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OT: "Psycho" and "Licorice Pizza" --And LA Confidential and The Apartment (SPOILERS FOR ALL)

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Yes. Sure, there is a connection.

"Licorice Pizza" remains my personal favorite film of 2021, and unlike some years in which the choice was perhaps not a strong one...it is this time.

Because I've seen it more than once, and with as with all my personal favorites...(1) its enjoyable to watch each time(though I must give it a rest now), (2) there's something innately unique and intelligent about it(especially in the script and dialogue) and (3) I see new things each time I see it.

New lines. New shots. New meanings. New INTERCONNECTED meanings.

I will admit that on this last go round, I more strongly saw connections to two of my personal favorites OTHER than Psycho , one from the same year: The Apartment, which is my Number Two personal favorite of 1960 (nothing could beat Psycho based on how Psycho hit my young life). And the other, weirdly enough (but with quite a DIRECT link) is..LA Confidential, my personal favorite of both 1997 and the entire 90s(when pitted against the other bests of each year.)

Psycho, like LA Confidential is my personal favorite of 1960 AND my personal favorite of the 60s...so you can see how these things interrelate.

But wait, there's more: The Apartment won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 1960; LA Confidential won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for 1997; LIcorice Pizza is NOMINATED for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar of 2021. Will Licorice Pizza join The Apartment and LA Confidential in winning what I consider to be the most important non-acting Oscar other than Best Picture.

Today (March 10) I don't know. In a few weeks, I will.

Alas Joseph Stefano's terrific screenplay for Psycho wasn't even nominated in 1960 (the winner was Richard Brooks for Elmer Gantry; with The Apartment over on the original side.) But the Psycho script should have been nominated, and its more famous than Elmer Gantry today.

So the screenplay for Licorice Pizza will either end up like Psycho(NOT winning an award) or like The Apartment and LA Confidential (winning an award.)

To the comparisons (Psycho last)

LA Confidential. That 1997 film, set in 1953, opens with a rousing rendition of the 40s(?) tune "You've got to Acc-En-Tuate the Positive, E-liiminate the Negative, Latch on to the Affirmative, and Don't Mess with Mr. In-Between." (The actual title is in there somewhere.) That's an upbeat tune that just SWINGS. It opens LA Confidential under Danny DeVito's smarmy narration ("Come to Los Angeles!" ) and follows the end credits with "fake footage" of 1950's celebrities mixed with LA Confidential cast members. It is a VERY important song to the tone and irony of LA Confidential.

In "Licorice Pizza," our young enterprising entrepreneur hero, Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) sees SOMETHING through a window and "Accentuate the Positive" comes on the soundtrack and -- we are now as upbeat and positive as he will be. What does he see? A "first wave waterbed on sale." The salesman is none other than Leo DiCaprio's real life father(seeing as Hoffman is the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman's son), aided by a sexy African-American saleswoman. Not only does Gary desire to BUY a waterbed, soon he is in business (with Leo's dad?) to SELL waterbeds. And lots of them. All over LA's San Fernando Valley.

I daresay the ONLY connection between Licorice Pizza and LA Confidential is that song...but its a very important song. The rest of the Licorice Pizza soundtrack is mainly seventies(the film is set in 1973) maybe a little sixties(Sonny and Cher.) What's this FORTIES song doing on the soundtrack?

Well, I'm sure that writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson had his reasons, but whether he intended it(and he had to buy the song rights, so he HAD to know about LAC), the EFFECT is (1) to connect two very great movies and (2) comment on 1973 Los Angeles by flashing us back to a movie about 1953 Los Angeles - the same basic terrain, very sunny, rather perverse -- in two very different movies. Set 20 years apart in our distant past.

The Apartment.

This is the BIG one (and where my Licorice Pizza SPOILERS are.)

The Apartment is an early "dramedy" in which good guy nebbish Jack Lemmon's love for kooky but troubled Shirley MacLaine goes unrequited until the very last minutes of the movie -- when Shirley realizes her love for Jack and leaves rich middle-aged villain Fred MacMurray in the lurch to RUN (that is, to RUN) through the streets of New York to her true love, Mr. Lemmon . Its a very, happy ending.

Well, Licorice Pizza ALSO has a couple who spend their entire movie in a lot of romantic pain -- together, apart, maybe apart forever -- but in the end, Alana Kane(played by Alana Haim), the kooky but troubled heroine of THIS love story, TOO ends up running through the streets of Los Angeles to her true love, Gary.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Except with a difference: as the girl runs in this one...the boy runs too. Both of them for blocks. Seeking to collide in requited love. And better still(for this movie, not beating The Apartment in any way), these two PRESENT runs of boy towards girl are intercut with two PAST runs of the boy and the girl. And in those PAST runs...one time the boy was running to rescue the girl(after she fell off the motorcycle of a callous old movie star who didn't even notice her fall) and time the girl was running to rescue the boy (as he was hauled off to the police station on a mistaken charge of murder.)

In The Apartment, Jack Lemmon gets a long speech to Shirley MacLaine about how much he loves her, but MacLaine only answers about their card game: "Shut up and deal." A Billy Wilder Special Curtain line. PTA isn't playing that game. We get instead, Alana Haim, saying in her beautiful singer's voice, "I love you Gary."

Some cynical critics in 1960 didn't think that MacLaine and Lemmon would REALLY "live happily ever after." Some cynical critics in 2021 think that Alana and Gary won't live happiliy ever after, either. Who knows? Its fiction. In The Apartment, MacLaine took pills and would have died if Lemmon had not saved her. THAT's going to cement a marriage. In Licorice Pizza, we see how all sorts of other possible men and women do NOT connect our with loving duo -- so maybe (in the old Hollywood tradition) they are made for each other. Oh, he's 16 and she's 25, maybe older. So what, especially if they keep it platonic for a couple more years. On the other hand a movie is referenced in "Licorice Pizza" ("Breezy" in which 50 something William Holden romances a teenage hippie played by Kay Lenz) and when he says "maybe we'll only have two years together, she says "Two whole years?"

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

So maybe for Gary and Alana -- "two whole years?" (Platonic.) But maybe a lifetime (in real life, the girl WAS Kay Lenz, and Gary became a rich producer. They didn't stay together. But they DID sell waterbeds)

Licorice Pizza doesn't play the "sad" emotion as hard as The Apartment did -- in which Lemmon kept helping MacLaine stay together with her swinish lover, (both of their bosses) Fred MacMurray, but Gary DOES get Alana an acting agent(on his advice that she act) who DOES put Alana into the clutches of middle-aged old star "Jack Holden" (Sean Penn) so we feel SOME of the pain of The Apartment. The good guy keeps helping the girl get with the wrong men...when WILL She see the light? (But its not that simple; Gary rejects HER sometimes, HE goes to at least one other woman, and flirts with yet another.)

Rather as with the "LA Confidential" theme song, I expect that PTA knows his "running" finale to Licorice Pizza connects to another great movie (The Apartment.) And some of the themes and romantic pain in The Apartment recur -- its "boy can't have girl" for two hours(and more in Licorice Pizza). And then.. he can. A deserved and logical happy ending.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

And so: "Psycho." Yes, its there. To me. In one specific way.

Dialogue and acting with "bounce."

Great screenplays have great dialogue, which, when acted by great actors , gives you a great movie.

Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim = Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh in the parlor?

No. Not those two.

Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim = Martin Balsam and Anthony Perkins on the porch.

The Norman/Marion dialogue is slowly paced, quiet, contemplative...slowly building to Norman's rage and Marion's retreat.

The Norman/Arbogast dialogue is fast paced, staccato, a "tennis match" of sorts.

And much like the great first scene between Gary and Alana. On line for him to get his school photo taken, with her as the pretty(enough) and shapely(definitely) young assistant upon whom the young fellow "hits." (But he doesn't really hit on her in a lascivious way -- he at first asks for a date -- "Dinner tonight?" and then modifies it -- "Don't call it a date, just come by to say hello".

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Norman and Arbogast on the porch(the second time, in the dark, when things are dangerous for both of them) is a textbook case of an ENTERTAINING dialogue scene: the lines are good, the pace is good, and both men demonstrate what good actors do: "Line readings and making faces." Line readings can be the timing of words AND the trained voice of the speaker; making faces can be very precise -- involving, funny.

Well, there comes a part in the Alana/Gary dialogue that rather matches up -- in line reading and face-making -- to Arbogast/Norman in Psycho:

Psycho:

Arbogast: Let's say , just for the sake of argument, that this Marion Crane wanted you to gallantly protect you? You'd know you were being used, wouldn't you? You would be made a fool of..
Norman: But I'm NOT a fool, and I'm not capable of BEING fooled...not even by a woman.
Arbogast: Its not a slur on your manhood. I'm sorry.
Norman: Let's put it this way -- she may have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother.
Arbogast: (Brightening) Then your mother met her! Can I meet your mother?

Licorice Pizza

Alana: How are you going to pay? If I say yes and go to dinner with you on a date, how are you going to pay?
Gary: You say everything twice.
Alana: (Sudden surprise) I don't say everything twice. What's this say everything twice?

Alana thought she was shutting this young fellow down as not being able to pay for a date. He CAN pay for a date(he's a child actor, he has his own money) but he throws her first with "you say everything twice."

And here's the thing, Anthony Perkins on "Let's put it this way, she didn't fool my mother" and Alana Haim on "If I say yes and go to dinner with you on a date" BOTH pretty much make the same face( a sudden narrowing of the eyes, a certain ruthless nastiness popping up) and you can just FEEL the connection across the decades.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Alana/Gary is a "meet cute" romantic opening to be sure -- the guy wants a date, the girl doesn't (she CAN'T , she thinks, he's too young for her,} but she can't NOT be responsive to his literal "star power" Gary's star power puts him closer to the age of Alana; and she (it will prove) is much younger than her years.

But Alana/Gary is played in the tradition of "banter" of a verbal duel(with romance attached) and so (WITHOUT romance attached) is Arbogast/Norman.

Consider: in both storylines, one person is fast talking, clever, aggressive and "with a plan of action"(Arbogast, Gary). He has a goal, he wants something. The OTHER person (Norman, Alana) is on the defensive, parrying back finally using those "evil" facial expressions to reveal a tougher personality than expected.

But indeed, one is a mystery confrontation between two men, the other a romantic introduction to "boy meets girl." Still, BOTH dialogues are EXTREMELY well-written(PTA makes sure that Alana DOES say everything twice, two more times in the long scene) and EXTREMELY well-acted (Balsam and Perkins were pros, Hoffman and Haim are gifted amateurs) and I know I'll be able to watch Licorice Pizza's dialogue scenes in the future with the same satisfaction and delight that I have watched Norman/Arbogast for all these years.

I might add that Alana is posed on her "How are you going to pay" line with Gary almost exactly as Norman is posed on his "She didn't fool my mother" line with Arbogast. Over the shoulder, emphasis Alana/Norman. (Balsam gets more reverse shots in Psycho; PTA keeps the camera on Alana to keep us entranced by her, with Gary.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Note in passing: Alana Haim has a face which is not "classically pretty." She has a prominent nose and rather plain features. PTA knows that, but he makes sure to introduce her first as a BODY -- from behind, swaying towards Gary and his friends with the hip moves of the rock star she is in real life. We're already in love with her body(or remembering what that was like to be so in love at a younger age.) When PTA cuts to her face, Haim is backlit in the sunlight and angled so that her nose disappears and her features fade -- and she's got a GREAT smile, a GREAT voice(trained for singing, though she has a sister in the movie who sings better) , great long black hair in the 1973 schoolgirl tradition, and great presence. PTA knows JUST how to introduce Alana Haim as a star.

Also: later in the film when Alana has been gone for awhile, she re-enters the story again -- AGAIN seen from the back -- a big close-up on her hair and her shadowy heads and you KNOW its her.. that sway again...laser focused on "finding her man Gary" again....even if they are not yet a couple. This is why PTA is up for Best Director, too.

Hey at least Hitchcock got THAT nomination for Psycho.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

Some half-baked thoughts about LP (which I finaly got to see a few days ago).

1. I didn't find the main couple very interesting either together or apart. Neither actor to me had especially interesting voices or much presence period In general it was an incredible *relief* to me when the various cameos from Penn, Tom Waits (playing a director, apparently based on Mark Robson), Cooper, Benny Safdie (playing politician Joel Wachs) start showing up. Suddenly the film's dialogue upgrades, the laughs start to come, we're in a proper PTA film, and in Safdie's case we finally hit some emotional truth that with the leads themselves never arrives.
2. Put another way, the leads felt to me like bit-players in their own movie. The film infuriated me with its its *raising* of important issues with the leads that *should* have led to conflict/growth etc. but then just *dropping* them. E.g. 1, Gary seems to be aging out of his acting/stage career which should be some sort of crisis for him. Maybe agents are going to start bitching at him about his chubbiness, who knows? But none of this is ever discussed. The crisis never arrives. He'll be going though his savings from his acting career *very fast* setting up his waterbed and pinball businesses. He probably *has* to make one of them work? How can he be so sanguine about probably dooming his waterbed business by doing a genuinely terrible job for Jon Peters? Or will he think about going to college? Being repeatedly called a 'dipshit' by Alana might plausibly drive that sort of change in direction after all. None of these areas of conflict and development are ever ever explored. (cont.)

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

(Cont'd) E.g. 2. Alana is alerted that Gary has been been getting repeated hand-jobs from one of Alana's in-the-biz friends (played by a Spielberg daughter). On the one hand this sounds like incipient Hollywood mogul behavior from Gary, and I expected Alana to call him out on this, on 'how he's gonna fit right in'. But she doesn't. On the other hand we expect that there's going to be some fal out for Alana who's keeping Gary at some physical distance and about whose own level of sexual experience we the audience have some questions. Is it possible that she's a 25 year old virgin at the height of the sexual revolution? Sure she lives with her parents and sisters but really? Somehow, however, and it struck me as sheer laziness on PTA's part, none of this was ever discussed again or addressed. We finally have no idea about what makes Alana tick (I was shocked at how little real feel we got for Alana's sisters and the wider family. And the dinner blowup over Alana's date Lance's atheism struck me as moronic. Judaism is very sophisticated about atheism- Ecclesiates is *all* *about* how the religious tradition speaks to some of the very smartest Jews who aren't going to be able to make themselves believe.) I was sure that at some point Gary was going to maul her for her lack of experience at 25 just as he tweaks her a little for being in a dead end-ish job before he met her. But that never happened.

For these sorts of reasons I found the movie uninvolving and just plain disappointing really. LP is not a good coming of age film, nor a good '20-something gal finds direction' film, nor a good hangout movie (we needed many more than 2 continuing characters throughout the film that we get to know for that), nor is it a good precocious kid film. Did Not Like.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

For these sorts of reasons I found the movie uninvolving and just plain disappointing really. LP is not a good coming of age film, nor a good '20-something gal finds direction' film, nor a good hangout movie (we needed many more than 2 continuing characters throughout the film that we get to know for that), nor is it a good precocious kid film. Did Not Like.

---
Ha. Well, I think we've actually been in agreement on a movie maybe 2 times out of...50? So no nurt feelings on my part. At least you "engage." Which allows me to engage a bit back...because I did really like it...though not without reservations.

Indeed, it seems with our modern "auteurs" and their modern "great movies," one almost always has to "put up" with some sort of personal obnoxious quirk in their filmmaking -- "take some bad to get the good."

QT, for instance. I've had to look the other way at some sadistic violence in his films that can't help but suggest the man's got a screw loose and is using his "final cut" power to indulge it. But I'm an adult, I know its make believe, and I move on to the dialogue, the acting, the look of the film in question -- all the OTHER scenes that aren't so sick.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

With PTA, it has to be the "caterwauling women" and "screaming men" in a number of his films. I'm not big on hysteria in my movies, but PTA seems to crave it. The mother who screams at Mark Wahlberg in "Boogie Nights. TWO caterwauling women in Magnolia -- Julianne Moore and Melora Waters -- (whatever their justifications) Men? How about Adam Sandler yelling with gut-clenching passion and immediacy into a Hawaii phone booth at his sister, threatening to kill her if she doesn't get him a phone number for the woman he loves? Or Phillip Seymour Hoffman's yelling rant back AT Sandler when the latter calls him to confront him at his phone sex operation (Shut up shut up, shut UP!) Even in the Merchant-Ivoryesque "The Master," a relatively controlled Hoffman eventually screams "Pig- FUCK!" at some guy.

Yep...PTA sure loves his characters to be angry and yelling at times. A clue: one interviewer got PTA to inadvertently acknowledge that the mother who screamed so horribly at Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Night("You're worthless!") was....based on his own mother. Aha.

And so I came to realize that in Licorice Pizza, Alana is really yet another one of PTA's caterwauling women. She just does it in shorter, explosive doses:

(Kid bumps into Alana as she walks down the photography line)
Alana: F off!

Danielle(her sister, quietly): You have to stop fighting with everybody all the time.
Alana(after a moment's flash of contemptation): Oh, F off, Danielle!!

(Kid bumps into Alana as she runs to rescue Gary from the polic)
Alana: F off, teenager!

