Paul Thomas Anderson was born in San Fernando Valley. That area north of the metropolitan area of The Angels, interior, flatter, with large avenues. A quieter area where the lights of Hollywood arrive more subdued, less bright, although it has always been closely linked to film production.
He grew up there and still lives there. There he has lived his entire life, except for the New York parenthesis to study film and a few months that made him too long and too natural in Santa Monica.
There he had already placed three of his nine films: Boogie Nights, Embriago de amor (Punch-Drunk Love) Y Magnolia. And now comes his fourth, the definitive love letter to the Valley, as he and everyone in the Valley calls it: Licorice Pizza (Theatrical release February 11).
And what is Licorice Pizza? It is a young love story, a coming-of-age. A fun adventure between Gary (Cooper Hoffmann, the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, a friend of Paul Thomas Anderson and his pet actor) and Alana (Alana Haim, the little girl from the Haim gang). A 15-year-old boy and a woman in her early 20s who meet in his graduation photo and end up starting a waterbed business together, she gets into politics and he's the king of pinball.
But Licorice Pizza is much more. It's a state of mind. Is happiness. It is warmth. It is optimism. It's getting infected by Gary's energy and Alana's doubts. It's a chain of simple and crazy scenes and moments that make for a perfect movie. Is he memory puzzle by Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA). Starting from the title.
Licorice Pizza was the name of a chain of record stores that was in Southern California in the '70s. “If there are two words that trigger a kind of Pavlovian response and memory of when I was a kid running around, they are licorice and pizza. It takes me in an instant to that time.” explains the manager. “If you don't know the store, I think they are two words that go very well together and maybe they capture a mood. Or maybe they just fit the poster? Yes to everything.
Fat Bernie's Pinball Palace.
In Licorice Pizza, Licorice Pizza does not appear, not even a record store, although the art director of the film says that they set one up in one of the premises that they had to redecorate to turn the Valley of today into the Valley of the 70s. A great job because it is disappearing faster and faster, even more so with the pandemic, they say. “During this period of inactivity, many have taken to renovating spaces, we lost some good locations in a matter of days,” he says. Florence Martin.
Luckily, they had the PTA memorabilia and old newspaper clippings to recover that San Fernando Valley. The director of Wells of Ambition has not been afraid to take a walk down memory lane, as they say. Namely, be invaded by nostalgia. “It wasn't that long ago that homesickness was considered a kind of medical condition,” he explained in the LA Times, “something that discourages you from moving forward or living in the present. But it is very difficult not to be nostalgic today.”
I LOVE YOU, SAN FERNANDO VALLEY
In his film he has recovered many of the sites that were once history in the Valley. As the Tail O' The Clock, a fine restaurant where Hollywood stars used to go, from the 1940s until it closed in 1987 to be transformed into another shopping center.
To recreate it, they used the exterior of another bar that is now closed and they recovered the red leather armchairs, the carpet... that hearth of a lived bistro with a lot to tell where Gary takes Alana on her first non-date, she goes out with an actor and legend who could be William Holden (played by Sean Penn).
Alana, Jack Holden and the Tail O' The Clock.
They also recreate cinema the gate, where in those months of 1973 in which the film takes place you can see Murder at a fixed price, with Charles Bronson; and Live and Let Die with Roger Moore.
And of course there is Gary's store. That place with large windows in Encino, the one that first assembles Fat Bernie's Environmental Living, his waterbed business. Until the oil crisis reduces the production of vinyl and forces him to reinvent himself and takes advantage of the legalization of pinball to transform it into Fat Bernie's Pinball Palace, an arcade paradise, free pepsis and youth flirting. Gary's whole story, by the way, is inspired by Gary Goetzman, former child actor, and today successful producer.
Gary, king of pinball, will make you fall in love.
Gary Goetzman is another Valley product. Another great character from the Valley. As they are Alana and the entire Haim family, which appears in full at Licorice Pizza. As is Paul Thomas Anderson. "It may not seem like the most beautiful place in the world, but it's my place," he says. “I have no better answer as to why I like it so much. It is my home. I feel like an expert when I'm here. I'm stuck here and I find it very cinematic."
He admits that it's just as nice shooting in a place where you're a tourist as it was in London with The Invisible Thread, but he can't help but end up going back to what he knows and loves. "Comfort. Happiness. I like the look of it. I like how he tastes and how he smells. I don't know other than that I love him."