The Big Picture - Let’s Talk ‘Licorice Pizza’
Episode Date: January 11, 2022It’s time for a very important conversation about a very important film: Paul Thomas Anderson’s ninth feature, ‘Licorice Pizza.’ Joining Sean and Amanda to break it all down—including favori...te performances, scenes, and needle drops, and how it fits into PTA’s filmography—are Chris Ryan and Wosny Lambre, a.k.a. Big Wos. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Chris Ryan and Wosny Lambre Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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The Watch is the latest and the greatest in pop culture from best friends Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald.
Join them as they discuss TV, movies, music, and much more.
Check out The Watch on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Sean Fesey.
I'm Amanda Dobbins.
And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about licorice pizza.
Finally, today on the show, we are having a very important conversation about a very important film.
I'm talking about Paul Thomas Anderson's ninth feature, Licorice Pizza.
Joining us to do so is Chris Ryan, and making his Big Picture debut is The Ringer's Wazney Lambre, a.k.a. Big Waz.
Waz, what's up? I'm good, man. I feel amazing.
It's crazy because I actually popped my cherry on the rewatchables on Friday,
and now I'm popping my big picture cherry, which is like, you know,
I feel like that's very appropriate for this movie.
I was going to say, yeah, in the parlance of licorice pizza.
No virgins on this pod right now.
CR, how are you doing, man?
Oh, I'm a weathered veteran, you know?
I'm doing great, man.
I'm excited to talk about this.
I was wondering when this was going to happen
because licorice pizza is still in theaters
with or without people.
And in some ways, it's a shame that it's not available on streaming so people can watch it over and over again.
But in other ways, shout out to PTA and the theatrical experience.
The fun thing about this episode is going to be that once we record it, it will live forever.
It can never be deleted, no matter how bad Amanda's takes are, no matter how good my takes are.
Amanda, how are you doing?
I'm doing great, Sean.
Thanks so much.
I'm excited to get to talk about this movie with some specificity because we didn't really
get to the last time.
And also just for you to have your moment, you know, among friends, which is another
in many ways, also what Licorice Pizza is about.
So true.
So now the three of us are going to leave so Sean can do a 17 part narrative pod about
John Peters.
And then we'll come back.
Yeah, so I do feel like I'm about to pick up my prom date or something.
This is me typing to John Peters.
So, Licorice Pizza, just forewarning.
If you're listening to this episode and you haven't seen the film and you don't want the film to spoil for you,
I would probably just turn this off.
We're going to go all the way into the movie. We're
going to go all the way into what we love about it, into the story details, into some of the
Easter eggs, into the very specific choices, maybe some of the controversies. We'll talk
through everything that's going on here. Before we start on the movie itself, though, you know,
Waz, you hit me after you saw the movie and you had some thoughts and I was really interested in
your thoughts. In general, what's your relationship to Paul Thomas Anderson and his movies?
You know, this is going to sound,
I hesitate to snitch on myself in public sometimes and like reveal certain things about myself.
But I think it's important that people understand this.
Like I'm the youngest in my family, right?
By a lot.
So my brother's 11 years older than me.
My sister's 13 years older than me.
So my cultural references are informed by their tastes. And so when Boogie Nights came out,
my brother had that on VHS, which would mean that I was watching that at eight and nine years old.
Amazing.
And more importantly, which y'all need to understand is that Boogie Nights, as far as my cultural leanings, it goes right with the Scenario video by Chirab Call Quest.
It goes right with Lil' Kim's Hardcore album.
It goes right with Ready to Die.
Boogie Nights is right there for me as far as when I became sentient in my cultural tastes, right? And so before I even knew that I liked movies,
this is a movie that we were watching all the time at the house. And so that's where I start
with this dude before I understood like what it meant to be an old tour filmmaker or any of that
stuff. Like Boogie Nights was one of the first movies that we had on VHS and that we were
watching in the house over and over and over again.
Just like Boys in the Hood, just like Juice, which I did with Bill and Van on the rewatchable.
So yeah, this guy's important for me anyway.
And so, you know, like as I reveal my takes on this movie, understand that I was watching
Boogie Nights all the time at nine years old.
And yes, when I saw Dirk Diggler's dick, I was like, something ain't right. My shit don't look
like that. So that's my relationship with PTA, man.
Incredible way to begin. I assume you've been following along and seeing all of his films as
they've been released over the years.
Of course.
Okay. So let's talk about Licorice Pizza and also also where we last met pta so this is his ninth movie his eighth movie
was phantom thread came out in 2018 and i would say it was very very warmly received and it felt
like the pta story turned a little bit that was a slightly classier affair for him a period piece
a film set in europe a film about a couturier and a young woman. And it's about fashion and style
and love and poison and angst and all sorts of things. Beautiful movie recognized by the Academy.
It actually did pretty good business. It made over $45 million, which if you look-
Did it now?
It did. Yeah. If you look at the arc of PTA's career, he's not always a box office king,
even though he's a king in our hearts. And it felt like to me, before this film
came out and we were thinking about his next film, he turned 50. It felt like he was kind of
settling into old master territory. Somebody who could be relied upon to make a great film every
three to four years. Every time a new one comes out, it's a major event. But also, you know,
little gray in the beard. He's got some teenage kids at this point. I felt like he was maybe not evolving, but moving to a new direction, moving to a new stage of his life.
And we were going to move along with him.
So it was interesting when this movie was announced and we heard a little bit about it,
which is a return, really, to where he had not been for a little while, which is the San Fernando Valley.
That's where he's from.
That's where the place that he loves is where he set many of his films, including Waz's Beloved Boogie Nights. And this is another
film set in the 1970s. And it's another film set in the milieu of creative people,
creative horny people, candidly. And it's such a fascinating piece of work.
Chris, we've not talked on mic about Licorice Pizza. So before we get too deep,
what did you think?
Did you like it?
Oh, yeah, I loved it.
I mean, I think now at this point with movies,
I pretty much like go in and I so immediately respond
to anything that actually feels like real life, you know,
and anything that looks like it took place in the real world.
And that is an increasingly rare experience in movies these days where even
even stuff that might be a drama or stuff that might have you know awards intentions or something
critically minded intentions still can feel pretty canned and it can feel like it's taking place on
sound stages or it can feel like it's taking place in Toronto subbing in for New York or Chicago or whatever. And this just felt so rich
and sensory, like sensorily alive that I think that even beyond what it was about and the way
it was told and the performances within, that's the thing that I, I just felt like I sat down at
the UCLA movie theater and, you know, in Westwood at the Bruin or whatever. And I was transported.
I really was. And that's like, that's why you go to the movies.
Amanda, we talked about it in broad generalities.
I think you liked this movie.
I was a little bit skeptical that you'd be skeptical of it.
But with a little bit of distance now,
how are you feeling about it?
Wait, can you explain that?
You were skeptical that I would be skeptical.
So you thought I would love it or you thought I would be skeptical i thought you would be skeptical of it you know i i was
ready to like i was ready to get my heart ripped out on the first conversation we had about it i
know you were very nice and i'm wondering just as time has gone by are you still feeling warmly
towards licorice pizza i talk a big talk but when it actually comes to hurting all of you,
I only want to do that in the context of movie drafts.
I'm never going to do that.
No, I really like this movie.
Your Boogie Nights story is incredible,
not only just on its face,
but also because in many ways,
I feel like if you boiled down the ringer to its essence,
it would be like a bunch of people who did watch Boogie Nights from
the ages of like eight to 11. And then that defined the entire ethos or sensibility of how
people or a lot of people in this company interact with the world. And I mean that in the most
positive way. And it's like very familiar because I didn't get to see Boogie Nights at eight my parents weren't that cool so I came to it later and my experience of PTA and Boogie Nights
and really just being with all of you is admiring something while also watching a lot of people
really like embrace it you know this like this is my cortex this is my thing and I wouldn't say
that Ligurish Pete's is like my core text, but I also enjoyed myself.
I mean, at some point it is still watching a master at work.
And what I think is so interesting about it is that PTA gets to 50.
He has like a lot of career establishment.
He can kind of do whatever he wants in a way that few filmmakers can at this point.
He's sorting through things.
And this is not a tossed off movie,
but that this is the film that he wants to make during COVID.
It's just like a great flex, honestly.
And it still has intention and precision
and a lot of interesting ideas.
But he's also just playing with memory
and his own career and hanging out, honestly, and youth and it's memory
with distance. So I just, you can't argue with the accomplishment of it. And then parts of it
have really stayed with me and I really enjoyed it. It wasn't what I expected. And I think that's
when I've talked to people who have finally seen it since it's been released, people have been like,
huh. So that was different than what I thought it was going to be which like yeah it is but that
doesn't mean that I didn't like it Sean let me on the island you know like just let me share in the
warmth the problem with the island is once you get on you can never get off so are you sure you want
to be on the island I mean yeah like am I allowed to ask some questions on the island?
Yeah.
No, you just.
What kind of Democrat, what kind of government structure is on an island?
The only questions you can ask are from the Lipsy Moore-Hoskman's The Master questionnaire.
Okay.
You know, it's funny.
I've never listened to Amanda describe her participation with Paul Thomas Anderson's work.
It's how I often describe consuming Beyonce's work.
I'm like, I see it. I recognize the cultish devotion around it. I recognize that it's good
and that she's amazing. It's not touching me on that level, but I get it. Go ahead, y'all.
Whack off to it. Do what you do.
You know what, though, Sean?