Alana cold calls on behalf of her council candidate, Joel Wachs:

Alana: Hello, would you be interested in hearing about our efforts to clean up corruption (phone hangs up.) Oh, well F OFF THEN!

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

And of course the big scene(a clip in distribution) where Alana yells at her entire family after her date refuses to saw say the prayer.

And her yelling at that date:

Alana: What does your penis look like?
Date: What?
Alana: What does it look like?
Date: A regular penis, I guess.
Alana: Then you're an F'ING JEW!

And so forth and so on. Yes, PTA does like those angry women(actually, Alana Haim herself improvised the whole penis discussion and rage. She was originally supposed to cry at the date for humiliating her.)

Gary yells back at Alana a time or two, but he just doesn't have the wind power nor the seething rage that seems to be part of Alana's otherwise sweet and sad personalty.

The point is: one has to "put up" with PTA's "raging woman" schtick to get to the good parts of the character and the story, while -- at the same time -- Alana's rage is somewhat endearing , part of the romance. Gary isn't the first man to be entranced by a woman of angry passion (Streisand made a career out of these dames.)

Alana is also sweet and caring towards Gary in many parts of the film, her capacity for love and empathy is there, too. There is a hint, quite frankly, of her being somewhat bi-polar in her swings.

A scene in which this comes forth most directly occurs when Alana and Gary are reading newspapers over a breakfast booth(as Nixon talks about the gas shortage on the TV). Alana gives Gary a very loving look, but, within moments, is angrily calling him a dipshit for not understanding how the gas shortage will affect their waterbed business. A real mood changer, this girl.

Of course, PTA reveals that Gary is reading ads in the LA Times for porn movies(this before video -- the age of "Boogie Nights.") This is a real quirky couple.

And I liked All of that. A favorite scene in a movie in which I had a lot of them.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I didn't find the main couple very interesting either together or apart. Neither actor to me had especially interesting voices or much presence period

---

We just agree to disagree here. HIS voice was perhaps not all that distinctive, though the energy in his line readings was(to ME.)

HER voice I just enjoyed listening to. And her timing. And her silent acting. Though the movie has a lot of rat-a-tat-tat screwball dialogue, PTA gives Alana Haim (the actress, no Alana Kane the character) some nice moments to pause before she says the next thing; its in her eyes, the pain and rage and neediness . Or sometimes, the humor.

I saw Licrorice Pizza pretty quickly after reading a few reviews that call lit "the best film of the year" and introducing a "major star in Alana Haim." "You can't take your eyes off her." "The knock-down drag out stardom of Alana Haim." "A star is born." "A natural born movie star." These are ALL actual critics quotes and yeah, maybe I was biased going in.

But she DOES have something and it DOES have to do with PTA's script and direction, I think. That will be a problem for her. If her movie career is going to advance at all, she will have to find vehicles that fit her personality and her (let's face it) often plain looks.

I'm thinking: Liza Minnelli. Equipped (as Cooper Hoffman is) with a tragic famous parent, and not terribly pretty looks(as Alana Haim does), Liza got an Oscar nom for "The Sterile Cuckoo" and WON an Oscar for "Cabaret" and....faded as a movie star pretty quickly after that.

Hey, maybe Alana Haim should do a remake of The Sterile Cuckoo. THAT role would fit. Cabaret -- not so much. Alana can sing, but her sister Danielle is the one with the "star voice" in that trio.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

In general it was an incredible *relief* to me when the various cameos from Penn, Tom Waits (playing a director, apparently based on Mark Robson), Cooper, Benny Safdie (playing politician Joel Wachs) start showing up. Suddenly the film's dialogue upgrades, the laughs start to come, we're in a proper PTA film, and in Safdie's case we finally hit some emotional truth that with the leads themselves never arrives.

--
Your observation here is fascinating to me, because I felt the INVERSE. I was thoroughly into all the scenes of Alana and Gary interacting with other teens(of course, Alana is NOT a teen, but she acts like one) and I felt that the celebrity cameos rather "barged in" to the story.

Especially Bradley Cooper as Jon Peters. HERE I find the critics at odds with me. Cooper's apparently coked-up gibberish wasn't very entertaining and I did NOT find the truck sequence to be all that spectacular. It was good enough, but reviews were suggesting "The Wages of Fear" or "The French Connection." One critic even compared this to the runaway car sequence in Family Plot(which, process screens and all...is better.)

Sean Penn's turn as "Jack Holden" was a better sequence, once you realize what's going on. Here PTA mixes several true stories: Holden drinking at Tail o' the Cock; Evel Knievel doing the motorcycle stunt there, and (fictionally) pushing Jack Holden as "at home on a motorcycle in his movies." That was NOT Holden -- that was Steve McQueen.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Tom Waits was Mark Robson, huh? Makes sense. Robson directed William Holden in The Bridges at Toki Ri(changed to Toko-SAN here.) But some critics thought he was John Huston. Or Sam Peckinpah. Whichever he was supposed to be, the combination of egotistical old star and egotistical old director made a point about how movie people are DIFFERENT from us. Holden doesn't much care at all about Alana(who is , sweetly, drunk off of one martini). When she falls off his motorcycle, he never notices, never cares, leaves her behind. The whole CROWD leaves her behind. Except Gary , who makes one of the film's great "runs."

Noteable: The durnk and hurting Alana fell on her guitar -- "I fucking broke Danielle's guitar" she moans. Her sister Danielle's guitar, we realize. Danielle loaned her the guitar for the audition -- something left unsaid but understood in this sharp screenplay. (All through the film, the REAL Danielle Haim proves a loving and caring sister to her younger, more tempermental sibling.)

Noteable: the look Alana gives Gary as he rescues her. Only that pesky "age thing" will stop the love and passion exchanged by the two in this moment. It is one of many "thwarted opportunities" in this most tricky of love stories.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I didn't much like the NYC sequence with Lucille Ball (under another name)...again, Alana and Gary aren't really center stage here.

Interesting: you can go on YouTube and see the REAL Lucille Ball REALLY put on that group song and dance number with the kids, on the Ed Sullivan Show. PTA just restaged it whole -- and added some stuff for "Gary" to do.

Interesting: That bit where Jon Peters keeps correcting Gary on Barbara Streisand is from...

...the trailer for "What's Up Doc?" (1972) where we are shown "off screen" footage of director Peter Bogdanovich getting the SAME correction FROM Barbra Streisand:

Bogdanovich: Steizand.
Barbra: StreisSAND.
Bogdo: Streiszand.

One realizes that PTA probably based every scene and gag and anecdote in Licorice Pizza on something else, something REAL.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The film infuriated me with its its *raising* of important issues with the leads that *should* have led to conflict/growth etc. but then just *dropping* them. E.g. 1, Gary seems to be aging out of his acting/stage career which should be some sort of crisis for him. Maybe agents are going to start bitching at him about his chubbiness, who knows? But none of this is ever discussed. The crisis never arrives

---
Here we arrive at the thing that I found most true (and possibly "over my head") about Licorice Pizza. That it is an ART FILM at heart, and part of how it IS an art film is PTA's insistence on not playing things out, just skipping over them or sometimes just going "art for art's sake."

PTA DOES give us a scene in which it is "spelled out" that Gary's chlld acting career is over: he's a giant sitting in a row of tiny kids. The agent (PTA's real life wife, Mya Rudolph) is instantly shocked -- "you've grown" -- and its pretty clear he isn't getting the part.

I can't remember if there are any scenes in between that scene and his walking into the waterbed store but...PTA doesn't care about the connective tissue.

Same thing when Gary wrecks JOn Peters' bedroom. (I'll have more on THAT, anon.)

And this entire sequence: at the "teen fair," Alana and Gary are flirting and reconciling when -- suddenly cops jump into the frame, grab Gary, arrest him and haul him off on a MURDER charge. Things end within five minutes -- its mistaken identity, he's free to go, Alana begs him to come to her, Alana hugs him deeply (MORE of the love story) Alana starts punching him (that bi-polar thing) and then...they start RUNNING? To Sonny and Cher? In joy?

Art film. We are asked, I guess, to take it or leave it. PtA's going for "the rush of emotion" over logic or plot or structure.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

That "rush of emotion over logic and plot" informs two famous movies: "ET the Extraterrestial" and "Vertigo." I've always linked those movies in being light on coherent narrative and STRONG on emotion. Its the orchestral music in those movies that does it, I think: Herrmann and Williams. Two greats from two eras.

With Licorice Pizza, Sonny and Cher will have to suffice. Though I do love the wall-to-wall not-quite-famous 70's music in the film. "Lisa, Listen to Me" by Blood Sweat and Tears was a personal favorite to me in the 70's. Not a big hit. Sweet song(with a powerful David Clayton-Thomas vocal.) Never would I have dreamed that decades later it would be the big song at the climax of a new movie. (Followed, over the credits by a great Taj Mahal song about seizing the day -- and your love.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

He'll be going though his savings from his acting career *very fast* setting up his waterbed and pinball businesses. He probably *has* to make one of them work?

---

The movie is low-key about this, but Gary's "hustle" reflects a young man who is in dangerous financial straits.

The father is clearly gone. Gary's a father to his little brother( a very touching relationship.) HIs mother works for HIM, in a shaky public relations firm (with all the attacks on the Japanese restaurant owner, the movie does present him a kindly man trying to help Gary make a living.) Child stardom paid the bills but now...what?

The Haim Family as the Kane family is interesting, too. On the surface...that's the Haims, alright. And mom and dad ARE in real estate in real life. But the fictional family lives in much more reduced circumstances than the Haim Family which now has(I assume) very high earning sisters in it. PTA took the Haims and created a story in which three girls around 30 years of age ALL live at home under the same roof, and a strict religious father.

I like the two shots of Alana on her bed in the "Kane" family home. The bed and a small night table fill the frame...we can see nothing more. It is like a CELL. I wondered: could all three sisters have separate bedrooms in that house? Or does Alana have to share? (UPDATE: PTA covered that. Its Alana's room alone. "Get out of my room!" she yells to sister Este.)

This isn't so much the "art film" aspect of Licorice Pizza as the "well written, well directed" aspect of the film. The framing of the shot of Alana's bedroom(the same way twice), limited information about the family...she's trapped. Who can rescue her? Gary? But he's on the edge of poverty..

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

How can he be so sanguine about probably dooming his waterbed business by doing a genuinely terrible job for Jon Peters?

--

The first couple of times I saw the film, my answer was..."art film." No interest in exploring the reality of what Gary did to Peters.

But the LAST time I watched, I think the answer is this: the scene where Gary ruins Peters' bedroom FOLLOWS the scene where Alana tells Gary that waterbeds will soon be over because of the oil shortage. So Gary innately KNOWS his business will go under, time to move on...so WHAT if he ruins Peters' bedroom.

AND: Peters threatened to choke out Gary's beloved little brother Greg. Them's fighting words. (In an art film context.)

---

Or will he think about going to college?

---

Well, PTA knows something we don't: the REAL Gary ...succeeded. I don't know if he went to college or not, but he made it.

--
Being repeatedly called a 'dipshit' by Alana might plausibly drive that sort of change in direction after all.

---

Ain't love grand? The movie ends with Alana at her sweetest and most loving towards Gary...but...that other side. This is one of those couples that may just LOVE to fight.

--

None of these areas of conflict and development are ever ever explored.

---

Well, the movie just sort of floats from vignette to vignette, but pressed, I would say that each step along the way makes Alana and Gary realize "they are made for each other" and that, therefore, they will confront the elephant n the room: the age thing. They've been honorable about it. I think for two more years, they WILL be honoroable about it. And then life will be legal. Or they can move to a Southern US state and they're legal RIGHT NOW.

Hey, I just read that Megan Mullaly is 12 years older than her husband Nick Offerman. They're actors. Just shift the years a bit: Gary and Alana will be fine.

CONT
CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

(Cont'd) E.g. 2. Alana is alerted that Gary has been been getting repeated hand-jobs from one of Alana's in-the-biz friends (played by a Spielberg daughter).

---

A Spielberg daughter in this scene. ANOTHER Spielberg daughter in another scene. Leo DiCaprio's father. Phillip Seymour Hoffman's son. Some cynic noted this is a "rich Hollywood relatives" movie. Somewhat. But PTA and the Haims earned their way up -- the Haims REALLY the hard way(years.)

---

On the one hand this sounds like incipient Hollywood mogul behavior from Gary,

---

If he REALLY did it. I don't think he did.

This is one of my favorite "little scenes' in a movie filled with it. We see Alana -- as always -- working hard to do her job(she wants to belong.) Then she sees the other girl -- whom she knows. The other girl is much prettier than Alana. The two stand side by side primping in a mirror. Alana wishes to "up sell" her status as Gary's business partner and remarks "he's really smart and enterprising"(a clue among many in the movie that Alana DIGS this guy.) The OTHER girl moves to deflate Alana with the hand jobs story, and asks Alana "Does he do that to you?"

Alana: "Oh, all the time."

I think both girls(women) are lying to each other, but the damage is done. Alana is all shook up about "who Gary is," and the relationship returns to "Boy loses girl."

---
and I expected Alana to call him out on this, on 'how he's gonna fit right in'. But she doesn't.
--
I tell you what, though. The shot AFTER the scene in the bathroom is a nice. lingering shot on Alana sitting in the car with him (still Gary's DRIVER, he doesn't have a license at this point) looking at him with a knowing smile. Maybe she doesn't love him anymore. Maybe she doesn't TRUST him anymore. Maybe she's intriguiged by his "sexy side."

And maybe he didn't do it at all.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

And the dinner blowup over Alana's date Lance's atheism struck me as moronic. Judaism is very sophisticated about atheism- Ecclesiates is *all* *about* how the religious tradition speaks to some of the very smartest Jews who aren't going to be able to make themselves believe.)

---

Interesting tidbit on THAT scene. According to Alana Haim, it really happened, at a family dinner, but it was sister DANIELLE's boyfriend. Alana says after the date refused to say the prayer "nobody talked for , like, 16 minutes." Like I said, PTA seems to have put a real story into every scene in this movie.

Now...I'm not looking to GOTCHA on this, swanstep. The scene has to play on its own. And if it did NOT play...fair enough.

I liked the scene for the novelty of the entire Haim family in the room together. and the sisters DO get to sing in harmony...the only time in the whole movie they get to BE Haim. Though I like how while Este(oldest sister) works in real easte with her parents, Danielle has a guitar. Maybe in this FICTIONAL home, Danielle might still be a music star.

BTW, Alana KANE growing up in home where the father still has such a strong accent further underlines her "Old World Household" for the story. And: Mama Haim is in four scenes but never says a word in the whole movie. I'll bet she requested that.

I WONDER: OK, Alana has the lead role in Licorice Pizza. But did PTA make sure all the sisters got the SAME pay? If he didn't...trouble, yes. And how about mom and dad? I'm serious. I sure hope this movie doesn't break up the group. I've already read that interviewers CANNOT ask about Licorice Pizza in interviews about the upcoming Haim Tour. And DANIELLE is the focus of their new "single"(a song with no album) called "Lost Track." Directed by PTA, of course.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

On the other hand we expect that there's going to be some fal out for Alana who's keeping Gary at some physical distance and about whose own level of sexual experience we the audience have some questions. Is it possible that she's a 25 year old virgin at the height of the sexual revolution? Sure she lives with her parents and sisters but really?

---

"Licorice Pizza" has been called the "nicest" of PTA movies, which makes sense, given how Boogie Nights was about porn people and ended in fatal bloodshed for many of them. Other PTA films have murder, child abuse history, just bad things.

But Licorice Pizza...nice. Now PTA put that "disquieting" age difference in there, which makes it a bit "perverse" like Boogie Nights but...PTA strives to give us a VERY old fashioned romance. Think about all the love stories of the 30s, 40s, 50s in which the only goal was to bring the LOVE story to a happy conclusion. Sex was never part of the discussion. LOVE was. Sex got in if the couple got married or had babies. But otherwise, these were some very chaste love stories.

And I think PTA pulled it off here.

---
Somehow, however, and it struck me as sheer laziness on PTA's part, none of this was ever discussed again or addressed. We finally have no idea about what makes Alana tick. I was sure that at some point Gary was going to maul her for her lack of experience at 25 just as he tweaks her a little for being in a dead end-ish job before he met her. But that never happened.

--

Oh, I dunno. Growing up, I knew of people who were sexual in their 20s, but some who were not. Not everyone couples up in their 20s. Friendships are as good as it gets for some.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Brian at Joel Wachs campaign is established as an age-appropriate old classmate of Alana's and probably an old flame. He says to her "I remember how you like to do your homework." She acknowledges that. I took that to mean something sexual with Brian during a homework session. I may be wrong.

Its interesting how Licorice Pizza posits Brian as perhaps the ONE truly competitive candidate to Gary for Alana's love. But he's an old flame, they probably broke up for a reason.

Well, that's just some discussion of plot points from my POV. If you did not like the movie, nothing I can do about that.

I will add this. At least two of my favorite movies of a year -- Terms of Endearment and Love Actually -- had dialogue, characters, SCENES I just couldn't stand. And yet I loved both films when they were over. Something took over the story and my emotions and got it to the finish line.

