Licorice Pizza - Speculation & General Reactions

Started by Fuzzy Dunlop, August 30, 2017, 12:58:10 PM

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wilberfan

I'm looking forward to another year of excited anticipation, speculation, and tallying just how many Xixax lurkers surface and weigh-in again.  ;)

csage97

Quote from: wilberfan on November 13, 2019, 01:00:01 PM
I'm looking forward to another year of excited anticipation, speculation, and tallying just how many Xixax lurkers surface and weigh-in again.  ;)

Lol, I have certainly resurfaced. :)

wilberfan

Yes, I recognized you.  It's what prompted the comment...   :yabbse-grin:

jenkins

i liked when the ptaheads were a frothing hot mess distressed in a world without a confirmed new movie, but also i'm glad to see it happen for y'all

it's fair to surmise that high school movie or otherwise pta makes oscar nomination movies, so it's going to be dec 20 or another long patch of waiting, rest easy

Find Your Magali

Resurfacing!

I think just as important as thinking about how PTA might tackle the "high school" genre is thinking about why he wants it to be in the 1970s. Clearly, the tone, atmosphere and mindset of the day will play a big role in the story told. Also, the 1970s are not monotone. A movie set in 1971 could have a far different feel than one set in 1975 or 1979. Once we get a narrower focus on the year it's set, that might give us some insight into the story he wants to tell.

Also, integration and busing were two huge and ongoing factors through the Los Angeles School District during the decade. Unless it's just a straight-up comedy (doubtful), PTA would fold in some of the narratives of those racial tensions to the movie.

I also find it fascinating that PTA and I are the same age, meaning our most vivid school days are the 1980s, and yet he has a really sharp interest in the 1970s, which means his own personal lens on that decade is as someone in their single digits, age-wise. I could do all sorts of writing about what American suburban schools were like in the 1980s, because I lived it. PTA could too. Yet he chooses to go just a little backward into a decade that he certainly views with some fusion of childhood perspective and a potentially skewed nostalgia gleaned from pop culture and the stories of the adults who raised him.

Alethia

Quote from: Find Your Magali on November 13, 2019, 03:32:33 PM
Yet he chooses to go just a little backward into a decade that he certainly views with some fusion of childhood perspective and a potentially skewed nostalgia gleaned from pop culture and the stories of the adults who raised him.

Don't forget he has several older siblings, who surely must have aided in the development of his various tastes, and it's not unlikely he knew/grew up in relatively close proximity to at least a few successful child actors at that time as well.

wilberfan


Lewton

(Edited this a few times while trying to organize this rambling post.)

Quote from: Find Your Magali on November 13, 2019, 03:32:33 PM
I think just as important as thinking about how PTA might tackle the "high school" genre is thinking about why he wants it to be in the 1970s.

This is just in response to what you said about the 80s vs the 70s as it relates to PTA. What came to mind for me was this comment he made about 70s movies. He basically said he's not as obsessed with the movies of the 70s as others are, and that he tries to emulate films from the 1930s or something like that? But I'm assuming there will be movies within this movie, like in Tarantino's OUATIH.

But there's a difference between emulating a filmmaking style and representing a filmmaking milieu. It's possible that he'll be much more interested in the latter in this case. But he obviously still likes movies from the 70s so maybe I'm overthinking this.

Still, this makes me wonder if this high school movie might be more about television than feature films. I mean, the child actor character is said to be "successful." Doing a lot of commercials could be considered "successful." Television shows, too.

In other words, it's not clear what the industrial context is going to be. Is the template going to be closer to like... Jodie Foster's career after Taxi Driver or maybe someone like Barry Williams in The Brady Bunch?

And if it involves the world of television in some respect, then that makes me think of these comments PTA made in an article about his father. I wonder if anything like this might crop up in the new film, especially since there will supposedly be intersecting storylines:

Quote"From time to time I've thought about making a film about that era of local TV and the kind of Wild West lawlessness and the things that could happen. When my dad was doing it, it wasn't national, it was local. And it felt like lunch time was drinking time and you could come back to work totally hammered."

https://www.cleveland.com/tv/2013/01/ghoulardi_at_50_tim_conway_jim.html

That joins a few other ideas that he's mentioned but has yet to utilize. I recall something like a "families at war" idea from before TWBB. That one may never happen because I think it effectively turned into TWBB? But I wonder if that and/or the television idea was rattling around on his computer and if they've now resurfaced in some form through this new script. (Plus, there's that "wide open spaces" comment. And the two ideas Tiffany Haddish has mentioned: South Central L.A. in the 30s or 40s, and something set in the 1600s in England. Both of those sounded really promising so I hope they will still happen one day.)

RudyBlatnoyd

Total guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was loosely based on PTA's own childhood experiences and features an adult character, perhaps the father of the child at its centre, or one of the child's bosses, inspired by Ernie Anderson/Ghoulardi. Possibly played by RDJ?

pynchonikon

Sherlock Holmes 3 is said to start shooting in January, so I don't see RDJ being in this after all.

Tdog

Quote from: RudyBlatnoyd on November 14, 2019, 04:00:11 AM
Total guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was loosely based on PTA's own childhood experiences and features an adult character, perhaps the father of the child at its centre, or one of the child's bosses, inspired by Ernie Anderson/Ghoulardi. Possibly played by RDJ?

Interesting idea! It would have been very interesting to see Leonardo DiCaprio play the father of a child actor considering his own history.

Update: Oh well I guess he'll have to just work with Joaquin again for that part! I'm imagining a scene like the processing scene from The Master but with Joaquin and his actor kid running lines for an audition together really intensely!

pynchonikon

Quote from: Tdog on November 14, 2019, 06:48:15 AM
I'm imagining a scene like the processing scene from The Master but with Joaquin and his actor kid running lines for an audition together really intensely!

If there is such a scene in the screenplay, I 'll literally bounce off the walls.

trytotell

I don't think Joaquin will be in this. He's doing that Mike Mills movie. Plus, he's campaigning for Joker.

I don't buy that DiCaprio ever had anything to do with this. People read way too much into one vague tweet that was never backed up.

Sleepless

A few unconnected thoughts:

My immediate thought was this would be related to TV rather than movies. Perhaps because his father was in the TV biz, but also because of quiz kids Donnie Smith & Stanley Spector.

This article from Feb 2018: Paul Thomas Anderson Is Working On A Family-Friendly Script With His Eight-Year-Old Daughter

Quote from: Find Your Magali on November 13, 2019, 03:32:33 PM
Also, integration and busing were two huge and ongoing factors through the Los Angeles School District during the decade. Unless it's just a straight-up comedy (doubtful), PTA would fold in some of the narratives of those racial tensions to the movie.

I would be interested to see him tackle something along these lines.
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

trytotell

Take it with a grain of salt, but there's a rumor floating around that he was/is looking for a Mixed-race girl.