โThe emotion, Psychology, and the visual beauty of this moment are working in harmony, in a way that is just a pure cinematic moment.โ Considering Paul Thomas Anderson steals so blatantly from the movies that came before him (โBoogie Nightsโ takes from โGoodfellas,โ โMagnoliaโ is a โShort Cutsโ remix, โThere Will Be Bloodโ feels like โThe Treasure of the Sierra Madreโ), Itโs fitting to quote directly from Jordan Peele, an Oscar-winning filmmaker on the rise who showed his reverence for Anderson during a 2018 group discussion with the nominated directors that year.
P.T.A.โs โPhantom Threadโ (the son of Hitchcockโs โRebeccaโ) looks like a serious, awards-bait film about dressmaking in 1950s London, but it unfolds slowly to reveal a Freudian rom-com within its fabric. Memorably, Reynolds Woodcock (A cheeky little boner joke from the mind of his iconic leading man, Daniel Day-Lewis) betrays himself in the name of love. From 2019-20, the strangeness of the film lingered, like a seed sprouting in my brain.
My endless curiosity would extend to the pre-production of โLicorice Pizza,โ by all accounts a breezy, joyous teenage rom-comโฆUntil I Googled the actorsโ ages and realized Alana Haim was 28 & Cooper Hoffman was 16. Jaw. on. the. floor! Why make that choice?! In a “The Hollywood Reporter” Interview, the filmโs producer, Sara Murphy, answers, โWe all have those relationships, these unrequited loves, that you acknowledge as being significant in your life and important in your life.
And the reason they remain so is because they never did cross those lines โthey were completely inappropriate yet entirely necessary.โ If she understands the nature of this bond, was she the source for Paul’s incredibly sharp, psychological breakdown of how they happen? I’m Mexican, and we have these flippant little rhymes acknowledging these things as open secrets. Are we bonded for the thrill of being almost perverse? Proximity? How relationships our parents have with their friends blur clearly defined lines into a surrogate family? What I do know is โLicorice Pizzaโ really fucked me up.
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Anderson grounds the questionable relationship in specific anecdotes and memories. 98% of which dig into a past Iโd almost forgotten. He spoke at length about the situation that sparked his imagination. He was walking around his neighborhood in the early aughts, and stumbled upon a high school picture day where a kid was nagging at one of the older photographers for her number. I assume he laughed at the gall in that moment and went to work. One of his filmmaking idols is Jonathan Demme (โThe Silence of the Lambsโ). After he passed away, PTA turned to Gary Goetzman, a producer on that film, and they shared stories as a way to grieve. Gary’s childhood as an actor and businessman fills out the story beats of Anderson’s latest.
Prepping for picture day, a kid named Gary Valentine meets 20โฆ 5 (or 28) year-old Alana Kane (Haim). After the shit storm that followed the filmโs release, I presumed she’d be a woman who thinks laws don’t apply to her, โI can be your friend, but I can’t be your girlfriend, thatโs illegal.โ Sheโs conscious?!ย If Gary weren’t a minor, and if I weren’t born with Cerebral Palsy, we’d probably be given more consideration as potential boyfriends.
What’s more, a core dilemma in my adolescence was my perspective of girls changing from innocent friendships to people I found attractive. Gary says eagerly, โI just wanna spend my time with you, is that bad?โ I used to think, she’s pretty, if she rejects me, that’s the end of that, but I wanna know who she is, and asking her to hang out might be the best way forward. Towards the middle of the film, their mutual acquaintance reveals Gary’s knack for punching up age-wise and his sexual preferences. I recoiled in my seat, like the meme where The Hulk is embarrassed by his past self in the Battle of New York.
PTA and Michael Bauman photograph their film as a tribute to the world around us. The sun is out, the glass is green, Nina Simone sings โJuly Treeโ with hypnotic gentility. Clearly, it mirrors Shelly Duvallโs innocent romantic affirmations in Andersonโs โPunch-Drunk Love.โ In the thick of COVID isolation, we were longing for this. The duo had gripped my heart tightly, my eyes were also flooded by the sting of rejection.
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Which brings us to the modest Alana, the sun at the filmโs center that sees men gravitate around her like planets. (at political campaign offices and waterbed store grand openings.) It’s a performance guided by honesty. She lets her emotional range dominate a scene, and wants to make us laugh. (โFuck off teenagers!โโas she runs after a teenager.) In her first acting role, she fearlessly molds herself to fit Anderson’s behavioral interests. Sheโs the film’s aching heart, articulating his too-unique-to-miss thesis with the melancholy of being resigned to your situation.
