The Big Picture - ‘Licorice Pizza’ and the Paul Thomas Anderson Rankings

Episode Date: November 26, 2021

Paul Thomas Anderson’s ninth feature film opens today in select theaters. Sean and Amanda have a spoiler-free conversation about the coming-of-age story set in the San Fernando Valley (1:00). Then, Amanda allows Sean some room to work through his feelings and rank his favorite director’s movies from top to bottom (33:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ringer Films and HBO's DMX Don't Try to Understand is the next installment of the Music Box series, premiering this Thursday, November 25th at 8 p.m. The film focuses on a year in the life of rapper Earl DMX Simmons as he's released from prison in early 2019 and attempts to rebuild his career in the music industry and reconnect with family and fans. DMX Don't Try to Understand bears witness to a man searching for reinvention and redemption, striving to stay true to himself while reestablishing his roles as a father, an artist, and an icon. Watch or stream DMX Don't Try to Understand on HBO or HBO Max Thursday, 8 p.m.

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about licorice pizza. Paul Thomas Anderson's ninth feature film opens today in a very few select theaters, and it is expanding wide this Christmas. But today for me, this is Christmas because PTA is my favorite filmmaker.

And so on today's episode, we will talk a little bit about licorice pizza. I promise we will circle back and dive much deeper into it when it opens wide in theaters and after that we're going to go through the pta filmography and and rank our favorites and amanda is gonna is gonna open a wide berth here for me i am this is you've cleared out for me mostly on sofia coppola and nancy myers and and even you know the spencer episode to an extent and i appreciate it little, that's another one. This is your time. I already promised you. I did it in writing.

I was like, I'm not going to be mean to you. I'm going to be a supportive partner. It's Christmas for you. Today is Christmas for me as well because I'm finally allowed to put up Christmas decorations. There's no Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving in my house. So it's a joyous time for everybody.

Let us now celebrate the works of PTA. So licorice pizza, tough thing to talk about here because as we were planning this conversation, we were thinking about how to underline what this movie is without giving away what it is. And so the rough sketch, and I think if you've even read a synopsis of the movie, you know by now that this is essentially a movie about a 15-year-old guy named Gary Valentine living in the San Fernando Valley in 1973, who comes upon a 25-year-old woman or thereabouts who is kind of struggling with her way in life. The 15-year-old guy is an actor and a hustler and a person really on the move. And the young woman, Alana, is someone who

seems a little bit lost. And they meet at this critical moment in their lives and something happens and then things start to happen. Now, whether you want to describe this movie as a romance, as an act of seduction, as just an episodic journey through this period in history, obviously Paul is the don of the valley. Yes, this is really his home in more ways than one. And so this is an opportunity for him to kind of paint on the canvas with which he's most familiar. Just generally speaking, let's start. What did you think of Licorice Pizza?

Did you like it? Yeah, because also I feel like anytime we do a big throat clearing, like we need to talk about how we're going to talk about this movie, it like portends something bad. So let's get this out of the way. Delightful movie. We both really loved it. PTA heads.

Again, it's Christmas. This is a happy time. Let's all hug one another. I am certainly not the first or the last person to make this comparison. But while watching this movie, I thought a lot about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And I thought about it primarily because I was thinking about Chris Ryan doing PTA yelling, the lights, the fucking lights. But in a lot of ways,

this movie is him just yelling like the lights. And it is him going back to the Valley and a place where he grew up. And it is about memory and nostalgia. And there is like a hazy dream, like good vibes, quality to it. It has nothing to do with Manson murders, but it does have a lot to do with old hollywood and um a time where clearly pta is drawing not just on gary getzman's memories but some of his own and his relationship to the movies and to los angeles and to how those

two things combine magically on screen and it left me with a similar warm and fuzzy feeling. Yeah, it's an incredibly heartful movie. I've seen it. I've had a chance to see it twice now. I'll echo your feelings. I love it. Obviously, I'm in the bag for PTA's movies in more ways than one. But I think that this is an appropriate movie for the moment that we're in, an appropriate movie for him at this stage of his career. Obviously, when we think of him, we think of this kind of explosive first chapter of his career with Heartache and Boogie Nights and Magnolia, this kind of like antic, frenetic, kind of virtuoso feeling. Next chapter is him kind of exploring his heart and his mind and thinking about the ways in which his films kind of fit into the

hierarchy of Hollywood and America and Christianity, capitalism, all these big ideas. And then you get to this next phase. And I feel like Phantom Thread was an entree into this. And this feels like an even deeper softening of the PTA palette. You know, this is a guy who's got a bunch of kids who's living very happily, who is widely recognized as a master of his art. And this is a movie that does not really feel like it is overwhelmed by ambition. I feel even his absolute best masterpieces are films in which you can locate the ambition instantaneously. This is a movie that is excited to just exist. It is excited to reconstruct these beautiful memories. You mentioned Gary Getzman, who's a Hollywood producer and a former child actor who you may have seen in

the credits of many Tom Hanks movies. He's worked with Tom Hanks for a long, long time. And he's obviously a pal of PTAs and he's told PTA these stories about his life as a young child actor. And so certainly some of this movie is Gary's memories. Certainly some of it is Paul's memories, kind of building these things back together you know that this movie is largely based on true stories because it is deeply idiosyncratic it is so specific some of the the journeys and episodes that gary and alana get into here could only come from someone's real life yeah there's i mean there's like a definite healthy choice coupons quality to some of these things in like, but in a warmer way and everything that you said about the phases of his career resonates.

It is also a later in life. PTA is not old. We're not old guys. We're all in the prime of our lives. We're doing great. But you can feel that softening and even the way that he is examining as as you said and noted in our outline like you know yet another hustler like a young character trying to figure out his place in the world but instead of it coming from that like angry young man place it comes from a place of

look at what we've done and look at how great it is to be making this movie. There is a lot of joy in this movie as well. Yeah, I've been describing it as comic and not a comedy. There are a lot of laughs, but it is not. And there are a couple of moments in which it goes sort of broad and you're looking for a big laugh line in the audience. Both screenings that I've been able to attend, it's been a very warm crowd ready to embrace the movie. But, you know, it's not Anchorman. You know, it's not trying to be Anchorman. It's a little bit different. And I think, you know, it's also clearly a coming of age story in which the Gary character.

