Cooper Hoffman in a scene from Licorice Pizza. Photo / AP
The acclaimed director of Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood returns to his old stomping ground with a semi-autobiographical new film starring the son of his former leading man alongside indie pop star Alana Haim. He speaks to Dominic Corry in a New Zealand exclusive.
What Martin Scorsese is to New York City, Paul Thomas Anderson is to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.
The huge suburban tract just over the hill from Hollywood previously featured in movies like The Karate Kid and Pulp Fiction, but in his early breakout films Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999), Anderson really put "the Valley" on display, mythologising the area to great cinematic heights and becoming forever associated with it.
After 2002's Punch-Drunk Love, Anderson moved beyond the Valley with the Oscar-nominated likes of There Will Be Blood, The Master and Phantom Thread, but with his new work Licorice Pizza, the acclaimed writer/director returns to the Valley as a setting for a film partially inspired by his experiences growing up there.
Arguably one of the three most important American film-makers working today (alongside Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino), Anderson has lived in the Valley his entire life, and it's where he is when he gets on a Zoom call to talk to Canvas about Licorice Pizza.
Throughout our chat, Anderson comes across as warm, unguarded, and above all, someone who just loves talking about movies. He grew up obsessed with the art form (his father hosted horror movie screenings on local TV) and was wielding a camera before he even started primary school. He made a huge splash with his second film, the melancholic porn industry epic Boogie Nights, and has gone on to become one of the most celebrated film-makers of the last few decades.
He recently raised some eyebrows when he expressed his enjoyment of the much-maligned superhero movie Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which seemed out of step with the perception of Anderson as a serious auteur. But he's explained that the Valley home he shares with long-term partner Maya Rudolph (a former Saturday Night Live cast member) and their four children, is "a Marvel-obsessed household". And, as I said, he just loves movies.
Set in 1973, Licorice Pizza (the title, slang for vinyl, is borrowed from an old record store chain) follows an entrepreneurial teenage actor named Gary (played by Cooper Hoffman, the son of late Anderson muse Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died in 2014) and a rudderless 20-something woman named Alana, played by Alana Haim of the pop band Haim.
The opening scene sees the over-confident Gary ask Alana out for dinner after a chance meeting. Although she prohibits anything romantic between them, the pair hang out and she partners with Gary on various business ventures, like selling then-newly invented waterbeds.
"A million years ago, I'd had this basic premise of what happens when a 15/16-year-old kid asks a woman out for a date," explains Anderson. "And what happens when, against all her better judgement, she turns up. I thought there's something interesting there, good comedic possibilities, good dramatic possibilities."
Anderson says the set-up needed a bit more meat on its bones, which arrived in the form of anecdotes from producer Gary Goetzman, who had been a child actor in the 70s.
"Gary started telling me those stories about five or six years ago, and they really matched up. When he was telling me how his waterbed store went out of business during the [1970s'] gas crisis, I thought: if you have the Arab/Israeli conflict affecting a 16-year-old's waterbed business in Encino, you have a good story and you have to hold on tight to it. It's too impossible and too wonderful to ignore."
Anderson then incorporated elements of his own Valley upbringing.
"The line is starting to get blurry between what is Gary and what is me. But when I see it, I see myself. Not in the details, but certainly being young at roughly that time. The collection of friends, the way we moved around these neighborhoods. It is my childhood in that way. You could substitute a film camera and it would be my story."
Although Licorice Pizza features supporting turns from Sean Penn (playing a movie star) and Bradley Cooper (playing real-life Hollywood producer Jon Peters, famous at the time for being Barbra Streisand's boyfriend) - not to mention cameos from the relatives of famous people (Steven Spielberg's daughter Sasha shows up, as does Leonardo DiCaprio's father, George) - it is notable for centring around two inexperienced lead actors making their film debuts.
"I think the game is for the audience to invest in a certain authenticity in the story. If you're seeing people that you've never seen before in a film, I think you have a leg up. If they're engaging, then you have a better chance of thinking that you're seeing something that's real. I love that feeling when seeing faces on that big screen that you've never seen before."
Anderson has known Hoffman since he was born and says he was halfway through writing the script when it occurred to him that the young son of his late friend and collaborator would suit the role of Gary.
"His natural personality and his creative excitement were invaluable."
Haim was more central to the film's impetus, with Anderson having previously directed many of her band's music videos.
"Alana's the reason I wrote the movie. It wasn't even like, 'Who could play this part?' It was: 'Alana is a vehicle for these stories. The thought of this character that I have in my head is Alana.'"
It's a star-making role for the musician.
"I knew that she would be good, but I had no idea that she would be so miraculous. I can't describe the feeling every day of seeing this performance in front of my very eyes and feeling like I had lightning in a bottle."
Haim's real-life sisters/bandmates Danielle and Este play her sisters in the film and their parents play their parents.
"That was easy. The thought of having Este and Danielle there and, and more to the point having her dad play her dad, it's a little bit like: 'What the hell else was I going to do?'"
As our conversation finishes, I ask Anderson to confirm a vague recollection I have of him coming to Auckland on a Boogie Nights promotional trip in 1997.
"My memory of it is that it was ridiculously short. I remember thinking: 'What's the point of a press tour if I'm if I'm sitting in a hotel room in New Zealand? I might as well be in Cleveland, Ohio.' [I was] looking out the window at this beautiful country thinking: this doesn't make any sense. So I've been in New Zealand for 24 hours, maybe 36."
He hasn't made it back since then.
"Not unless you count watching nine hours of Get Back by Peter Jackson."
Licorice Pizza is now in cinemas.
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