Licorice Pizza - SPOILERS!

[Yes]

True. I guess since he likes to keep up with current music/films/etc., I thought that would've extended to the current social climate a bit more. Not so much as a filmmaker since he's never really been that type anyways, but in general.

I agree but I understand it. He's a very nonchalant 50 year old dad who made this really personal movie with his friends and family and the best possible intentions and naivety that any pushback is expected to be jarring for his behalf. He works in his own niche pocket in the filmmaking world. Just like the scene was jarring for many Asian viewers, which valid. Movies spark sensitivity on both sides more than ever nowadays

[wilberfan]

Not a script, but a transcript of LP.  (I've never encountered site(s) like this before.)

https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/licorice-pizza-transcript/

[wilberfan]

Were you guys aware of the Kubrick/O'Neal fallout on Barry Lyndon?  One Redditor took the "Love to Tatum..." remark in LP as another reference to an inappropriate age-gap. 

From Tatum O'Neal's book: A Paper Life

"My father mesmerised full-grown women, so it was no wonder that twelve-year-old Vivian fell for him. He was so handsome, funny, and seductive that she developed a deep and desperate crush on him. I began to worry that she tolerated me only as a conduit to my father. Worse yet, her crush didn't seem entirely unrequited. While I'm sure they never had any sexual contact- my father never had a thing for young girls- he evidently relished her affection enough to keep pouring on the charm.

When Vivian told Stanley about my father's flirtation, he was outraged. I never heard what he said to my father about it, but they had some kind of falling out. Stanley later dropped my father as the narrator of Barry Lyndon."

[wilberfan]

LMGI:  Locations Behind the Oscars Chat 2022

[DickHardwood2022]

 nice little analysis video

[wilberfan]

KODAK film helps serve-up a slice of the '70s for Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza - Cinematography Magazine

[Stefen]

To be fair, the current music he keeps up with is Haim. 😕

OMG.  BRUTAL.    I bet he's used the phrase "No, I don't like HAIM. I LOVE HAIM." at least once to someone.

But why stop there? Fuck it — this is a safe space where some of us have spent half our lives dorking out in — we can let it out here. Let's pop off and be honest.

PTA lost it — and since you guys promised me this is a safe space, I can confidently say, he hasn't had it for awhile.

I spent the last 2 films doing what everyone else has been doing the last 10 pages of this thread and trying to convince myself they were still the same good PTA films if you squinted and just believed hard enough because I wasn't ready to admit they weren't.

Phantom Thread was pretty as hell wtf was everything else? White people who have never had any hard times in their lives just getting bored and making some up. Compare their issues to REAL issues like having your mental health melted by a war then having to navigate getting indoctrinated into a cult, or being a shit for brains horny as hell high school kid  and getting paid to fuck beautiful women and do drugs until you're a junkie, but with shit for brains.

When you think you're the guy to adapt Pynchon into a film and charge full-speed ahead without stopping once to ask yourself what the fuck you got yourself into, you've gone off the self-importance deep end and there's no coming back. Sydney and Boogie Nights are two of the funniest movies I've ever seen and they barely tried and still have me laughing out loud at parts. Inherent Vice thinks its hilarious and it's just not. At least when you have to compare it to what came before it, which is inevitable.

TWBB and The Master are way better than what he had done and was a normal logical progression you make when you transition from your rebel days and start a family but where everyone else stops and gets comfortable he kept going and drove into the ocean in his minivan. He's got enough kids for a half-court basketball game in the backseat sitting on laps and sharing seatbelts.

His self-awareness gauge at this point is way past empty. The needle  is loose spinning around constantly. And look it's on fire now.

Licorice Pizza obviously wasn't gonna be an American masterpiece all-timer like TWBB  or The Master but it never had to be. I would have taken anything that came close to something like in PDL when Barry's getting asked if he destroyed the bathroom and denying it then gets asked why his hands bleeding and he says cause he cut it -- "on what?" "my knife"

Of course it never happened. Licorice Pizza was the first movie of his I immediately hated. I barely noticed the "problematic" things. I didn't see an older woman taking advantage of an underage boy like some sort of Incel mens rights goblin would focus in on. The kid was a certified creep with way too much irrational self-confidence and preyed on a girl who had a rare and never seen form of autism. It was gross. That type of guy will strangle a woman to death at some point in his life. In an alternate universe you could switch the characters of ginger waterbed night stalker and Eddie Adams and Boogie Nights maybe gets the half star it's missing to become a masterpiece and Licorice Pizza is a breathtaking coming of age film and has us handing it our hearts.