And then really, frankly, more the Alana character, I think, is kind of having a lot of realizations about her station in life and what kind of person she wants to be as she endures. And the movie, I think, it kind of wrong-foots you where you think this is going to be a Gary movie. And I think it ultimately does become an Alana movie in interesting ways. But Paul has talked about American Graffiti, I think, as kind of a signal for this film, showing that film to his kids and kind of getting their reactions to it, showing that movie to Alana, to Alana Haim, I'm talking about talking about of course who plays alana came in the movie cooper hoffman who the son of the late philip seymour hoffman who plays gary in this movie i love these kinds of movies i also love hangout movies you know we talk a lot of i think we think of like

richard linklater as kind of the the the auteur of the hangout movie in the 21st century so it's fun to see him i guess depressurize his movie. You know, did that surprise you that like when you sat down? Because I think we think we have a different set of expectations for a PTA experience. I think I wasn't expecting it. Yes, correct. Because I also try not to read too much about movies before I go see them. You and Bobby had both seen this movie before I got to see it and you didn't share too much with me. But as you said, we were talking about like what we do want to say to people before they see it and what and what we want to keep back. And I don't think it I think it can only add to the

experience to know that it is a looser hangout type of movie as opposed to an examination of American capitalism in the 20th and 21st centuries. Like it is, it's a different phase of the career and it's a different pace. Um, even though I think the, the vibe and some of the off kilterness will really be familiar to people. Um, so I, and I did find myself for a little bit being like, wait, so, okay, but is something going to happen? And plenty of things happen. I've only seen this movie once and I was reading some of the reviews last night and being reminded of like all the anecdotes and kind of the like weird detours and moments. I think that this is a movie that will really thrive in rewatching and reliving. So plenty happens, but again,

it's not PTA confronting the gods of America or his family or whatever. No, it strikes me as- Well, it is, but in a nice way, actually. Well, it strikes me as a dorm room movie. It's a movie you could throw on and at any moment you might enjoy one of the little adventures

that the figures are going on, which is not to say that it doesn't have any pathos. I think there's a lot of pathos in the Alana character who's kind of like, I think, churning her way through a frustrated period of her life and trying to find her destiny. But the thing that makes it different, I think, from almost every single one of his movies is there's no mystery in this movie, you know, especially in the last 15 years or so, there's something kind of ungrabable in Paul's movies. There's something where he's questing

for a big idea or a big feeling, and you're also trying to uncover it with him. This is much more plaintive in a way that I found kind of surprising. And I think if it was not so warmly made, it would seem like a little bit of a dud. But there's all this between the, I think the technical decisions that are made in this movie shot on 35 they've been showing it on 70 millimeter on this giant screen Westwood here in Los Angeles that's the best way to see this movie not everyone is going to be

fortunate enough to see it on these massive screens on film hopefully as many people as possible can check it out that way but, I think obviously Paul still shoots on film and shooting on film gives you this grain and this texture and that haze that you talked about that creates almost like a dreamlike atmosphere going through the movie. That feeling is in a lot of other movies. I think that dreamlike atmosphere is in The Master,

but The Master is such a kind of angry, yeah, frustrated, kind of like searching movie and this is almost like totally in the opposite direction it's it's at peace or far more at peace than that's not a quality that i associate with any of pta's other movies um but it's funny you and i were talking about feel good movies earlier this week and we were talking about Francis Ha and I have been thinking a lot about the Alana character in conversation with uh with Francis Ha because both the Cooper Hoffman character and the Alana Heim character are figuring it out it and that is the coming of age part of it it's not like they are satisfied with their station at life it's not like that they have

room to grow they're trying to figure out what makes sense for them. And it can get, you know, maybe not quite fraught for the Alana character, but complicated. And she gets frustrated. I think that's one of Alana Heim's great gifts as an actress is the just kind of like immediate zero to 60 just disgruntledness almost. She's just like, what is this? There's any, there's like a lovely screwball element to it as well. But even as they're trying to figure things out, it's that same, you know, it's going to be okay. Like, and you can like feel that in the movie.

This really is a feel good movie as opposed to pretty much all of his characters before now where it's like oh my god i don't know if you're gonna figure anything out i don't it might not be okay yeah i mean even in something like phantom thread where romance is a is a is a key aspect of the film there's so much tumult in the face of that romance that it makes it hard there are still a lot of paul thomas anderson signatures that i think the visual theme of this movie is clearly like running like being going on a journey but not necessarily knowing what the destination is. When Bill Simmons and I talked to Paul in 2017 on his pod, he had recommended a movie that the name of the movie escapes me right now. But in that recommendation, you remember this? He talked about this young woman who is an Olympic athlete who had been making this sort of transition after meeting a filmmaker to becoming an actor. And her first film was about her running career as a track athlete.

And he talked about how he loved to watch women run, which I think, you know, in my funny mind, like I love the idea of the slightly perverse Paul. Obviously, Paul has a perverse taste. And I identify with some of those tastes. But he was so sincere about how he loved to watch this young woman run. And he's got not just Alana, but Cooper Hoffman running all the time in this movie. And we've seen Joaquin run in his movies. We've seen Daniel Day-Lewis on the move in his movies. But this one in particular, it seems like he's locating... You know when you were 15 and you're just like, let's go somewhere. Let's get on our feet.

