Anticipating Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza

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

(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