Licorice Pizza

What Makes Gary and Alana Run?

or 

Once Upon a Time in Paul Thomas Anderson's Encino

 

"I'm never gonna forget you. And you're never gonna forget me."

 

At some point, the current crop of filmmakers go back home. Lucas did American Graffiti, Linklatter did Dazed and Cofused, Tarantino made Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. They take stories and attitudes and landmarks and build a movie out of it. Nostalgia, certainly. But, also an homage to a better time of life (certainly for them), not dealing with critics and unions and divas, when the dreams were simpler and just within grasp. Aspirations went with ideas and not with box office, and the chance to tell stories the way you want to tell them is the biggest aspiration of all.

 

And so, Paul Thomas Anderson makes Licorice Pizza about a time that can't be recaptured, merely recreated and certainly not eulogized. These things are supposed to be celebrations. The film takes place in 1973 (Anderson was born in 1970, but started making films when he was eight), so there is more than a hint of idealizing the period, as its young protagonists bumble through the California Dreaming and Ambition that typified the era in the post-Summer of Love/Manson-Psychosis.

Meet Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman); he certainly wants to meet you. Gary is a child actor who's aging out of the industry, but has found a new outlet for his precociousness. At 15, he has a public relations firm in partnership with his mother, and he is always on the eye for "the next big thing" that will make his future. At his high school's picture-taking day, he is struck by a lightning bolt in the form of photographer's assistant Alana (Alana Haim), 25 years old, and both stand-offish and alluring. Gary loves a challenge and he asks her out for a date. As if! He's a high school student and a pimply one at that. But, Alana is still trying to find herself, and so, to her surprise, she takes him up on it, at a darkly upholstered watering-hole that Gary's company has done work for.

There's an agenda for the rendezvous; Gary has to fly to New York to do a promotional gig on "The Ed Sullivan Show" for this movie he did with Lucy Doolittle* (Christine Ebersole). His mother has to stay behind to watch the business, and Gary, being underage, can't fly across country unsupervised. So, he asks Alana if she'll be his "chaperone". For him, it's a mere complication that needs to be dealt with, like re-scheduling a meeting; for her, it's just weird, she's an adult and she has to supervise this horny kid. But...it's a chance to fly across country. It's a chance to go to new York. It's a chance to be behind-the-scenes of show business.

It's a chance to be an adult.

Alana is from a strict Jewish family straight out of "Fiddler"—three daughters who are expected to "shelter in place." For her to be in charge on this trip, it's a thrill, no matter how odd it is to be with Gary, and it starts a series of adventures and misadventures that up-ends the traditional trope of "girls mature faster than boys." It's true to a point, Gary is incredibly immature emotionally, but has enough chutzpah and charm and manner that he's comfortable in any room he walks into. Alana is the more mature—to a point—but she's hindered by self-doubt and limited life-experience. Together, they're a power-house combination: where one is deficient, the other is strong (he can't drive; she can).

It's just the emotions get in the way. They're both smitten, but not in love. They're more partners, co-conspirators. So, Gary gets Alana an agent. Gary discovers there's this new thing called a "water-bed" and determines to be the most successful retailer in the L.A. area. When Alana starts working on the mayoral campaign of councilman Joel Wachs, she hires Gary to shoot some promotional pieces and Gary uses insider information overheard in the campaign headquarters to start a pinball arcade business.

But, with those adventures come friction. Alana's agent gets her a meeting with producer-star Jack Holden** (Sean Penn), who has dinner and drinks with the aging star, which is witnessed by Gary in a simmering jealousy. That's pay-back from Alana, who Gary hired to promote water-beds at his brick-and-mortar store only to ignore her for a class-mate at the opening. Alana is miffed that Gary has used the insider information to build his arcade business and goes for drinks with the attractive Wachs, only to discover that he's just using her as a "beard" to cover his break-up with a lover.

But, the most extended sequence (and the best) is Gary and Alana dealing with a water-bed delivery for one of their customers, Jon Peters*** (Bradley Cooper going over the top because you can't under-play Jon Peters), which involves Peters' own "irrepressible" personality, the energy crisis, and driving a delivery truck through the Hollywood Hills all mixed into an "incredible mess" scenario that skirts the edges of the "comedy/panic" matrix.

For Anderson, who cast friends, relatives, sons and daughters of friends, and family in the film—and photographed it himself—it must have seemed like making a home movie when he was eight years old. That everyone is so good in it just shows that he's as good at making friends as he is at casting. The script, based on tall tales told by producer/child-star Gary Goetzman is rather shaggy at times (and a couple of times, downright cringey, as the scenes involving John Michael Higgins' non-Japanese speaking restauraunteur), careening like a teenager's mood-swings, but ultimately, it's momentum leaves you with a smile on your face for one of the loosest movies Anderson has ever made, celebrating the sparking of adulthood's pilot-light before it becomes the smudged simmering of middle-age.

 

It's good to have fun making movies every once in awhile.

* The character is based on Lucille Ball. If you griped about Nicole Kidman's portrayal of her in Being the Ricardos, you will NOT be happy with what Anderson and Ebersole do with her.

 

** "Jack Holden" is based, it seems from dialogue spoken in the film, on William Holden, a movie star somewhat past his prime, but still considering roles where the leading lady is in her 20's ala Breezy.

 

*** Jon Peters is based on the real Jon Peters, who agreed to be portrayed in the movie only if they used his favorite pick-up line ("Hey, do you like peanut butter?") in the script because, after all, he is "from the streets."