Licorice Pizza

The latest offering from Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread) is a delightfully rambling, anecdotal film about life in California's San Fernando Valley during the one-of-kind period of the early 1970s. Named after a bygone chain of Southern California used record stores, Licorice Pizza evokes its time and place in ways that will feel both fond and familiar to those of us who grew up in the ʾ70s, and alien to anyone born after that decade. It also should feel like an agreeable fantasy to any of us who did not have our life figured out by our mid-teens or mid-twenties. The story centers on Gary Valentine, a 15-year-old former child actor and small-time hustler with enough business acumen to start several semi-successful ventures, and Alana Kane, a savvy and sarcastic 25-year-old drifting through the random jobs available to someone of her age and background during this decade. Gary is instantly smitten with Alana when he meets her working as a photographer’s assistant during his high school picture day. Alana, though dismissive of his overtures at first, finds herself curiously drawn to the cocky misfit and eventually starts to work for him, first as a chaperone and then as his business partner.

Licorice Pizza can best be described as a “hang-out film” because it doesn’t fall neatly into any other genre. It’s not a coming-of-age picture, as both characters are pretty much fully formed from the get-go. It’s not really a romance, either. The relationship that develops between the protagonists is essentially platonic, though Gary is infatuated with Alana, and Alana finds herself intrigued by Gary in ways that she considers “weird.”  What sets the film apart from the many other recent cinematic trips to the ʾ60s and ʾ70s (Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, and Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, to name but a few) is that Anderson does not attempt to infuse his nostalgic look-back with layers of thematic import. This lack of momentousness is precisely what makes Licorice Pizza such an endearing picture—and, though it’s getting a specialized rollout with 35mm and 70mm engagements complete with a preshow playlist of songs selected by the director, the least pretentious film this director has made since the wonderful dysfunctional romance Punch-Drunk Love (2002). 

Like his 1997 breakout film Boogie Nights, which fictionalized the life of legendary porn star John Holmes in order to chronicle the rise and fall of the adult film world in ʾ70s and ʾ80s LA, Anderson fashions Licorice Pizza’s loose narrative around the true-life youthful exploits of producer Gary Goetzman. Goetzman (who co-produced most of Jonathan Demme’s feature films in the ʾ80s and ʾ90s and went on to become Tom Hanks’s producing partner) was a child actor featured in the Lucille Ball vehicle Yours, Mine and Ours (1968). When he outgrew kiddie roles, Goetzman started a waterbed company and a pinball arcade when both fads were brand new. He also once spent a memorable afternoon delivering a waterbed to the legendary hairdresser-to-the-stars turned film and music mogul Jon Peters. Anderson, a long-time friend of Goetzman, takes these anecdotes, mixes them with his own teenage memories, and injects into the concoction his latest muse, Alana Haim.

Haim is the vocalist, pianist, and guitarist of the rock band Haim, a trio that includes her older sisters Este and Danielle. Anderson has directed many music videos for the band and clearly found inspiration in the pop vocalist, naming Licorice Pizza’s main character after her and casting not just her but her sisters, mother, and father as her family in the movie. As Alana Kane, Alana Haim commands the screen like few first-time stars have done. Everything about her feels utterly authentic to the era in which the story takes place. And her cool yet directionless character endears her to us instantly. Cast opposite Haim as Gary is another young actor making his first appearance in a film. Like Haim, Cooper Hoffman, the son of the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman, charms us in an organic and effortless way. Both young actors look like people their age would look in the 1970s. The pudgy Hoffman’s skin is greasy and blemished, while Haim’s face is full of freckles. Her uneven teeth give her smile a distinct, non-movie star look. Both actors seem so natural and comfortable in their skins that you feel at home in their company. And this shaggy, episodic picture becomes engaging, and even riveting, simply because they are always on screen.

In addition to joining Gary’s adventures as a juvenile entrepreneur, Alana pursues several career paths on her own, including film acting and working as a political volunteer. But the people she meets in these professions, especially the men, are far more immature and self-involved than Gary and his teenage friends. While Alana can be as prone to childish behavior and naïveté as anyone, she has a clear understanding of who she is, how the world works and how she might fit into it. Most of the prospects she encounters, in both work and romance, seem unworthy of her, yet she dives in headfirst. It is fascinating to watch her take in and process all the information that comes at her.

Licorice Pizza may well baffle audiences born after the 1970s. Contemporary society feels light-years away from an America where a twenty-five-year-old woman would even consider encouraging the romantic overtures of an underage boy; where a fifteen-year-old can start a brick and mortar business that stays open till dawn; and where pre-teens work retail, stay home alone, and ride around in the back of moving trucks as if it’s no big deal. But what I imagine younger (and possibly older) viewers will find the most confounding is that this movie doesn’t really comment on any of these behaviors. It’s precisely this lack of judgment that makes the movie feel so authentic to someone my age. It acknowledges that things were different in the ʾ70s without saying, “wasn’t it wonderful?", "wasn’t it terrible?", or "wasn’t it so wonderful, but also terrible?"

Though set during the 1973 oil crisis, and featuring a subplot in which Alana goes to work for a mayoral candidate, the movie feels free of any sociopolitical subtext—a refreshing change from many recent nostalgic exercises, such as the three I mentioned earlier. Licorice Pizza plays like a knowing and personal window on a bygone era, the way George Lucas’s American Graffiti glanced wistfully back to the cruising and early rock 'n' roll cultures of California teens in 1962.

Casting relative unknowns in the leads also makes this film stand out in today’s celebrity-driven industry. Some famous faces appear in cameo roles but, with the exception of a brief appearance by Anderson’s wife Maya Rudolf, actual movies stars are cast only to play characters who are movie stars or other larger-than-life personalities, such as a hilarious turn from Bradly Cooper as Jon Peters. (Incidentally, the film changes the names of all the real-life celebrities who figure into the story, like Lucille Ball, with the exception of Peters, who must have been flattered by Anderson’s depiction or was just happy to still be remembered.)

Lesser-known character actors who embody their parts perfectly play all the other supporting roles. So instead of the current practice of filling choice bit parts in a movie comedy with a chain of the same unwelcome improv comedians milking every little scene for maximum laughs, we get grounded but hilarious turns from, for example, Harriet Sansom Harris as Hollywood child talent agent Mary Grady. John Michael Higgins plays  Jerry Frick, a Los Angeles businessman who opened the first Japanese restaurant in the San Fernando Valley. He is depicted here as a friendly but foolish client of Gary’s.

Who knows if this picture will propel its two leads into bonafide movie stardom. It seems inevitable that Alana Haim will get many film offers after her work here. However, if the roles that come her way are unworthy of her, she may become as disillusioned with the movie business as her character becomes with many of her fictional pursuits. It’s difficult to imagine future films serving either of these actors as well as Licorice Pizza.