Like, I haven't just like dashed somewhere like that in a long time. And it's about this different time in your life and kind of reconnecting even just to the physical nature of it. Yes. I mean, it's funny that they're running so much in like the number one car culture capital of the world, you know. And there are also a lot of antics with cars in this movie as well. I mean, it's the 70s in the valley. But yes, just like the wide open spaces and these people kind of manically,

like almost like magnetically kind of being thrust together. They are often running towards each other as well. Yeah, there's something kind of necessary about it too because the film is set in 73, sort of at the height of the oil embargo and gas shortage in America. And so while everyone desperately needs their car in the valley, perhaps these kids who are more content to

be on foot kind of make sense here. I guess just a couple of more things about the movie because we don't want to give away too much. This has been often said, and I think it is very true. Robert Altman is kind of one of the signature inspirations for Paul's career. This is a movie with a big ensemble cast. More specifically, this feels much more like a Hal Ashby movie in terms of the tone. Hal Ashby had a way with locating kind of outcasts and somewhat unhappy people and putting them in situations in which they could be bonded together. Coming Home is a movie about that. Being There is a movie about that. This movie in particular feels like Harold and Maude and Shampoo had a baby, you know, like between John Peters and the Bradley Cooper cooper character very much inspiring shampoo between this this sort of sense

of this aimlessness and this sort of like i don't know kind of like wry sadness that comes in harold and maude there's a little bit of that in the undercurrent of this movie and it's hal ashby is very important director to me there's a reason that I feel very emotionally connected to Paul's movies because he feels like he's part of a lineage of storytellers that are like this, but it was nice to watch him make a movie in which he was out and out building on the legacy of that. Yes.

Yeah. And, and that to me is another part of the once upon a time in Hollywood comparison, like engaging like explicitly with the directors and the Hollywood moments that shaped these beloved directors of our generation. Yeah, I feel like we had a very similar conversation in 2019

when Once Upon a Time in Hollywood came out where I think we both walked out of that movie and Chris as well when we talked about it on the show. And we're like, it's nice to see Quentin kind of like open his heart a little bit and do something that was a little bit less concerned with volatility and a little bit more concerned with kind of like an emotional openness which is not to say that that movie doesn't have volatility it has a lot of it and this movie has some volatility too you know there's some intense sequences and people get very angry but if you have you been invested in a filmmaker's

career and followed their work very closely and thought deeply about what they're trying to say with their movies when they reach this stage and maybe it's maybe it's i don't know coordinated with where we are in our life but it's like this feels like the right time for us to be getting these kinds of movies i know we are but it's like it's nice to be kind of 10 12 years behind some of these folks we talked about it with sofia's movies yeah We are, but it's like, it's nice to be kind of 10, 12 years behind some of these folks. We talked about it with Sophia's movies last year as well. She also made kind of a nice movie last year in On the Rocks, you know?

And it feels like all of these people are kind of settling into a level of comfort with themselves that is allowing them to make something that does not feel gripped quite so tightly. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, they're not at war with themselves. They're not at war with the industry.

They're not at war with the world anymore, which is a defining characteristic of being 25 and 30 and maybe even 35. But that's when it starts. That's when it got a little exhausting for me personally. And, you know, I think there are some people who can't quite put it down. And there are other people who are willing to embrace a little sentimentality, which is often used as a pejorative.

But in this case, I mean it in kind of like the fullest, open-hearted way. Once again, Sean and I are also getting really soft. In more ways than one, I am in terrible shape at this stage of my life. Let's talk about the performances quickly. I don't really want to spoil. For anyone who has seen the trailer. You know that Bradley Cooper and Sean Penn and Tom Waits are in this movie. I don't want to ruin any of that.

Benny Safdie is in this movie. I don't want to ruin any of that. Christine Ebersol is in this movie. Don't want to ruin any of that. Some really fun kind of cameo episodic moments. But let's talk about Alana and Cooper because we've never seen them before unless you've been watching high music videos. Unless you've been on Instagram for the last decade or like logged this is this is the

one thing I've read a lot of great writing on this and and I don't want to diminish from Alana Hines debut as an actor she hasn't like acted in a movie before and her performance is central to the one I think she's great and there are things that she does that i've never seen her do and didn't know that she could do but all of the writing around it is like they found alana on the street and like respectfully not only has pta himself been working with heim the band and like directing music videos and been like very central to the like the throwback valley vibe that they have built their like 10 year musical career musical career on at this point but like if you look at instagram like any woman in america you are familiar with alana okay let's just it's it's very funny and very self-selecting, these reviews. Yeah, well, she's not an actor, though. She's not a trained actor.

Totally. She's wonderful. I've seen her in conversation now after both screenings. She was there to talk about the work that she does in the movie. And you can tell that Paul kind of surprised her with this one. Just kind of emailed her one day and said, read this, what do you think? Within a few days, he offered her the part.

And it sounds like in the early stages of the film that cooper who is also not a professional actor they they had to figure out how to be in this movie and i think that that gives the movie a charm in a way there there is like a kind of like unprofessional unfussy unmannered unactorily aspect to it and so when you actually put them against i mean sean penn and bradley cooper are there are there two more actory electric kind of gripping the camera by the balls actors that are around in hollywood right now so you there's this interesting contrast the other thing that that paul does that i think is really cool is no one's wearing makeup in this

movie everyone looks real you know when the first moment we see cooper hoffman he's looking in the mirror and he's brushing his hair and he's covered in zits he's a 15 year old boy you know alana has this kind of you know someone like alana who is a rock star if she were going to appear in any other film would be glammed out there would be a team that would be responsible for making her look just so. And she's beautiful in her own distinct way. And the film lets her look the way that a girl like this would look at that time, which is an unusual choice if you watch a lot of movies. Yeah, and it's not even like the no makeup makeup look, which we all should know at this point

is very intentional and takes a lot of time. And I have not quite mastered it um you know i but you are a you are a classic no makeuper you know i have a classic no makeuper and i'm just gonna be real she's probably wearing a little bit but like let's let's that's okay that's and like they both are is we're making movies okay there's something about like the lights and and and camera but it is it's stripped down it not glammed up. It's not even like the fashion 70s throwback that she does with her sisters and the man. And her sisters are also in this film,

her entire family, just basically being themselves. And they look very different from what you see on Instagram. It is very lived in. Can I just say I've always been more of a Danielle guy? Just always into Danielle. Okay. I think that's great. I mean, you know, they play different roles in the band than they do here on screen. Maybe I'm just a lead singer kind of guy. Yeah. Everyone has different strengths. Okay. Um, I thought she was very good. I think it's interesting to watch someone like this get thrust into like an Oscar conversation because it seems, now listen, I, i i am i'm as guilty of this as