You asked Amanda if she was skeptical
and she was talking about how things had stuck with her.
One of the things that I think is both the most attractive
but also can be maddening in following PTA's career
is that every pitch is an off-speed pitch.
Everything looks different
than the thing that came before it.
Everything, I don't know what I expected
after Phantom Thread,
but I didn't expect this.
I don't think I expected Phantom Thread
after that follow-up Master, right?
So, you know, like,
Master itself was such a curveball.
Like, every movie he makes
just feels unlike anything he's made before.
But then when you take
the kind of macro view after 10 years or eight years, you're like, oh yeah, I see that these
movies are about these kinds of people or they're about these kinds of ideas or he's chasing
something. And it's funny. I felt like this movie felt very contemporary, even though it's such
obviously a love letter to his childhood.
I thought it captured a very timeless element
about growing up and the danger they're in
and also the excitement they're in.
Yeah, well, there's one other movie
that was in between those that you forgot, Chris,
which is Inherent Vice.
And that's actually the one
that I can most closely compare this to
in terms of the vibe.
If you look at,
particularly since there will be blood
and the master and Phantom Thread,
those are really tension-filled,
anxiety-riddled movies
about very difficult dudes
and those dudes' problems.
And Inherent Vice also has a tension
and a mystery at the middle of it.
You know, this movie,
Licorice Pizza,
it's been described as like shaggy
or shambolic.
I don't think that's right.
I think it's pretty precise,
like Amanda said,
but it is episodic
and it is kind of digressive.
And like, I have no sense of time
when I'm watching this movie.
I was like, is this like 12 days
or like six months?
Like how much,
what period of time are we looking at?
Waz, as you were watching it,
you know, I don't know
if you've watched it multiple times,
but what did you make of it? Did you have big expectations going in?
I definitely had big expectations coming in because people were like, this is going to be
his Dazed and Confused, which again, a DVD that I had when I was away at school and college,
and I lived with four stoners in a suite. And you can imagine what happened every time we watched that movie.
So I was like, wow, like Paul Thomas Anderson's going to make like a coming of age story.
And, you know, I watched it and I got the same feeling that I did.
I know we're probably going to bring this up, but I got the same feeling that I did when I watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
In the sense that these are guys who don't make nice movies
and this movie's nice.
And then, you know, because I happen to be at a screener where him and Alana Haim were
talking about the experience of making the film after and I listened to him talk about
the film and I was like, yeah, this is nice.
Like you, like the way he's talking about it, it's like a warm feeling.
It's not like, you know, when somebody asked me about going on Bill's show and ripping Ben Simmons.
When I talk about that, it's not that.
But he's talking about something that he felt was precious.
And, you know, like listening to him talk about it, I felt like I got the sense of like, yo, these dudes are aging.
They're getting older and they're getting softer.
And I don't mean that pejoratively.
But, you know, and there's a couple of things we're going to get into the movie where I was like, yeah, this is I think a different PTA makes a different choice here.
And some of the choices make me know like, oh, OK, this is this is literally a nice movie, which is why he's gaslighting us about
the statutory rape. But we'll get into that later. So this is a story, as almost all Paul Thomas
Anderson stories are, about a young hustler, a guy on the move who's trying to make things happen,
who's constantly doing things. Although it's not really that. I feel like this is a little bit of
a trap door movie where the first thing that we see in the movie
is Cooper Hoffman's character, Gary Valentine,
in the bathroom, brushing his hair, 15 years old,
getting ready for picture day.
And then a cherry bomb goes off in a toilet.
And I was like, okay, to Waz's point,
this is a Dazed and Confused.
This isn't American graffiti.
This is a story about life inside of this high school
and how this kid fits
in and then what moves he's trying to make. And then the next thing we see is this young woman
walking along a row of teenagers. That's, of course, Alana Cain played by Alana Haim.
And I feel like the movie, even at that point, becomes an Alana Haim movie and not a Gary
Valentine movie. Now, of course, we see some things from Gary's perspective. He's taking care of his brother. He's opening these businesses along the way. But
I mean, I'm curious, like when you were watching it, did you sense that this was
more Gary's movie or more Alana's movie? Well, it's kind of divided, right? I mean,
she does memorably show up in that scene. And I think one thing I assume we can all agree on is
that Alana Heim, the actor, like just really shows up and steals most scenes that she's in.
It's like presence right from the beginning.
But structurally, it's kind of interesting.
I would say it's almost in halves.
And, you know, that's not exact.
Please don't send me timestamps or whatever.
But you're like watching the advanced analytics community of licorice pizza.
I mean, like you think it doesn't exist,
but we all know it does.
So you're watching the Gary Valentine character for a while
and sort his life out.
And also the Gary Valentine character
is like trying to get into the Alana character's life.
And then it does shift
and becomes really more focused on her.
So I wouldn't say I knew it immediately.
I will say about halfway through the movie, I was like, huh, we're spending a lot of time with this woman and this character who I'm completely fascinated by and want to keep watching, but't totally understand which we can talk more about
um but i think there is also this element of just the performance is so arresting
that you know i i do again think that like pta makes everything with a lot of intention and
nothing's happening in his movies that he doesn't want to but these were two people who had not
really acted on screen before.
You do kind of wonder,
once you see what she's throwing at him in the movie,
does the movie just start kind of drifting that way
on its own?
Yeah, you might be right.
Like the idea, basically,
that when he saw what he had with Alana,
he was like, this is an Alana movie?
Yeah.
I do wonder if maybe in the edit bay,
it became more of that than maybe the
one that we saw or the one that was written. The one thing that I think speaks to her power
and the power of that character is PTA loves enigmatic figures in his movie. And I don't
think Gary Valentine is very enigmatic. He's a person who's kind of all surface. He's like,
I got an idea. Let's go. Let's do this thing that I want to do. And he's a 15-year-old boy. He wants to get a handjob.
He wants to make some money. He wants to be famous. He wants what every 15-year-old boy wants.
And Alana is something different. She's not Daniel Plainview, but she's not that far off.
She's a little challenging and she's challenged and she's searching for
something, but she doesn't totally know what that thing is. And she's trying to find a modicum of
happiness and whether or not she finds it in this kid is basically the central tension of the movie
is can these two people make each other happy? Waz, what do you think? Alana's movie, Gary's
movie, what do you make of these two characters? It's absolutely an Alana movie. And again, I think some of the choices that are made
when it comes to, we're not sure how to feel about it. I think you only do that. You can only do that
with the character that we're spending a lot of time with, right? That we're fleshing out so much
of their desires and their wants and their aspirations. And so therefore they've engendered
some level of sympathy within us.
Like you can't make some of these choices with an ancillary character because we just
immediately write them off as good, evil, full of shit, whatever.
When the person is central to the story, we feel connected to them.
And that's when you get to have the most fun.
That's when you get to play with things in the way that I love how this
movie plays with stuff. And yeah, I do think it's in a lot of movie. And man, Cooper Hoffman,
hats off to him because I didn't even know that was, I didn't know that he was the child of his
father till afterwards. Right. And I'm like, damn, that's Philip Seymour Hoffman's kid that's crazy because I think
what he's doing in the movie is is so perfect he's like like you guys said like he's a hustler he's
always trying to get something done I think his attitude is look I figured out how to get on TV
I could figure anything out whereas his dad is always like I've got everything already figured
out and like in every situation I know more than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm wittier than you.
I'm funnier than you.
This guy's like, no, I'm going to work towards it.
I know I can do it because I've done stuff before.
And I kind of love that attitude.
It's like, I figured out how to get on TV.
I can fuck a chick who's 25.
That's the attitude that he brings to the movie.
And it's so perfect to match with somebody who feels like, you know, an underachiever,
a slacker, like they're the yin and the yang that way in the movies.
It's really cool to see it come together.
Chris, do you relate to Gary V?
You know, I'm not a very ambitious person.
I think I can be a pretty aimless one so
in a lot of ways like I think I responded to Alana's story um what did you make of Hoffman
and Haim together two first-timers like could you see the seams of their performances how would
you think about how PTA directed them what would I think I mean he does so much to help them I think
is what I would say is that there is so much going on in the compositions and in the production design, the costume design, the background, the extras, all the kids that they're surrounded by, all the things that they get to do.
I think where new performers or maybe unseasoned performers struggle is when you're like, sit at a table and talk to one another.
And I'm going to shoot this over your shoulder and your shoulder and then a master shot. If you have them running
around like crazy, they know how to run. They're human beings. They know how to do stuff. And I
think he's always giving them stuff to do. Even if they are sitting at a table, they're like,
I'm going to smoke. Well, you're going to throw up if you smoke that cigarette. You know what I
mean? They have activity to kind of comment on and be in the moment with i think it was really really wise it's not daniel day lewis like you
can't just let him like sit in a chair and people are going to be mesmerized you have to have like
you have to have like a little bit of juice going and then you also have to surround them with like
sean penn and bradley cooper yeah but i think that's sort of the genius of this setup. And again, like an evidence of PTAs control. Sean, you mentioned that in a lot of ways, this is a very familiar PTA setup. It's about like a striver and a person, a man who wants a lot for himself and is going to do whatever it takes, usually like with charm or manipulation or, you know, the American, you know, West behind him
to get what he wants.
And this is like, in a way, the same story,
but it's really subjective.
This is told from the perspective of the Stryver
more than any other movie.