Licorice Pizza is sort of like that. I don't like EVERY scene, and the celebrity cameo scenes the least. But I DO like a LOT of scenes in the movie, I know I will re-watch them. It connected. And I finally get a PTA film in the top slot.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I am reminded that, in the 70s, in Los Angeles just over the hill from the Valley where Licorice Pizza is set, I, too, encountered William Holden and Jon Peters "for real."

The locale: "Westwood Village", a small district of shops and movie theaters next to the UCLA campus. In the 70's, celebrities were all OVER the Village. A gang shot an innocent bystander there in the 80s and all the movie stars went away.

But in the 70s?

WILLIAM HOLDEN: I saw him walking in Westwood Village, up to me and past me. Not much to say, but he was a favorite of mine -- Pike Bishop in The Wild Bunch! -- and it was great to see him. Very thin, rather small of frame...very wrinkled face.

JON PETERS. A bigger deal. He and girlfriend Barbra Streisand threw the premiers of "A Star is Born" at the Village Theater in Westwood Village. I stood about a block away to watch them. They were dressed all in WHITE(like Peters is in LP.) Streisand, Peters...Kris Kristofferson, Paul Williams.

And standing right bedside me was a tall, shambling man in a sweater: Babs' ex, Elliott Gould. Gould was watching his ex wife's premiere! In the shadows, unnoticed. With me. A small man was with Gould. He said "You know, if you go up there, she'll let you go in with them." Gould said "Naw," and they walked away.

Finally: PTA gave Licorice Pizza an exclusive opening engagement at: the Village Theater in Westwood. Where Jon Peters had that premiere all those years ago. The Village can be seen in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" across the street from the Bruin theater where Sharon Tate goes in to see her own movie.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Of course, it could be that I'm just grumpy right now. Nothing new I've seen in the last 12 months has really floated my boat (Nightmare Alley and Power of the Dog are probably the closest to successes for me in the current crop). Drive My Car, The Souvenir Part 2, Almodovar's Parallel Mothers, and Sciamma's Petite Maman remain to perhaps save 2021 for me.

---

I work from a much smaller universe of movies per year in seeking my "favorite of the year." In some ways, that's a cheat -- there might be 30 great movies out there(now that COVID is starting to wane and allow for their release) , but I'm only going to draw from about ten or less that attract me to watch in the first place.

Its usual "brand names" to whom I'm drawn, which is why, modernly, I've picked QT movies and Scorsese movies and Coen movies and Aaron Sorkin scripts(even though Sorkin now has a "hack" reputation of sorts, I can't help myself, he writes funny arguments.)

Your breadth of knowledge continues to surpass, swanstep but it sounds like you've seen Power of the Dog and Nightmare Alley. I have too and -- well, neither of them hit me like Licorice Pizza, but LP hit me as an ENTERTAINMENT rather than Oscar bait. Against all odds, it is a very moving love story. With a happy ending. And we get so few of those.

PTA's being attached makes it "prestige." I keep bugging myself: I would NEVER take in a teen love story like the scores made over the years FOR teens. She's All That. She's the Man. Hell, even Pretty in Pink really isn't for my taste. And if "Licorice Pizza" starred -- say decades ago -- Sarah MIchelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr -- traditionally good looking youth stars, it might not be for me either.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

But PTA knows that by casting Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman -- whose looks range from somewhat unattractive to "real"(acne and all), he was setting the stage for a teen love story to be taken SERIOUSLY. And for me, at my age, its a "time machine" back to MY youth. And that's nice.

After a couple of looks at it, it does seem that Licorice Pizza helps "set" PTA as a man who likes to make films about "raging people." He's such a mild-mannered boyish interview, but his MOVIES are filled with woman AND men who yell and rage and argue, and it cuts deep. (I forgot Tom Cruise's table flipping and rants in Magnolia.) Does the quiet PTA harbor his own rage? He has suggested the mother in Boogie Nights(horrible) was his and said that the dying bastard played by Jason Robards in Magnolia is based on his own dying father.

--

The Licorice Pizza board doesn't seem to be taking the movie very seriously, so I'll toss a few more points out here:

It turns out that not EVERY line in PTA's movie is from his scriot.

It turns out that Alana Haim came up with the line where she says to Gary(during their truly great near-end argument -- I've been there):

"I'm a politician. You're talking pinball machines."

In the film, Alana's annoucment "I'm a politician" is the girl's attempt to sound worldly and serious...but it sounds unformed, borderline dumb. She's NOT a politician . She's a campaign worker. And being a politician isn't the badge of honor it once was.
The girl comes off as a bit dense.

And yet Alana wrote the line. And PTA left it in.

But its her next line that is poignant:

"I'm a politician.....I've got to get my life together."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Clearly her "politician" identity follows a series of attempts to BE someone: "I'm an actress." "I'm his business partner." "I'm the manager here."

Gary walks on her here -- he can drive now, he doesn't need her to drive him anymore -- and (per the script?) Alana's sudden vulnerability is sad to see: "Look, I'll drive you to see the stupid pinball machines....don't go" she is vulnerable, she wants Gary. Its just sad. And very real. And not -- I would contend -- Sarah Michelle Gellar/Freddie Prinze Jr. stuff, because it is so quirky(art film) on the one hand and so REAL on the other.

Funny: when Alana jealously tries to pry Gary away from his old flame at the waterbed store ("I'm Alana, I'm the manager here") she delivers one line EXACTLY like Don Rickles . Its what I mean by good line reading.

Nice: Danielle only gets a couple of scenes, but HER voice is softer and nicer and HER sister is actually trying to help Alana. She has some star quality , too.

---

Briefly on Haim. As I noted, they are going on tour and they are forbidding questions on Licorice Pizza and Danielle is beign moved back into the lead sister position. Will they survive?

I like their "years of hard work, rags to riches story"(well, not rags -- just good old All-American immigrant hard work.) I like how we've learned that Mama Haim taught PTA art in second grade in the Valley.

But this is funny to me: The sisters have such a "Partridge Family" background that,to counteract it in their rock act, they seem hellbent on being rebels via one mechanism:

Profanity.

I mean, these cute little gals cuss like longshoremen.

From some concert footage of Alana:

"So I'm telling those c---suck''ing mother--f'ers" f you! You can eat sh'''t!"

Nice mouths. You kiss your mother with those mouths?

CUT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I recently watched a NETFLIX movie on Motley Crue("The Dirt.") in which the fellows are shown taking drugs, drinking and constantly screwing groupies and other guys' girlfriends(including their bandmates girlfriends.) And I thought: I trust Haim isn't like THAT? Hopefully more like James Taylor on the road, maybe. Or Stevie Nicks.

Sidebar on Nightmare Alley. Its up for Best Picture too, directed by the man who won that award a few years back: Guillermo del Toro. Can he repeat?

Doubtful. The movie looks great in period Green and Gold(see: the movie poster for the look.) Its a remake of a "kinky" 1940s Tyrone Power movie I've been reading about for years(to which I thought: just how kinky could a 1940 sstudio movie BE? )

It turns out that the Power movie wasn't THAT kinky and the remake can't do much to make matters worse. (The character of a live-chicken-eating Geek is central to the story, the difference is, in the new movie, we see the chicken get ate.)

Bradley Cooper is the star, and between this and his misfired cameo in Licorice Pizza, I wonder: just how much of a star is he, really? Neither film made much money.

Nightmare Alley is ultimately about Cooper as a fake medium -- thiok Madame Blanche in Family Plot -- and I realize why they don't make many "fake medium" movies. Its hard to "buy" the gullible customers. Nightmare Alley is predictable and OK at best -- but great to look at.

Power of the Dog? The probable Best Picture/Director film(history for the female director.) Sam Elliott went off on it on a podcast, but that probably HELPS its Oscar chances. Beautiful NZ landscapes fill in for Montana. I found the story grim and depressing even with some upbeat elements near the end.

I'm just not the audience for Oscar bait.

Maybe Licorice Pizza wins for its screenplay, but maybe not.
But I'll be seeing it again -- and its the only Oscar movie I actually drove the theater to see. The others are all streaming.

I

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

PS. Licorice Pizza has a first scene that is a direct steal -- a direct homage -- to a scene in American Graffiti. The scene involves a cherry bomb in a Boy's Room stall. And an early "at sunset" shot of the hot dog joint where Gary buys his brother Greg a burger matches the opening shot of AG.

So you can add American Graffiti to The Apartment, LA Confidential, and Psycho as being referenced in Licorice Pizza.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

PTA's being attached makes it "prestige." I keep bugging myself: I would NEVER take in a teen love story like the scores made over the years FOR teens.

Yes, PTA's auterish impulses and obsessions are all over LP so there's no way it feels comparable to an average, even quite good 'for teens' rom-com-drama. In a way, LP isn't a million miles away from things like Almost Famous, Rushmore, Harold and Maude, and Election and (from the UK) An Education and Fish Tank, shading into even more dramatic and transgressive stuff from French directors like Louis Malle (Murmur of the Heart) and Maurice Pialat (A nos amours) and Varda (Kung Fu Master).

PTA's signature stuff wearied me overall this time and the lead couple just didn't grab me. That may be a personal thing. The class conflicted but smartie teen lovers of the Normal People mini-series *did* just grab me

The inarticulacy (at least by my snobby standards) of PTA's wannabe lovers is a bit of an obstacle for me I suppose. That said, I've liked films in the past, e.g., Sciamma's great debut Water Lilies (2007), about how deeply feeling and perceptive teens can be while they're also inarticulate and opaque to each other, and also selfish and cruel. So perhaps I should say that PTA's specific version of inarticulate teen-hood didn't work for me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Yes, PTA's auterish impulses and obsessions are all over LP so there's no way it feels comparable to an average, even quite good 'for teens' rom-com-drama.

---

Yes...I've rather had to "talk my way in" to liking Licorice Pizza so much , given my age, but then I'm "young at heart" anyway, and the film takes me back to 1973 AND has some folks in it who are more known to my generation -- Jon Peters, the William Holden surrogate...Nixon. It is a rather adult take on teenage romance, and of course it is NOT a teenage romance because she's 25 except -- and the movie makes this point strongly -- Gary is ready "older" than her in "real age." He's the breadwinner for his family, the father to his little brother, well aware that if he DOESN'T earn, its curtains.

---

In a way, LP isn't a million miles away from things like Almost Famous, Rushmore, Harold and Maude, and Election and (from the UK) An Education and Fish Tank, shading into even more dramatic and transgressive stuff from French directors like Louis Malle (Murmur of the Heart) and Maurice Pialat (A nos amours) and Varda (Kung Fu Master).

---

There is definitely a tradition for "young love movies" AND "odd love movies" (like Harold and Maude) which rather fit in here.

Comparison has been made to Max in Rushmore and his inappropriate crush on his female teacher. But as opposed to this story, Max is younger than Gary and the teacher is older than Alana -- in presentation on screen if not in ages given.

PTA's signature stuff wearied me overall this time

---

Interesting...an auteur having an off day -- perhaps blinded by his friendship from the Haim sisters and Hoffman's son -- all of whom are quite good but rather at the service of PTA's vision here.

--

and the lead couple just didn't grab me. That may be a personal thing. The class conflicted but smartie teen lovers of the Normal People mini-series *did* just grab

--

Fair enough.

I have a bit more to say....for the record---

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The inarticulacy (at least by my snobby standards) of PTA's wannabe lovers is a bit of an obstacle for me I suppose.

--

Its a tricky bit of business in this film. PTA allowing Alana Haim to say "I'm a politician" (HER line) inadvertently made the character less formed and more dumb than I think PTA intended.

Indeed, that opening scene between Gary and Alana(in the school photo line) is just about a perfectly timed and written "first love duet" that feels like a lot more than a "meet cute." THAT is the classic scene in this movie(even how it LOOKS, Alana's blue and white outfit, the bright yellow SoCal sun, a camera that follows the two kids switching positions as they walk and talk.) I think that scene ALONE sold the first group of critics on the movie, on Alana Haim, and on Cooper Hoffman. They don't quite act or sound so perfect later on.

---

That said, I've liked films in the past, e.g., Sciamma's great debut Water Lilies (2007), about how deeply feeling and perceptive teens can be while they're also inarticulate and opaque to each other, and also selfish and cruel. So perhaps I should say that PTA's specific version of inarticulate teen-hood didn't work for me.

---

Speaking of selfish and cruel, its a rather interesting scene during the "nighttime half" of the Waterbed showroom when a drugged Alana demonstrates happiness and physical love for Gary and he pretty much shrugs her off, doesn't speak to her, and goes to his "age appropriate flame."

Its like the hard driving, sweet and kind date-seeker of the opening scene has disappeared and NOW we see one of those guys who just doesn't care about her anymore, now that the girl likes him (see: Vertigo.) I cant read if this scene is "the usual rom com stuff" or something deeper -- but the emotions hit home anyway. Gary could have had Alana NOW(as a girlfriend if not a lover yet) but -- he rejects her. Why? (Maybe its nicer than that; maybe he just doesn't think he SHOULD be with her, now.) The movie kept my emotions going -- if only in nostalgia.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Bonus comment: seeing as I'm so smitten by Licorice Pizza and its Apartment connection, I shall now actually DUMP on another movie(or at least another SCENE) which ostensibly had The Apartment as its muse.

Cameron Crowe wrote and directed "Jerry McGuire," and wrote a role FOR Billy Wilder. Wilder turned it down(the old sports agent.) Crowe had done a Hitchocck/Truffaut" interview book with Wilder, but Wilder was just too old to give incisive answers. Still, Crowe worshipped Wilder and seemed to think that "Jerry McGuire" was HIS Wilder movie.

Not in that one scene I can't stand, it wasn't.

Renee Zellwegger sobbing(?) "Stop..STOP!...You had me at hello."

This is a good line in some rom com circles, but I HATED it. Hated her line reading(a sob that stretches out to nausea), hated the line for its meaning, hated her scrunched up face SAYING the line.

I sure am glad Alana Haim didn't have to do that scene, or a scene like it.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Alana Haim has intimated that once the Oscars are over on March 27, what one critic called "the longest movie press tour in history" will finally be over and Licorice Pizza will deactivate as a new movie and become( I believe) a classic.)

So a little more over here in OT land:

The film won a Best Screenplay award with a public ceremony last week -- the BAFTA (British Oscar.) One thing I recall about the BAFTA is that Walter Matthau won the Best Actor BAFTA for Charley Varrick, in that Licorice Pizza year of 1973. So its a good award.

So I suppose there's a "race" to see if PTA can win his first Oscar.

Alana Haim did that ceremony in London in one gown, then changed to ANOTHER gown and went to ANOTHER awards ceremony, ALSO in London. (At Royal Albert Hall, where Hitchcock staged that assassination those two times.)

Alana's taller, older sister Este accompanied her for the red carpet and the ceremony at both places but -- "Star Sister Danielle" was nowhere to be found. Hmmm. Alana and Este also hit Paris for some fashion show. No Danielle. Hmm.

I saw some critic's column this week about how Licorice Pizza should win Best Picture(doubtful) in which he writes, "I'd watch that movie two times a day if I could."

I sort of know the feeling. Its been a very fun rewatch, and a very good study in screenwriting and mood.

Here's what I miss: its not on DVD yet. So I can't skip directly to scenes I like; its a long slog to wind to them. Which is too bad, because here is a movie where I can rewatch and love, maybe 15 scenes, but just feel like SKIPPING about five other scenes. Its not a perfect game.

Still those 15 scenes I love brought back my "movie love" for 2021 and 2022, and I'm very grateful for the feeling.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

A few other "moments":

As one critic noted, even though Alana Kane(the character) keeps rejecting Gary and insulting him in that opening scene -- she never walks away, walks WITH him(neglecting her job) all the way up to the moment he sits down for his picture (whereupon to watch him get his photo taken, Alana HAIM strikes a sexy rocker's pose with her legs -- she knows her power.) Then she walks him all the way to the door and out. Bottom line: she's intrigued by this guy, from the start. (Maybe the movie stuff -- she DOES gravitate to power.)

--

Alana Kane resists giving Gary her phone number . But she does. And he gets it wrong -- and she panics a little: "No you got it wrong" and he reveals he remembered it right. But now he knows: she WANTS him to have that number.

--

Gary pines for Alana, but he gets chicks pretty easy all through the movie. The flight attendant gives him a come hither look("You're one of the actors?"), he picks up some girls at the Teen Fair and takes them to dinner versus "Jack Holden's" table. And of course he reconnects easily with his old flame at the waterbed store(to Alana's fury.)

So what gives? (A) Alana is "hard to get" (see: Marnie.) and (B) As he told his little brother "Today I met the girl I'm going to marry." How 1943 can you be? He KNOWS Alana will be the love of his life; the other (age appropriate) girls are just too "easy pickings."

---

The song that accompanies the opening walk and talk Nina Simone's July Tree) and the song that comes up on the end credits (Taj Majal's "Tomorrow May Not Be Your Day") are the perfect beginning and end for this film -- and not well known to me.

---

And: its too bad that the Japanese restaurant scenes took such a hit, because comic actor John Michael Higgins is both funny and kindly in the role.

