Licorice Pizza
Licorice Pizza | |
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Directed by | Paul Thomas Anderson |
Written by | Paul Thomas Anderson |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography |
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Edited by | Andy Jurgensen |
Music by | Jonny Greenwood |
Production companies |
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Distributed by |
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Release date |
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Running time | 133 minutes[2] |
Countries |
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Language | English |
Budget | $40 million[3] |
Box office | $1.3 million[4] |
Licorice Pizza is a 2021 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who also serves as one of the film's producers and cinematographers. The film stars Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, and Benny Safdie.
Licorice Pizza was released in the United States in select theaters on November 26, 2021, and was released widely on December 25, 2021.[5] The film received acclaim from critics and received three awards from the National Board of Review, including Best Film. It was also named one of the best films of 2021 by the American Film Institute and received four nominations at the 79th Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, along with eight nominations at the 27th Critics' Choice Awards, including Best Picture.
Plot
In the San Fernando Valley in 1973, 15-year-old Gary Valentine prepares for his high school picture day. He asks out 25-year-old Alana Kane, a photographer's assistant. She later meets with him for dinner. Later she chaperones him to New York, where Valentine attends auditions and appears in a variety show with Lucy Doolittle. Kane begins dating Lance, one of Valentine's co-star in a Doolittle film, but the two break up after an awkward dinner with Kane's family. Valentine and Kane develop a friendship.
Valentine starts a waterbed company with Kane as an employee. While selling beds at an expo, he is arrested on suspicion of murder but is soon released. When Kane decides she wants to try acting, Valentine introduces her to his agent, who gets her an audition for a film starring Jack Holden, and directed by Sam Harpoon. After her audition, Kane accompanies Holden to a local restaurant, which Valentine and his friends, as well as film director Rex Blau, are also patronizing. Blau convinces Holden, an avid motorcycle enthusiast, to recreate a stunt on a local golf course involving a jump over a fiery ramp. An inebriated Holden brings Kane along but she topples off the bike in the process. Valentine runs to her to make sure that she is unhurt. Holden performs the stunt but wrecks the motorcycle afterwards. He gets up unharmed and head back to the restaurant with Blau to continue drinking.
Valentine and Kane deliver a waterbed to Jon Peters's house as a gas crisis begins to sweep the country. An irritated Peters leaves to go see a film, but not before threatening to murder Valentine's entire family. After setting up the bed, an upset Valentine floods the house before leaving with Kane. They are later waved down by an agitated Peters, whose car had run out of gas. They drive him to a gas station; once there, he threatens a customer. Kane and Valentine leave him behind, with the latter stopping to attack Peters' car, but they soon run out of gas as well. Kane backs the truck down a hill until Valentine and his friends are able to fill the tanks. Kane sits down on a curb as Peters walks down the sidewalk, angrily smashing store windows until distracted by two women who he begins to hit on. The waterbed business ultimately fails as a result of the gas crisis.
Kane begins to work on the Joel Wachs mayoral campaign. Valentine briefly joins Kane, but after overhearing that pinball will be legalized, he decides to open an arcade. The two cut ties after an argument. As Valentine prepares for the opening of his arcade, Kane is invited for drinks with Wachs. She arrives at the restaurant and is introduced to Wachs' partner, Matthew, and learns Wachs is gay. He asks her to take Matthew home as a beard, which she does. Afterwards, Kane goes to Valentine's arcade to see him, but he had left to find her at Wachs' office. After wandering around, the two reunite and head for the arcade, where Valentine introduces Kane as Alana Valentine and kisses her. The two run out of the arcade.