I would say the rest of them,
because you have like daniel
day lewis giving like an all-time performance it's like it's a character study and these the
more experienced actors you're bringing your own history to them and they're um they're like
deconstructing who these people are and what these ambitions are about and this is like what it's
like to be in in gary valentine's like 15 year old head in like
a very charming way and i think as was said it's a nice movie it's an affectionate movie like you
can tell that like pta like loves this character and i wouldn't say that of all of his other
characters i would say he's like working through parts of himself or like men in general that
he hates in the other characters and so but like daniel day
lewis couldn't do what cooper hoffman's doing in this right and there is this just sort of like
big-eyed big screen wonder i looked around during my screening at westwood and i say this with all
the love of my heart like a lot of like early 40s guys just like grinning up at the screen
and they were not wearing their masks
so i could see that they were just grinning and they were like this guy he's doing it and
to like to get to go and that was i like i mean that they were happy and amanda yeah i definitely
hope that somewhere that chris ryan well no. Well, no. I said I was...
I'm on a lot ahead.
But I hope that Daniel Day-Lewis
is somewhere in his woodshop
listening to the big picture
as he does every Monday.
And then Amanda challenges him
to be like,
you can't do certain things
that Cooper Hoffman could do.
And he's just like,
I'm fucking back.
He's like, watch me.
That'd be incredible. You know, to Amanda's point that I think is perfect and again so much of this stuff is intentional even like Alana Haim
and they kind of like we're not allowed to talk about this and they kind of get to it in their
like press run but she doesn't look like the women who we see in movies.
And I think that's part of... It's a genius way to get somebody to stare at someone.
She doesn't look like them.
She doesn't act like them.
She feels different.
And that's why she feels magnetic.
Her teeth are crooked.
Everything is different about this girl. And that's why I was like, wow, this is so fucking smart.
In a lot of ways, it's like this is simple, but it's so smart to place a newcomer and not some, you didn't grab a newcomer out of fucking, you know, Vogue magazine.
Like this person looks like a person you walk into on the street. But now we're putting movie magic around her.
And I'm like, shit, I got to watch this.
I've never seen this before.
And so that's what I think is cool.
And I remember one time, man, I don't know who he was talking to,
but Quentin Tarantino was talking about the town as opposed to the fighter.
And he was like, you know why the town is not as good as it could be?
They put movie stars in that shit.
Those don't look like townies to me.
Those look like L.A. people.
Whereas the fighter, those look like people from low mass.
And that makes all the difference.
And I think Licorice Pizza is more fighter than the
town in its casting. And I think it's brilliant. There's a lot of different interesting examples of
basically like setting you in a world that makes it feel real. So, you know, PTA has talked about
how Alana Heim doesn't wear makeup in this movie, except when she does wear makeup, she applied it
herself. And you can very much tell because it is not the best application of makeup I've ever seen. Cooper Hoffman,
who actually is 15, is just riddled with acne in this movie. And there's no cover up on him
in this movie. I mean, his skin doesn't look very good. And that's purposeful because that's what
you looked like when you were 15, or at least I did. And the same goes for a lot of the faces
that we see in the movie. I think one of the fun Easter eggs is the casting of children of famous people throughout the movie,
from Tim Conway's son, who plays the casting agent, to two of Steven Spielberg's daughters.
On down the line, there are a lot of famous people.
Obviously, the movie, we haven't mentioned this yet, but it's very much inspired not just by PTA's youth,
but largely by the stories he heard from Gary Getzman,
who is a producer in Hollywood and who is a child actor,
much like Cooper Hoffman's character,
who appeared in Yours, Mine, and Ours,
a movie like Under One Roof, the fake movie in this film.
And so, sure, these kids look like kids,
and these young people, you know,
Alana Haim is not maybe conventionally movie star beautiful,
but she's striking in all her own way.
In the same way that all these people
that are in this movie did grow up in the valley
and look like they grew up in the valley.
They have the look.
They have the look also of,
you know when you meet a famous person
and you see a photo of their kids or something
and you're like, that child looks like almost famous.
You know, like you're not quite your parents,
but you're almost there.
And there's something about seeing
all of the kind of collection of faces throughout
this movie that makes me think of that.
The other thing, too, that I was thinking about was, to your point about Boogie Nights,
this is really the first PTA movie about young people since Boogie Nights, you know?
And it feels like a direct reflection of his kids getting older that he is excited about
going into a world like this.
Because, you know, Eddie Adams from Torrance was, what, 19 when that movie really kicks
off?
But since then, he's mostly been making movies about guys in their late 20s and 30s and
40s and their rage basically. And this is like the least rageful movie he's made. Chris, what
did you think about just going back to high school? Did you enjoy yourself?
Yeah. I mean, the thing that's interesting about, uh, licorice pizzas, high school experience is
there's no high school. Like there's just, there's no education happening. All the education is
happening on the streets. And in fact, you're kind of like, am I watching Lord of the flies?
Like where is any adult supervision? Where is any T where are the teachers do these kids play
baseball? Like, is there a coach around? And the thing is is is that like when you're when you're
that age you know you do have like this bifurcated existence where like yeah i have to get up at this
ungodly hour and go to fucking school and like sit there and then it's on and then then then that's
when like you and your friends act like demons and go running around wherever you grew up and
getting into trouble and like basically entertaining yourselves. And I think that he made an entire movie about entertaining yourself, but it is, I think, notable. And we'll talk more about like the complete and total like absence of adults, except as kind of like these very dark omens surround like on the periphery of this movie rather than you know like helpful
kind words in the in your ear yeah they're they're either predators or liars for the most part
most most of the adults that we meet in this movie so there's like that tinge of cynicism there
um amanda what do you what do you think about gary's hustles waterbeds you know i mean pinball
machines i'm just grateful i need more people to see it.
So the waterbed jokes start landing, you know, I think I also, I, I don't, this is a movie
that takes its time.
And I, I love, I really enjoyed myself, but especially as you're trying to figure out
that the movie takes its time, you know, your mind doesn't quite wander, but you're looking at something else on the screen or its time you know your mind doesn't quite wander but you're looking at
something else on the screen or i don't know it's it's not like parceling out plot to you
in kind of the regular increments where you're like okay so now they need to like find the holy
grail got it um so i like how did he become a waterbed person he just like walked by and then
got a line of you know credit and was like well now i have
water bets i like i don't i is he like paying taxes like i just i want to know so much about
like the small business looked away for five seconds and i was like cool you're like the
waterbed king of the valley and you're 15 years old like no judgment seems great but i i had some
sort of logistical questions i guess how can I become the next Gary
Valentine yeah the movie like lets you know that he obviously has access to some level of capital
uh he started a PR marketing firm with his mother like obviously this guy has some money somewhere
access to it and can therefore either get it from a savings
or access a loan.
Like, he has enough business sense
that he can figure out a way to rent a storefront
and get some waterbeds on consignment.
I think that's always supposed to be,
because if you think about it too deeply,
like, a 15-year-old being the manager of a store, like they don't even let y'all manage McDonald's.
Okay?
Like the idea that you're going to manage your own waterbed store or pinball machine store, it's like.
But I think what we're supposed to get from that is just like Gary's always thinking about money.
He's always thinking about the next hustle.
He's always thinking about how is he going to get ahead?
How's he going to win?
Um,
the logistics of it get kind of murky though.
I mean,
and I think that's apt into like a larger point,
which is like,
how deeply are we supposed to think about the specificity of like any of
this movie?
It's been compared,
you know,
it's like a memory piece.
It's dreams.
It's, there is a lot of, there's some messed up dreams. I know, it's like a memory piece, it's dreams. It's, there is a lot of,
there's some messed up dreams.
I mean, it's still a PTA movie, right?
So there's just going to be like weird things
wherever you are, which I love.
But it's, you know,
I don't think that this is meant to be
like historical biography.
This is some,
like a sort of fantastical place where you wander
in and then a 15-year-old
can be setting up a waterbed
at John Peter's house. I had jobs
as a teen. I just
didn't do the books.
You know?
Like, I worked,
but they didn't let me manage the place.
You know?
Amanda, you raised a really good point
that I think is kind of
one of the core tensions
around the conversation
around this movie,
which is so many of the details
in the film are so specific
that they can't help but be real.
And so many of the decisions
are so clearly driven by
whether it's historical accuracy or not,
this pursuit of like remembered truth, right?
That's ultimately what he's going for.
Is my friend told me a story or I remember the way the sun looked from this vantage point at
this time in the 1970s, et cetera, et cetera. Pursuit of memory, maybe, but maybe not remembered
truth. Maybe that might be the distinction. Possibly. I mean, I think it's a question of
whether or not like this is a happy story. You know, it has a kind of a happy ending,
but I'm not totally sure it's a happy story. Was it better to be a teenager in the 1970s
or was it better to be a teenager now?
That also feels like something that PTA
is kind of chewing on a little bit
as he thinks about his own teenagers.
I guess the other thing too is that
this is just a beautiful portrait of an LA
that I feel like I only half know or one quarter know.
You know, there are some things in this movie that are still excellent that you can go visit, but not very many.
Restaurants like Tale of the Cock is very similar to, as you pointed out, Wasden Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when Brad Pitt and Leo's characters go to Casa Vega.
Very similar sort of red leather booth restaurant, which is like, that's a breed of restaurant that is dying in Los Angeles.
You know,
that the golf course is still there where Sean Penn's character takes a big
leap,
but the,
those storefronts are all changed.
There's no waterbed stores thriving in the Valley right now.
Was now that you're,
now that you're an LA resident,
what do you,
what do you make of PTAs?
And a Valley resident.
That's right.