She admits to Gary during their second scene, โYouโre gonna be rich in a mansion by the time youโre 16. I’m gonna be here, taking pictures of kids for their yearbooks when I’m 30. โ It’s so easy to see the straightforward outlook on these characters, you’re 15 in high school, don’t worry about growing up. You’re a 25-year-old in show business, you’ve found your path. Now in my 20s, I’m eager to find my professional identity, but I don’t know what the thing will be to make me feel like an adult. I go home, and my sister is overprotective. โYour friendsโ lives are different from yours, you’re too trusting, be careful.โ This film is like stab wounds I didn’t know I needed.
As Murphy describes, itโs heartbreaking that my first chance at love was too close for comfort. I suppose she found teasing jokes attractive. We walked together, I said I couldnโt kiss her. Spanning from the high-octane โPeace Frogโ (The Doors) to the screaming, repressed desire of โLet Me Roll Itโ (Paul McCartney), PTA seemingly runs on instinct. Highlighting the particulars of a life you havenโt lived is difficult, so much so that the filmโs dissenters wrapped their heads around it as abuse or fantasy. Thatโs reductive, putting morals that he aligns with, and a general disinterest in empathy, above the complexity of the film. He navigates difficult situations like a doctor in the middle of open-heart surgery. (Take infidelity, I come from a religious culture where thatโs a sin, but you have to be honest about how that happens.)
An alienating example is at Gary’s house after he gets Alana an audition. They argue about film nudity. (Florence Pugh in โOppenheimer,โ queen!) Anderson is fully aware he can point the camera at Alanaโs chest, but that would imbalance the relationship. With a Hitchcockian panning shot, he takes a stand against this behavior and de-sexualizes breasts. His curiosity is more nuanced, teen hormones will push things in a more vulgar direction. In Alanaโs shoes, I thought, things will go as far as I say. I can guide this safely. Then a situation happens to make you uncomfortable and question the relationship outside of yourself: โI think itโs weird that I hang out with Gary and his 15-year-old friends all the time.โ She lacks the wording, but she means three things: I regret my actions, Iโm rattled, can you help me?
Brazenly, editor Andy Jurgensen’s business as usual flow revealsโ There is no help! Who was I supposed to turn to? My family patriarch, who defines machismo and resents his daughterโs interracial relationship? My mother with issues that caused more of my pain? A sister under pressure to start her own family? Or a step-sibling, who knew my Gary and didn’t come through when I asked her to. There’s dissonance in how fast he cuts the film when compared to the niche topic in Paul’s script. Together, they create bottled memories with earth-shattering realizations. We repress these relationships because they were strangely confusing.
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My Gary lives in my subconscious, looking like Jacy in โThe Last Picture Show.โ Their relationship resets immediately after the dialogue above. At the time, I thought, 30 minutes ago you had an uneasy interest in my body, now your legs on my lap, watching โSaw VIโ like nothing happened? Weโre attracted, but we’ve never kissed. What is this? Itโs young love and the โThis is weird, but we’re getting through itโ aspects that keep it intimately private.
If PTA had a real passion for Psychology, he’d be a San Fernando Valley-based therapist. As a filmmaker, he makes Alana and Gary’s playground aย “Hangout Movie,” Coined by Quentin Tarantino. It’s known for long runtimes, so characters stop feeling like fiction and more like people you’d be friends with. Using โAmerican Graffiti,โ โDazed and Confused,โ and โOnce upon a Time in Hollywoodโ as references, they’re relaxed, even slacker films interested in life’s lazy days. You watch TV with company, smoke in park dugouts with your friends, or wander around town playing music on car radios. The aimless, slow pace is grounded in real, immersive locations, ideas of self-discovery, romantic conquests, and specific people who come in and out of the protagonistโs life along the way. (Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, Benny Safdie).
The multilayered genre work that PTA pulls off made my brain short-circuit. Deeper, faster, and more efficient than the expectations of a bloated vibe film. Itโs clear the director of โPhantom Threadโ hadn’t gone anywhere. It’s looser, weirder, people say. No, they’re equals, this has jet fuel! I retort. Heโs still a deeply focused tailor, considering every aspect of his creation.
Itโs damn watchable because romantic highs are replaced by cinematic ones. Thereโs pushing against the wind in your hair on a summer day, or moving from moment to moment with the dizzying quality of a Rube Goldberg machine, diverse scenes affect what comes next. (Gary bombs an audition, burgers are comfort food, his crush is on a date, he calls to feel close, she invites her boyfriend for dinner after Gary pretends to be him.) Their most romantic moment feels more like gathering around at recess for Beyblade duels, Twist, crash, and repel.