Cast
- Alana Haim as Alana Kane, a photographer's assistant
- Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine, a young actor who falls in love with Alana. Valentine is based on film producer and former child actor Gary Goetzman.[6]
- Sean Penn as Jack Holden, an actor based on William Holden[6]
- Tom Waits as Rex Blau, a film director
- Bradley Cooper as Jon Peters, a film producer
- Benny Safdie as Joel Wachs, a politician running for office
- Skyler Gisondo as Lance
- Mary Elizabeth Ellis as Momma Anita
- John Michael Higgins as Jerry Frick, a Los Angeles businessman who opened the Mikado Hotel and restaurant in 1963. The Mikado was the first Japanese restaurant in the San Fernando Valley.[7]
- Christine Ebersole as Lucy Doolittle, an actress based on Lucille Ball[6]
- Harriet Sansom Harris as Mary Grady, Valentine's agent. Grady was a Hollywood child talent agent and mother of actors Don Grady and Lani O'Grady.[8]
- Ryan Heffington as Steve
- Nate Mann as Brian
- Joseph Cross as Matthew
- George DiCaprio as Mr. Jack
- Ray Chase as B. Mitchel Reed
- Emma Dumont as Brenda
- Maya Rudolph as Gale
- John C. Reilly as Fred Gwynne, an actor who portrayed Herman Munster
- Dan Chariton as Sam Harpoon
Haim's sisters Danielle and Este, father Moti, and mother Donna also appear as Alana Kane's family.[9] The children of Anderson and Rudolph also appear.[10]
Production
Development
Around 2001, Anderson was walking by a middle school in Los Angeles on picture day. He observed one of the students nagging the female photographer and had an idea of the student having an adult relationship with the photographer. The screenplay of Licorice Pizza evolved from this experience and additional stories told to Anderson by his friend Gary Goetzman, who was a child actor who had starred in the film Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball, appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and eventually started a waterbed company and pinball arcade. Goetzman at one time delivered a waterbed to Jon Peters's home.[11][12] Anderson considered Fast Times at Ridgemont High and American Graffiti as major influences in the making of Licorice Pizza.[6]
Anderson received permission from Jon Peters to develop a character based on him, on the sole condition that Peters's favorite pick-up line is used. Anderson went on to create a "monster version" of Peters based on 1970s Hollywood producers who had "a reputation for a lot of bravado and aggro energy".[6]
The working title of the film was reported in November 2020 as Soggy Bottom.[13] In September 2021, the film was officially titled Licorice Pizza,[14] named after a former chain of record shops in southern California.[15] Anderson explained, "If there's two words that make me kind of have a Pavlovian response and memory of being a child and running around, it's 'licorice' and 'pizza' [...] It instantly takes me back to that time." He added that the words "seemed like a catch-all for the feeling of the film [...] that go well together and maybe capture a mood."[6][12]
Casting
Anderson wrote the screenplay with Alana Haim in mind and offered her the lead role in summer 2019.[16] He has a close connection to her band Haim, having directed several of their music videos, and is a close friend of the Haim family.[17] Haim's sisters Este and Danielle and parents Mordechai and Donna were also cast to play the roles of her family.[18] Cooper Hoffman, the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, was cast late in the process after Anderson found the auditioning young actors too "precocious" and "trained" to match the naturalistic style of Haim's acting.[17] Licorice Pizza marks the feature film debut of both Haim and Hoffman.[18][19] Described as a "family-and-friends project" by the Los Angeles Times, the film also features Anderson's wife Maya Rudolph, their four children, and many of their neighborhood friends in various roles.[12]
Filming
Principal photography began in Encino, California in August 2020.[20] In November 2020, it was reported that principal photography had wrapped and post-production had begun.[21] A Tudor manor previously owned by actor Lyle Waggoner was used for scenes at Jon Peters's house.[22] Tail o' the Cock, a famed local restaurant that was demolished in 1987, was recreated for the film at the Van Nuys Golf Course.[12][23] Haim spent a week learning to drive trucks, and performed her own stunt in which she backed a truck down a long hill.[16]
Anderson and Michael Bauman (sharing a director of photography credit) shot Licorice Pizza on 35 mm film, using older lenses in order to create the film's 1970s texture.[24]
Music
Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood composed the film's score cues. The first trailer for the film, which was released online on September 27, 2021, was set to David Bowie's "Life on Mars?".[25]
The official soundtrack will be released by Republic Records. Included are some of the songs featured in the film, as well as one of the original tracks composed by Greenwood.[26]
Release
On December 18, 2019, Focus Features came on to produce and distribute the film.[27] On July 17, 2020, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired distribution rights to the film from Focus.[28] On July 17, 2020, it was reported that MGM would set a new start date due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[28]
The film was released in select theaters in the United States on November 26, 2021, and will be followed by a nationwide release on December 25, 2021.[5][29]
Reception
Box office
Licorice Pizza opened in four theaters on November 26, 2021, including the Regency Village Theatre in Los Angeles. It made $142,000 on its first day, $105,000 on its second, and $89,000 on its third for a $335,000 opening weekend and an average of $83,800 per screen. Audiences were reported to be 72% between the ages of 18 and 34, 66% male, and 70% Caucasian, 19% Latino and Hispanic, 8% Asian, and 3% Black. Close to 70% of all moviegoers were also college graduates.[30][31]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of 178 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Licorice Pizza finds Paul Thomas Anderson shifting into a surprisingly comfortable gear – and getting potentially star-making performances out of his fresh-faced leads."[32] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100, based on 49 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[33] Audiences polled by PostTrak gave the film an 87% positive score, with 73% saying they would definitely recommend it.[34]
Accolades
References
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External links
- 2021 films
- 2021 comedy-drama films
- American films
- American comedy-drama films
- American high school films
- 2020s English-language films
- Films directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
- Films impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic
- Film productions suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic
- Films scored by Jonny Greenwood
- Films with screenplays by Paul Thomas Anderson
- Films set in California
- Films set in the 1970s
- Films shot in Los Angeles
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films
- Universal Pictures films
- Focus Features films
- Films set in the San Fernando Valley
- Films set in 1973