That's right.
You're a Valley boy.
That's,
that's the,
that's the, that's the,
that's one of my favorite things about this movie is the Valley of it all.
Cause I used to date somebody who grew up in the Valley and she was
explaining to me that there was this ick.
Whenever somebody would say the Valley,
it would be followed by consternation,
right?
Like it was not cool.
It was not glamorous.
It was basically where the townies lived essentially. Right. Um, and what I love about this movie is Paul Thomas Anderson
is reveling in that towniness of the Valley. Um, and now that's not really the case. Like people
move to Sherman Oaks, people move to studio city, like people who move here with intentions of being important people in this town move to those towns.
They don't need to just live in West Hollywood or, you know, Santa Monica or any of the glamorous neighborhoods of this city.
Like people have no problem living in the valley anymore.
So that that grit is a little bit gone.
But trust me, if you go to fucking North Ridge or Rosita right now, you're like, okay, I understand why people shit on the Valley.
I get it.
There's nothing glamorous about that.
So that part of the movie of Paul Thomas Anderson being like, I'm a Valley person and I'm damn proud of it.
It's nice to see because because again, I live here, and that scene with Sean Penn, and dude's like, yeah, he's about to do, he's basically about to do an Evel Knievel jump right here in Encino.
That is fucking perfect, right? we're about to get a taste of hollywood and show business magic here in this fucking just
straight up one level mall townie ass town it is it's perfect the way they do that yeah the way
i've been thinking about it is it's not a hollywood movie it's a movie about like the change between
the cushions of hollywood you know like all the figures that we see, even,
even the sort of,
it's an outer borough movie.
You know what I mean?
Like,
it's like,
it's like,
it's like the same thing where it's like,
if you make a Boston movie and you set it in Charleston or you set it in
Dorchester,
it's like making a New York movie,
but it's set in Queens.
It's like making,
it's like,
yeah,
it's LA,
but going into Hollywood,
it was like a rare occurrence for these people.
So we see these stand-ins for very well-known figures, for Lucille Ball and for William Holden
and for a kind of John Huston-esque director. Chris, what'd you think about it as like a little
pocket history of Hollywood in the early 1970s?
Well, it's, you know, so we've obviously spent a lot of time on this podcast thinking and talking
about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which in its own way is both very accurate historically and then is completely
up to Quentin Tarantino as God Emperor of that universe and deciding this is what happens to
Rick Dalton for the next 30 years after this and everything. So it was interesting to see PTA
approach LA history and just be like, I'm going to like massage some
details for my own purposes. I don't quite know what those purposes are. Like, I don't necessarily
know why it's not William Holden straight up. Like, I don't know whether or not that the Holden
family or the Holden estate might be like, Hey, that's, that's not dad, but like, I may,
I maybe,
um,
but yeah,
like it's,
it's very interesting to watch these two directors engaged with like the
meta history of the place that they call home.
If not always the history history,
it almost feels like,
and I don't think this is the purpose,
but it almost feels like,
you know,
when we're talking on this show, Amanda, and I'm trying to recall the name of a movie and I can't quite think of it and I get it like slightly wrong.
You know, like the Bridges of Toko-ri is a movie, but the Bridges of Toko-san is not a movie, but I might have called it accidentally the Bridges of Toko-san.
Like in the same way that it feels like he's trying to reach back for something.
It's like, there's just a little blurry, you know? It's like Sean Penn is like a blurred version
of William Holden.
You know, Bradley Cooper is actually
a kind of eerily, scarily accurate version
of the way that at least John Peters looks,
if not acts, although, you know,
that's another really fun part of the story.
Maybe we'll hold off on digging into
some of those performances
until we get a little later in our conversation.
The other thing I just wanted to mention about this is
from like a formal perspective,
PTA is really on another level, guys.
I don't know if you know this, but there's just-
Yeah, he's really good at making movies.
There's some filmmaking in this movie that is so incredible.
And it actually, it feels like a callback
to what he was doing in the early stages of his career
when he was just like, I'm just showing off for you.
You know, in Boogie Nights and Magnolia,
it's so virtuosic man yeah yeah he totally he feels
comfortable the there's so many oners in this movie and moving the camera around like crazy and
choosing big emotional music cues to get people you know kind of thrilled and filled to their
gills with excitement like there's there's a real like unbridled i love this place and i'm gonna
use all my tricks to show you how much i love it. That is one of the things I love about it. Phantom Threat is a beautiful movie, but it is so tight. You know, it is so carefully managed and it's about people that are like, I have all of these skills to show you how excited you
should be about this moment or how scared you should be when Gary is arrested and you're so
confused. And that also reminded me a lot of being a young kid. You know what? Something
kind of goes bad when you're young and you're like, well, this is the worst thing that ever
happened to me. I'm going to prison for life for like 20 minutes. And a lot of that is in the filmmaking too you know
like the sound cuts out it's terrifying all you hear is you're going to attic a dickhead and then
he's sitting and he's chained to a bench in a room by himself and a lot of that stuff is all
in the filmmaking you know it's some of it is in the writing and some of it is in the setup but
a lot of it is basically this incredible command of the camera of music of sound of performance like
it's it's it's really exciting and i think it's easy to kind of overlook some of those aspects
of it because the movie is sort of fun and light in its own way but um i don't know anything jump
out to you guys in particular about the way that he made this movie you know, I had recently rewatched The Master
before I had seen this.
The scene where the old dude overdoses on the hooch and he has to run and he's like
running through this big ass field and it's close and then it zooms out and I'm like,
wow, this looks so cool.
And a lot of this movie is doing
that, right? It's like, it's, it's showing you like this dude is running from something. We
don't know what, but he's constantly running. He's constantly on the move. And like, they show
you that so perfectly in that shot. Even the, the freaking Evel Knievel scene reminded me of The Master where Joaquin Phoenix gets on a motorcycle
and never comes back.
And it's just like, oh, he's pretty fucking far right now.
So many of the visual cues reminded me of The Master.
Like, you know, the part where he's just laying on the boat and again, you get to see it from
the overhead and it's like, yo, this is a big ass boat and the ocean is so blue and beautiful like he's trying to make the valley look look
like a beautiful place i just feel like it's like a guy who knows every sidewalk every pothole yeah
every what the light looks like on this street at this time of day exactly how like and this is the thing
is like no matter how mundane or uh pedestrian your life might be at any given point i think
anybody who's in love with movies will sometimes like step outside of themselves and imagine like
what would it look like if a dolly was going by as i walked into this record store or as i
sat down at this incredibly normal dinner you know but it's like
for pta it's like i'm gonna i'm gonna like track in as they bite into these burgers and they're
gonna be the best looking fucking hamburgers anyone's ever seen ever because when i was 15
they were because you know when i was 15 this was like the universe and so he makes it feel
like you're in casino or something,
even though you're just at this,
like probably like place with a C health rating,
you know,
in the Valley.
Um,
I want to talk about what you guys think this movie is actually about.
Like,
what do you think he's trying to say with the movie,
which is not,
there's no one size fits all answer here.
I'm just kind of curious
because Waz, you pointed out the running
in films like The Master.
Running is a big theme of all of PTA's movies.
You see it in Punch Drunk Love.
You can see it in this movie over and over again.
In fact, when I rewatched it last night,
I didn't realize that those closing moments
of the movie when Alana and Gary
are re-embracing,
that we see like literally a callback
to a previous time when they were both running.
And that, you know, it's a very intentional,
like these are characters on the move
and they're questing for something.
But maybe that feeling of like racing with nowhere to go
is what I keep thinking.
When you're a kid or when you're in your 20s
and you don't totally know who you are
or what you want to do,
that you kind of are like,
I just kind of have to keep hunting around. I have to keep getting new experiences or meeting new people or having
something. I can't wait for life to happen to me. Like I have to happen to it. But I think that
there's a lot like other ways to read the movie too. Amanda, what do you think PTA is trying to
say about this period in time and about these people? That's such a, we don't need to get into
conflict theory here. Don't we? Don't we though mean it is interesting like there's what he's trying to say
and then what kind of reveals itself over time and you know sean when we did the pta rankings
however many months ago that was um the consistency of the themes and also kind of what he's working
through over time if you want to draw them like okay well here he's like 30 something and you know these are like very
angry thwarted guys and anger is the predominant emotion that's available and you know i i think
again he's very conscious of what he's doing so he's maybe conscious of a lot of that anger but
where all of it's coming from, I don't know.
Maybe that's something you've learned over time.
Same with Phantom Thread.
It's about, again, like a persnickety, very exact person with a lot of ambition, but it's also about marriage and finding a foil or an equal or both depending on, you know.
So it's like, are we reading intention versus what is actually
revealed in the screen itself? I think it's a little early to be like, here is how this fits
into the grand theory of like Paul Thomas Anderson psyche, a man who I've never met,
but have great admiration for. But I do think that this is about, I think it's about memory
and how we remember things and reflect on things that,
that happened to us and how that does change over time. So I do think, as you said, it's a
slightly older person's movie, which is said from a slightly older person at this point,
really just appreciate that he's kind of tracking my life stages. Thank you so much paul um but yeah it's about it is about many of his signature themes ambition and
and and striving and and and you know kind of what you see in the movies versus real life
and control versus things happening but it's an older person reflecting on like a younger person's experience
with ultimately, I think a lot of affection. And it's just that his memory works in different ways
than a lot of ours. And so you see a lot of things that maybe like in your own memory,
you kind of black out, which again is interesting. Like, I don't know, is this movie nostalgic is a
question that I would ask for all of you.
