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No clue. They never explained that.
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MovieChat Forums > Licorice Pizza (2021) Discussion > [deleted]
It's not explicitly stated. It is generally assumed it's either a journalist or someone doing oppo research for his opponent.
shareI thought the overall "set up" was meant to remind us of the great 1976 movie Taxi Driver, when campaign workers Cybill Shepard and Albert Brooks noticed weird Robert DeNiro across the street.
In terms of the story itself...yeah, he's opposition research. The candidate has a secret.....
Wachs wasn’t really a serious candidate in the race…so in real life, probably wouldn’t have caused enough concern for the other candidates to resort to too much oppo research.
shareSPOILERS
It seems that a lot of "Licorice Pizza" consists of PTA taking a grain of historical truth and then turning it into something different for his movie.
Joel Wachs IS the real name of a REAL LA politician who DID eventually win other offices in the 70's and beyond. He is still alive today and gave a brief interview praising "Licorice Pizza" for showing how closeted politicians had to be in those days. Wachs didn't come out until 1999.
PTA evidently elected to use "the Joel Wachs story" not only to examine the closeted politician circa 1973, but to give to Alana Haim's character a "final straw" in a series of "wrong men" for her that would drive her into the arms of Gary Valentine.
But there was this "morsel" tied into the Wachs story for Alana. Right before she goes to the restaurant and finds out that Wachs needs her as a beard.. she ALMOST kisses her male friend, the young male campaign aide. THAT guy might have been a more age appropriate alternative to young Gary(now 16 in the story, I think) but...he's connected Wachs and so Alana goes to Gary.
Nicely complicated movie. Not as simple as it seems.
Yeah, I wasn’t implying that Wachs wasn’t a real person and that the private life angle wasn’t true to life….I was just pointing out that he only got 3% of the vote in that Mayors election and finished behind 4 other people…so he was never really a serious contender to be Mayor at that time
shareYeah, I wasn’t implying that Wachs wasn’t a real person and that the private life angle wasn’t true to life….
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I'm sorry that I implied that. I did not mean to. Rather, I just wanted to engage on the plotline in the movie -- mainly the gay aspect, but also the male aide who COULD have been a boyfriend to Alana.
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I was just pointing out that he only got 3% of the vote in that Mayors election and finished behind 4 other people…so he was never really a serious contender to be Mayor at that time
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Hah...so Alana rather hitched her wagon to the wrong candidate. The movie rather sadly has Alana moving from possible career to possible career(sales, acting, politics) without ever really finding a home for her talents -- which are real. She's very hard working and eager to impress.
Anyway, thank you for the additional information on Wachs. He won office eventually...with a lot of candidates, they have to lose a few times before they finally win.
Like a lot of things in the movie, it seemed totally out of left field that she suddenly went to volunteer for this campaign. A very disjointed film.
shareLike a lot of things in the movie, it seemed totally out of left field that she suddenly went to volunteer for this campaign. A very disjointed film.
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I think that the disjointed nature of the film ties into its status as "an art film." A number of scenes lack internal logic, and are rather dream-like.
For instance, the whole sequence of Gary being suddenly grabbed and cuffed and driven to jail on a MURDER charge is all weirdness and emotion -- built to show us Alana silently BEGGING Gary to escape with her , through the jail house window, once he is "cleared and freed." As a "plot thing" the scene doesn't much matter at all. As an EMOTIONAL thing -- well, here we see just how much Alana cares for Gary and the scene leads to another crazy, dream-like RUN, which also has no logic.
Alana sees the Joel Wachs campaign poster on a window just as Jon Peters crazily stomps away from her(luckily he doesn't recognize her) to hit on some women. Alana wants OUT of this waterbed business -- which will soon be hit by the oil embargo -- so she shifts into politics "just like that." Working on campaigns as a volunteer is a way that a LOT of aimless people can find meaning. When Alana later has a nasty argument with Gary , she says "I'm a politician, you're just a salesman" as if making cold calls for the candidate makes her a politician...but she has found meaning.