Equally good(and unscathed in the press): Harriet Sansom Harris doing a more scary and realistic(but still funny) version of the agent she played on Frasier.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

And: its too bad that the Japanese restaurant scenes took such a hit

God people are easily triggered these days! They can't mentally accommodate that a realistic film set in the 1970s and 1980s is likely to depict some of the casual cluelessness & racism that was undoubtedly around then, maybe even make some jokes about it.

The Take channel on youtube has a long vid on PTA's couples & lessons in love he offers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HylgtUcbgXo

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

And: its too bad that the Japanese restaurant scenes took such a hit

God people are easily triggered these days! They can't mentally accommodate that a realistic film set in the 1970s and 1980s is likely to depict some of the casual cluelessness & racism that was undoubtedly around then, maybe even make some jokes about it.

--

Yes. And again, this restaurant owner and his wives were evidently "the real deal" like so much else in this "memory script. They really existed in the 70s in the Valley.

PTA tried to answer on this topic just once that I read. He called it a joke where his intentions...may not have landed. And he also said the scene was ABOUT "an idiot."

Didn't work. His quotes were used in another article attacking him. Seems most critics just wished the scene had been cut.

That's called censorship.

And in today's society...sometimes it works, but a lot of the time, its just internet noise.

Indeed, here at "Satan's Machine," the rise of zillions of commenters and blogs has created a mini-society of "offense." A movie gets run through the template and found lacking. With Licorice Pizza, its the Japanese restaurant scenes on a small scale and the ENTIRE PREMISE (15 year old and 25 year old) on the other. That's given me pause, but really, I found the boy and girl rather equivalent on the screen; he's taller than her, she's young for her age. If the storyline didn't TELL us of the age difference, I wouldn't have seen it.

Plus...he's a man. He is the breadwinner for a household (alongside his mom, but she works for HIM.)

---

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The Take channel on youtube has a long vid on PTA's couples & lessons in love he offers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HylgtUcbgXo

---

I'll take a look. It occurs to me that PTA has presented some couples in his movies. Adam Sandler and Emily Watson did fine in Punch Drunk Love(which I like less than LP); John C. Reilly and Melora Waters in Magnolia came out OK. DDL in Phantom Thread? Maybe.

BUT -- and I put spoilers in the the thread -- Licorice Pizza ends up being something I haven't seen in a long, long time: a good love story with a happy ending and a rooting interest in that outcome.

Simple as that.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

To American Graffiti, The Apartment, LA Confidential and (maybe) Psycho(to me only?) we can add another influence on this film:

Goodfellas.

Remember how Henry Hill talked about "Jimmy Two Times"? He says everything twice ("I'm gonna go get the paper. Get the paper.")

Well, that's Alana Kane. "You are such an actor. You are such an actor."

Cute detail.

And, and throw in usual suspects Fast Times at Ridgemont High(Spicoli is in THIS movie), Almost Famous, Dazed and Confused.

But this one is its own sweet and spicy experience...

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The Take channel on youtube has a long vid on PTA's couples & lessons in love he offers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HylgtUcbgXo

---

I'll take a look.

---

I have. Its an interesting video essay but one with which I have a fair amount of disagreement. Its a bit too "hectoring" -- about the Alana/Gary age gap; about the cop and the addict having a romance in Magnolia.

On the other hand, Phantom Thread with the woman POISONING the man on a continual, non-fatal basis? I didn't get that "Licorice Pizza love vibe" from that one.

And indeed, Adam Sandler's out of control, yelling , murder-threatening, bathroom destroying rage in Punch Drunk Love isn't too comforting for the love story in which it sounds. (A reminder that MOST of PTA's films -- ALL of them except Licorice Pizza -- are pretty angry, raging MEAN movies. Before Licorice Pizza, I wouldn't have called PTA our "nice guy auteur."

---

I wrote this up-thread:

It occurs to me that PTA has presented some couples in his movies. Adam Sandler and Emily Watson did fine in Punch Drunk Love(which I like less than LP); John C. Reilly and Melora Waters in Magnolia came out OK. DDL in Phantom Thread? Maybe.

---

And that's pretty much who the YouTube video covered. Though they added the strained "father-son" love(thwarted) in There Will Be Blood and The Master.

---

BUT -- and I put spoilers in the the thread -- Licorice Pizza ends up being something I haven't seen in a long, long time: a good love story with a happy ending and a rooting interest in that outcome.

Simple as that.

---

I stand by that. And I simply don't agree with the hand-wringing in the video and the comments over the age thing. It struck me as a love that could maintain "platonic plus kissing" for a couple of years, and then advance once Gary was 18.

Simple as that.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

[Restarting a Thread with wide columns]
I have at last seen Petite Maman (2021) and like it a lot. It's a very quiet, gentle, 70 minute fantasy (apparently influenced by a range of kids fantasy fiction as well as the more realistic aspects of animes like My Neighbor Totoro and in the far distance by the sweeter aspects of a range of Hollywood fantasies like Big and Peggy Sue Got Married and Back To The Future). PW is so simple and slight and delicate that I'm loath to say anything more here, i.e., beyond 'Watch It'. Try not to read up too much about PM before seeing is my most fervent advice: let its little secrets and pleasures just come to you. It's a probable future classic movie if people don't snark themselves out of being able to enjoy it!

[Possible Proviso: I'm definitely on Team Sciamma. I've loved all her stuff since her debut, Water Lilies (2007), and at 43 she's still on the up-swing. So I'm wide open and disposed to give the benefit of the doubt to and like each new thing she does at this point.]

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

PW is so simple and slight and delicate that I'm loath to say anything more here, i.e., beyond 'Watch It'.

--

Well, I bespoke here to you about one I liked (OT has its reasons); I'll try to return the favor.

That said, you have and invariably will have a much wider range of films that you watch and filmmakers that you are familiar with.

At the end of 2021, I went to the Roger Ebert site, where a fairly large group of "staff critics" each chose their 10 best of the year. These people watch EVERYTHING for their living, and on most of the lists, I will say that I either didn't recognize half of the titles at all, or I DID recognize them but simply didn't make the time to track them down.

Maybe I'll catch all the Oscar noms for 2021; but maybe not. I think it is a little "wrong" that several of them seem to have come out on Netflix or Apple exclusively (less, maybe one theater in NYC for one week): Spielberg was right "unto the letter of the law" that theatrical films only should qualify for Oscar, but then COVID came and knocked everything out.

At least West Side Story and Licorice Pizza went to theaters first. They both peformed in the high 20 millions -- not much when The Batman is opening over 100 million domestic. Bigger loss for West Side Story. But I SAW Licorice Pizza at the theater(with a large enough crowd that laughed and applauded appreciatively), and I suppose now WSS and LP will "live on forever" in streaming. I'm guessingLicorice Pizza gets a following. I'm guessing that Spielberg's WSS will go the way of Van Sant's Psycho -- the original is just fine thank you.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

[Restarting a Thread with wide columns]

---

I'm not going to ask how you do that, swanstep, but I'm glad you did (Me, I just start another thread. This is better.)

Try not to read up too much about PM before seeing is my most fervent advice: let its little secrets and pleasures just come to you. It's a probable future classic movie if people don't snark themselves out of being able to enjoy it!

--

Again, i will try. I suppose in 2021 I sought out movies by makers I like (Eastwood), or from content I liked(The Sopranos) or...something about the storyline and the reviews drew me in (1973 and some "Best Movie of the Year" reviews for LP ,but also the plot -- it was something I wanted to see. I love funny love stories.)

Interesting: how COVID delays (in the making as much as the release) are bringing us a whole bunch of "delayed" movies that feel a little worse for the wear. Bond was postponed like three times; The Batman got its release date moved a year; Top Gun II STILL hasn't been released (Mr. Cruise wasn't going to allow THAT to get meager COVID box office.) And yet...time moved on , the years passed -- "they're all here." (or soon.)

As I noted above(I lost the post then it came back, but its different in context here): at the end of 2021, I went over to the Roger Ebert website and looked at its many, many critics' individual 10 Best Lists. They are paid to see EVERYTHING. I didn't recognize a lot of titles; I recognized some titles I probably won't see. In short, there will always be a lot more movies in release than I will ever see.

That said, the Roger Ebert reviewer assigned to "Licorice Pizza," Christy Lemiere(sp?) wrote one of the first reviews I read, and she is one who called it the Best Movie of the Year.

"I'm a slave to media hype."

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

One phenomenon that I recognize with myself is that I do periodically *tire* of some director or other. After a certain point, their style & repetitions irk but yet their attempts to 'do something different' also seem strained. Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch this last year was amazing to look at and listen to - Wes-dialogue is so arch that it's almost like hearing an easy-to-understand foreign tongue - but it lacked the heart of his best work like Grand Budapest Hotel (my fave for 2014). Recent Wes films have been very hit and miss for me on this sort of ground: His Isle of Dogs (stop-motion) was just a pale shadow of Fantastic Mr Fox and very forgettable I find. Licorice Pizza suffers for me by coming where it does in PTA's filmography, e.g. ,The Haim sisters in LP felt just like a less tart version of the ferocious, possibly toxic sisters in Punch-Drunk- Love (my fave of 2002), and Bradley Cooper's cameo in LP felt like a less-inspired version of Alfred Molina's at the end of Boogie Nights. And so on. I don't know what the hell Joel Coen thought he was doing with Macbeth - there were various good ideas in there (and one knockout performance, by Kathryn Hunter, a legendary acting teacher in London showing how it's done!) but the sense of complete mastery of material that you get with, say, The Man Who Wasn't There or No Country or True Grit or A Serious Man just wasn't anywhere to be found. Maybe ten years from now Sciamma will have burned out on me, she won't be able to surprise me any more either. We'll see!

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

One phenomenon that I recognize with myself is that I do periodically *tire* of some director or other. After a certain point, their style & repetitions irk but yet their attempts to 'do something different' also seem strained.

---

Its a risk, isn't it? QT's theory about "aged" directors work declining can also sound in YOUNGER directors who just can't keep up their "auteur" reputation. It was ever thus. Welles after Citizen Kane(Ok, after the Magnificent Ambersons.) Frankenheimer after The Manchurian Candidate(OK, after Seven Days in May.)

In these fast moving times, a director can get kinda old kinda fast.

--- Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch this last year was amazing to look at and listen to - Wes-dialogue is so arch that it's almost like hearing an easy-to-understand foreign tongue - but it lacked the heart of his best work like Grand Budapest Hotel (my fave for 2014).

--

I watched The French Dispatch on streaming -- I wanted to see it at my local art house theater, but they pulled it before I could get there.

Agreed: as a matter of style and look and narration and tone, its very Wes. But it was twee to the point of abstraction. I need to see it again to truly understand it, I feel. I only got "the gist." (As a sidebar, one of its episodes features a briefly referenced young man/MUCH older woman affair that puts LP in context and better for it.)

I very much liked The Grand Budapest Hotel(with its obscure homage to Torn Curtain) but you have to go back to The Royal Tannenbaums for the one I really LOVED. It came early -- after Rushmore -- but it was multi-generational and perfect. The movie that Gene Hackman(magnificent in this) SHOULD have gone out on , instead of Welcome to Mooseport.

Truth be told, Budapest is only one movie ago, right? So Wes has been producing good ENOUGH films late in the game. He's still a player of sorts. I assume he will keep getting financing.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Licorice Pizza suffers for me by coming where it does in PTA's filmography, e.g. ,

---

I never particularly had been ranking the PTA movies. LP generated some writings upon them. Interesting: now he's done 9 movies, just like his "pal," QT. But PTA has made no announcement of cutting things off at 10.

Another way that QT and PTA "match up." Each man made a modest debut film (Reservoir Dogs, Hard Eight) that was FOLLOWED by their "landmark" arrival film (Pulp Fiction, Boogie Nights.) They match up a bit in the LA locations of some of their films, but each man also went his own way to other places.

Still, Boogie Nights put PTA on the map, and along with its Scorsese-like filmmaing and 70's/80's nostalgia, we know WHY: he took up Porn People and the Porn World, and it was as fascinating in its own societal way as the Mafia World. We entered a world of outsiders. Yes, there was plenty of sex all through it, but never very sexy. And the movie eventually hits some very gory stretches: people get killed.

"Licorice Pizza" happens right down the block and a few years before the events of Boogie Nights. But the film has a "sweet" reputation that is unique in the PTA canon. Nobody gets killed. Child abuse (a factor in Boogie Nights and Magnolia) isn't a topic, It has a happy ending(I don't care how long these kids will be together, they look happy to me right now.)

And the issue becomes: is not the happy LP (with its subversive age-inappropriate romance) a slight and meager and pale follow-up to the powerful Boogie Nights and Magnolia(LA films), let alone the literary high art of There Will Be Blood, The Master and Phantom Thread?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

My answer: oh, maybe, but doggone it, Licorice Pizza shot right up to the top of MY list of PTA films. Easy enough, most of the others never got close.

Internet columnists drew up lists of PTA's work -- even with LP just in release -- and put LP at number 6 or 7 on a list of 9. Understandable given the breakout of Boogie Nights, and the High Art Qscar bait of There Will Be Blood.

Still, Number One was easy for me. LP made me happy. I responded to it. I still do. Its rather unexpected out of its maker. And one senses some deadpan subversion there: some people ARE bugged by the age difference thing. Its not a purely innocent film, and PTA knew this.

--

The Haim sisters in LP felt just like a less tart version of the ferocious, possibly toxic sisters in Punch-Drunk- Love (my fave of 2002),

---

Your fave of 2002? That's good to know. I looked at Punch Drunk Love again(along with some other PTA films once I saw LP) and it certainly has the "art film thing" going. The atonal music and disturbing sounds of things crashing. The interludes with a screen full of colored lights("doubled" a bit in LP by a lot of "lens flare" shots, especially at night. Sandler's character -- not THAT far off from his box office persona -- but heartfelt and downright scary sometimes. Here, too, is a romance with a happy ending from PTA...but the story is more weird and menacing, Adam Sandler is just hard to warm to. Versus the couple in LP.

---
CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

and Bradley Cooper's cameo in LP felt like a less-inspired version of Alfred Molina's at the end of Boogie Nights.

---

As for the sisters, I see it, but the Haim sisters have more individual personality. Danielle has a very nice, sympathic role to play here -- she's looking out for her younger, combative sister, trying to help her (possibly aware that the girl is mentally ill in some way.) And she, too has a great voice. Watch her in the pinball palace with Cooper Hoffman as Gary near the end:

Gary: You look great.
Danielle: Thank you.
Gary: (Looking down) You did your toes!
Danielle: Yep. I did my toes.

Its a sweet moment because Danielle took the time to do that for Gary's opening, and Gary appreciates it. (I think.)

Meanwhile, Este gets her "special delivery" for one quick close-up questioning Alana about her first date with GAry:

Este: Where have you been? Were you on a date? Why are you dressed like that? It must have been a LONG date.

Alana yells at her(of course), but Este "got her comedy relief moment." The movie sees to know the "Haim pecking order" and thus these sisters are more differentiated than the interesting but large bunch in Punch Drunk Love(less one sister who gets more screen time and scenes.)

---

As for Bradley Cooper's Jon Peters cameo. So well reviewed -- so disliked by me. I assume the character is meant to be coked up, but his gibberish and his hostility never made me laugh or enjoy seeing him on screen. The truck drive was OK enough(nice close-ups on Alana's face in heroic concentration) but...no. Many other scenes I liked better.

And indeed, Cooper is but a pale echo of Alfred Molina's truly scary (and equally drugged up) nutcase in Boogie Nights, whose presence and companions hint at murder from the get-go. And those FIRECRACKERS. I recall my sig other walking out of the theater during that scene. She waited in the lobby til the movie was over. I stayed. Gallant, eh.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Of all the other PTA movies, I most remember Magnolia as capturing my affection on first viewing. It was 1999, a year where I don't really have a clear favorite -- Magnolia COULD be it, if I can leave out the "caterwauling women" (Julianne Moore and Melora Waters.)

I watched it on a Saturday afternoon when I could relax and settle in for the full three hours. I was immediately taken by the opening sequence of "coincidence stories" and I was enthralled by the rain of frogs at the end that connect all the stories. The "in between stuff" was interesting in various ways, but always with a certain emotion attached.

And I watched as Tom Cruise -- a superstar who was far too kid-like for me to like in his early years -- became a man and showed WHY he's a superstar -- he soars above his other cast mates as if in another plane of existence. Plays a real rotter (how about those sexually graphic, misogynistic speeches, huh?)

I also loved all the Aimee Mann music and ended up playing it in the car for a year.

The sex in Boogie Nights was landmark. (Psycho for 1997 landmark?) I found it highly disturbing how Julianne Moore treated Mark Wahlberg like "her little son" on the one hand but had professional sex with him on the other. Not only were these psychologically damaged people, the were, for the most part, very unintelligent people, which is difficult to relate to on the screen.

And, hey -- Burt Reynolds. Demonstrating the great movie star he COULD have been had he not thrown it away on car chase comedies. His voice, his manliness, his movements. Burt's the Daddy of Boogie Nights, and almost as much of a "stand alone" draw as Mr. Cruise in Magnolia.

