Title: Licorice Pizza
Rating: 4 Stars
First of all, this film is not about licorice pizza. That sounds gross. Licorice pizza is slang for an LP (get it, LP’s are round like pizza and black like licorice). Licorice Pizza is a local chain of record stores in Los Angeles whose heyday was in the 1970s.
This is a story that evokes a specific time and place. The time is around 1973. The place is San Fernando Valley. Many of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films are set in San Fernando Valley or, more broadly, Southern California (eg Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice).
On picture day at his school, fifteen year old child actor Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) meets twenty-five year old photographer’s assistant Alana Kane (Alana Haim). Very self-confident and mature for a fifteen year old, Gary manages to coerce Alana to meet him for dinner (at Alana’s insistence, only as friends). Even though she is much older, Alana seems a bit adrift and begins to be drawn into Gary’s orbit.
They proceed to have some adventures together. Alana agrees to chaperone Gary on a New York trip for a promotion tour. In auditions, it becomes clear that Gary, tall and large for a fifteen year old, can no longer continue his career as a child actor. Undeterred, he gets into the water bed business. With his brash self confidence, he is a natural salesman. This continues on until the oil crisis of 1973. The crisis destroys the water bed business.
Alana joins a mayoral campaign. While helping Alana film a commercial with the candidate, Gary overhears the candidate say that pinball is on the verge of being legalized. Armed with this inside information, Gary decides that his next venture will be a pinball arcade.
In all of this, there is attraction, jealousy, and tension between Alana and Gary. Is the age difference too much? Does it matter?
Anderson does a great job evoking 1973. I was ten years old then. I remember when water beds were the coolest things in the universe. I had a friend that had a water bed. There was a pinball arcade within walking distance of my house that we loved to hang out at. The settings were all familiar to me. The living rooms and the kitchens were just as I remembered them.
There is strong acting in this film. Both Hoffman and Haim are quite good, which is surprising because this is the acting debut for both of them. In fact, Hoffman wasn’t even considering a career in acting until he was offered this role. Haim is a musician in a band with her sisters. The entire film relies upon the believability of this relationship. Entrusting that to two new actors seems like a serious risk. Be that as it may, it pays off. Hoffman and Haim make the characters interesting and their relationship compelling.
Other actors do strong work here as well. Bradley Cooper plays an over the top Jon Peters that has to be seen to be believed. Apparently Anderson previewed the character with the actual Jon Peters. Peters said that he’s not that crazy but that he definitely would have hit on the girl. Hilariously enough, Anderson wrote that into the scene as well.
Sean Penn plays a character inspired by the actor William Holden, trying to impress the young Alana with his Korean War stories and improvised motorcycle stunts. Tom Waite plays an over the top director (possibly inspired by Sam Peckinpah) that goads Penn into his dangerous stunt.
This really does seem to be a very personal film for Anderson. Cooper Hoffman is the son of a frequent collaborator of Anderson, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. I did not know that going in, but once I learned it, I couldn’t unsee the resemblance, both in appearance and in acting style, between the father and son. Apparently, many of Cooper Hoffman home movies growing up were filmed by Anderson.
Anderson was inspired by an elementary art teacher. Unbelievably, that art teacher is the mother of Alana Haim. In the film, the family scenes of Alana featured her actual sisters and parents.
That’s not the extent of the family connections. Anderson’s daughters also appear in the film. I’m not sure what the connection to Anderson is, but, in another acting debut, Leonard DiCaprio’s father, George, plays a water bed salesmen.
All of these personal connections seemed to give the film an intimate feel. The naturalist acting of Hoffman and Haim made me feel as if I’m actually in the scene watching them as an observer.
All of these things together make Licorice Pizza a well crafted film.
dorkenstein 