anybody but it feels like it is diminishing my appreciation for the movie where i'm like i don't really give a fuck if alana heim is nominated for an academy award like enjoy this movie try to try to appreciate the fact that there are not a lot of movies that are like this right now nevertheless there will be an awards push for her it's so funny it's you really don't want to share the things you love with other people which i'm the exact same way and no no no i like i totally get it i um can i totally different um my husband who is so often like mocked on this podcast was on a different ringer podcast not ours we don't invite him he was on the ringer verse and i thought he did a great job he was great he was so good um he was talking about wheel of time,

which is a very nerdy fantasy series that I've never read, uh, that he loves very much, but they were also talking about this moment of when something that you love, and it's not, you're not the only person on earth who loves it, but it's a, it's a small dedicated community you've organized and spent a lot of one-on-one time

with someone's art or just with the art itself. And then it gets opened up to the masses and how jarring that experience can be. And it's really funny. You do a full podcast about the Oscars and you're just like, please leave the Oscars conversation out of my PTA time. Yeah, I mean, in true, I hate my self-fashion. I hate what I've done here where I have to mention the fact that there will be an Oscar conversation

around a movie like this. I guess it's not that I don't want to share what's great about this. What I don't want to do is diminish it and kind of water it down and bastardize it because the movie's intentions feel very pure. We watch a lot of movies at this time of year every year whose intentions are very much informed by their hopes to be recognized by awards bodies. Obviously, this movie getting Oscar nominations wouldn't mean more people would see it. We saw that with

Phantom Thread. Phantom Thread actually did pretty good business in part because it was recognized by the Academy. That being said, Phantomantom thread starred daniel day lewis and was this beautifully mounted film that takes place in europe it was a period piece it was all about the design and fashion and there were all these pieces yes there were there were pieces that made it legible i think to the academy this is going to be a little bit harder i think for some members to parse because it's, it, it, it ambles, you know, it, it kind of like, it just kind of flows along. It's not hurtling towards something. And so because of that, it's, it's more unusual, but, uh, let's just talk about Cooper very

quickly. Um, again, another, I had never seen him before. And obviously he has this deep relationship with with paul thomas anderson because philip seymour hoffman was you know a dear friend and a muse in many ways for for paul and so i think asking him to participate in this movie is just generally very heartwarming uh did did you have this i had this i had this experience of watching him that was very much akin to watching michael gandolfini in the sopranos uh the recent the recent Sopranos film, where I was like, oh gosh, like you really can't not be your father sometimes. And in a nice way, you know, where he would make a couple of gestures or move his hand in such a way that I like, that touched me. I was like,

oh gosh, you know, the profound legacy happening in the physical form, it was really meaningful to me. What did you think? Yeah, of course. There were certain moments that were very touching and bittersweet, like when the father kind of shines through. But I think for the most part, I was just like, wow, look at this guy, this just very charming young guy go. And there is like a real confidence in this character and this performance

that I guess is like sort of consistent throughout PTA characters but usually the confidence like eats these people alive and without spoiling it my guys just thriving yeah and that's that's hard to do as a character and that's hard to do um in your first film especially when it it's, you know, two new actors, if not unknowns, carrying a Paul Thomas Anderson film. I mean, think about the psychic weight of that just on its own, even before you bring in the, you know, the stuff about his dad having been so central to so many of those other roles. It's like that it doesn't happen anymore where you get two people who have not starred in movies. This is a big opportunity.

Well, it occurred to me too as I was looking back at some of PTA's other movies this week. It's been a long ass time since he made a movie that did not center either Joaquin Phoenix or Daniel Day-Lewis. I mean, he was really calling from arguably the two most celebrated male performers of their generations. Or Adam Sandler. And Adam Sandler before that. Yes. So. I mean, one of the reasons we love Paul Thomas Anderson is he loves movie stars and he knows how to put movie stars in a position to thrive.

So this is obviously a pretty significant change for him to choose two relative unknowns. And yet I think the movie just works very well it doesn't hurt that he has surrounded the the these actors with not just the sean penns and the bradley coopers of the world but um harriet sansom harris is the person who jumped out to me the most when i saw this she plays the casting agent and i don't want to spoil that scene but that actually was my that was my favorite comic scene in the movie and you you may remember Harriet Sansom Harris she appears in Phantom Thread as the drunken woman who is eventually put down in the dress uh she gives a similarly virtuoso performance in this movie as like a Sue Mengers-esque kind of a child star agent in a

hilarious scene. Again, this is a Paul Thomas Anderson thing. He knows how to pick faces and pick performers who maybe have not necessarily been the biggest stars in the world, but drop them into these worlds and make them unforgettable. And just give them five minutes or 10 minutes and then keep it moving.

There are a whole number of others that we'll get into much, much deeper as we talk about the movie later in December. There's also, I think, an interesting conversation to be had akin to the one we had about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood about the real and imagined history of Hollywood here and what he has chosen to keep true

to the history we know and what he has chosen to distort. A lot to unpack there. Some of that just seems like legal. You know? Just like kind of what, you know, what names will the lawyers let us use and what names do we have to change slightly? The last thing is just the music.

Paul Thomas Anderson, well-known. I think he has taken up the mantle along with Quentin that Martin Scorsese kind of built out of essentially inserting pop music into his films and using it expertly. He's also had this partnership with Johnny Greenwood now for many years in which he scores his films. There is some Johnny Greenwood score in this movie, but not very much. It is primarily powered by time-appropriate 1970s pop and rock and roll.

And there are a great many song choices here that work for me. There are a few that are among the best I've ever experienced in my life. I've been listening to the music of this movie nonstop since I saw it. I know that you have too. I'm reluctant to give away the big one, but the big one is such a big one for us

because of our guy, Paul. So if you don't want to hear it, hit 30 seconds. But I will say, again, my husband went to see this movie before both of us. Very rude. Just didn't invite me. He was like, goodbye. It's Tuesday afternoon. I'm going to see Licorice Pizza by myself.