The critical acclaim is nothing more than from reputation and at this point is basically an enabler and partly to blame for PTA's self-awareness dumpster fire.

Look, I'm just an over-opinionated internet film bro talking shit. I don't have answers. I'm not saying he should have a solo drug binge weekend in a seedy hotel  every couple years....

I stan and shield Yorgos Lanthimos now. Nothing full-time or anything. Just twitter spats and letterboxd profile bombing at anything resembling criticism once in awhile. Mostly for fun and just to keep social and not forget how to interact with humans. My prime and career best years were way back in 1999-2002 between Magnolia and PDL. GLORY DAYS.

[WorldForgot]

He's got enough kids for a half-court basketball game in the backseat sitting on laps and sharing seatbelts.

 

[Jeremy Blackman]

The kid was a certified creep with way too much irrational self-confidence and preyed on a girl who had a rare and never seen form of autism. It was gross. That type of guy will strangle a woman to death at some point in his life.

Unironically a compelling argument...

[DickHardwood2022]

I'm surprised  it's taken this long for someone to start talking bollocks again.

[Drenk]

The kid was a certified creep with way too much irrational self-confidence and preyed on a girl who had a rare and never seen form of autism. It was gross. That type of guy will strangle a woman to death at some point in his life.

Unironically a compelling argument...

That's right. The scene where Gary wants to grope Alana is depicted as a sweet moment of longing, then as a moral victory. It's terribly uncomfortable on many levels. The artificiality of the moment (how he puts them in this bed) and what it shows us can't be redeemed by pretty 35mm dust. If he had read his script after finishing the first draft instead of shooting Haim music videos around LA, maybe he would have realized that this is the moment where Gary makes a sexual move, and what happens next is what's interesting. But he would have needed to rewrite the last half of the movie.   

If PTA hadn't lost it, if he had intended to dig the inherent creepiness of Gary, dealing with both his marketing skills and treatment of women as tools for his sexual relief*, if he hadn't been charmed by himself as a version of Gary, it could have been a more interesting movie. But he decided that the Creeps are the Other Guys! Bad Guys, Sweet Guy, Lost Girl. I rejoice in the fact that he can't make a movie as dumb as this one for a while.

*For a movie about a horny guy, it is terrified of sexuality. It avoids actual sex. PTA even said that the real Gary was glad that it was the PG 13 version of his life story; well, why aren't you writing about what was actually happening for that kid in that world at that age? Once again: if you want to make home videos, just use an iPhone and don't show it to the world.

[RudyBlatnoyd]

I honestly think that Licorice Pizza has done more to expose the parlous state of media literacy than any movie I can remember in recent memory.

Yorgos Lanthimos? I seem to remember a somewhat interesting if overly mannered filmmaker of that name around 11-12 years ago. Wonder what happened to him...

[DickHardwood2022]

The kid was a certified creep with way too much irrational self-confidence and preyed on a girl who had a rare and never seen form of autism. It was gross. That type of guy will strangle a woman to death at some point in his life.

Unironically a compelling argument...

That's right. The scene where Gary wants to grope Alana is depicted as a sweet moment of longing, then as a moral victory. It's terribly uncomfortable on many levels. The artificiality of the moment (how he puts them in this bed) and what it shows us can't be redeemed by pretty 35mm dust. If he had read his script after finishing the first draft instead of shooting Haim music videos around LA, maybe he would have realized that this is the moment where Gary makes a sexual move, and what happens next is what's interesting. But he would have needed to rewrite the last half of the movie.   

If PTA hadn't lost it, if he had intended to dig the inherent creepiness of Gary, dealing with both his marketing skills and treatment of women as tools for his sexual relief*, if he hadn't been charmed by himself as a version of Gary, it could have been a more interesting movie. But he decided that the Creeps are the Other Guys! Bad Guys, Sweet Guy, Lost Girl. I rejoice in the fact that he can't make a movie as dumb as this one for a while.

*For a movie about a horny guy, it is terrified of sexuality. It avoids actual sex. PTA even said that the real Gary was glad that it was the PG 13 version of his life story; well, why aren't you writing about what was actually happening for that kid in that world at that age? Once again: if you want to make home videos, just use an iPhone and don't show it to the world.

So youre just annoyed because you would have written it differently is that what youre saying. how does that made the film bad?

[Yes]

This thread truly continues to deliver. Drenk's 5869202020th dunk on the film, PaulElroy's 5993020303th defense of it, and now Yorgos Lanthimos stanning. Love it

[kingfan011]

Yorgos Lanthimos the director mentioned the movie?