Thus, my PTA list:

Licorice Pizza
Magnolia
Boogie Nights
Inherent Vice
Punch Drunk Love

There Will Be Blood
The Master
Phantom Thread

....I saw Hard Eight, but can't remember any of it, so I can't rank it.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

And -- overall, There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Phantom Thread aren't MY kind of movie -- they are borderline Merchant-Ivory, objectively great acheivements (especially There Will Be Blood) but not particularly exciting or entertaining to me.

Trivia: Boogie Nights split with LA Confidential as the Number One movie of for 1997 the two main critics at Entertainment Weekly. Not a major publication, but I took it, and I always ended up pitting LAC vs BN in the wake of that split. I much preferred LAC for its polished look and complex crime epic script; Boogie Nights in comparison was garish and(in the bloody second half developments) rather exploitational, I thought. (The scene with Burt Reynolds in the limo, Wahlberg with the gay pick up...)

Still, I came to like Boogie Nights over the years.

But this: I link LA Confidential to Licorice Pizza this way. In both cases, I knew nothing about them and had no expectations about them. With LAC it was "Who is Russell Crowe? Who is Guy Pearce?" With LP, it was the poster: "Gee that girl isn't very attractive." But then I saw these films and ...wow. Nothing's more fun than falling in love with a movie where you had no expectations at all (and the girl IS attractive, once you get to know her.)

Versus: With The Godfather, Jaws, Batman 1989, The Departed....I knew those would be my favorites as soon as they went into production. I just waited anxiously until they finally arrived, and they all became my Number Ones of those years.

The movies can be fun ,either way: the favorites you anticipate(Jaws)the favorites that come out of nowhere(Licorice Pizza).

Its entirely gratifiying to still find at least ONE movie that makes me feel now, as I felt THEN.

Almost as enthralled as I was by Psycho.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

I also loved all the Aimee Mann music and ended up playing it in the car for a year.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

Of course, back in 1984 Collins was arguably the principal victim of similar Oscar dysfunction when the worst song Stevie Wonder ever wrote, "I Just called to say I love you", beat out Collins's 'cinematic' ballad "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)", "Footloose", and "Ghostbusters (who you gonna call)", three of the biggest popular hit, movie soundtrack smashes of all time (that are all still widely known and played today).

Anyhow, Collins probably should have won for 'Against All Odds'. Maybe some voters in 2000 felt they owed him one. In any case, some of the Oscars' biggest fiascos *have* happened and continue to happen down in the Best Song category. At the Psycho board we're more exercised by injustice in acting awards and Best Film and Best Director and Best Editing and Best Score, but Best Song has had more than its share of shocks.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Oh yeah, me too. Note that at the Oscars the following year, Aimee Mann's 'Save Me' (from which PTA derived/built his whole script!) along with 'Blame Canada' from the South Park Movie and the heartbreaking 'When she loved me' sung by Jessie the Cowgirl in Toy Story 2 - so three of the best, most musical, most crucial to their respective movies songs ever nominated in my lifetime (all from very good to superb films), all *lost* to a hapless, unmemorable, now completely unremembered Phil Collins song from Tarzan (itself an unremembered Disney film that no one rated at the time).

---

Well, perhaps, as you note below, Phil Collins was being "owed one." Also I think Disney was already becoming the juggernaut(totally disassociated from the more modest company Uncle Walt had built) in animated musicals.

Still, what a wealth of riches-- in 1999 AND in 1984. I remains my contention that modernly, Best Song is more often than not given to songs that nobody hears, and were not crucial to the movies in which they appeared. Except for Disney, still. ("Happy" getting bested by "Let it Go." On the other hand, I guess Happy was more of a stand alone hit.

--

My memory too is that the live renditions of all the losing songs were brilliant so that the crowd was absolutely in shock when Collins's song won.

---

Ha. Yes. That happens a lot, too.

Its my understanding that one thing that this year's gutting of the awards on stage is supposed to accommodate is full "Best Song" renditions. I can't remember what's up.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I might add that "Licorice Pizza," set in 1973, generally avoids an "America's Top 40" list of famous 73 hits (no Elton John, no Eagles, no "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree." ) PTA SAID he consulted such lists, but his song selection is pretty esoteric. For instance, he uses Paul McCartney's "Let Me Roll It" instead of his 1973 hits My Love and -- Live and Let Die(whose title nonetheless appears on a crucial movie marquee.) Its about 50/50 known songs versus not known songs.

Plus, it wasn't nominated, but Jonny Greenwood contributed a nice, quiet , bittersweet theme to "Licorice Pizza" that turns up(by my count) in two crucial places: when Gary and Alana take their first night walk together and he gets her phone number, and, of course, for the big emotional finale. Very nice.

Greenwood took the stage in London with Alana Haim to pick up PTA's screenwriting BAFTA.

Like NOW I care about awards shows. Ha.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

At the Psycho board we're more exercised by injustice in acting awards and Best Film and Best Director and Best Editing and Best Score, but Best Song has had more than its share of shocks.

--

Ha, maybe Psycho should have had a theme song -- or borrowed one ("I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right ouf of My Hair," maybe?)

You know, with the Oscars approaching and Power of the Dog landing 12 nominations (12! For a Netflix movie!), I'm thinking that maybe Psycho was the most OVERALL snubbed movie(for nominations) in Oscar history:

Picture!
Actor! (Perkins , for all time)
Score(!!!!!-- arguably the most functional and historic score of all time)
Film Editing(!!! -- though here, I think the "jagged" nature of the cutting may have gone against the editor's motto of "invisible edits.")

Those are HISTORIC snubs -- they are what Psycho is all about. And then we can add in:

Best Adapted Screenplay(not from a great novel, but very famous now).
Best Supporting Actor (My Man Martin Balsam though, maybe, I'd still let Ustinov have the award.)

...and of course, my belief that Janet Leigh , who WAS nominated for Best Supporting Actress, merited a nom for Best Actress.

It remains a conundrum. Hitchcock probably never offered up a more deserving film for Oscar consideration than Psycho(a massive hit AND an artistic triumph, with several truly great performances) and yet by its very "cheap and tawdry nature"(" A B shocker")...it didn't rate.

Oh, well.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I suppose this is the place to note that "Baby Haim" Alana Haim spent the last week making the rounds of awards ceremonies literally all over the world.

She started with a trip to Paris, accompanied only by one Haim sister(Old Este, who turns up for everything.) Not an awards show in Paris, a fashion thing -- I think these girls now make more money from clothing lines and make-up promotions (and handbags) than from their music.

Then Alana and Este(no Danielle) took the Eurostar train from Paris to London for the BAFTAs.

Then Alana flew back to NYC for the "National Board of Review" Awards. Not even Este made that trip. And still no Danielle. But Cooper Hoffman lives there, so that poor recluse showed up to accept HIS award ("Best Breakthrough Star") , with Bradley Cooper giving out awards and posing with the young lovers. (Note in passing: Cooper Hoffman is more handsome than his dad and looks TOO handsome for Alana Haim when not in the movie with her.) At THAT place , the movie won Best Picture and Best Director along with awards for Alana and Cooper(Hoffman.) I recall that Hitchcock won the Best Director award from them in 1969 for...Topaz....true facts.

This meant three different major gowns for Alana -- including one (BAFTA) that gives us pretty much the view Gary sought from Alana Kane in his living room in the movie.

So I wonder: how are the Haim sisters holding up amidst all this fame for Baby Haim? How long will Danielle stand for this? And...have they sacrificed their art on the altar of extremely well-paid fashionista/cosmetics/handbag shill exposure? Or, conversely, has the movie supercharged their upcoming concert tour that starts in April?

I can't believe I've gotten into this.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

A little more I can say by way of a sales pitch (at least on this board!) for Sciamma's debut, Water Lilies (2007): Water Lilies features a Jaws-like cross-cutting triangle of 15 year old girls: two (Florianne and Anne) are much more physically developed and just bigger than the other (Marie); Marie nonetheless has her sexual preferences conclusively sorted out, she's gay and knows it, whereas Florianne and Anne are vaguer, they're straight by default or through general conformism and social pressure; finally Anne is relatively chubby and a bit plain while the others are skinny and pretty (especially Florianne who's a blonde, near-bombshell). This is the same clever character structure that Jaws has for its three leading men (Brody, Quint, Hooper). No sharks are blown up in WL but well-motivated conflicts, mistakes, cruelties and sadnesses occur.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

Drive My Car (2021)
DMC has an incredibly boring, pretentious first 40 minutes (after which the opening credits roll so it truly *is* and *feels like* a very long prologue - it really should in my view have been whittled down to 5-10 minutes tops!) DMC settles down after that into 2+ hours of a fairly *standard* grief-stricken-person/artist-tries-to-get-on-with-life movie. Lots of artsy influences and predecessors here Ozu/Bergman/Rivette/Kieslovski/Kitano but this main part of the movie also isn't a million miles from mopey, Hollywood-adjacent stuff (with the same influences!) by Alexander Payne (About Schmidt, The Descendants, Nebraska) or Ken Lonergan (Margaret, Manchester By The Sea). Actors in particular love these kind of films and scripts, hence the awards attention DMC has received I believe. In the past, DMC would have been one of those little-seen foreign films that Hollywood would probably have remade for American audiences, tightening it, warming it up in various respects, and film snobs would argue about whether the undoubtedly more distant, patience-testing original was nonetheless better, etc.. But DMC is probably too successful to allow a remake of that kind now - the world's shrunk a little bit since the hey-day of such remakes perhaps.

In sum, DMC has some problems (especially with its first forty minutes) but has sufficient high-points (as high as those can be in a mope-athon) and payoffs in its third act to be worth a watch.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I appreciate the posts on "Water Lillies" and this year's Oscar bait "Drive My Car," swanstep.

As over the course of my movie going life, I spend as much time reading about movies as seeing them -- and generally "read" more movies than I see.

On paper, "Drive My Car' sounds almost like a parody of the "modern Oscar bait."

Its a "foreign" film to America, but the Oscars are international now. In Japanese, with Japanese actors. 3 hours long. About a long car trip to put on a production of ...King Lear?

I mean, I just sort of shake my head and think "hey, that's a party I'm not invited to."

"Licorice Pizza" is an "Oscar thing" for this remaining weekend(the awards are tomorrow) but I chose it as my personal favorite of 2021 solely for its entertainment value. Intelligent entertainment(great script, good acting.) And RARE entertainment. Not a thriller. Not an action movie. Not a western. A LOVE STORY (so rare, anymore.) And a strong nostalgia piece -- I relate to these young lovers because they remind me when I was young. Its a very happy-making movie to me.

I was reviewing my "personal favorites' list of the last decade and I reached 2016: The Magnificent Seven remake.

Oscar didn't touch that movie. And I don't think I saw review higher than "two stars." And the final narration by the woman in the movie --- "They were truly...magnificent." Hoo boy.

BUT: It was a Western (I like those when they are good.) With a "war movie" undertow (the 7 knew that the incoming army of bad guys could wipe them out, but this was no Wild Bunch. Survival WAS possible, for some.) It was a remake of a BELOVED childhood/teen favorite, and retained a few lines from the original (I love the villain about the townspeople he terrorizes: "If the Lord had not wanted them to be shorn, he would not have made them sheep.")

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Of course, now that villain wasn't a robust, macho Mexican bandit leader(Eli Wallach), it was a wimpy psychotic white guy(Peter Skaarsgard, or whatever.)

But that wimpy white guy WAS evil personified. And it was good to see the 7 ride in to push back on his tyranny.

I was impressed with the casting. Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt were good "star-equal" subsitutes for Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen.

And the film had two great action sequences: the big battle finale (showing that since the exciting climax of the original in 1960, The Wild Bunch had been made and elements of war-like action were now part of the show) and the first time Denzel and his 6 show up to hassle some bad guys and kill all but one of them. ("We know that you like to hurt women and children," notes Denzel to the chief baddie, "but we wanted to see what would happen when you came up against real men.")

Add in some unexpected deaths to add a pathos to the story and...well, "The Magnificent Seven" was "Licorice Pizza" that year and if both of them are not quite "Oscar classics" -- I can watch them any time.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

On paper, "Drive My Car' sounds almost like a parody of the "modern Oscar bait."

The Honest Trailers channel on youtube had a trailer for this years Oscars that ends with a dissection of the ultra-specific sub-genres that the Oscars has rewarded before that all of the Best Picture Contenders belong to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYlTg3HEBcg

Drive My Car's ultra-specific baity sub-genre is 'Widowers in Cars Driving Silently' (which Nomadland, also exemplified).

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Back on the OT "Licorice Pizza" beat...but from a different angle.

I found a "free" streaming of PTA's Boogie Nights (1997) -- the "movie that started it all" for him (even if Hard Eight was really his first), and watched it all the way through.

Some thoughts:

Boogie Nights was made 24 years before Licorice Pizza. It looks like it could have come out the same week! It is a real "mind blower" to feel that PTA conceivably have made these two movies one right after the other. They are both shot in the San Fernando Valley(on some of the same streets, I think.) They are both set in the 70's, though Boogie Nights extends into 1983 (which was still, sort of , the 70s.) The cinematography -- use of color, use of California sun -- is roughly the same. They both use 70's songs in the main on the soundtrack.
But honestly, as long as one doesn't consider how old the actors look today (and Mark Wahlberg doesn't look THAT much older)...they seem to be from the same time.

Boogie Nights is "bigger" than LP, more "epic" with more characters and it was intended to make a big splash to get PTA on the map. The "let's visit Porn World" angle alone made the film daring (skirting NC-17) and provocative and something that people wanted to see, but PTA's Scorsese-esque pyrotechnics and exhilarating use of music were on display too.

Still, I, personally, can easily put Licorice Pizza above Boogie Nights -- and at the top of my list of PTA films to date (I'm not alone from what I've read, but there are not THAT many of us.)

Its the TONE that puts Licorice Pizza up there. Its NICE, its ultimately very positive on life(at a time when life isn't very positive for us.) Boogie Nights kinda/sorta ends on a happy note for its survivors, but they are still very damaged people at heart, and a number of the others died violent deaths or ended up in prison.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

That's not to say that, objectively, Boogie Nights is not a more historic and important movie than Licorice Pizza -- it is.

But I do wonder, given most of the PTA movies between Boogie Nights and here - some of which DO have successful (tentative) love story endings and happy endings to go with the bleakness , but most of which are pretty negative -- what possessed him to make this NICE story NOW?

Now, its not THAT nice. Alana, our heroine, has a capacity for sudden rages and cussing at others for no reason ("F off!" "Asshole!" "Dipshit" "Idiot") that takes some getting used to. But at heart, she's sweet and lost and ready for the right love.

Gary...interesting. No sooner does Gary have Alana on a plane to NYC as his chaperone, he opens a flirtation with the fflight attendant ("What's your name?") just like he did with Alana -- in FRONT of Alana. Hmm...IS this guy an operator? A junior grade seducer on to no good with more women down the road.
Well, when ANOTHER young actor starts to hit on -- and win -- Alana right in front of GARY -- the roundelay of jealousy is underway. An entire aching movie of it that seems to say : "forget those other people, you are the ones for each other."

So not a pure Disney film this time around(heh) but...honestly, Boogie Nights looks like Caligula in comparison. PTA got nice this time. Will he go back to being mean?

A funny, maybe true story has popped up: Years ago, singer Fiona Apple had a relationship of several years with PTA. One night, PTA and Apple went to QT's house --just the three of them -- to watch movies in QT's screening room.

What ensued, said Fiona, was two movie freaks bragging about their movies to each other and quoting movies incessantly and driving Fiona insane enough to want to escape. "From two of the great filmmakers of our time." A lot of cocaine was evidently involved , which seems to explain the wildness of some parts of QT and PTA films. And all those yelling people.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Which reminds me:

I had accused PTA of putting too many "caterwauling women" in his movies Boogie Nights and Magnolia.
Well, Boogie Nights has plenty of caterwauling MEN. So I guess PTA just likes to watch men and women scream at the top of their lungs -- and somehow he makes art out of it. Even with Licorice Pizza.

And this:

Up above, I made my personal list of PTA's 9 films (less Hard Eight, which I don't remember) and it went like this:

Licorice Pizza
Magnolia
Boogie Nights
Inherent Vice
Punch Drunk Love

There Will Be Blood
The Master
Phantom Thread

...and the thing is, I don't think I ever would have MADE a list had not Licorice Pizza captured my imagination and heart so well. I had no INTEREST in making a PTA ranking, he didn't matter that much, though L liked Magnolia very much. Honestly..too much yelling. Its like the near-end caterwauling in the Brenner house in The Birds.

I expect that There Will be Blood is "objectively" his great film. From an esteemed novel, with great themes, great art, great dialogue("I drink your milkshake! I drink it UP") with a great star and his Oscar winning performance. But still, its one of THOSE kind of movies, and I respect them more than love them.

Anyway, now PTA has a list in my head. And his most recent movie is topping it -- "fading" directors aren't supposed to be able to pull that off...with some of us, they do.

That's it for now.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

@ecarle. Someone else who shares a lot of your fondness for LP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nof_fwJc8i0
Interestingly, he identifies Eastwood's (largely forgotten, and unseen by me) Breezy (1973) as an important antecedent, also Melvin & Howard!

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

@ecarle. Someone else who shares a lot of your fondness for LP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nof_fwJc8i0

---

Thank you, swanstep.

You're being a real sport about this given that the movie didn't do much for you.

