Of course the trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza drops the morning after I publish my top 12 Oscar contenders list. But I can’t really complain because it was wonderful and only increased my excitement for the film.
Image Credit: Radio Times
This looks like it will be, above all else, a love story. The montage of loaded looks, knees touching under a table, fingertips inching towards each other, hands planted on a car window, and running. Running away, running towards, and just running. The romanticism rumored is on full display here, with goofy humor mixed in, like a cookie dough ice cream. Oh wait, there’s already a better food metaphor waiting for me here: a licorice pizza. (Though the title of the film more refers to LP vinyl records than an unconventional pizza topping.)
The use of David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” might be the pizza crust in this metaphor. It initially sounds like your typical period-setting needle drop, but my favorite part of the whole trailer might be how the song sets the pace for the editing. By the end, the intercutting scenes and the swell of the song crescendo together and end on sublime exaltation. Sean Fennessey, host of The Big Picture podcast, says he has heard that Director Paul Thomas Anderson edits his own trailers. I’m not at all surprised by this, and love how this feeds into his narrative as a loveable auteur.
What did we learn from this trailer that we didn’t already know? Alana Haim seems to be more of the lead than anyone else, with Cooper Hoffman not far behind. Oscar pundits have been in a frenzy speculating just how many (or few) minutes Bradley Cooper actually appears in the film. His scene-stealing appearances in this trailer are hilariously eccentric. It’s clear he’s having fun hassling Cooper Hoffman and wailing on those car windows. Is it enough to get him a Supporting Actor nomination? I’m going to guess that the role isn’t serious enough for that. The Gold Derby podcast speculates that the whole film may be too funny to attract the attention of the Academy. But it would be fitting because the character Bradley Cooper plays, Jon Peters, had to be credited on Cooper’s recent adaptation of A Star is Born because he still had the rights to the story from the version he produced with his then girlfriend, Barbara Streisand. No, it’s sand. Sand, like the ocean. So there’s some strange circular Hollywood reality logic happening with Bradley Cooper winning an Oscar for a character who produced an earlier version of a film that got him his last nomination.
Regardless of its Oscar chances, I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Licorice Pizza.