And then came home and turned this on in our house. So I knew that this music cue was coming and it didn't diminish it for me. So once again, if you don't want to hear it, skip forward. But it's Let Me Roll It, the Paul McCartney, the Wings song. And I just, as I said to you, like I felt like I could lift a table

when it started in the movie and it's been on in our house nonstop, really the whole been on the run album actually which is tremendous and i it's just very special when it happens it's just like an alchemical thing that i am so grateful for it's a hair-raising moment and he still has the ability to make those hair-raising moments where what it feels like time stops in a movie and a filmmaker has grabbed something that matters to you

and inserted it and associated it with the story that he's telling in such a deep and fun way. That's a great one. There's a couple of other ones. There's a couple of other bands that the Doors and Blood, Sweat, and Tears are two bands that have been kicked around a lot by the sort of critical and cultural establishment for the last 30

years. And him trying to rescue those bands in this movie, I found wonderful. And then the song, which I will not spoil, that closes the movie when the end credits hit is now like my favorite song of all time. And it's a song that I had heard by an artist that I love, but not something that I had associated much with. And this movie has a great ending as many Paul Thomas Anderson films do. Licorice Pizza is a great movie.

I hope people will check it out. I can't wait to talk more about it. Hopefully we'll be able to build a whole world of coverage around Licorice Pizza as it makes its way into the world. Do you think this movie has commercial prospects?

How do you think it's going to go into the world? God, I have no idea. It's hard to tell these days. And again, we didn't we didn't talk about the king richard box office thing and and bill you know kind of getting our hopes up on a podcast and then not paying out and me feeling really sad though it does seem like many people watched it and not just watch two minutes of it watched the whole film at home so do i think this movie is targeted to a age and demographic that will just wait until a Friday night and they've put their kids to bed and they're like, now I can, you know, have a edible and watch the great licorice pizza.

I do. So and that is its own form of commercial viability at this point. Do I think that everyone's going to be like, let me rush out? A lot of people will seek it out at theaters and because it's only in so many theaters right now and maybe that'll help kind of like the scarcity demand of it all. But I think it'll be seen.

How it will be seen, I got no idea. Yeah, I agree with you. I think there obviously is this strong desire to have it be seen on on screen on big screens and the appetite for this kind of a movie is lower than it ever has been on big screens so there's some challenge there ultimately doesn't matter ultimately it's a movie that i think people will want to live with and will want to spend a lot of time with over and over again so uh we'll talk more about it in the future let's let's transition now to the wider paul thomas

anderson conversation yeah um it's john's time he is uh why let me try to figure out why he's my favorite i still don't really know okay i'm just gonna ask you this so i'm i'm glad you're just gonna just let it all out i'll set myself up well i mean is there a better way to kind of position what i'm about to go into here no i what is it that makes these movies so singularly important to you i think some some artists you watch their work and you can tell that they're just so desperate to get something out of themselves you know they're just so you can feel the urge to express themselves in a way that like doesn't make me cringe you know sometimes the way i'm describing that sounds a little bit highfalutin and uh and perhaps pretentious but i think particularly with paul and if you read his interviews when he was younger if you watched him

in this kind of like frantic stage of his career circa magnolia you felt like a mind racing all the time kind of eager to be understood and eager to get something across the screen and also extremely ambitious and desperate to kind of become legendary in a way that I thought was fascinating. You know, as somebody who grew up in Hollywood, who was sort of surrounded by Hollywood, his father was a voiceover person on television and hosted TV shows over the years. And so he knew the milieu very well, but he also, I mean, his first movie, his first short film was about a porn star. He was also somebody who was transgressive, who was a little bit underneath the dirty fingernails of Hollywood as well. He saw some things as a kid that maybe

we didn't get to see growing up where we grew up. And he seemed eager to kind of like shine a bright neon light on some of those things. So that's very intoxicating when you're a kid, you know, and I was all of 14 or 15 when Boogie Nights came around. I didn't see Heartache when it came out. That was a very small film with a very small release to play at Sundance. Some controversy around the release of it but I will never forget um hearing the uh the Eric Burden song spill the wine on the trailer Boogie Nights I must have been going to see I don't know what what was in 1997 what was playing in theaters for a kid like me

I'm not sure what movie I should probably try to figure out what movie I saw in which I saw the Boogie Nights trailer right but just the trailer, it wrapped its arms around me. And I was like, whatever this is, I'm in. And it wasn't because it was porn or the 70s. There was something else going on. There was a sense of showmanship, a pizzazz to the way that that was sold to me, marketed really to me.

And I got hooked. And I got hooked. the movie lived up to my expectations and it's been interesting and we we talked about with licorice pizza early at the conversation like how he's reached this phase of his life where he feels more comfortable making a movie that is more of a hang but i liked that he was on this desperate journey to make something meaningful you know you could i could feel you know, that sort of thing. And it is timing as a lot of it. He is a director that is so important to our generation because I mean,

you being 14, when you saw boogie nights, like that's, that's why you love Paul Thomas Anderson, right? Like that's just, it catches you right at the form of moment and the transition to being like a grownup and thinking about things in a different way. also that thing we talked about like oh i didn't know you could do

this in movies right um and then as he goes on his journey you also go on your movie watching journey and i mean like taste definitely seems a part of it. He has like specific, excellent taste, but his interests and style and just what he wants to look at, probably both like our generation, like recognize that it was interesting, but it also basically taught us what was cool and what to like in a way. Yeah.