I don't totally know if it is according to the-
I think it is, but I don't think it's nostalgic for the 70s.
Yeah.
Or is it like nostalgic as we understand it versus like, is it nostalgic to him?
Is an interesting question.
I think it's nostalgic for something that's universal, which is there is a point in your
life where you get a little bit of money in your pocket and they let you out into the world and you're totally unequipped to be there.
But they're like, go. Go out there. I don't want to see you in this house all day.
Come back later. Now, that's maybe changed. Maybe parenting styles have changed from when I was a
kid. But this taps into one of the like primal memories I have of my life is
the feeling of my mom being like, get up and get out of this house today.
And I was like, okay, see ya.
I'm going to ride my bike to West Philadelphia.
I don't know.
And that would be like my day.
And I would go hang out with my friends and we would hang out until dinner, if not later.
And that would just be parenting back then.
And there's like this magical thing that happens when you have $5 in your
pocket and a no idea what you're going to get into that.
This movie,
it like captures in,
in a way that I don't think I've ever seen in a coming of age movie that
kind of like everything you're experiencing is the first time you're
experiencing it.
But you do have like a little bit of like self-awareness and understanding of
time that you can sort of be like,
like Gary saying to her,
like,
I'm never going to forget you is like both true and bullshit.
It's like the thing that you think you're supposed to say to somebody,
but it's also true.
You will never forget that person.
So I kind of think that it gets at this really awesome
in-between moment of childhood and adulthood.
And that's why the Alana character is so complicated
because she's ostensibly on the other side of that.
And she wants to know, like,
why am I hanging out with these people?
But maybe she's like prematurely already longing
for that time in her life.
You know, again, I feel like i'm snitching on myself
a lot on this pod and like as a i consider myself to be a very political and a politically minded
person i feel like this and pca doesn't really do politics overtly in his movies like you can
watch there will be blood and say that's how you get money in America? Or you could be like, wow, this is a fucking kind of-
That's a movie about Dick Cheney.
Yeah, right.
Or it might be fucking communist propaganda, right?
Like, yo, capitalism is fucked up, right?
Like, the means by which you go about getting money in this country is kind of fucking shady.
Like, you can take that reading.
I might take that reading.
Whatever.
When I'm watching this movie, I feel like he's being very anti-woke in the movie.
It's like, yes, these things are things that we would find to be abhorrent and were straight up the culture and the norm.
Like an old dude getting in a U-Haul truck and purposely grazing this young woman's
tits and not thinking anything about it. Like it's fucked up, but it happened all the time and
we survived. It wasn't that bad guys. Like, you know, I feel like that's what he's saying with
the movie. I don't know that he's nostalgic for that time or maybe he's making apologies
for that time. I wouldn't say either one of those things.
I'm somebody who I just feel like, yeah, like shit like that used to happen.
And guess what?
We'd get up in the morning and we'd do whatever the fuck it is we had to do that day.
That's what I feel like he's doing with the movie.
It's like very like, look guys, I get it.
Micro aggressions and all of this other shit.
I get it.
It rules your fucking day now.
But in the 70s, your tit might get touched you know oh the woman might give you a handy and
guess what we're fine it's okay like move on with this shit that's what i feel like is happening in
this movie that's a very funny reading i think i'm with you all the way up to it's fine i don't think i don't even
know if he has really even arrived at a judgment on that you know like you might say because of
the warmth of the movie that he's did say that's that's why i say that i think there's a case for
it but there's like there are so many gradations of him you know poking the audience and showing
them things that he knows is going to make them uncomfortable that's the thing he does in all of his movies he's a bit of a troll that way which
is why he's this is why he is both enigmatic and frustrating and this is why his i think we're
obviously rounding into like some of the more controversial elements of this movie this is why
his persona is so frustrating and i think at this moment is because if you ask Quentin Tarantino something,
he's like,
here's a 32 minute answer for this question.
If you're like,
Hey,
why did you change William Holden's name?
Well,
you know,
and then like next thing you know,
you've been given a lesson on the by like,
like William Holden's grandfather getting into like why he did this.
I heard PTA with you and Bill,
Sean,
you guys are bringing stuff up. He's like, Oh, that's interesting. You guys saw that. Yeah. I heard PTA with you and Bill, Sean. You guys are bringing stuff up.
He's like, oh, that's interesting. You guys saw that.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's just like he's not
going to show his hand.
Whether it's discipline, whether it's
like, fuck it, I just wanted to make a movie about
my kids' friends
with the parents
who were around and their kids and
it was a project to do during covid and like that's it obviously there's a lot more intention
involved in this movie but the way he's sort of selling this was like it was like summer camp
you know what i mean like that this was like this thing that we did together is like almost a
community theater project but yeah because he doesn't come out.
I mean like his answers for a lot of the questions that we're going to be
asking or I've been like,
I don't think so.
I don't think,
I don't think I did that.
You know,
the idea that I'm supposed to think that something happens in this guy's
movies that is purely accidental.
Coincidental is ridiculous and absurd.
It doesn't jive with the person we know him to be like.
This dude is exacting and intentional.
So when these choices where it's like,
this girl, you could have made her 19.
You made her 25.
That's a deliberate choice for a
specific reason
don't tell me
again when I say he's gaslighting people
with these interviews I'm like
really we're not supposed to look into
the age difference really
we're not supposed to get anything out of it
and it's meaning and it's intention
that's fucking
bullshit but whatever like I don't need you to vocalize it to me of it and its meaning and its intention, that's fucking bullshit.
But whatever.
Like, I don't need you to vocalize it to me because to me, everything is on the screen.
It's there for you to see it.
And that's fine by me.
Like, I don't really, I hate creative people who are intentionally mysterious.
Like, really, bro?
Like, oh, you're so dark and mysterious and nobody can figure you out. Like, I hate that when people do that intentionally, but I get why people want to
be those kinds of creatives because you want people to engage with your work and open up
their minds to something. So I think that the difference there between that cliche that you're
talking about was, is as you can tell from some of the conversations that bill and i have had with pta or any number of interviews you read with him
like he's not brooding wearing a smith's t-shirt you know in a dark cave like he's a he's a dude
from the valley he's like pretty easy going he's a nice guy and certainly there is a lot of
intentionality behind the shading of his answers.
But that's something that, frankly, most artists do. Most artists don't do what you just described
Quentin Tarantino doing, Chris. Most filmmakers are not like, let me explain every single decision
I've made to you. Now, I love that about Quentin. I find that endlessly entertaining and often quite
interesting and enlightening about his work. But most filmmakers are like, figure it out for yourself. Now, the controversies in this movie, I think, are
interesting because the figure it out for yourself part is the most challenging part. And some people
are having problems with it. And some people are genuinely hurt or upset about it. And I understand
that. I'll say, like, I felt like I understood the decision making in the film. And I think it's
helpful to talk through it and not do it in a hot take way
and not be like, fuck your feelings,
but just say the two big stories, obviously,
are the age gap, which I think we should start with,
between Cooper Hoffman's character
and Alana Hines' character,
and then the John Michael Higgins character
and the depiction of his relationship
with his two Japanese wives
and the way that he communicates with them.
So the age gap.
Here's the thing is that,
and Waz, you said something that
i thought was so smart which is just like it's all on the screen with him which i think is really
true but for me the one issue with the alana character is like the why is not totally on the
screen i am not particularly hurt by you know this age difference I didn't walk out like with the reaction that some people did
but I was kind of like I still don't a thousand percent understand this character and why she's
spending so much time with this person and I think my best explanation as I've thought about it is
like well it is supposed to be sort of like a dream piece and i and i do like i said i watched a lot of
men of a certain age watch this movie and there is a dream girl type quality to some of pta's
female characters over time and i think my favorite is amy adams in the master sure yeah
what a dream but they're very rarely presented as their own characters right they're characters
who are in relationship to the the male characters in the movie and i i don't say that as like a
knock or that like pg doesn't understand women or whatever like i don't care it's just that's
what he's examining i think phantom thread is the exception to that um and in many ways i think
that's probably why phantom thread is one of my favorite movies so
of his movies so i was just kind of like i don't totally get why this character is spending time
i'd like i just i didn't understand unless it is supposed to be some part of like this
gary valentine like dream wish magical world fulfillment thing and then an examination
on the flip side of like
what that actually looks like it's funny you keep using the word dream but i i really don't think of
this as a dream movie at all i i i i think of it as like trying to remember something and i think
that like a dream is more like uh a world that is unreal to you oftentimes things that can and the
things that can happen there are absurd and magical and
this is more like well one the alana character my understanding of it my read of it is she's lost
and she's kind of a loser you know she's 25 or really probably 28 based on the way that she
communicates in the movie i have questions about that well i mean mean, she pauses on 25 at one point
and she kind of misspeaks about how old she is
at a later point in the movie.
She's still living at home with both of her sisters
and she's got a shitty job.
She has no career and she meets a guy
who is younger and has acne and is in high school
but is also successful and has money
and has ambition and might.
And we see her when she starts dating Lance,
she's looking for somebody to take her out of this life.
And it doesn't pop immediately with Gary.
And she tries for Lance and Lance,
of course,
is an atheist.
And so he won't,
uh,
perform the duties at Shabbat.