For me, it was just a truly wonderful surprise -- a movie that worked like the other favorite movies of my life, at a time when I had been feeling that THAT feeling could not be kindled again, too much, too often. And I'm still not much sure about WHY it has that hold on me. The opening pick-up scene in the photography line is pretty key, I'm sure. So well shot, colored(blues and gold) written, acted. And that sweet Nina Simone song is so INTENSE about "seeds of love planted" that you just know this young couple are made for each other. No matter what.

By the way, I have my favorite movie of 2022 "lined up to be proved or disproved as such."

Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, evidently coming in November on Apple, maybe some theaters for a little while. Scorsese's on the short list of auteurs I respond to. I read the book and this true story is quite a tale. Leo and DeNiro work for the first time TOGETHER with Scorsese, and that awkward looking fellow of improbable stardom -- Jesse Plemons (hot off Power of the Dog) -- in a lead as well, as the FBI man out to foil evil DeNiro's plot(Leo turned down this "lead" to play a more disreputable character.)

--
CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Interestingly, he identifies Eastwood's (largely forgotten, and unseen by me) Breezy (1973)

----

I saw Breezy, on cable, years ago. Its odd: Clint Eastwood(at the height of his early superstardom) choose this story to tell as his second directorial piece, after Play Misty for Me. Eastwood is not in it except for a "Hitchcock cameo" walk on. I think in William Holden, Eastwood saw a kindred spirit but of a "non-competitive" now older age; a handsome, boyish star with middle-class roots and a no-nonsense approach to acting. Holden LOVED Eastwood as a director.

As the YouTube video shows, PTA lifted verbatim Holden's dialogue with Kay Lenz(somewhere between an old teenager and a young woman) and gave it to Sean Penn for his audition with Alana. The video proves something else -- though Sean Penn got Holden's hairstyle and tailoring right, he comes nowhere near Holden's mild-mannered macho and likeability. Penn was actually miscast as Holden.

Funny thing about Kay Lenz: she was also in American Graffiti -- briefly seen -- as a teenage girl who seems to have a "secret thing going" with her high school teacher. Its a mysterious moment(student Richard Dreyfuss sees the teacher and the girl go into a deep discussion in the darkness), and pegged Kay Lenz -- in both films -- as "the teenage girl with an older male lover."
And yet, LP casts Alana Haim as the "older person."

In real life, the REAL Kay Lenz WAS really the girlfriend of the REAL Gary Goetzman, and they REALLY did deliver a waterbed to Jon Peters. PTA revealed this in some interview, LP really has a lot of real life people and their stories in it. Alas, Gary and Kay didn't last; so perhaps Gary and Alana didn't either.

Interchangeable fantasies: in Breezy, older man Holden "gets" young lover Lenz(she does nude scenes), in LP, younger man Gary "gets" older lover Alana -- these are the fantasies of men of certain ages.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

as an important antecedent, also Melvin & Howard!

--

PTA evidently had a friend and mentor in Jonathan Demme, who directed Melvin and Howard. I don't agree with the YouTube critic-narrator's belief that Gary and Melvin are both losers. Melvin, maybe, Gary...no. We know that in real life, Gary was very successful, and his ever-spinning plans seem to sprout up anew whenever one falls apart.

I like how this YouTube piece directly matches up the Breezy dialogue and the "cherry bomb" clip from American Graffiti to their use in LP. I'm not quite sure of the attempted match-up to Dreyfuss's escape from entrapment in AG to the character of Alana in LP...seems like a bit of a stretch. Seems to me that PTA was mainly trying to emulate the look and feel of AG rather than to match up characters. Though BOTH films are noteable for the lack of sexual content; these young folks are innocent, in love, and thinking about lust maybe...later.

I'll bury a lede here: once, and only once, I wrote somewhere around here about American Graffiti as the only movie I've seen -- in a lifetime of seeing them -- that literally changed my real life. It played such a powerful role in that (very young) real life, that I'm rather embarrassed to watch it today. That was then and this is now, and I prefer to forget that a mere movie could do what it did to me. So maybe that's ANOTHER reason I like Licorice Pizza...its connection to the most important movie of my life (see, its NOT Psycho.)

I also like in the YouTube video , how the one clip from Dazed and Confused (set in 1976), shows THOSE high schoolers in front of the movie marquee with "Hitchcock's Family Plot" on it. I've always loved that little in-joke.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

A final piece ahead: the Blu Ray DVD of Licorice Pizza is coming in May. So now I'll be able to skip to favorite scenes and not have to fast forward as if on VHS(this is how you have to do it on streaming; there are no DVDS available of Netflix favorites The Irishman and Buster Scruggs.)

I read through the menu of "extras." One deleted scene called: "The Hand Man." Hmmm.

I've about exhausted my thoughts on LP, but I wanted to try out a couple more:

I like how the movie captures how -- with very young lovers -- angry argument takes the place of sexual love. You can't do the latter, so you "substitute" the former. The movie gets it just right -- the early alrguments in the film are flirtatious and exciting to the two kids (like when Alana goes off on Gary for his having pushed her to be "sexy on the phone" with a customer but not that sexy.) The crucial, rather disjointed but too personal argument near the end ("The world doesn't revolve around Gary Valentine" "Yes it does" "No it doesn't," "Yes it does") goes too far, gets too mean and (wonderfully) reveals Alana's true emotions and love for Gary ("Wait, look, I'll drive you to that stupid pinball place...") These are arguments that you FEEL.

And I think this YouTube video is yet another place where it is said that the relationship doesn't really reach closure, "they''ll break up and make up again and again."

I don't think so. It takes the entire mpvie for these two to share a deep kiss, after which Alana says(in that great Haim voice), "I love you, Gary." That's a new level for these two,r regardless of the age difference. I think they have a shot at "forever." Its only a movie..

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

PS. Speaking of DVD extras, about four of the extras on the "Once Upon A Time in Hollywood" DVD(a kindred movie to LP, yes?) are so great that I consider them part of the movie that was released: (1) Leo's Rick Dalton singing "Behind the Green Door" on Shindig ALL THE WAY THROUGH(with those sexy cheerleader dancers); (2) An extended cut of Dalton on Bounty Law exchanging tense dialogue with Michael Madsen(I wanted to see the REST of that episode to see what would happen next; (4) A bizarre, cheapjack ad for "Old Chatanooga Beer" (the choice of Pitt's Cliff Booth) ; and a commercial for "Red Apple Cigarettes" narrated by Kurt Russell and starring a fake Burt Reynolds ("Take a bite..take a bite and feel alright...of Red Apple.")

Here's hoping that the Licorice Pizza DVD has a similar "world of extras."

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

OT on the Licorice Pizza front.

A "new phase" opens with the imminent release of the film on DVD. No longer will I have to laboriously fast forward(such an OLD term) through my streaming copy and the DVD has ONE deleted scene called "The Hand Man" that may answer a key question that the films raises ("Is he, or isn't he?")

But I've done something in the meantime that helps add some real "oompth" to his late breaking movie pleasure of my later years:

I went to a Haim concert.

This was not done lightly, nor without some research on the appropriateness of my quest(but after all, is not LP ABOUT age appropriateness?)

I studied some concert footage and I saw SOME older folks in the audience. Whether parents(or grandparents) I dunno...but they were there. I'll note that I go to modern day James Taylor and Jimmy Buffett concerts and both gray hair and baldness on the audience members is practically required.)

Also: I took a much younger person along and that made for a comfortable fit.

THAT said, at this concert itself, I'd say about 25% of the audience were older, and not necessarily with kids. I think one of the reasons is because Haim samples a LOT of 70's artists (and later.) "The Wire" opens with the opening riff of The Eagles "Heartache Tonight," "Summer Girl" tracks Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side all the way through(he gets a credit); and they've got dead ringer songs for Sheryl Crow(a friend of theirs), Fleetwood Mac(Stevie Nicks is their "mother") and Joni Mitchell. So maybe older folks get a nostalgia vibe from the Haim sisters "new take"(their musician parents raised them on 70's classic rock.)

I would not have gone if I did not like their songs. I've spotifyed the songs into my memory and I knew every one they played. Tracking with my concert experience (decades worth) I even guessed their two encore songs. They hadn't played The Wire or The Steps so I said "I'll bet they encore with The Wire or The Steps." They did both..

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Within bounds(I'm sure we have some music experts here), I DO think the Haims have actual musical tlalent -- mainly the "middle sister" (Danielle) who is the true star of the group, with the best singing voice(usually the lead voice.) Guitar work. Drums. The eldest sister, Este, is famous for playing bass with her "Bass Face"(a very ugly contortion of her mouth until her face looks like a Picasso) but it looked to me like somebody has convinced her to drop that act. I saw little of that bass face, and so she looked more conventionally attractive in her gig.

Haim sold out their "hometown concert" at the Hollywood Bowl. Not so, here. Plenty of empty seats up in the second level(where I was) but a very full and very noisy "standing room only" main floor that kept filling with sing-a-long fans. I could not gauge if Haim will last long as a headliner or not. I think they have the songs, and with only three albums, I trust they'll do more.

They are a sister act, but they are also a "trio act" -- "The Magnificent Three" -- and each one came running out to her position on stage to massive applause cheers and screaming til they were positioned across the stage -- Alana left, Danielle in the center (as she IS the center), then Este over to the right.

As luck would have it, my balcony seats were "to the left" and so we looked right down on Miss Licorice Pizza herself -- Alana Haim (aka Alana Kane in the movie) for the duration. And I have to say, it started to have an effect. For whatever brief time it may be, Alana Haim IS a movie star, and DID play a character I really liked,a nd I felt a bit transported into the film looking down at her. (Kinda like seeing Cary Grant in person back in 1980 and thinking NXNW. No, really.) Many folks in our balcony seats went down onto the dance floor so at one point, Alana Haim looked up and saw -- just the few of us. She looked quizzical, rather as she did in the movie sometimes. It was cute.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Her sisters are also in the movie, so that felt nostalgic, too. And -- their OPENING ACT was in the movie, too. Just one young pretty woman -- her stage name is Buzzy Lee. Her real name is Sasha Spielberg -- the daughter of Steven Spielberg and his pretty wife (screaming star of Temple of Doom) , Kate Capshaw. I can't say that Buzzy's tunes were memorable ,but hey, she's TRYING to escape the shadow of her famous parents. Maybe Steve donated a million to the stage lighting fund? (Two Spielberg/Capshaw daughters are in LP; Sasha is at the sign in desk for the school photographer; the other one tells the "hand man" story in the restroom of the (banned) Japanese restaurant.

Alana Haim spoke only briefly of Licorice Pizza. She did not say the title, she just said "I made that movie" and then "and I didn't quit this act with my sisters." Then: "You know why? Because I'm a loyal bitch." Ah, those Haims. Proving their rock and roll cred the only way they can (other than with those guitars): cussing.

She DID get huge applause on the words "I made that movie" and hey, I'm sure it got Haim some new fans.

That's about all I have on the experience. I have enjoyed the fact that Licorice Pizza sort of caught my fancy and picked me up and took me to a new place this year(literally a new place: a concert miles away). And the movie took me to Haim and I'll deal with my age...later. Stay young.

I'll be seeing James Taylor and Jimmy Buffett again. I might just see Haim again, too. They'll be older...

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

OT:

May 2022: The DVD is now out for Licorice Pizza(2021) and it only has one deleted scene.

Various trailers and commercials for the movie back when it was out revealed bits of scenes that weren't in the final film:

ONE: Bradley Cooper's drug-crazed Jon Peters at a gas station(that we do seem him at in the film), simultaneously smashing the side view mirrors of two adjacent cars, like a Samarai warrior.

TWO: Somebody farting in the car en route to/from filming Joel Wachs campaign commericial. "Ill roll down the window," Wachs says diplomatically. Cut to: Alana Kane(Alana Haim) in the kitchen of the home of Gary Valentine(Cooper Hoffman) , demanding to know if he did it -- "I knew it was you. I know your smell," she says with disgust.

THREE: And SOME girl in a bikini(she looks bigger and chunkier than Alana Haim) walking into a sliding glass door from a swimming pool. (There's also a shot -- not seen in the movie -- of Alana in HER bikini, BY that swimming pool.

'The DVD is out and NONE of those deleted scenes is on the DVD. Only one is included and it is called "The Hand Man Scene."

It turns out that it is an odd little scene -- very much in tone with the rest of the movie and yet in some ways more rough in content than the rest of the movie...and more stylistically mannered.

Those of us who saw the movie know what "The Hand Man" means -- we wanted to see what kind of follow-up scene was involved.

The "feed scene" IN the movie has Alana Kane emerging from the bathroom stall at the film's notorious Japanese restaurant to find another young woman primping in the mirror. The character is "Frisby Cahill," played by one of two Spielberg/Capshaw daughters in the movie.

Alana had been in the stall installing one of Gary's "Fat Bernie Waterbed" ad cards, but she washes her hands so maybe used the bathroom too.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Alana and Frisby, side by side, make small talk. Frisby works as a waitress in the restaurant, and is wearing the kimono to prove it. She asks Alana if she still works at "Tiny Toes" child photography, and Alana says no, she is business partners with Gary Valentine.

Frisby responds that she knows Gary: "A cute kid for a hustler," always hanging around the restaurant and her boss. Alana (surprisingly) praises Gary as "very smart and a good businessman." (Aha, she admires him if not quite loves him.) Frisby then volunteers that Gary is always bothering her for hand jobs -- Alana jumps in with "me too" -- and Frisby calls him "The Hand Man" and says "I'll pass the baton on to you," and leaves the bathroom.

In the next shot, Alana gets in the car to drive (she has a license, Gary does not), and Gary sits in the passenger seat, innocent of what Alana has learned from Frisby. PTA gives us a tight close-up on Alana's smiling, self-amused, perhaps jealous face as she stares at Gary.

END OF SCENE IN MOVIE

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

END OF SCENE IN MOVIE

That scene alone, on its own, created several unanswered questions:

Does Gary REALLY pester Frisby for hand jobs?
And if so, did Frisby actually GIVE Gary hand jobs?(Her phrasing is neutral, she says he always pesters her, she doesn't say she always refuses.)
What baton is Frisby passing to Alana? To be PESTERED for hand jobs, or to give them?

There is also this: Frisby shares her demoralizing information about Gary after learning that Alana is partnered with him in business. Is Frisby jealously trying to screw things up for Alana and Gary?

And this: Frisby is demonstrably prettier than Alana -- Alana may be deflated to know that Frisby has ANY sort of interaction with Gary. (Hence, Alana falsely volunteers that Gary asks HER for hand jobs, all the time.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

BEGIN DELETED SCENE

The deleted scene STARTS in the car with Alana at the wheel, with Alana's smiling, self-amused, perhaps jealous face as she stares and Gary, and she starts to talk:

Alana: (False cheer) I just got a baton!
(Long pause)
Gary is confused.
Alana: You know who I got it from? (Pause) Frisby Cahill.
Gary: Frisby Cahill...how do you know her?
Alana: (Doesn't answer.)
(Long pause.)
Alana: She said her wrists are tired.
Gary(confused): Why?
Alana: (Doesn't answer.)
(Long pause.)
Alana: You know what I'm going to do with that baton?
Gary: What?
Alana: I'm going to shove it up your asshole.
(Gary is now reduced to confused, uncomfortable silence. We can assume that at a minimum, he knows he's in trouble simply because he KNOWS Frisby Cahill. But maybe there's more?)
Alana: Who's the hand man?
(Gary becomes almost a child, reduced to total embarrassment and inability to speak. He seems very YOUNG. He's a little bit terrified.)
(Long pause.)
Alana: "Who's the hand man?" (Her cold repeat of the same question is menacing, unforgiving.)
Gary(weakly): I don't know.
And now, Alana GUNS the car engine and drives it at top speed, and Gary looks truly terrified. Alana brakes the car to a sudden halt.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Alana: By the way, maybe a guy will think about buying a waterbed when he's got his weiner in his hand, but a girl sitting on the toilet isn't going to think : "Oh, I should buy a F'ING waterbed!" (This is Alana's trademark sudden rage -- earlier expressed at the young actor about his Judaism and at her sister for saying she shouldn't fight with the family all the time.)
(Long pause.)
Alana (More rage, built on earlier rage and exploding): "YOU'RE the f'ing hand man!"

END DELETED SCENE.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Hey, well, its as entertaining as any other scene in Licorice Pizza, and continues some of the character study of the two leads. Given that Gary has almost no lines and has to play the scene in ever growing uncomfortable silence, the scene to defaults to our show-stopping young star, Alana Haim, who here takes Alana KANE from the suggested bi-polar personality of the main film and off to the edge of an actual raging psychotic.

(As a female commenter on YouTube wrote of this scene: "Nice girl you've got there, Gary.")

The first thing to do with this deleted scene is to pull out that (to me) terrible line near the end about waterbeds -- and examine it. The main thrust of this scene is that Alana is confronting Gary about another woman -- what's with this non sequitur about the water beds? (With it icky images of boys with wieners in their hands and girls sitting on the toilet.)