I have no problem with the cops thing. It was a fun surprise, based on mistaken identity. Volunteering for a campaign out of the blue is not like that--it's not something that happens TO her, but something she chose to do.
You keep defending the movie on the basis that it's an "art film". But so are PTA's other movies, yet they aren't so shambling and unfocused.
You keep defending the movie on the basis that it's an "art film". But so are PTA's other movies, yet they aren't so shambling and unfocused.
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Both statements are true. As I offered in another post around here, when a film maker defines themself AS an "art film" maker, there is always an "Emperor Has No Clothes" element to the incoherence of the film. Is it incoherent BECAUSE it is art? Or is it just incoherent art? Which reminds me -- Inherent Vice, which I liked very much, was often fairly incoherent too. Because of the novel?
With Licorice Pizza...who knows. And I never try to impose my liking for a film against someone's dislike.
In fact, I did NOT like everything in Licorice Pizza -- I think the whole Jon Peters sequence is overrated, and in REAL life...wouldn't he ruin that company for ruining his bedroom? The "Jack Holden" sequence didn't feel like much the first time, but the second time I saw how little Holden cared for Alana, and how sad she was to realize it. He gets her drunk, too ("We're going to Korea?" she asks.) I suppose the issue is -- Hollywood stars don't much care for "the little people" unless they feel they can use them sexually.
But I like the overall feeling and tone and nostalgia of the piece -- I like the 70's, I love LA -- and I think PTA had a number of things on his mind when he made this particular film. It is far and away the "nicest" of his works, and -- as with Punch Drunk Love, it believes in both love and its lovers.
PS. Tarantino feels that directors get worse as they get older....but I don't think PTA is that old.
I thought Inherent Vice was PTA's worst. But I really liked Phantom Thread, so the relationship between his age and the quality of his films is not linear in my view. (It was looking like it was something close to linear for Tarantino, but then I loved his most recent film OUATIH.)
shareI thought Inherent Vice was PTA's worst.
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Hmm.
But is this like the view offered to Tarantino(by his fans) and, back in the day, Hitchcock? That theee men were such great overall artists that a "worst" movie is simply the one at the bottom of a list of "good to great" films. Idea being that neither PTA nor Tarantino nor Hitchcock could ever make a movie that was "bad."
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At least Licorice Pizza ends up with an understandable story to tell, and an ending that a lot of us have rooted for and enjoy seeing. Its a love story. Not many of those are made. Fewer GOOD ones. Inherent Vice sort of told a story, but not with much real focus.
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But I really liked Phantom Thread, so the relationship between his age and the quality of his films is not linear in my view. (It was looking like it was something close to linear for Tarantino, but then I loved his most recent film OUATIH.)
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I reminded again of Hitchocck. Very late in his career, at a very old age and in bad health, Hitchcock made several bad movies (but not THAT bad) : Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz. But then he came back and made one of his best: Frenzy.
In short, the "linear model" indeed doesn't work, people "come back from failure" or find the right story to tell after a wrong turn. Etc.
I would call Inherent Vice actually bad, and Licorice Pizza I would give a very tepid recommendation.
shareWell..OK.
More seriously, though...you would therefore be of a mind that PTA has NOT turned out an unbroken string of great films..or even good ones?
To me, this is the interesting angle to "auteur" filmmakers. They have to create a distinctive body of work -- iniitally, at least -- to be reviewed with greater seriousness than most other directors.
But evidently one CAN be an auteur still, even if some of the auteur films are not very good.
Just a musing, on my part. Old school Hitchcock, as an example: Rear Window and Psycho: masterpieces. The Paradine Case and Topaz: not so much.
That was definitely a plot hole. I guess we can only guess who he was….
shareHe may have been a new lover of the pollical candidate. He was breaking up w the other guy Alana had to drive home. Then the other guy was in the restaurant.
He was 'waiting' for him maybe earlier too across from the campaign office.