And so,
uh,
inevitably she re-encounters Gary at this teen fair. And you see in that moment,
I love that scene so much, the teen fair, everything that happens there from the walkthrough
of the fair and then their reunion, and then he gets arrested. But when they reunite there,
you can see that she sees opportunity and he sees desire. I think think that's what's happening there and i think
she's charmed by him i think how could you not be charmed by gary he's got a lot going on he's a
weird fascinating 15 year old kid look this this isn't very complicated for me because
in this town i end up in a lot of rooms where famous men are or people who have proximity to fame are.
And I observe how people treat them, right?
Like once you have some proximity to something shiny over here, people gravitate towards
you and behave in ways that we think are irrational to behave if you remove the context
you'd be like that's irrational that dude's not that good looking not that funny not that charming
probably has bad breath but you know he's got a song with gunna so people want to be near him
right and so like i'm not confused by her attraction to him. And on the other end of that, as someone with a song with Gunna,
I'm often wondering whether or not people are hanging out with me for me.
You know what I mean?
Or is it just...
Or is it that you're in the Pod Hall of Fame?
Yeah.
I'm not confused by her attraction to him because he is attached to something shiny.
He is successful.
He's done something that people aspire to do.
Why would she not want to do that?
Again, she's a fucking yokel.
What people aspire to do in this context, though,
is have some waterbeds on consignment.
No, it's to be close to fame
and potentially become an actor,
which is something that he provides for her.
He introduces her to an agent.
He does.
And she gets very excited
about that prospect
and then pursues that career
and meets William Holden.
I mean, in a lot of ways,
she is getting things
out of that relationship
that she would not have been able
to get if she dated another yokel,
like Waz is saying.
And so, now,
whether or not that's, like,
something that should be
depicted on screen,
I think is really
where the controversy lies.
People saying we can't show the world a relationship between a minor and an adult.
That's really where a lot of the outrage has come from.
And of course we can, because I think what PTA is saying is this happened.
Did this happen to a person who is alive right now specifically that he's going to point to?
No, he would never do that. But I think he's trying to point out that especially in 1973, and this goes for both
genders in both directions, no matter what, stuff like this happened. And do we understand that it's
illegal? Of course we understand that it's illegal. Is it immoral? Yes, it's immoral.
But does that mean that it's unreal? No of course it took place and of course that's part
of the tension and the drama of the film is the idea of how unusual like look at alana's reaction
to gary in the first 20 minutes of this movie she's like i can't fucking believe i'm doing this
this is unbearable that i am making this decision to go to the tail of the cock to drink soda with
a 15 year old boy like it's not again was said, it's all in the movie.
It's not as if it's,
there's some lack of clarity about the point of view about the decision,
but I guess there is like a bigger conversation about,
can you show things like this in movies?
Of course,
my personal opinion is you have to show things that make people uncomfortable
or that are dangerous or,
or,
or not moral.
Cause otherwise what are stories?
What are,
what are we trying to learn about the human experience? I, is that or not moral. Cause otherwise what are stories? What are, what are we trying
to learn about the human experience? I don't, I, is that fair? Okay. Look, go ahead, Amanda.
I'm really interested to hear what you have to say. You know, as soon as like, should you show
something on like, I, you know, I started rolling my eyes. Like, like, of course I think so. I,
I disagree with you guys. I am a little less convinced by this woman it's like really
ensorcelled by the like mega stardom of a 15 year old who sang backup for lucille ball in a variety
as much as it's like he has so much conviction he has proximity i know what i want to do yeah
i think it's a stew of all those things i think it's everything i think it's the hustle i think
it's and i love that you guys think that and i love that you guys think that that's possible for you out there and
that's cool look this is the thing like amanda right like you obviously have your head screwed
on straight but that's why i fuck with pta because he's willing to throw this bomb in there
and just be like, wipe his hands.
Like, I don't have any explaining to do.
You guys figure it out.
I think you're right.
I think it is a provocation.
And it worked because we're here talking about it on the show
and people have been talking about it on the internet
for a long while.
I guess let's use that as an opportunity
to talk about the other provocation,
which is this John Michael Higgins character
who plays Jerry Frick, who is based on a real life businessman. He's a guy who opened the first
Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles, or in the San Fernando Valley, at least, and who is portrayed
here as someone who speaks to both of his wives in two separate scenes in this crude, offensive,
mock Japanese accent. And he doesn't't speak Japanese he speaks English in that
accent now obviously this has come under fire from all corners the character is offensive the
character is very purposefully offensive as far as I can tell from the film in the same way that
this film feels like a memory of a relationship and a memory of an encounter with a famous Hollywood producer.
This scene, when I saw it, and perhaps I'm speaking from a place that is more fortunate
than others, but it just struck me as the way you would remember something awful or stupid that
happened when you were a teenager. I met this guy who was an asshole, who talked in this gross
accent, or just this at the time, maybe a character in 1973 would perceive it as a silly accent to his Japanese wife who did not speak English I did not see it as necessarily having
fun at the expense of the wife character in fact my reading of it which maybe is wrong was that the
wife characters were the more intelligent of the two people in the relationship based on what was
being communicated in the scenes but again i think
you're right was that it's a provocation he's trying to get you to react to the idea that
something like this could or did happen and how did you guys see it am i off base am i is that i
think i think for the the difference between the two things that we're talking about here is that
the relationship between alana and gary is the central idea of the movie.
And then this part just feels kind of tossed in there.
So you could have the same movie without those scenes.
That's true.
Now, this is just definitely one of those things that in the last 10 years, something like this is just definitely going to
draw way more attention. When we do rewatchables and it's like we're watching The Hangover and
you're like, damn. It's just like a different discourse in 2011 versus 2022. But I think my
issue with it was, first of all, if there's people who were like, that was fucked up,
I didn't like that. Who am I to say that they can't feel that way?
It was more just that I was like, it's weird that there's two scenes of this and it actually
has nothing to do with the movie.
It's like you could have handled the same thing by just being like, yeah, I do PR for
restaurants and I wouldn't have doubted it.
You know what I mean?
I can see that you can get tables at Tale of the Cocks.
So it's not like it embellishes
or enriches the movie that much
it's just like these two scenes
you have this incredibly talented comic actor
doing it and I
almost feel like a little bit like he gets hung out
to dry because of that you know it's like
he does that accent
I don't think anybody is like John Michael Higgins
is racist or anything like that
but people are obviously this is just like a tone deaf insertion of a plot point that actually has nothing really to do with the rest of the movie.
But what did you guys think?
I mean, I definitely read this as a provocation that.
And to Chris's point, I think that is because it is like you don't have to have it in the movie.
It's not one of the central questions.
It is just like a couple of scenes. And it's like, oh, you've decided to do this.
And you like, clearly it's not an accident.
It's not like we didn't think this through.
You've decided to make this, these scenes that will clearly, they're not how we make
movies or talk about anything in 2021, 2022.
And that will clearly upset some people and again
i you know i think anyone who is upset by this it's absolutely they're right i i was so it's a
question of judging why the provocation and i guess whether their provocation pays off is is up
to you guys i you know i don't know are we supposed to be trying to understand these
things there is a part of this movie that is like as we've talked about remembering something but
remembering all of the pretty fucked up aspects of it as well and that tendency that you know like we
I think we all have like you you know remember yeah like when I was growing up like all the
adults smoked around me like whatever you know like shrug face and that's you know remember yeah like when i was growing up like all the adults smoked
around me like whatever you know like shrug face and that's you know that's a different that's like
a physical endangerment as opposed to um something hurtful but this sort of like shrug attitude
which he's doing a lot here is it wise to apply a shrug attitude to just sort of like racist jokes that you don't really need
i'm not sure is he trying to be wise i again like i i don't know i'm not like the movie haig so
i'm i'm gonna bounce on that we shouldn't we should institute the movie haig going forward
though you know just try every film. Kill them. Okay.
Again, this is why I love this guy as a filmmaker, because I watched that scene and there is truth in it.
And I say that as somebody who's both of my parents speak English as a second language.
And I have watched people who speak perfectly good English
dumb down and start talking funny
when they're talking.
I've seen it.
I've experienced it.
Like, I'm talking about people
like girlfriends.
I'm like,
why did you just,
why did you say corner that way
when you was talking to my mom?
And they're like,
oh, people can't help it.
Like, it's true. It happens. And when I watched that, I was. And they're like, oh, people can't help it. Like, it's true.
It happens.
And when I watched that, I was like, first of all, he's speaking to something that happens,
that is true, when people speak to people who English is their second language.
Like, it happens all the time.
And second of all, I watched that scene, and I don't know how you could come away from
watching that without thinking, thinking like sometimes white people are
ridiculous that's all i think so it's important that most of the criticism that i've read about
this moment it's it's interesting because you can't i do this would have been interesting had
this movie come out on streaming but i've seen a lot like it was really uncomfortable listening to
all the white guys laugh at this
scene you know what I mean like
instead it wasn't like they were like oh yeah
that's true to life
it's like oh I'm listening to a bunch of white
dudes crack up at this accent
now I'm not getting
into the veracity of that or like getting
into like what every white guy thought
while watching it I'm just reporting back
from the discourse front I know i know just as facts the idea is like the audience is supposed to understand
you're laughing at the actual white dude in that scene he is the only thing ridiculous happening
that dude and his disposition and his ignorance and idiocy that That's what's funny. He is so dumb, and he is so unaware,
and we all realize, like, wow,
you get to be that dumb and manage a restaurant.
Like, I don't know how you watch that
and not understand who's being ridiculed there.
I don't know.
