I thing I might not have noticed in a better film.

Two obvious homages: the cherry bomb and American Graffiti, and--I think--Taxi Driver with the lurking weirdo outside the campaign headquarters.

My only real problem with the music was “Life on Mars”

I didn't mind it, but it is a little familiar, and was better in the trailer. (There's another film that used it very prominently in the past few years...I thought maybe The Martian, but that was "Starman.") What I liked: Sonny & Cher, Mason Williams, Clarence Carter, and "Let Me Roll It," and I thought "Peace Frog" worked surprisingly well. Major sin: burying "I Saw the Light."

"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.