Licorice Pizza trailer: New Paul Thomas Anderson film, originally titled Soggy Bottom, on the way
Details of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film — Licorice Pizza — have been hard to come by beyond a cast list and that it centred around LA/Hollywood in the 1970s.
Originally titled Soggy Bottom the first official footage from PTA’s follow up to Phantom Thread finally dropped this afternoon — expect
And, well here it is:
https://twitter.com/mgmstudios/status/1442504690839658506
Personally, the general mood of the trailer not what I expected at all (and it’s worth noting that PTA has regularly cut his own trailers in the past).
It looks like Licorice Pizza (that American spelling is going to irk me) is mostly a teenage love story albeit with filmmaking and Hollywood thrown in (Bradley Cooper plays real life film producer Jon Peters).
There is a chance part of the film will be autobiographical with PTA himself a child of the Hollywood 70s (born in Studio City in the summer of 1970).
It wouldn’t be the first time PTA has dabbled in autobiography with Dirk Diggler’s fractious relationship with his mother in Boogie Nights reportedly influenced by the director’s difficult upbringing.
Apart from the aforementioned Cooper, there’s also Benny Safdie as Joel Wachs (again, a real-life person), Sean Penn, Tom Waits, John C Reilly and, in the main role, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son Cooper Hoffman playing a child actor.
It also looks like musician Alana Haim will have a sizeable role as Cooper’s love interest (she’s given the more prominent spot on the poster).
As for the plot? Well, it’s clearly a love story with some coming-of-age themes and it’s going to be very, very Hollywood.
PTA was effusive in his praise of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood but I don’t think the Magnolia director will do anything that bombastic in terms of revisiting Hollywood history.
The trailer goes no way to explaining why PTA settled on the title — Licorice Pizza was a popular record store chain that was founded in 70s California but it looks like the film is about movies rather than music.
Expect lots of Oscar buzz. Despite PTA’s stellar output he’s yet to take home a golden statuette himself.
Interesting fact: an unconfirmed rumour is that Anderson’s affection for the Haim sisters stems from the fact their mother used to be his teacher.
