A PERFECT SLICE OF LIFE
Coming-of-age tale Licorice Pizza may be filmmaker's best work to date
The period references come in all shapes and sizes in Paul Thomas Anderson's deliciously titled Licorice Pizza, which is set in 1973. There are global affairs like the oil crisis. There's local politics — did you know that pinball used to be illegal in Los Angeles? And '70s lingo; can you dig it?
There are real people, like hairdresser-producer Jon Peters, and actors Lucille Ball and William Holden, the last two thinly fictionalized in roles played by Christine Ebersole and Sean Penn. There's a giant barometer hanging on someone's wall, and those weird airplane headphones that looked like a stethoscope. It feels real, but it feels fictional, too. I kept expecting Rick Dalton from Once Upon a Time ... In Hollywood to mosey by.
Front and centre is Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine, a teenage actor and hustler who, over the course the movie, starts a waterbed distribution company and opens a pinball parlour just as soon as it's legal to do so. He also falls hard for Alana Kane (Alana Haim), who starts the film as a photographer's assistant, goes into business with Gary and then gets involved in city politics. She's ambitious and energetic but also unfocused. Kids those days!
If Hoffman looks familiar, that's because he's the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. And Haim has been known for more than a decade now as a member of the three-sisters rock band Haim. The two leads' breezy chemistry, despite a scandalous 10-year age gap, is what drives the joyous, goofy story that is Licorice Pizza. (Both are already nominated for next month's Critics Choice Awards.)
The movie takes place in and around L.A., where the writer-director grew up, as did his friend Gary Goetzman, the inspiration for Valentine. Anderson has been to this time and place before — see Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Inherent Vice — but never with such an unabashed rom-com vibe. Strange (and very funny) episodes rattle past us, such as Alana's first meeting with an oddly intense casting agent (Harriet Sansom Harris), John Michael Higgins's inexplicitly racist restaurateur or John C. Reilly's blink-and-miss-it cameo as Herman Munster.
The film's most involving chapters are also its greatest established-star power moments. One comes when Alana has a screen test opposite Jack Holden (Penn), who then takes her out for a drink and an impromptu motorcycle stunt, both enabled by his old friend Rex (Tom Waits).
It's a real old-hollywoodmeets-new moment, with Jack and Alana not only on different pages but quite possibly reading distinct books in separate languages.
The other features Bradley Cooper as Jon Peters. The real Peters apparently told Anderson that he could write the character any way he pleased, as long as he included his favourite pickup line. So when Cooper asks a couple of random passersby if they like peanut butter sandwiches — well, now you know why.
There are probably a lot of other in-jokes and references that will only be fully appreciated by Angelenos, showbiz types or quite possibly by no one other than Anderson himself. But Licorice Pizza is as accessible and enjoyable as each half of its odd name, which apparently comes from a defunct chain of record stores in Southern California.
And its soundtrack lives up to that namesake, with tunes by Paul Mccartney, The Doors, Donovan, Gordon Lightfoot and even a little Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters, the 1940s being to the 1970s what the 1970s are to us, musically speaking. It's the perfect backing for this carefree coming-of-age comedy.
And while I don't know where Gary and Alana are going to end up — there's a lot of history coming down the pike at them — I enjoyed every minute in their company. And I hope to see Hoffman and Haim in whatever they do next.