“Licorice Pizza” tells the story of Alana Kane and Gary Valentine, growing up, running around and falling in love in the San Fernando Valley in 1973.
A discussion following its screening Friday at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival included director Paul Thomas Anderson, who is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay and Best Director, producer Sara Murphy, nominated for Best Picture, and Alana Haim, who plays the role of Alana Kane, a photographer’s assistant.
Haim’s performance has received outstanding reviews and is notable because it’s her first acting job. Anderson wrote the screenplay with Haim in mind, having directed several of her band’s music videos. Kane performs with her sisters, Este and Danielle, in the band Haim, and both sisters, along with Haim’s parents, Mordechai and Donna, were cast in the film as her family.
“Imagine we are living through this pandemic time when we couldn’t see people, and then my dad appears on set in his bathrobe and my mom comes out of the trailer with this ’70s hair-do and my sisters are there — it was so wonderful,” Kane said. “Pretty much all of my father’s dialogue is from his brain. He and my mom had never been in front of a movie camera before, so it’s kind of shocking but also great.”
In fact, many of the actors had never appeared in a feature film before, including the role of Gary Valentine, played by Cooper Hoffman, the son of late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. The film also features Anderson’s longtime partner, Maya Rudolph, their four children and many of their children’s friends.
“Filming with my family just felt like a natural extension of how we live,” Anderson said. “We are all performers, and it’s hard to describe, but it seemed impossible to think of making the film any other way.”
Anderson said the film was meant to be a summer project before COVID-19 hit, and then it turned into an opportunity to be together and to protect one another. He said the pandemic provided an opportunity to experience filmmaking as it should be — offering complete immersion and total concentration because there were no other life distractions.
“All we did for 60 days is make this film, go home, go to sleep and get up to make the film again,” he said. “It was a wonderful time, and we are lucky to have a record of it.”
Anderson said he had been thinking of telling the story for years. Inspired by the true story of film producer and former child actor Gary Goetzman, the story evolved one day after Anderson walked by a middle school in Los Angeles around 2001 and observed one of the students nagging the female photographer. He had the idea of the student having an adult relationship with the photographer’s assistant. The story emerged from that, coupled with the many stories told to Anderson by Goetzman.
“I had known Gary for about 20 years,” Anderson said, “and I spent a lot of time with Gary and Alana, and hearing their stories it just felt like this was a joyful, important love story worth telling.”
Anderson shared that “American Graffiti” was a major influence on the making of “Licorice Pizza.”
“There’s a homemade feeling to ‘American Graffiti’ and — I mean this as a huge compliment — it feels cheap but cinematic. It felt like events in the movie were really happening; it’s entertaining and funny and encompasses a lot of stuff and then not much at all,” Anderson said.
The pace of “Licorice Pizza” is also fast and frenetic, as the film is carried by the perspective of 15-year-old Gary Valentine and his equally crazy companion, Alana.
“It’s free-wheeling and determined by the characters,” Anderson said, “and the character of Gary has the attention span of a 15-year-old, and the energy of the two main characters throttles you through and you’re never quite sure where it will lead.”
Haim said she was grateful that Anderson allowed the actors the freedom to improvise.
Haim spoke about the scene outside her family home, following a Shabbat meal, where she invites a boy to dinner and he reveals that he is an atheist.
“This really happened once when my sister brought a boy to our Passover seder and it enraged me,” she said. “I asked Paul if he would let me try something, and I didn’t tell anyone what I was going to do. I just walked up, filled with rage, delivered the lines and it worked.”
It’s notable that Haim did the driving herself in the movie, maneuvering a five-ton truck backward down a long, winding hill soon after learning how to operate a stick-shift. That scene parallels a pivotal shift in the character’s psychological development, and Haim admitted that it was terrifying in the best way.
“I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d be in a feature film, and I don’t know what left turn I took to get here but I am so incredibly grateful,” Haim said.
Murphy, the film’s producer, admitted that it was scary casting two leads who had basically never acted before.
“I put total trust in Paul, and although I don’t like to admit this publicly, he is not often wrong,” she said. “It felt scary, and exciting, and right.”
The film also stars Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper and Benny Safdie.
SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling opened the show at the Arlington Theatre, welcoming filmgoers and thanking the John C. Mithun Foundation for allowing all of the films to be shown for free throughout the festival. He also acknowledged major sponsor UGG and his board of directors. In addition, SBIFF is raising funds for Ukraine in partnership with Direct Relief. To date, they have raised more than $56,000. Click here to donate.
— Ann Pieramici is a Noozhawk contributing writer. She can be reached at news@noozhawk.com.