I suppose this is Alana's "final take" on the "Soggy Bottom" name for the waterbed company -- Gary(a boy) suggested that waterbeds suggest sex and Alana(a girl) suggested that "Soggy Bottom" suggests shitting your pants. Here, Alana is using her rage to "lay down the law" about Soggy Bottom(but hey, the company name has already been changed to Fat Bernies.) Still, this seems a bad line to me, and deserved to be deleted. NOT the whole scene though.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

CONT

The main event of this scene -- as with many scenes in the movie -- is to demonstrate that while Alana and Gary have committed to a "non-romantic friends" relationship, , they each get very jealous of each other all the time, and hence -- they ARE in love with each other and this movie is going to have to deal with that eventually.

Two questions are begged here:

ONE: Gary's silent embarrassment suggests that yes, he DID ask Frisby for hand jobs. He's been caught hitting on another woman, by the woman he says he loves.
TWO: Alana THINKS that Frisby really DID give GAry hand jobs -- and she is telling him that she will not -- in a most nasty way -- she will shove that baton not simply up his ass, but up his assHOLE. ("Nice girl you've got there, Gary.")

The movie leaves unanswered the reality of exactly what Gary and Frisby did, but it is clear than Alana is jealous about it, and it is clear that GAry is embarrassed to have been "exposed," no matter what really happened.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

So much for the CONTENT of the scene. Now, all about its strange STYLE.

Perhaps the scene was deleted because the style was so different from the rest of the film. It depends on a lot of long, LONG pauses between lines for Alana -- it has a rhythm to it, plus she is seeking to torture Gary with silences.

The scene is pretty much all Alana's to play. She gets most of the lines, and the close-ups. She is (once again) simultaneously pretty(sexy) and plain. Her anger (Bi-polar? Psychotic?) rises to the fore. And her voice and line readings are just great, on lines like:

"I just got a baton!'

"Frisby Cahill." (And later about Frisby..."Ah...umm." )

"You know what I'm going to do with that baton?"

But PTA has Alana do something noticeable: take very, very long pauses between her lines. She even nods her head up and down to create a "metronome" effect between lines -- something visual to do.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The effect is to turn Alana into a rather sadistic inquisitor of Gary -- making him wait through those pauses and forcing him to REFUSE to answer ("Who's the hand man?") , and for her part, trying to tamp down and control the rage (always within) her that here comes out "bit by bit" ("You know what I'm going to do with that baton?") and explodes at the end "YOU"RE the f'in hand man!")

I love it all. Maybe the scene should not have been in the movie(one commenter said it would undercut the next scene where Alana sexily sells a guy on the phone a waterbed), but I'm glad it is here to look at. The scene reinforces the the fact that Licorice Pizza is a heart, BOTH a rather sweet AND a rather twisted tale of "young love." Gary can't help but be infatuated with this unformed, raging young woman (men sometimes GO for that rage; see Depp/Heard); Alana can't help but be a kind and loving person beneath her raging surface. And she loves Gary. We keep rooting for these two despite their issues(and ages...they can wait.)

Fun deleted scene to watch. I wish we could see more.
...and that concludes the "Licorice Pizza" adventure of 2021(movie) to 2022(DVD.)

Nothing going on over at its page. More age appropriate here(a movie about 1973.)

Hitchcock connections?

Well, in The Hand Man scene, Alana reveals herself to be a somewhat of a psycho -- and she nods her head a lot just like Martin Balsam listening to Anthony Perkins.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

@ecarle. Thanks for this extended treatment of the deleted scene from the LP dvd. Deleted scenes remind us of the importance of the editing room phase of film production. Sometime people describe it as the stage where the film gets written and directed a third time (after once 'in the writer's room', and once on set/location). With Hitchcock we know almost everything about the general shape of his process, e.g., we know that he was typically very hands-on and very Alma-on during the writing stage (working and reworking stories with the official writer, often changing writers to get what he, Hitch wanted with lots of Alma at every stage). In the editing stage, Alma seems to have been right in there with Hitch and Tomasini (or whoever was the official editor at the time). [Cont.]

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

Now, the "a movie is written three times" idea really underestimates how collaborative movie-making can be. Some directors are just open to other people's ideas that can influence tone and pacing all the way through. They stress 'Dailys' to get lots of feedback from actors and crew, and show rough cuts of this and that to all their directors pals during editing (this was particularly common in the '70s, e.g., in the Lucas-Spielberg-De Palma group), and learn a lot from any test screenings. PTA's process with LP sounds pretty open e.g. here:
https://www.ibc.org/features/behind-the-scenes-licorice-pizza-with-editor-andy-jurgensen/8296.article

Anyhow, deleted scenes can be *very* interesting because they open a window into all the process of decision-making and polishing that leads to the final version we know. The story of Star Wars' edit is now legendary and is *so* illuminating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMyMxMYDNk
and the story of Annie Hall's edit is one of *complete* genre change with Allen essentially remaking all the (never-released) deleted scenes as Manhattan Murder Mystery two decades later.

The extension of the hand man scene in LP you describe sounds like a classic minor change: It darkens Alana's character a little - maybe makes her seem too hot and cold bipolar - without answering any of the basic questions raised by the original scene, so it gets chopped. It sounds like PTA and his editor made most of those decisions. But I wouldn't be too surprised if I learned that Maya Rudolph was a bit of an Alma or that QT gave valued notes.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Deleted scenes remind us of the importance of the editing room phase of film production. Sometime people describe it as the stage where the film gets written and directed a third time (after once 'in the writer's room', and once on set/location).

---

I read William Friedkin's autobio and he contended that he practically "re-wrote" several of his films -- The French Connection and Cruising , included, IN the editing room. There was some arrogance to his statement, as if the screenplay written for him by others could simply be thrown away and "re-cut."

With Cruising, Friedkin infuriated star Al Pacino by cutting it to suggest that Pacino was the gay killing killer of the film. Pacino's main point: "I would have played the part differently!" (Which is met by an old Rat Pack joke. Told that the movie Soldiers Three would become Sergeants Three, Joey Bishop said "You should have told me. I would have played the part differently.")

I read that Hitchcock, on his final film Family Plot, elected to switch the order of two minor scenes from their order in the script. So I guess he made SOME changes in editing.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

With Hitchcock we know almost everything about the general shape of his process, e.g., we know that he was typically very hands-on and very Alma-on during the writing stage (working and reworking stories with the official writer, often changing writers to get what he, Hitch wanted with lots of Alma at every stage). In the editing stage, Alma seems to have been right in there with Hitch and Tomasini (or whoever was the official editor at the time).

---

We have two famous stories of "Alma the editor":

She spotted Janet Leigh gulping while dead on the bathroom floor. CUT (and insert profile shot of shower head.)

She decided that Kim Novak's ankles looked too thick and fat running towards the mission bell tower as Madeleine. CUT (one part of the run; Kim gets there awfully fast.)

Topaz has evidence of problems in the editing. A "Directors Cut" was put out on DVD that was much longer than the released film -- and even more boring(well, I like Topaz, but it can be boring.)

On a "DVD documentary" on Topaz, they run the "edited" version of a scene alongside the "long" version (The French hero and his daughter running down a staircase to look at a body on a car outside the building.)...and the edited version is much BETTER: quicker, to the point. One sees there evidence of what happens when you do NOT cut something down.

Editor George Tomasini died after Marnie; Alma got elderly right alongside her husband, so we can figure that something was lost from the earlier "peak years."

That said, Frenzy has some great editing in the Brenda Blaney murder scene and the potato truck scene, by an experienced British editor named Jon Jympson.

But things slow way down again in Family Plot.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I"ve been thinking: the whole idea of "deleted scenes" is worthy of "second guessing."

I'm thinking that deleted scenes didn't come available until the DVD disc -- with "stops" -- came available. I don't recall deleted scenes being recorded onto VHS tapes.

Evidently, deleted scenes gave directors and actors a chance to "show their work" outside of studio constraints or time limits on running time, etc.

But I've seen a LOT of deleted scenes and usually -- they deserved to be deleted. Something's missing -- drama, comedy, story meaning.

PTA chose to put only one deleted scene on his Licorice Pizza DVD, but there are clearly others(we can see them in the trailers and commercials.) So THIS scene must have mattered to him in some way.

I can see why. I like it and I think it should have been in the movie. It demonstrates yet again why some critics went wild for Alana Haim -- "A star is born," "You can't take our eyes off her," "The rock e'm sock 'em, take no prisoners star of Licorice Pizza." She DOES have something and it is well on display in the hand man scene . Like: she has a great SMILE, and these threats she makes to Gary (Cooper Hoffman) are made WITH smile (and a mean little laugh that reappears later)...until the smile turns to rage. Bi-polar. Psychotic maybe but...get this...LOVEABLE. Her rage reflects something simple: jealousy. She loves Gary but isn't allowed to show it.

Cooper Hoffman's near silent work is fine in the scene too. As he silently suffers the accusations, we realize (a) they are true and (b) he's still too much of a child(yep) to process how to fight them. (The question is still begged: he requested the hand jobs...did he get them?)

Add in the truly bizarre rhythm of the scene, with all the pauses, and you have a scene that should have stayed but...probably had to go.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Meanwhile, this:

When the LA Confidential(1997) DVD came out in 1998, I noted it had no deleted scenes and I decided: Good. Clearly writer-director Curtis Hanson felt the movie AS WE HAD IT had all the scenes it needed to have, all the scenes we needed to see. Its perhaps academic: if we are to honor a story as "real," or as art, or even as "great storytelling," we should NOT be shown scenes from the story that weren't meant to be told(at final cut.)

Or this:

I think the first thing that was LIKE deleted scenes was the 1980 "Special Edition" of Spielberg's Close Encounters of 1977. I recall disliking the special edition, because it totally "messed" with the original. Scenes were removed and new scenes put in; more money was available for a few "big deal" shots(an ocean liner in the desert) and we saw inside the spaceship at the end.

But overall, the 1980 version rather undid the 1977 version and from then on, we had TWO versions in our heads, competing and cancelling each other out.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

This is an OT thread, but "on topic."

The deleted scenes of Psycho.

3 of them emerged just a few years ago and were sent to theaters in 2020:

3 scenes of mere seconds, or "milli-seconds":

ONE: More of Janet Leigh's back and "almost side boob" as she undressed for her shower, peeped upon by Norman (milli-seconds.)

TWO: More of the blood on Norman's hands in the bathroom approaching the sink.

THREE: Two more stabs down on the unseen Arbogast at the end of his murder.

Since these scenes (no -- this FOOTAGE) had been censored originally, their restoration gave us a "director's cut" 60 years after release, and(as an essayist noted) they showed how precise Psycho was -- just a little more of Janet Leigh's skin, and a little more of Janet Leigh's blood on Tony Perkins hands -- was meaningful.. So were more stabs to kill Arbogast("overkill") but those stabs still look suspicious to me(a "rewind" of one stab.)

But this: there are several "deleted scenes" in Psycho which may never have actually been FILMED.

You can read them in the published 1959 script of Psycho by Joe Stefano. They include:

ONE: Amidst the cop stop and car lot scenes in the beginning -- a stop at a gas station for Marion. A ringing phone scares her off.

TWO: After sinking Marion's car in the swamp, Norman goes up to Mother's room and finds her bloody clothes outside her door(same high angle on Norman as on the Arbogast attack to come.) Norman burns the clothes in a furnace and we get a shot of the Bates mansion with smoke coming up out of a chimney against a night sky. Fade out.

THREE: As Arbogast canvasses motels and boarding houses, a long shot of his car passing the Bates Motel three times(left to right, right to left). before he goes in.

FOUR: As Sam and Lila drive to the Bates Motel, they discuss Marion, and we learn that the parents of Marion and Lila are dead, and how Marion sacrificed for Lila.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

There is no evidence that these scenes were "filmed and cut"; Hitchcock seemed to abandon them, and we can guess why.

Gas station: too much time before getting to the Bates motel.

Norman burns mother's clothes: Brings on the "Arbogast overhead attack shot" too soon (and that shot REPEATS after Arbogast when Norman carries mother downstairs.)

Arbogast keeps passing the Bates Motel: the backlot filming area prevented any such shot from being made; adds unnecessary time.

Sam and Lila discuss Marion. The biggest LOSS to the film(vital information about Marion and Lila; a chance to pre-mourn Marion) but...Hitchcock wanted the thriller to accelerate at this point.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

PTA's process with LP sounds pretty open e.g. here:
https://www.ibc.org/features/behind-the-scenes-licorice-pizza-with-editor-andy-jurgensen/8296.article

---

It was fun reading that -- LP stands as a movie I enjoy returning to. I suppose it is not so much that ALL movies of a certain entertainment value have ended, its just that we get so FEW of them these days. In 1973, there were 30 LPs in release to choose from (including the on-point American Graffiti,but other genres too.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Anyhow, deleted scenes can be *very* interesting because they open a window into all the process of decision-making and polishing that leads to the final version we know. The story of Star Wars' edit is now legendary and is *so* illuminating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMyMxMYDNk
and the story of Annie Hall's edit is one of *complete* genre change with Allen essentially remaking all the (never-released) deleted scenes as Manhattan Murder Mystery two decades later.

--

I was not familiar with those Star Wars and Annie Hall stories...they "re-shape" my previously stated dislike for SEEING deleted scenes and modify the idea: scenes can and SHOULD be changed, edited and rearranged if it makes for a better movie that really connects with audiences and does not fail.

I recall renting a DVD years ago of some horror movie -- I think it was "Jeepers Creepers" -- and the "deleted scene" was actually an entire 30-minute plus third ACT of the first version of the film -- which got thrown out. A NEW third act was written and shot.

Something like this happened with DePalma's "Snake Eyes"(1998) -- a "spectacular" hurricane ending was THROWN OUT in favor of a different climax(the hurricane becomes instead a promised but never acted upon climax -- the gun in the first act that never fires.)

---

The verdict from me: I guess deleted scenes on DVDS are OK if they continue the entertainment of the film. "The Hand Man" scene did just that. It was fun to watch...several times.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The extension of the hand man scene in LP you describe sounds like a classic minor change: It darkens Alana's character a little - maybe makes her seem too hot and cold bipolar - without answering any of the basic questions raised by the original scene, so it gets chopped.

---

Yes..all of that. I've rewatched the scene a few times(it is only about two minutes) and Alana seemed a bit less psychotic each time -- but there can be no doubt based on this and other of his films that PTA really "digs on raging characters." Its a calling card and sometimes he overdoes it. I love how Magnolia opens(The Great Ricky Jay's speeches on coincidence, illustrated) and how it ends(the frogs) but in between we get three separate characters making long speeches confessing their infidelities -- over and over and over(sometimes raging, sometimes pleading.) PTA based Magnolia on entertainment industry people he knew and grew up with -- I guess they were all cheaters. So PTA gave them voice. And a lotta rage. Alana Haim hasn't been compromised yet with sexual cheating -- all she's got is the jealousy and the rage.

---

It sounds like PTA and his editor made most of those decisions. But I wouldn't be too surprised if I learned that Maya Rudolph was a bit of an Alma or that QT gave valued notes.

--

That's a good thought. Maya and PTA seem to be quite a team -- she's in LP.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

OT, very OT:

From a recent "check in on Haim" I found a new(2022) video from that old dog Bruce Hornsby, in which he is joined on a "sort of duet" by Danielle Haim. The song is called "Days Ahead" and the video(directed by Hornsby) is downright strange , though it grows on you.

The video places some little dolls -- a middle aged man and his middle aged wife -- in a dollhouse and photographs them in very strange ways. The hand held video camera moves on the dolls are very amateur yet artful. Strange, I tell you.

But its a good song, and when Danielle Haim's voice comes in, I'm reminded: she is the heart and soul of the Haim sisters, the one with the most beautiful singing voice.

Its a sweet, beautiful SPEAKING voice, too, and I'm reminded that in Licorice Pizza, using that voice, Danielle actually plays the "nicest role" as the voice of reason and guidance who has the back of "star" Alana Haim. Danielle's character(called Danielle) clearly sees Alana's character(called Alana) as damaged goods, a raging and troubled sister who needs care and confidence. A scene where Danielle is just a voice on the phone trying to sell Alana on going to Gary's pinball opening because "they have free Pepsi" is very sweet...vocal.

Whatever the age difference, Danielle is FOR the Gary-Alana match up to go as far as it can. Its a great little performance. (Big Sister Este gets fewer lines, all comic relief - methinks PTA just couldn't take her seriously.)

I trust that Haim will last as long as the Pointer Sisters or Heart -- sister acts don't break up like other "girl acts" -- but there seems to be an effort afoot to move Danielle back to her rightful place as "the leader of the pack." She's the lead singer and I think she's the lead writer, too.

So just a note to recommend that VERY strange Bruce Hornsby video with the VERY sweet Danielle Haim voice(her boyfriend produced the Hornsby song) and to note that Alana Haim isn't the ONLY talented actress in Licorice Pizza.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Its OT but this is where I'll put it:

I've taken to following the Haim tour as it wends its way from continent to continent in mid-2022.

There are occasional articles on the internet.

We reach now the juncture in which Haim has wrapped up much of its American leg of the tour and "hopped across the Atlantic" to Britain. I can't recall if they are heading to Continental Europe or not -- they have in past tours.