Like I would say. Yeah. I think there's definitely something to that. I think there's something, we've talked about that with basically all of our kind of iconic directors that we love on the show they they trained us how to dress what kind of actor acting style was cool what music was cool and you you go on this you spelunk your way through popular culture when you see i mean if you listen to the boogie night soundtrack to the point about licorice pizza there's a lot of jams on there that I'd never heard before. And I was like, oh, okay, this is this. Oh, this is this period of Marvin Gaye's career. Oh, this is this period

of British rock and roll. This is what this version of disco sounded like. Quentin obviously does the same thing. Sophia does the same thing. All these filmmakers, Soderbergh, Wes Anderson, they are curators as much as they are artists. And so they were able to build these worlds out as time goes on pta gets away from that i think i think he starts going into a slightly more narrowed down vision of the kinds of stories that he wants to tell which is not to say they're not expansive stories but he's not using as many of the component parts he seems to have like figured out that there are some core themes he wants to hit on and it feels like magnolia is this big turning point where he tries to jam everything into that movie he's got like 5 000 ideas and i still love that movie because again i saw when i was 16 and i was like

what the fuck holy shit you can do this and so it's still a mind blower to me but i think most people understand that it's it's ambitions it's it's reach uh exceeds its grasp in in many ways i mean it's also like it's a lot of feelings and a lot of working through things that like in the process of the art there is i mean there's obviously like a huge amount of craft i don't want to say like undisciplined but when you compare it with just the exactness the laser focus of there will be blood and the master in particular which are like his i'm gonna write the great american novel phase just like watch me like watch me work um magnolia is the young person trying to put all of the pieces together while also just kind of unloading everything all at once, which is its own art form and has its own place for sure. It is. I like an overload movie. I like a breathlessly ambitious film. And that one,

he gave an interview in the New York Times this week. And in that interview, he said that he thinks movies should be two hours. And Licor's Pizza is about two hours and 10 minutes. Most of his movies of late have been in the two hour and 15 minute range. Magnolia is 189 minutes. That's a big ass movie. That's a lot to ask an audience to sit through. Even when you've got Tom Cruise and Phil Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Melora Walters, Julianne Moore,

Alfred Molina. You got this incredible cast of characters. It's still a lot. I mean, we have these kind of awful conversations about would this be a TV show these days? Thankfully, Paul Thomas Anderson has not made a TV show, but I don't think an executive would let him make a movie like this right now.

I literally don't think a movie like this is possible in 2021 at this length. Sure, but also he't think a movie like this is possible in 2021 at this length. Sure, but also he just made a movie starring two people who've never been in a movie before. He gets to do the other things, the things that other people don't get to do. That's always kind of been his place. It's very true. And he does have a kind of privilege in that respect. But I will say he does not seem very interested in playing the kind of box office game and

only kind of modestly interested in the awards game. But one of the folks who was interviewed after the most recent screening I went to was a woman named Sarah Murphy who had worked very closely with Philip Seymour Hoffman for many years and has become a kind of producing partner on the last few PTA projects. And she told the story of how she became associated with him and how she came to work for him. And I think he called her up circa 2015 and said, I heard you know how to do things on the cheap. Because he wanted to start making music videos with Haim. And that's the thing is he's trying to work within the means that allow for him to keep making movies. You know, Mike Mills told me about this earlier this week on the show.

He was like, I'm looking to make movies that get just enough attention just enough critical acclaim maybe one awards nomination just so I can make the next one and that's really all I care about and you kind of feel that way with with Paul at this point too that he's like if I could just make keep making this stuff until I'm like 70 75 I'd be good with that which I I think is also cool I'm starting to enter that phase of my life honestly again it's like they're not as much left to prove and there's like still plenty left to prove but you know no one's on a glacier just yet but it's the but but that definitely magnolia and for sure and there will be blood and the master are just pulsating with the just like a very familiar late 20s, early 30s, like male, just I must eat like the whole world right now vibe. It's really interesting also because I did not get to see, I would have been like 12 for Boogie Nights.

And as discussed, my parents, you know, I wasn't allowed to see boogie nights when it came out so i probably did not see any paul thomas anderson movies until college or as a young adult and a very classic uh a young man being like this is really important to me here it is type situation and you know like an interesting marriage of like energy and phase of life which everyone goes through it and it's maybe it's it's honestly more palatable in a movie than just you know sitting across the table from you but uh it's we it all it's natural it's part of life one of the reasons i'm glad i've been uh married and with the same person for as long as i have is because i am so grateful i have not had to go on dates and tell people that there will be blood is my favorite movie because that's like that's psychopath shit and like I don't know how

many second dates I would have had the opportunity to have uh because you're right there is like it's a signal to people that you're a little bit you're a little too much you need to relax like I was not very relaxed in my late in my late 20s and early 30s I was I wanted it and I like that that Paul Thomas Anderson wanted it that he because in in in a personality that's that's pretty annoying that's not a good conversation at a bar and i know that about myself we shouldn't be so hard on these young men i mean like being 27 or 25 bobby i know it's hard and and also there will be blood is like one of the great movies so it's you know you can appreciate it also just like, holy shit, you made that.

But there was always a little bit of element of like, if you're like finding yourself in the 2000s canon of Paul Thomas Anderson, it was like, oh, okay, cool. Like, you know, good luck to you with that. Yeah, I mean, I think the Magnolia like transition is interesting because the Cruise character

has been so kind of memed and celebrated and dissected at this point but that's ultimately a very angry and repressed person working through a very powerful loss in his life and when when we watch when i watched that movie i saw that character as kind of like satirical i think that i thought there was something very humorous and that he was playing with the the public persona of tom cruise in some ways with that character but then when you go when you look at punch drunk love i think you realize that there's like a much more native angry unsettled feeling inside of pta at that time and what he's doing with the

barry character and adam sandler is like not parody and not a joke and kind of like furious. There's like something burning inside of him. And there is obviously an immense sweetness to that movie. And it does round itself into this beautiful romance. But Barry Egan is fucking pissed. Yeah, but it can be both, right? Like that's actually what great artists can do is they can recreate that like that that basic like powerful emotion and they can and and it can be like raw and and alarming but also kind of like you know intoxicating and then they can also have the savvy to be like what

I need is Tom Cruise doing this performance in Magnolia and getting Tom Cruise to do that I mean 1999 was a very different era for Tom Cruise but like when I re-watched Magnolia I was kind of like not the most excited about it re-watching it because it's just it's like three hours you know and like sitting down to be like now i will watch like this three hour like you know grief fest is is a lot um and then i was just every time i can't believe you got tom cruise to do this that is like that's such a testament to his understanding of movie stars his understanding of movies and his understanding of how to turn these very primal emotions into actual art, which not everyone can do.

