Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson drew the script from producer Gary Goetzman’s teenage years: child acting, a waterbed company, a pinball arcade, a delivery run to Jon Peters’s house. Alana Kane’s family is played by Alana Haim’s own, two sisters plus her mother and father. Cooper Hoffman is in his first film. It was shot on 35 mm with older lenses chosen for period texture, and Anderson shared the cinematography credit with Michael Bauman. The most argued over material is 2 scenes where John Michael Higgins’s restaurant owner speaks to his Japanese wives in a put on accent. Media Action Network for Asian Americans called for an awards boycott, asking that the film not be nominated for picture, director or original screenplay; the Academy nominated it in exactly those 3 categories and it won none. Anderson replied that telling a period film through the eyes of 2021 would be a mistake. BAFTA gave it original screenplay and left it a nominee for film, director, editing and leading actress. A good fit if you want the distance between Gary and Alana rebuilt and knocked down again each episode rather than to learn where the relationship lands. Not for viewers who cannot sit with a film that sets a 15 year old against a 25 year old and never questions it.