Yesterday, they played the Gastonbury festival in England...just two acts before Paul McCartney himself. I'd say that means they've made it in that area. But evidently, England embraced Haim long before America did and Glastonbury is where they made their names years ago and got a first record deal -- in the UK.

There have been some bumps along the way in the Haim tour:

An article about their concert in Wisconsin noted that the fans there screamed incessantly for them -- but the fairly small venue was only half full. That article disappeared within a few days off the net(at least front and center.) But I suppose an act of Haim's "smallish following" will have a few cities where folks don't turn out. (They DID sell out the Hollywood Bowl near their LA homes.)

Then, just last week before "jumping the pond," Haim turned up (on video) playing for a pretty small but rich crowd at a "cryptocurrency sponsored concert" in NYC. Oops. As some wag wrote: "hope they paid them in cash." I expect it was a pretty big payday for just a few songs, but still, after the Wisconsin fiasco, just goes to show you: rock touring carries risks of flop nights as well as triumphs.

Haim will play all over Britain and then come back for a few more US dates in the late summer -- and then they are booked for a couple of fall "group concerts" one of them in California where they hail from.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Now that COVID is sorta behind us, I know that ALL rock groups tour all around the country and the world like Haim is doing right now. But it has been fun to follow this specific group of young women, and to consider the sheer adventurous physical endurance of flying(or bussing) from town to town, state to state, continent to continent, playing the same songs every night(their Glastonbury playlist is pretty much what I saw them do in the US.)

The eldest, Este, has serious diabetes and wears an insulin pump; these tours must really toll on her. (I had a friend who died of that in his late 50's, she's got some time left.) But no matter. The show must go on.

There is the mystery matter of the men (or women?) in their lives. Only middle sister Danielle has a publically declared male partner -- he's the producer who puts all the synthesizer stuff in in their songs(and Jewish, like Danielle is.). Baby Alana Haim claims singlehood because "no man can put up with me touring all the time. I'm never home.." Este seems to have a mystery partner.

What is that LIKE? Touring around the world as sisters with their partners away from them? More to the point, how does a girl band do what a boy band does with groupies? Can they? Do they even WANT to?

Enquiring minds...want to wonder.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

August, 2022.

I saw Licorice Pizza around Xmas Day in 2021. It took a few months(til March 2022) to come to streaming "to buy or rent."(I bought it.)

Now it arrives "for free if you have a subscription" on Amazon. So it took about 8-plus months to get from movie screen to "available." Fairly long I guess. Respectful.

Meanwhile, I noticed that QT's 2019 "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is ONLY available (still ) to rent or buy. Well, on my streaming services. Maybe its free on Apple or Peacock.

Its pretty tough living in an age where some of us can NEVER see certain original films unless we subscribe for them. Its like Hollywood is keeping its product AWAY from potential viewers...

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Meanwhile, my "hobby" following Haim that was borne of Licorice Pizza(if only PTA knew how many of us his little movie grew) is reaching a poignant finale for 2022. (I've been checking articles on the internet.)

Haim pretty much finished all its US dates and all its Europe dates for the year. A few stray dates remain in the US in the fall, but "the big tour is over."

It seems that Haim played to some half-full halls in the US(reviews mentioning this were pulled off the net by their handlers) but sold out big venues in England right and left. They are mini-Gods in England. They played to many thousands at Glastonbury and to 20,000 in London -- and in London, BFF Taylor Swift sang with them on stage(she flew all the way to London to hang with Haim? That's friendship, but I'm sure she has a place there.)

I find Haim to be a bit more of an "old and mature" act than Taylor Swift. At least I hope so.

Touring done, Haim turned up in Italy this week for a UNICEF charity. They posed on the red carpet(make-up and clothing make these Plain Janes into glamour babes.) They WATCHED Jennifer Lopez perform.

Soon they will return to the states. Their European coach will turn into a pumpkin.

I suppose they can/should start work on another album. They've only done three.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

September 2022: I have finally seen Belfast -- the movie that won Best Original Screenplay of 2021 over the Licorice Pizza screenplay.

Its rare that I have " a dog in the fight" at the Oscars anymore, but I WAS rooting for Licorice Pizza to win at least for its screenplay. I didn't think the mojo was there to win his nominations for Picture or Director...but the screenplay made sense to a man who was "due" and ...who wrote a great screenplay here, very unique, very precise -- inarticulate as "kids" can be but in an articulate way.

Eh, the Belfast script was fine...I can't say "oh, it was such a bad screenplay compared to the Licorice Pizza screenplay." That's indeed why Oscar competition is in certain ways, just as irrelevant and insulting as George C. Scott(who refused his Oscar( said it was.

But at the end of the day, the Belfast screenplay(based on actor-director-writer Kenneth Branaugh's own Belfast childhood) was just pretty predictable.

The compliexities of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland were rather boiled down to: the neighborhood is getting really violent and people have to pick sides or leave.

More to the point, the movie boils down to this argument:

Husband: Belfast is getting too violent. We have to move to England.

Wife: But we all have lived here all our lives. It our home. We can't leave!

That's the movie. That's the plot. The final decision seems pre-ordained.

BUT: its also the sad point of the story.

Imagine if the San Fernando Valley families in Licorice Pizza had to "leave the Valley forever" and move to Arizona. That would sure be troubling. But that's not life in America(well, not POLITCAL life...you can move away from crime).

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

After a modern-day opening in color, Belfast switches to black and white for its 1969 flashback story, but there's a great scene where the entire family goes to a theater (in black and white) to watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang -- in COLOR -- and a point is made: in the grim gray violent world of Belfast, even the rather cheapjack fantasy of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang would be literally "transporting" to children and parents alike -- a literal escape from the drudgery of their lives.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Interesting to me: I saw the scene of the entire family at the movie theater in Belfast concurrently with seeing the trailer for the upcoming Steven Spielberg movie The Fabelmans(about HIS childhood) and that film too has shots of the entire family lined up in row of theater seast to see a movie(The Greatest Show on Earth)

The two movies together brought back memories of MY parental family sitting us all in a row to see many movies in my childhood. (We were a "movie going family," what can I say.)

All these years later, with some of those people gone..those are great memories.

I espeically remember the entire family laughint hard all the way through Blake Edwards slapstick powerhouse "The Party." And, on another occasions, my parents(mainly) laughing hard through a scene in the Elaine May-Walter Matthau comedy "A New Leaf" having to do with Matthau trying to get a Grecian nightgown onto May. Two minutes of great laughs(Roger Ebert mentioned how HIS audience went nuts for this scene in his review of the film.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

One more movie-going family memory.

So hardy were we as movie buffs that we sometimes sat through double features.

That's how I saw the revered Paul Newman Western Hombre. I didn't see that on first release in 1967; I saw it in 1968; Fox "attached" the old Hombre to the new Western Bandolero with James Stewart and Dean Martin as brothers! Bandolero came out only a year before The Wild Bunch, and though it is a "standard oater" it predicted some of the violence of The Wild Bunch and actually went ahead and killed off both Jimmy and Dino at the end.

Even we could tell that Hombre was more "serious and prestige" than Bandolero, but I do remember a huge audience laugh when Paul Newman asked baddie Richard Boone, "How are you gonna get back down that hill?"

When both movies were over, and we were leaving the theater, I asked my father how he liked the movies.

His answer was terse: "Too much Western."

Ha. Too much Western. It turns out he wasn't much off a Western fan. I sort of had to connect with Westerns on my own.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

So anyway, Belfast has that nice scene(two actually) of the entire famiily at the movie theater, and that brought back memories but...Licorice Pizza should have won Best Original Screenplay.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

Getting back on the 'main line':

So anyway, Belfast has that nice scene....but Licorice Pizza should have won Best Original Screenplay.

Looking back at the Oscar winners this year it's an almost unrelieved parade of grimace-provoking decisions. The Best Picture winner CODA was an all-time, pandering, middle-brow dog (probably a worse winner than Green Book) and it won the Adapted Screenplay over 4 films that were more interesting in my view (Dune, Drive My Car, Power of the Dog, The Lost Daughter). I haven't seen the films that got Will Smith and Jessica Chastain their Best Acting wins - neither King Richard nor Eyes of Tammy Fay were praised much as films apart from their acting showcases they're both 'eventual streamers' at best for me and most people I assume. And so on.

Ultimately there's no getting around that none of the top films in consideration last year were quite knockouts or 'absolute must-sees". (Everyone thought 'Belfast' owed a lot to Roma (2018) but *nobody* thought it was as good.) I'd say that Licorice Pizza has risen a bit in people's estimations since its release because it feels of a piece with Boogie Nights and Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love and Inherent Vice so that LP feels part of PTA's big career statement about His Southern Californian Twentieth Century. That's a pleasant, cinematically gratifying place to hang out in and rewatch occasionally. I wasn't originally bowled over by LP myself but I'm feeling fonder towards it over time and in that wider context.

[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

Ultimately both the 2020 and 2021 Oscars seem doomed to be Asterisked, overshadowed both by the 'Plague years' at the movies that they cover, and by 2019. 2019 had one all time great (Parasite, which felt led up to by excellent and popular east Asian films the previous year with Shoplifters and Burning) and two near perfects (Jojo Rabbit and Portrait of a Lady on Fire) plus a range of spectacularly awardsworthy films - all better that any of the contenders in 2020 and 2021 - The Irishman, 1917, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, Marriage Story, Uncut Gems, and maybe even Joker and Little Women. Also in 2019, little things like Avengers:Endgame and Knives Out for blockbuster cred, and interesting weirdness afoot with Us, Midsommar, The Lighthouse. 2019 remains the last year the whole movie industry felt like it was firing on all cylinders.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Getting back on the 'main line':

---

Ha. Well, my little detours are "looks back" at the context of how I actually saw some of those movies ("Too much Western" -- an argument to be refuted?) and I do think that both Belfast and the upcoming Fabelmans remind us that there is something to be said of the "family bonding" of every one seated across the same row, mom, dad, kids. I'm not sure that much happens anymore.

---

So anyway, Belfast has that nice scene....but Licorice Pizza should have won Best Original Screenplay.

---

Looking back at the Oscar winners this year it's an almost unrelieved parade of grimace-provoking decisions. The Best Picture winner CODA was an all-time, pandering, middle-brow dog (probably a worse winner than Green Book) and it won the Adapted Screenplay over 4 films that were more interesting in my view (Dune, Drive My Car, Power of the Dog, The Lost Daughter).

---

Rough stuff. I still haven't seen CODA , but it seems pretty clear to me that it is an "affliction win" -- the question really remains WHY does "the Academy"(whoever they are) always go for that? Affliction movies are as predictable winners as biopics (See Will Smith and Jessica Chastain this year -- and I saw both films and they were "the usual" biopic plus Chastain was rather buried under mask-like make-up that played against reality.)

Smith's performance will now forever be NOT remembered, but you can see why he did the picture. He gets to play one of those sports dads who drives his children to win "at all costs"(to him) -- and in this version of that , we have the black dad up against the white coaches then prominent in tennis, so there is "tension and unity" in the same tale.

---

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Ultimately there's no getting around that none of the top films in consideration last year were quite knockouts or 'absolute must-sees". (Everyone thought 'Belfast' owed a lot to Roma (2018) but *nobody* thought it was as good.)

--

I guess not. I haven't seen Roma -- and hey, its right there on my Netflix so I should -- but Belfast seemed to be a "slight" take on a very serious historical time.

--

I'd say that Licorice Pizza has risen a bit in people's estimations since its release because it feels of a piece with Boogie Nights and Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love and Inherent Vice so that LP feels part of PTA's big career statement about His Southern Californian Twentieth Century. That's a pleasant, cinematically gratifying place to hang out in and rewatch occasionally. I wasn't originally bowled over by LP myself but I'm feeling fonder towards it over time and in that wider context.

---

Well, I in no way would hold you to change your mind on it, and I knew its only REAL Oscar chance was original screenplay(perhaps more because PTA was "due" than anything) but honestly, I personally liked it so much MORE than his prestige stuff and felt it was "nicer"(age issues and all) than Boogie Nights( a very brutal film), Magnolia( a movie with drug addiction and child abuse within it), Inherent Vice(more like Incoherent Vice) and Punch Drunk Love(you can't save Adam Sandler THAT MUCH.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I think Licorice Pizza would have been a fine and acceptable Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay win -- perhaps matching up with the 'small romantic" winners like Marty and Annie Hall. More important: the storyline was incredibly UNIQUE. OK, so PTA borrowed all those scenes from real life happenings, but he mixed and matched them in new ways, turned them to his own use and brought back (for some of us) a really great memory: young love (not quite FIRST love.) The opening pick up scene and the song beneath it(July Tree) are , together, classic stuff IMHO. For the ages. Well acted by the two young 'uns, too. And who the hell is expecting a movie about water beds and pinball machines to have so much meaning. (Its like a director deciding to focus his movie on neckties and potatoes.)

But it wasn't much of a year otherwise.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Ultimately both the 2020 and 2021 Oscars seem doomed to be Asterisked, overshadowed both by the 'Plague years' at the movies that they cover,

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Especially 2020, it was as if the movies ceased to exist that year (at theaters, at least) and ...it was shocking to see them disappear so fast.

Remember on my "personal favorite movie of the year list" (with 2019 getting a rare tie in The Irishman and OATIH, and 2021 solidly repp'ed by Licorice Pizza) my LEGITIMATE favorite for 2020 was "the 60th Anniversary of Psycho Director's Cut." I saw it at the multiplex, it had those 30 additional seconds in three scenes(important ones, really)...it was all I really SAW that year. (And lest it seem like an "easy choice"-- Psycho didn't make my 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10's lists at all.

I'm not really sure they should have had an Oscar show in 2021 for 2020 films . There were so few.

Note in passing: I find it curious that 2020 Best Actress Oscar winner Frances McDormand didn't show up to give Will Smith the Best Actor Oscar( a tradition.) Did she KNOW something(they used three stars from Pulp Fiction instead.) Or was she perhaps a bit sheepish about winning a 3rd Oscar for something that barely got out. (Hulu.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

and by 2019. 2019 had one all time great (Parasite, which felt led up to by excellent and popular east Asian films the previous year with Shoplifters and Burning)
and two near perfects (Jojo Rabbit and Portrait of a Lady on Fire) plus a range of spectacularly awardsworthy films - all better that any of the contenders in 2020 and 2021 - The Irishman, 1917, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, Marriage Story, Uncut Gems, and maybe even Joker and Little Women. Also in 2019, little things like Avengers:Endgame and Knives Out for blockbuster cred, and interesting weirdness afoot with Us, Midsommar, The Lighthouse.

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Here's where I bow to you and get out of the way and let you list so many films I neither saw, nor necessarily even heard of.

I DID see Parasite -- at a large art house with a FULL house -- and I liked it enough. But this: it won both Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Picture at the 2019 Oscars. Seems to me if the movies are now "international" at the Oscars...time to dump that foreign language category. Evidently , international voters helped Belfast "beat" Licorice Pizza. If the American studio system is now a thing of the past as a "leader" in movies, time to go all the way and merge.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

2019 remains the last year the whole movie industry felt like it was firing on all cylinders.

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Yes, and it will be interesting to see how fast it takes for that kind of output to return. The studios are saying that 2022 simply didn't have enough product ready(COVID had cancelled a lot of films), So I suppose pipelines can be replenished soon. And we have a few movies almost ready for release from known people like Spielberg and Scorsese.

I'm thinking "my guy" Tarantino may wait a long, long, LONG time to make that "10th and final film" he promises. To make the splash he needs to make, he needs a fully functional movie marketplace for screenings and premieres and big audience turn out.

PS. This one is for swanstep, with trepidation and tongue somewhat in cheek:

It turns out those "Haim Girls"(of Licorice Pizza fame, they are all in it) have concluded their 2022 US and Europe tour -- but will now be heading over to New Zealand in 2023. So if you want to see them -- there they will be (somehow I doubt it.)

I'm a bit impressed. Their various YouTube and Tik Tok videos posit them as "San Fernando Valley Girls" at home in comfy suburban Los Angeles homes. Its impressive to think that they keep taking their show around the world. Evidently they may be more popular "overseas" than in American, EXCEPT for Los Angeles.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Also I did elect to rent PTA's first movie, Hard Eight to see and place in my "PTA list."

I knew that I saw it, but could remember nothing other than "it starts hip and funny in Vegas and gets ugly." I remembedr it got ugly.

And it does. But it gets nice, too. An all-time great starring role for Philip Baker Hall (I know he played Nixon for Altman, but this is a "regular" character.) Hall's great voice. Sam Jackson's great voice. Sam demonstrating his great line-reading rhythms early on, before they outwore their welcome. Gwyneth Paltrow, showing no skin, but capturing the sordid side of her cocktail waitress cum-hooker. (I'm sorry: I've always found the rather dopey and borderline unattractive John C. Reilly not much fun to watch or listen to.)

And its only in Vegas a little while before decamping to dumpier Reno(which turns out to have subbed for Vegas in earlier indoor scenes.)

So my "new" PTA list:

Licorice Pizza
Magnolia
Boogie Nights
Hard Eight(first is near-best)
Inherent Vice
Punch Drunk Love

"Prestige Tier":

There Will Be Blood
Phantom Thread
The Master