Like, it's so weird to think that
this Japanese, obviously competent woman
obviously the brains behind the operation is the one who's being ridiculed and mocked and not the
complete fucking idiot in the scene i you know it is meant to create discomfort that scene right
and i think like a lot of people just like don't know where to put that discomfort and our also
discourse is not really equipped to handle discomfort of any kind whatsoever.
I'm glad you guys are here. I agree with everything all three of you said. I think
that you could make the case that this scene was not effectively dramatized, so it did not need to
be in the movie. You could make the case that the ridicule is completely aimed at the clownish white
male in the movie. You could certainly say anybody who was hurt by this, I understand it. I think
just like something appearing on screen that recalls a painful moment.
That's something that people are considering now in ways that maybe they didn't consider
in movies 20 or 30 years ago.
Let's wrap up the controversies.
Let's talk about things that we love.
Chris, I'll start with you.
What was your favorite scene?
Gosh, my favorite scene was probably the sort of element at the end when the pinball palace is open and just like that whole
milieu of like
this kid has this like bar,
he's looking for her.
I know that some people have found
that the very end of it
lands awkwardly,
but I thought that that
stuff in the pinball palace
was my favorite bit.
Let's get you a pinball palace.
I've been thinking a lot about
when we get the Kron taken care of,
what's next for all of us.
I definitely think to make up
for the last couple of years,
I'm pretty close to opening CRs.
Whether it's like...
Shrimp and Sports?
Yeah, Shrimp and Sports is coming back.
And maybe I'll throw a couple
pinball machines in there.
But everybody needs a fucking place
to hang out, right?
Yeah.
And we're going super indoors.
This place is like no outdoors whatsoever.
Once it's cool, I'm just going to be like,
fucking shut it down.
The iron gates are coming down,
and it's just like half prison, half sports bar.
I like the pinball palace.
I also loved all the John Peters stuff.
Yeah, we're going to get to Cooper very shortly.
What about you was for me? Absolutely.
My favorite scene is when Gary and Alana go to the talent booking agency
lady and she's just being really racist about how Jewish Alana looks.
And like,
again,
for me,
that's working on me on a trillion levels
as a black person who only learned that there were differences in white people
when I got to high school and went to school with Polish kids
and Italian kids and Jewish kids and Irish kids.
And I was like, wait, white people segment themselves?
That's crazy.
Who knew? Like, like that scene spoke to me on so many levels because it's so
offensive and so hilarious. And it's like a meta commentary, like PTA patting himself on the back
for putting Alana Heim at the center of his movie. Like he's describing her in a way and being like,
this is why you never see these kinds of people at the center
of these movies because this was the sort of orthodoxy of the thinking in the town.
And I'm doing it right now.
And we're making fun of the fact that people were stupid about it.
That scene is like a lot of shit in this movie.
It's doing so many things at once.
The actress who plays the agent, Harriet Sansom Harris, is unbelievable.
Dynamite.
It's like a dynamite five minutes.
I was rewatching it last night and she's like, you're a fucking fighter, aren't you?
That's my favorite line reading of the whole movie.
She's just such a genius.
Amanda, what's your favorite scene?
I mean, the John Peters segment, which you may argue with my appraisal of this whole
movie as a dream, but that is like a 20 minute
fever dream in the middle of this film um and i'm can we talk about bradley cooper now let's do it
like may we yes that's what i'm talking about and and and and just yes and also this is maybe a good
way to talk about how this movie actually does use movie stars. We've kind of alluded to all of like the big recognizable names kind of floating around the frame of these two people.
Who anchor the movie, who are not, they're becoming movie stars, but don't have a ton of experience. to show up for i guess like 15 20 minutes go full cokehead john peters you know actual references
to strice in and the way they're playing with the the real hollywood history and using the actual
names chris i'm assuming for legal reasons i think i read that pta like did call john peters and was
like hey is this okay and john peters was like sure he said he
said he said the only thing i would change is that i would have shot a banger yeah that's right
and so he's like okay word great if you're looking for more evidence that pta was trying to show a
time when things were slightly more fucked up yes yeah there it is john peters was like actually i
would pick that girl up and so just kind of an electric
10 minutes of
over the top performance that allows
both Cooper Hoffman and
Lana Haim to display their own charisma
and their own stunt
driving ability and then
segwaying into just like the
incredible set piece driving down
the hill which is you know
if this movie is about people running towards things
and momentum and all of that stuff like fits in,
but it's just also a great like action movie in the middle
for no reason other than P.T. is like,
you want to see what else I can do?
This.
Completely.
And it ruled.
I completely, that's my favorite scene too by far.
I really enjoyed the Bradley Cooper part of it.
It did feel like one more
provocation i was like this isn't this is like almost outside of this movie like take me off
into john peters land when he shows up that was the whole like how did you get how did you meet
him does he just call the john peters just call up and ask for a water like all that stuff from
like we're just at john peters's house this is fucking crazy yeah well i guess like that's like
those are the stories that g Getzman must have.
That one in particular,
Getzman did tell that story.
He was like, this actually happened to me.
I actually did deliver a waterbed to John Peters' house.
And when he tells the story,
he says that John Peters was like
the nicest guy in the world
and that he didn't do any of these things.
And that, you know,
but there are of course these legendary stories
about what a hound Peters was at that time.
So it seemed like PTA is kind of blending the two things.
The race down the hill is extraordinary.
It's like such fun, thrilling filmmaking.
It's like the big final fight in an MCU movie, but in a real movie.
Like it was really, truly great.
No, I think watching the scene again, when you're watching it for the first time, I wasn't sure if something fucked up was actually about to happen to them.
I was scared for them.
So it was like built this like suspense.
And again, once you get to the end of the movie, you realize that this is not that movie, right?
This is a nice movie.
But in the moment when you don't know which direction is going to go, like I was legitimately scared for these kids.
And that's why I enjoyed that scene.
It built some type of suspense.
One thing that I was thinking when I was watching the movie is how many
different movies it could have been.
You could have had just a movie about Alana joining up the Joel walks
campaign or a movie about Gary's child acting.
If you had to choose one that you wish PTA would have made two, I mean, obviously, we
got the movie we got and it's awesome.
But was there part of it that you were like, oh, I wish we could have spent more time in
this sort of microclimate of this movie?
Probably Alana's work at Tiny Toes Photo Agency.
Yeah.
Deep inside what it's like to be a photographer's assistant in 1973.
I don't know.
What for you, Amanda?
The John Peters is my favorite part of the movie,
but part of its appeal is that it is just like a 15 to 20 minute,
if you're counting the down the hill set piece as part of it,
just like excursion, just like a complete delight within it.
And I think it loses some of its energy if you spin it off as
its own thing the i was most curious to know more i guess about like the alana character and the and
the joel walks who's played by benny safty and that comes in in the last two thirds and she's
like sort of figuring out a little bit about her life that That one just, that character made more sense to me.
And I was like,
oh, this is interesting
and I want to know
what's going on with her.
It would mean less Cooper Hoffman,
which is sad
because he's,
I mean,
he's not directly involved
in all of it.
But that could sustain
a world of its own,
I guess.
Benny Safdie shouts to him,
you know,
basically getting his
Lindsey Graham on
in this movie. It's kind of crazy. But him, you know, basically getting his Lindsey Graham on in this movie.
It's kind of crazy.
But like, I just, I love that part because it says a lot about the Alana character.
And like, she feels like she should be doing something big.
Like she says like, we're about to change the world.
The fuck are you doing, Gary?
You know, like it speaks to her ambitions ambitions. She wants to do something big.
She doesn't want to be a fucking accountant or a fucking waitress. She wants to do something that
she feels is bigger than herself, bigger than whatever her lot in life or her station in life
is. So yeah, definitely on the campaign trail with a closeted politician that would be
amazing she literally says i'm a politician another one of the great lines in this movie
uh okay let's let's just do favorite needle drop incredible as usual incredible choices
by pta here i've spent way too much time with this soundtrack in the last six weeks i've been
listening to it a whole hell of a lot.
Amanda, I have a pretty good feel for where you're going to go.
So I'm going to start with you.
Yeah.
I mean, I've already done this.
So let me roll it.
Which at this point, like what is happening?
I remember some of what's happening in it, but.
It's the motorcycle jump followed by Alana falling off the back of the motorcycle.
And Gary races to save her and he picks her up and they start
walking together. And it's almost like this kind of slow motion love explosion where they find their
way to a waterbed and they touch fingers ever so briefly. A chaste moment. And I knew that this
music cue was coming because I had it spoiled for me, which is like not really being spoiled.
Just killer song.
That moment when they like finally make it to the waterbed,
you get a lot of the song as well.
And I just,
I don't know.
It's,
I guess it's sort of the obvious one,
but it rules.
I was very moved by it.
I've been listening to it a lot since then.
CR,
what's your needle drop?
I'm going to probably go with The Doors.
Classic.
Just because I went on a big deep Doors run once Jay-Z sampled The Takeover.
Sampled it for The Takeover
and I really got into some of those records.
And they are a much maligned classic rock band
at this point.
Other than Light My Fire and The End,
you don't really hear a lot of Doors out there in the real world.
But the idea that these guys are all just like,
this Doors record, like, it's awesome when that comes in.
And that's a deep cut.
Yeah, and that song like kicks the movie into motion.
That's when like the waterbed business really takes off
after they leave that AM radio spot.
Okay, Waz, what about you?
Any songs that jump out to you from the movie?
This is fucked up.
I'm waiting for the day for directors to become prominent
and senior enough who are of my age group
so that they could drop 50 Cent Heat in a fucking movie
and I could lose my mind.