Aaah! How’s this happening? By writing a cyclical script with the narrative discipline of rom-com. โI hate you!โ (Horny, immature, selfish) โI love you!โ (Confident, enthusiastic, coming-of-age aid) Complete with a romantic montage more focused on a business literally taking off, and Alana serving as an older sister figure for a bunch of teenagers. The more time you spend with someone, the more love should grow. PTA rides the wave of morals, guilt, and shame to build a wall against romance. A drink of a Coke is his slap to her face (a quieter, gentler version of The Master’s hard-boiled processing scene). Dating someone sets romantic and sexual expectations. Alana and Gary have to side-step romantic moments and avoid sexuality for the sake of the mutual desire to find their place in the world.
Mine was like, I’ll hold her hand when she wants a kiss, or I can see your eyes full of desire right now, but for the love of God, don’t try it! I realized, shit! She did want me, but she could pull back to consider my feelings. In Anderson’s interpretation of this sequence, the space between their arms is a visual boundary. They look at each other, then face the ceiling, and their fingers touch right on the line. (How doesnโt he have a โBest Directingโ Oscar yet?!) Imagine the age gap corrective, Tom Holland and Zendaya are what we see when young adult actors date. Making Alana a high school senior would shift Andersonโs perspective into an exploration of teen sexuality. (They’re too young to do it, but weโre more accepting)
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I never saw Jacy again after a scene like the night at his waterbed store. As was typical by now (2012-โ15), we caught up on life, flirted. She spent the rest of the day with her friends. I was Gary, slouched, lusting, and angry, sitting in the corner of a salon as cumbias played and good times rolled. How I wish I could change a few details of my life to make her my first girlfriend. โI’m disabled, you know I canโt hurt you, and you still like me?โ
When Gary introduces Alana to an age-appropriate romantic interest, she becomes possessive, but low-key, like my friend getting jealous when I watch movies without him. Gary put her through moral dilemmas, dressed her like she’s at the beach in the middle of a work day, and ignored her platonic bid for connection, knowing full well he’s a boy with a crush?! Anderson puts her on time-out to deal with her shit, highlighting how you could be profoundly out of tune while sharing the same space.
The thing about lust is that it doesn’t last; my lack of communication and our diverging life paths got in the way. Anderson gives his complex couple a reality check, with the soundtrack as a sneaky extra layer. Gary drives away, The Four Tops are heard playing โ7-Rooms of Gloom,โ a desperate, lonesome tune about shattered romantic dreams. (Iโm fully in shambles by this point. Whoโs in Paulโs ear? It feels like itโs me!) Just as fast as Gary leaves, a random window flyer could redirect a life.
If Reynolds has to sacrifice for love, Alana gets an easier choice: who will watch you grow up? Quickly, Anderson winds down his loopy, cross-town film with the closure that life mostly lacks. An 87-year-old romantic clichรฉ is crystallized as a gesture that lets people have happier days. His atypical perspective gives Alana the emotional openness that I denied myself, and Gary gets a moment so singular, it can be considered a steal that will โSlip Awayโ (Clarence Carter). What wouldโve happened if Jacy did too?
By then, Spanky and our Gang have set the stakes,
Now I can’t promise that I’ll spend a day with you
Can’t promise that I’ll find a way with you
Can’t promise no
I can’t promise that I’ll love you
But I’d like to get to know you
Time moves on, the memory remains. โLicorice Pizzaโ is an ode to almost-romances, helping me accept Jacyโs influence on my past instead of trying to forget. I did the best with what I knew at the time. As a Gary, I recalled the friends I failed at making lovers, needing to better separate the two. They loved me in the moment, now they’re gone. Presently, I want to be more empathetic, give myself the grace that the adults in my youth couldnโt, validate the feelings of the children in my life (or give them better suggestions), and try to understand hardships that people don’t feel they can talk about.
With tears in my eyes, I rushed out of the theater! appreciating the people who help ground me as my lifeโs going sideways, like the bois I can be immature with. On the flip side, I have summer vibe sessions with a woman I’ve known since I was six. Reconnecting made me sentimental, remembering a simpler time in my life when I wasn’t hormonal. She looks kind of like Alana and holds me like she cares. Lastly, there’s my teasing, occasionally unhinged, vulgar, high school homie. We rely on each other after shitty dates. โNo te me aguites guey, weโve got each otherโs backs!โ I’m sad that this is the life I’ve had. Iโm happy that someone helped me reflect and explain the difficult echoes of my adolescence. Thanks, Paul and company!