There's a whole other podcast to be done about the actors he could not get to participate and do some of those things. There's the famed what if of Leo playing Dirk Diggler and Warren Beatty playing Jack that would have made Boogie Nights a completely different film,

would have perhaps made the careers of those actors significantly different, and certainly Paul Thomas Anderson's career significantly different. But that's part of the reason why Licorice Pizza is so unusual and so interesting as a next phase, because he's not doing that thing where he's desperately trying to get someone very famous and very skilled to channel these energies that he has, these ideas that he seems to have. I mean, we're ascribing a lot of intention and feeling in a way that maybe he has not necessarily specifically located,

but Hey, that's the job when you're trying to unpack some art, there's no question that there was something roiling inside of Paul at that time. Punch Drunk Love is a tricky one for me because it's not personally going to end up very high on my rankings but i think for some people it is by far their favorite paul thomas anderson movie and and i i guess i'm curious like how you feel about that one because it doesn't i don't i would say it does not strike

me as being in your zone yeah but i love it i and i did go back and do a lot of re-watching and again re-watching a movie and re-watching a movie and rewatching a movie at home is a very different experience than going to the theater and seeing of any of these but punch drug love was one of the ones that stood out to me upon rewatch i mean that makes sense right it's like 90 minutes it has in its bones some of the d that I know so well from romantic comedies, but is really like fucking with those in like interesting ways. And you can also, if you're doing it and as a revisitation of PTA's career and,

you know, themes and stylistic traces and it, it, it is like a interesting like flex point because you can see like you know the anger and the oddity and the valley of it all but he's trying on different formats and different constraints really um so and and the adam sandler performance which is just endlessly fascinating to me both in the the sandler of it all and as you said this idea of getting movie stars to do something that we didn't really know was there or that maybe you knew was there but no one else could convince

them uh to deliver so i mean this is hard in general when you're ranking something where they're like honestly no misses so like putting anything at number nine or number eight is going to feel really bad for you yeah and and i and i understand that it's tough i i wouldn't it's not number nine or number eight for me but i guess it's maybe not as high as some people would have it because i think a lot of these a lot these films in particular are when you meet them and we've been talking about that a lot lately on the show i think that there is a a generational quality to some of this stuff i think like it was so funny to watch phantom thread become this sort of powerful meme in our culture because i was like whoa you guys are into this as much as i am that's actually

quite strange where were you you know 10 years ago when i was what i wanted to talk about there will be blood all night it's different phantomreat is a comedy and it's and it is about romance like there it is it is very different than there will be blood is it I drink your milkshake are you sure that's hilarious I mean but that's like what's cool about it is that there is it's taking the intensity and the the like thematic tensions and putting it in a totally different situation and coming up with a different result but some of it is just like no one says a word for like 20 minutes and there will be blood i know it's you know rules so hard there there will be blood is an absolute masterpiece

we all know that but like you sit down to watch it like on a thursday night as i did and i was just like it's just me in my house just watching people look for oil for like a long time. And no one is saying anything. What you've just described to me. It's like a perfect night. I know. That is absolute bliss. It's like my,

my dad's famous pronouncement about me, which is like, Amanda doesn't like movies where people don't talk. I think that was after inside Llewyn Davis. And I was like, you know, dad, you are a hundred% right. Well, that certainly speaks to the Aaron Sorkin admiration

because that's all those people do. I mean, there's plenty of talking in all of his movies. There's not a whole lot to be said, I think, about There Will Be Blood from me at this point. I've written about it extensively. I've asked Paul about it a few times now in my career. I do think it is the movie of the 21st century, using the 20th century to kind of unpack who

we are, what we are, what this country is built on. You know, it's been funny watching Succession very closely this season. I don't know if you're all caught up on Succession and doing that show with Joanna and like zeroing in on, I think, a lot of very similar thematic tension in that series and what There Will Be Blood is after. Now obviously There Will Be Blood is like this much more like stately American cinema project you know that is like in

the tradition of John Ford and Sam Peckinpah and you know but by the same token it's just about like the really corrosive nature of wanting more and more and more and not knowing why you want it. And it almost feels like him putting Magnolia on the big screen and being like, why did I want this? Why did I want to do it this way?

Why was I so driven? What was I so angry about? What did I sacrifice? What relationships did I sacrifice? What feelings did I ignore in an effort to get this thing that i thought was so important and so in addition to it being this big weighty material about our country and about you know wealth and and religion it's it feels very very very personal you know about him kind of like trying to reckon with all of this ambition that

we're describing here ambition andition and anger. Yes. So the only movie that I rewatched to prepare for this, because I don't really need to rewatch these movies. I've seen them a lot. But the only one I rewatched that I'm still trying to, I'm still trying to figure out is The Master. Okay. I think that that will be, as I get into the next phase of my life,

the like, what was this? What was he after here? How did he do this? What's going on between these two guys? Especially since Hoffman has passed away and I look at what he's doing in this movie and I'm like, this is all magic tricks.

He's Houdini. I've described many times the screening that Chris and I went to, the midnight screening at the Arclight when we saw this movie that was pure chills, pure like I'll never forget, going out into the lobby afterwards and everyone just looking around at each other

and not knowing what to say. It was like we just got hit with a big bag of feathers right in the face. And I still, to this day, I am overwhelmed by it. I love it. I think it's so interesting. But that mystery that I was trying to talk about earlier

this one's still i don't i have all this big like big understanding of there will be blood and i have no understanding of the master do you do you look at this one before we talked i re-watched part of it which is i mean all of these it feels terrible saying out loud that you only re-watch part of them because they're masterpieces i mean it's it's a time crunch guys it's a busy time of year and i'm just like doing my best do you have i ever told you my saying the master story i don't think so remember this i saw it at um the zigfield theater in new york at the premiere um and my husband zach baron was there uh andy greenwald was there and it was the first time that i met chuck clisterman. And we all went to dinner after the master. So imagine me talking to those guys about the master. I didn't say very much at the table, I'll be really honest.