But there's not a song in this movie that i heard and like that i conscious
that i was conscious that i was like holy shit that's diamond girl by seals and crofts like
i'm looking at this list like i'm like bro all of these songs were just songs that came on as i was
watching the movie because these are not my references, unfortunately. My musical palette is so limited to fucking rap and New York rap and some Jamaican dance
hall.
But really, me and my friends, we're just listening to Lloyd Banks freestyles.
You know what I'm saying?
So these music cues don't hit me in the way.
I yearn for a day when the music cues and movies um actually make any type of
fucking sense to me uh but unfortunately um i'm an idiot when it comes to this stuff we're getting
close to your 50 cent moment happening i don't know who's gonna do it i'm basically living through
it on yellow jackets where they're like here's another 90s banger and i'm like oh my god i was
i've been thinking about the age of these people when this song came out i've been thinking about this with station 11 too station 11 and yellow
jackets are the first old millennial tv series that's the all of the references are like young
gen xers old millennials and we will get to mid you're a mid-millennial right was like you'll
you'll get there soon save my age on the show the show I'm not in show business you guys can know how old I am
we just need to hold out long enough
for PTA to make a sexually depraved movie
about G-Unit
starring Joaquin Phoenix
and it'll be a comedy for sure
obviously Let Me Roll It is my favorite
Tomorrow May Not Be Your Day is the closing song the Taj Mahal song which is not a Taj Mahal song I was super familiar with comedy for sure uh i i obviously let me roll it as my favorite i the the tomorrow may not be your
day as the closing song the taj mahal song which is not a taj mahal song i was super familiar with
but how every time when that song kicks you can't help but like levitate out of the movie theater
you're like man that was a movie huh love movies love going to the movies love being with people
who go to the movies what a wonderful experience that was i listen to that song every day now
um okay favorite performance amanda you're going cooper and who do you or bradley cooper i should being with people who go to the movies. What a wonderful experience that was. I listen to that song every day now. Okay.
Favorite performance.
Amanda,
you going Cooper or Bradley Cooper?
I should say.
Yeah,
I am going,
I am going Bradley Cooper.
I mean,
because we can't just do like,
wow,
Cooper Hoffman and a lot of hyper great in this movie.
Like they're great,
but that's boring.
So Bradley Cooper.
CR,
who do you got?
Tom waits.
Rex.
Yeah. I mean, my favorite was Alana. I thought she was like a revelation in this movie. so Bradley Cooper. CR who do you got? Tom Waits. Rex Blount?
Yeah I mean my favorite was Alana
I thought she was
like a revelation
in this movie
this was not the
Heim sister
that I was always like
well like I mean
like Danielle is the
star of that band
like you're kind of
like you're fixed on her
and so I was really
impressed with her
but when Tom Waits
shows up
and directs this stunt
I was just like this is
my fucking guy so glad i lived at a time when tom waits was alive uh was what about you it's for me
it's alana for a bunch of the reasons that i mentioned but mostly because again hollywood
is so lazy they're like we're gonna put these people in the center of the frame that we've established that millions of people are quote unquote horny for.
And Alana Haim in this movie is sexually magnetic and alluring.
And I understand why anybody would want to be near her.
Her performance of that, while it's not overt, a lot of it is subtle like so again this is what again i'm telling on
myself but pta is a pervert right like that part where gary's trying to tell her to sex it up
and she's basically like brother you don't know shit about yeah you don't even know you don't
know what sex is like okay cool i'm gonna show you what sex is and Like, okay, cool. I'm going to show you what sex is.
And there's a part where she puts her feet on the table.
That was for Tarantino.
And Gary's staring at her feet.
And then later on in the movie, he walks up to a girl and says,
somebody got their toes done.
Which is communicating like, this dude's in the feet.
Alana Haim knows it.
And when she's trying to explain sex to this fool,
she puts her feet on the table.
Like, that's fucking incredible.
She's incredible.
She's incredible in this movie, man.
And like doing it very subtly.
Like there's ways that people's sexual magnetism
can sort of like overwhelm you at times, right?
In movies in a way that you don't
in in ways that make you not be able to confront anything else about the character like she's doing
it very subtly while also being vulnerable but also being smart while also being like all these
other things so her performance to me is just she's knocking people out of the park in this shit
not sure i can really even share anything
after that confirmation.
That was bold.
I think Alana is the best part of the movie.
But like I said,
Harriet Sandstrom Harris too, the agent.
I think that little tiny window of her
and that window into that version of Hollywood
at that time is great for me too.
Amanda, we talk about the Oscars a lot.
What's going to happen here?
This movie's winning
Best Picture and nine Oscars.
Is that going to happen?
Sure, yeah.
PTA going to ride off
into the sunset?
Has anyone seen this movie?
That's the thing.
I don't...
It's not about $10 million,
which is not bad
for a movie starring
two people that people
have never heard of.
I think in a different time,
it would have done better,
for sure.
It's appointment viewing
for a certain type of person in the industry who may or may not
be the Academy.
I mean, Ben Affleck has seen this movie as he wants to let every interview now interviewer
now, but I think this movie will do really well at home.
Actually, I think that this is actually one both that you could watch, you know, please
forgive me all cinephiles and you know, all of your, your camera stuff, but that you could watch you know please forgive me all cinephiles and you know all
of your your camera stuff but that you can watch at home and that also re-watch wise i think is
going to become a part of the consciousness in a way because it does have all these vignettes
and like kind of bite-sized pieces that people have started making reference to but once it's
more widely available i think will kind of stick in people's heads and certainly a certain type of academy viewers head i i bet it'll be nominated because
we need 10 nominees this year i don't think that it's going to win best picture but but that's okay
what about best screenplay that's what everyone's saying best original screenplay is
he may or may not be the front runner cr what are you going to do if he wins best original
screenplay we're not into the street nude?
Sell a waterbed?
I'll be happy for him,
but screenplay is always this like
weird nether region of the Oscars
where I'm like,
so if you guys know that this is the best
written movie,
why is it not the frontrunner?
Like, I just,
this is the part that I don't get.
But it's also,
it's like,
it's where all of the actual,
like the heroes.
It's the cool kids table.
You know, it's the cool kids table.
It's all the people we love the most.
And listen, at some point, I always go through this every year.
Like, do you actually want your favorite movie to win best picture at this point?
Knowing what we know about the history of best picture with the exception of Parasite,
which was like very fun.
And we all agreed on that.
Do I want all of these people
to be like,
yeah,
this belongs up there
with like Shape of Water
and, you know,
Cherry of the Fire.
Oh, so this is like
a Groucho Marx thing?
Like I wouldn't want to be
a member of a club
that would have me?
Yeah, this is not the first time
I've trotted out this thing for you.
So then you guys need to change
the way you talk about Oscars
and openly advocate for shit
you don't like to win,
you know?
No, I want PTA to fucking thrive. I want him to win every award. I want him to win Osc win. I want PTA to fucking thrive.
I want him to win every award.
I want him to win Oscars.
I want the movie to make $100 billion.
But it's also like, you know,
none of our faves have actually won a lot of Oscars.
So I don't know.
It's true.
I don't know.
It's tough to follow the Academy Awards as we do.
A lot of self-loathing.
Waz, make one ridiculous prediction
about how this movie is going to do at award season.
It's definitely not going to win Best Picture.
That's for sure.
But I think, you know, if they play the game enough, you know, kiss enough babies, they'll get other, I guess we're calling those other awards, ancillary.
By the way, shouts to the Writers Guild, which I'm a part of.
That's the most important award, guys.
But no, I think they're going to get a lot of love because the right people care about this movie culturally, right?
You know, think about something like Succession, which does like maybe one quarter of the viewership as Yellowstone, but culturally is way more significant. It gets
way more love within, you know, blue check world, whatever, like it's getting enough
love and blue check world that I think they're going to get enough ancillary love.
And what's most important, we're going to get this guy, Paul Thomas Anderson,
talking about something that he loves, which is fun, right? It's nice to see these creators
engage with their shit in a way that's public and that's honest and that's nice. which is fun, right? It's nice to see these creators engage with their shit in a way
that's public and that's honest and that's nice. It's nice. I said that at the top, but
it's nice. And one more thing about the niceness, how I knew where this movie was going
when they fall asleep on the water bed and he doesn't touch the tit i was like oh my god really in real life that
kid's touching the tit but in this movie because it's so nice it's so heartwarming to me um i want
to see it do well and i think it will with with like the people this has been a nice conversation
about a nice movie this has has been also a, uh,
an admission from blue check world. I think this is as blue checky as it gets here on the big picture.
Was thank you so much.
I love Yellowstone.
CR reporting live from Montana.
Thank you for your work.
Appreciate you,
Amanda.
Of course.
Appreciate you.
Thank you,
Bobby Wagner.
He's our producer on this show.
Stay tuned later this week on the podcast.
I don't know what the hell we're going to be talking about.
I think CR is going to come through. Maybe we're going to talk about scream. Maybe we're going to talk about horror movies the podcast. I don't know what the hell we're going to be talking about. I think CR is going to come through.
Maybe we're going to talk about Scream. Maybe we're going to talk about
horror movies in general. I don't know. We're going to figure it
out. It's a wild time in the movie world.
Until then, shout out to Liquor's Pizza. I love you.
Baby
Baby don't you wait
too long
Oh mama don't you wait too long
Oh honey don't
you wait too long
Cause tomorrow may not be
your day