Licorice Pizza (2021) on Netflix
In 1973 San Fernando Valley, 15-year-old actor Gary Valentine meets Alana Kane, a photographer's assistant, on his school picture day. His dinner invitation puts her off, but she comes anyway.
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- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.1/10163,549 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Gary Valentine is a 15-year-old actor in the San Fernando Valley in 1973; Alana Kane is 25 and works as a photographer's assistant. They meet on his school picture day, and his invitation to dinner puts her off, though she comes anyway. Gary's mother cannot chaperone him on a New York City press tour performance, so he invites Alana, and he grows jealous as she dates his co-star Lance. Gary starts a waterbed business and meets Alana again at a trade expo for teenagers. She joins the business, speaking seductively on the phone to win over a customer. Police then mistake Gary for a murder suspect and arrest him, and Alana hurries to the station after him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Licorice Pizza (2021)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Around 2001 Paul Thomas Anderson was walking past a middle school in Los Angeles on picture day, observed one of the students nagging the female photographer, and had the idea of the student having a romantic relationship with her.
- The screenplay grew out of stories told to Anderson by his friend Gary Goetzman, a child actor who had starred in Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball and eventually started a waterbed company and pinball arcade; Goetzman once delivered a waterbed to Jon Peters's home.
- Anderson received permission from Jon Peters to develop a character based on him on the sole condition that Peters's favorite pick-up line, "Do you like peanut butter sandwiches?", was used in the film.
- Cooper Hoffman, the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, was cast late in the process after Anderson found the young actors auditioning too "precocious" and "trained" to match the naturalistic style of Haim's acting.
- Haim spent a week learning to drive large trucks and personally performed the stunt in which her character backs the truck down a long hill.
- Tail o' the Cock, a local restaurant that was demolished in 1987, was recreated for the film at the Van Nuys Golf Course.
- Though it grossed $33.3 million against its $40 million production budget, the film took three nominations at the 94th Academy Awards and became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first fully produced, marketed and distributed film nominated for Best Picture since Rain Man in 1988.
