Licorice Pizza: Paul Thomas Anderson is a good history teacher (through his screenplays)
Licorice Pizza is the new eclectic period comedy by Paul Thomas Anderson, the 'other' Anderson (remember 'There Will Be Blood' in 2007, with its invocation of the Brahms Violin Concerto in the closing credits!)
The film opens innocently enough with a scene in 1973 in the Valley (San Fernando) when a 15-year old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) hits on mid-twentish photographer Alana Kane (Alana Kaim) on a walk. Automatically, I thought, this film could go into legally dangerous territory. It properly stays on the edge. Gary looks a bit pudgy and physically unimpressive, as an actor, although in the film he is surrounded by young, fit, clean-cut teen boys. But he is socially aggressive and forcefully charismatic, if unwelcomely so.
Gary starts a waterbed company at about his 16th birthday. (No matter, Max Reisinger on YouTube, who is quite deservedly charismatic, had started Perspectopia then and even advertised it in Costa Rica, according to his Jan 2, 2020 post which you can look up.) Gary, in his own way, is quite socially matuere and combative. He gets flown to NYC to be in a theater piece called something like 'Under One Roof' which seems to celebrate large families.
Gary builds his business in the Valley with the usually aggressive telemarketing and phone bank and big talk operations that would be all the rage before the Internet came. He gets into situations, like one where Alana makes a very startling remark about circumcision, a half hour into the movie. It's incorrect; in the past, many non-Jews were circumcised as routine. Today there are protests against the practice, like at gay pride.
Complications come by, all right. Gary seems to be a problem for businessman Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper, with chest hair artificially enhanced), well, because Jon is Alana's real boyfriend (obviously, from looks, of more than legal age). Well, Gary stays in the bouse and brings up one of the waterbeds. Then he leaves and backs a truck down the hill in the gas shortage (we'll come to that). The film does not show the flooding of the house, but it should have (maybe a deleted scene for the DVD?)
The last third of the film is taking place during period of gas lines which mostly happened in early 1974. I actually remember Nixon's speech listening to it in a hotel room in 1973 when he said 'we may have to ration gasoline'. This all stemmed from the Arab Oil Embargo, which I learned about on a Saturday night when arriving at the Ninth Street Center in NYC after a Friday night gay camping trip in High Point State Park in New Jersey. It was finally lifted in April 1974 when 'they got the price up'. It was a threat to the geographical mobility I needed during my own 'second coming' as I describe in my own books. There was a smaller crisis in 1979 associated with the hostages in Iran. Few people remember these today.
Gary and Alana evolve into true business partners, and try, for example, pinball parlors when pinball machines become legal again (pre computer game era, remember). At the very end, Gary and Alana are supporting a West Hollywood candidate Joel Wacgs (Bennie Safide)for city council, with the same aggressive personalized marketing. Near the end of the movie the candidate introduces his gay life partner, which was still attracting notice in 1973, although four years post-Stonewall (and eight years pre-AIDS). I wonder today, would Connor Franta, after his book tours, run for office in his new hometown of West Hollywood/Los Angeles? Maybe this is the best defense to Trumpism is people running at the local and state levels?
Harriet Sansom Harris plays Mary Grady, Gary's agent, and Sean Penn plays Jack Holden aka William Holden.
Name: Licorice Pizza
Director, writer: Paul Thomas Anderson
Released: 2021/12; full theatrical 2022/2/11
Format: 2.35:1
When and how viewed: AMC Shirlington 2022/2/3 fair audience evening
Length: 132
Rating: R
Companies: Bron, Focus Features, MGM, United Artists
Stars: ****_
(Posted: Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12 noon EST by John W. Boushka)