you sound like you simultaneously love and hate Licorice Pizza
Well part it’s the first new movie I saw since Cats 2019, all my movie-opinioning mojo got channeled into it. I certainly don’t hate it, I’m not sure I love it but I’d have an affair with it. Lovely treatment of period ‘70s youth even better than Dazed and Confused, and since then we got what, Almost Famous and The Virgin Suicides? Makes you appreciate how on it That 70s Show wasn’t
Suddenly appreciating the Licorice Pizza symbolism that that downhill truck was an unstoppable force moving of its own momentum but still Alana was in fact steering it and using that momentum for her own ends
Something a lot of Christians fail to realize is that they have the
luxury of choosing atheism. For instance, you never see a Muslim or a
Jew only saying they’re an atheist.
Imagine thinking something like this, typing it out even, and not realizing you’re telling on yourself that you think every person who was raised in your stupid little cult belongs to you forever.
Not to mention that there are plenty of ex-Jewish and ex-Muslim atheists who don’t consider themselves Jewish or Muslim, you just don’t meet as many of them because you live in a country where Jews and Muslims barely crack 2% of the population combined.
You know, for a 25/15yo age gap relationship movie that explicitly draws parallels to closeted ‘70s gays in the climax, Licorice Pizza generated barely any discourse
One thing Licorice Pizza got me thinking, if teens today are unslutty to the point of Puritanism a lot of it is was a generation was raised in dispersed suburbs without even anyplace to physically gather, the iconography of “the mall” as the teen gathering spot was really obsolete by my microgeneration
By contrast I went to Cornell with people who had been growing up in like Manhattan in the ‘90s and holy shit you guys, Kids was coming from somewhere
So as we return to the cities as nesting sites, there’s that to keep in mind
Worth pointing out that as much as Dazed and Confused (1993) re: 70s teen culture, the precedent for Licorice Pizza in terms of “coming of age in innocently sleazy 1970s Jewish Los Angeles” is Slums of Beverly Hills (1998)
Licorice Pizza is a lush, funny, charming, moving early ‘70s San Fernando Valley period piece about a 25/15yo age gap romance that’s a coming of age for both of them. But it’s okay cause the 15yo is the initiator and the boy, which is exactly how you pull the thesis/antithesis -> synthesis turn. See it.
“Licorice Pizza” was a LA record store that doesn’t show up in the movie at all, though there is actually a bit about contemporary vinyl economics. Also, there’s a subplot about pinball, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a bunch of the classic tables used as props came from this girl I know.
Now that I think of it, the male lead’s “child star whose mom is busy managing shows in Vegas” is Jenny Lewis as hell.
Which, she’s only even in the movie long enough to give that reason why she can’t escort him to a NY show (a requirement she portrays as externally imposed and unfortunate), thus bringing in Alana instead
(Actually just noticed that the arc that ends with them getting together kinda starts with her in the audience excitedly claiming him with substitute-maternal pride. Like, “the 2021 age gap movie has not only a female-senior relationship but she mixes the roles of mommy and gf,” well it would!)
Compare to Almost Famous, the also-“'70s youth in the adult entertainment (no, not that way) business world” (though in fairness it totally smiles upon the fact this all happens in a world where he reads Deep Throat and swingers’ club ads in the mainstream newspaper), where the lead’s mom tries to project more stern authority but ultimately approves of him going on tour with rock bands.
Next step we need a movie where the lead’s mom tries to control and protect him, and this is portrayed from the adult perspective as understandable and even appropriate but within the moral calculus of the movie this still makes her an enemy and his slipping her a righteous triumph
Also on the femdom tip, on top of having a confrontational personality in general, there are sequences that serve to establish Alana knows Krav Maga and is surprisingly, intensely good at driving a heavy truck
Licorice Pizza is a lush, funny, charming, moving early ‘70s San Fernando Valley period piece about a 25/15yo age gap romance that’s a coming of age for both of them. But it’s okay cause the 15yo is the initiator and the boy, which is exactly how you pull the thesis/antithesis -> synthesis turn. See it.
“Licorice Pizza” was a LA record store that doesn’t show up in the movie at all, though there is actually a bit about contemporary vinyl economics. Also, there’s a subplot about pinball, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a bunch of the classic tables used as props came from this girl I know.
Oh, also beyond the age gap stuff, polyamorists might be interested in the way the overwhelming majority of the drama is about them dealing with jealousy over each other’s (potential) other paramours while the whole ambiguous thing plays out, given that it is 1973 Los Angeles and sex partners are falling off trees
Licorice Pizza is a lush, funny, charming, moving early ‘70s San Fernando Valley period piece about a 25/15yo age gap romance that’s a coming of age for both of them. But it’s okay cause the 15yo is the initiator and the boy, which is exactly how you pull the thesis/antithesis -> synthesis turn. See it.
Reblog if you’re a Millennian and do not ever want to be taught anything unless you told it on the cell phone
reblog if this is the first time you’ve heard of this movie
In the 70s when with competition from TV and the fading of prewar habits people no longer went to the (studio-tied) theater to see whatever once a week you had the rise of suburban multiplexes (a choice of what to see), the blockbuster era, and overall a shift to promoting the movie, not making it, as the real challenge.
Now, until recently that meant you’d see ads for it around 8 times in the 2 weeks before it opened on the programs that the kind of people who would see the movie watched
And they would promote it through other bottlenecked media. The stars would go on talk shows that were the not only the only place to watch celebrities communicate in a given day, let alone the only thing to take in at 11 PM period, or entertainment media that was the only place to see attractive people you recognized be glamorous all day, and promote the movie (in return for their presence promoting the medium)
Where are they supposed to find you now, your Discord server?
Twitter ads still get through on phone apps, which is actually where I see most/any movie trailers. It’s why they’ve moved to the (otherwise bizarre) 5-second “trailer-trailer” at the start of the trailer, to catch your eye before you’ve scrolled through the ad. Also people do sponsored streams/videos (though that’s mostly for games), Tumblr does those dumb Q&As that are basically just a talkshow appearance, and those dumb sponsored twitter “”trends”” that you can’t get rid of.
Yeah, and there’s that thing where Twitter hashtags get custom icons to draw your attention to people talking about it
I just for the first time heard about a promising Paul Thomas Anderson ‘70s LA teenage coming-of-age film – quite my jam –
that’s currently out right now (“in select theaters”, wide release around Christmas, I’m told) because through my pinball affiliations I saw a guy talking about the custom table they made for the premiere party. How’s that for social media bankshot marketing?