I was just kind of like, I had like the master part too, which was all of those guys trying to process it in real time. And I say that with love for all of them. And so I think it has, it, it feels basically, it's the coldest of his movies for sure. And while also maybe like getting closest to whatever like vein he's been poking at in terms of ambition, but I guess like really power dynamics and whatever happens like between men um yes which can be a lot of sorts of things and so feeling a little bit on the outside looking into it is both

i think the experience of that movie and how that movie is made and also how i just experience it like just just like trying to understand what's going on with men, which I'll like never totally get. And that's okay. Um, you guys do you, but it is, it's definitely, as you said,

like the one that you'll, we'll all be puzzling over and probably rewatch it every five years. And it's something different. I wonder if it's even something different to, to PTA, like every few years, the way that it, it mutates, it's even something different to to pta like every few years the way that it it mutates it's really like complicated in a good way it is i think like you've made the right point which is that is very much about something that happens between men that

i think in this movie you could make the case that there is like a kind of desire between the two main characters whether that's like a carnal desire i think make the case that there is like a kind of desire between the two main characters. Whether that's like a carnal desire, I think is debatable. But there is like a longing for each other and a longing for the company of this person that you can't totally understand. That is like, it is romance in many ways. And it's so funny that the movie had this big Trojan horse of, this is the L. Ron Hubbard Scientology movie. And like, that's not really what that movie is about at all. It uses the tools of the L. Ron Hubbard story, I think, to give us the Hoffman character and to put us in that world where a quasi-famous cult leader is able to operate and is able to entice and charm and ensnare all of these people particularly this

character freddy but this is also happening on succession right now between greg and tom and and and then more specifically this week with uh with roman and the justin kirk character that was Where there is this masculine, combative, emotional, obsessed, loving, chemistry-bound relationship between two guys. I have friendships like this where I'm like, this person riles me up and I'm confused by them and I love them and I want to throw them down the sewer. And there is something that he has been able to hit that very – I honestly't i can't think of very many filmmakers that can do this yeah the the succession comparison is apt except i think that succession is moving towards or not moving towards in bodies and nihilism that i don't think is there in any of the pta stuff you're right if it's there he's really battling against it and there is like a real sense still of emotion and something that either hasn't been unlocked or frankly that he's like

fighting to to keep closed because it is like so powerful and there's even in even in the master which i think is like cold and like very distant and calculated um there is something humming underneath it that is like very very potent and mysterious as you said whereas i think succession is just just really dead inside in a way that i think is its own form of like artistic achievement like the how dark and dead they're getting this season is i think turning some people off and i'm like here for it let's go um i exact same i feel the exact same way about succession and i but i think you are 100 right that it feels like paul thomas anderson is trying to reject that or better understand it to get away from it. That darkness, especially as we get further into

his career here and he starts to transition, he starts clearly thinking much more about love in terms beyond the kind of psychotic obsession. There will be blood in the master, our films about psychotic obsession with getting what you want, with holding onto relationships. The H.W. Daniel relationship is so strange that is not his son that is a kid that he effectively stole saved raised and then abandoned and the same is true for freddie and the hoffman character there is this bizarre why do we need each other question thrumming inside of these movies. Phantom Threat is different.

It is, there is a psychotic nature to it, but you know why they need each other, why they want each other, why they come together. Yes. I mean, there is the unspoken fathers and sons thing through the first half of PTA's career. It's not unspoken. It's like super spoken.

It's spoken. It's like really spoken and then retread and i think sometimes even when he thinks he's not speaking it he's really speaking it and you know that that's a great cinematic tradition and i just i send all my best wishes to all the fathers and sons out there thank you for your support i must say i appreciate it you're at least like father daughter you know so you're like on girl dad island but i i have had to negotiate a very strange relationship with my father so you are you are i can relate you're a son of a father that's truly um yeah you know good luck to you guys so but but phantom thread is the

is an examining like of a different type of you know what can be like marriage which could be or a romantic relationship which can like be very fraught and has its own power dynamics and is not just about like mushy gushy love um even though i think that like movie like does get there more than the others do uh but yeah there there there are always actually feelings underpinning some of this, even if he's figuring out how to parcel them and when to let them out and when to keep them shut really tight until they could power a nuclear plant. I feel like the Vicky Krapes character might have opened Paul's movies up to you in a new way. Is that fair to say? Yes.

Yeah. I think that that is probably the only female character, you know, maybe until Alana where the female character is as an equal or is, you know, it's, it's a two hander for at least some of that movie, even though obviously like the power dynamics within how he meets the Vicky grapes character and,

and the power dynamics are kind of like a central aspect of that movie and how they're going to negotiate them. But she really gets a place at the table. Whereas in most of the other movies, they're just they're supporting characters. And that's not like a PTA doesn't care about women thing. I'm not don't even I'm not going close to it. But that's not what I mean at all. It's just that he has made a lot of movies about men and their relationships to other men.

That is his, that's his interest set or was. And now he seems to be much more interested in distinctly the relationship between a man and a woman. The last two films are very much about the kind of psychological warfare, deep seated feeling, but also the sweetness and the love and i mean that that sequence in phantom thread when daniel day lewis's character arrives at the restaurant diner for the first time where the vicky craves character is working

and he begins to order and she describes for him what's happening with the menu and the food and the interplay that they have. There is no scene like that in all of his other films. There's nothing that is that full of yearning and mischief and excitement. And you feel like you're on the brink of something very special. And it's fun. It's fun to watch him get to these points of telling his story. If he had just made the master 16 times,

I probably would have just lapped it up and been like, bravo, you genius. But it would not have felt like a full career. It would have felt iterative. And I think that that's also a trap that a lot of filmmakers, when they reach this stage of their career, really all artists,

is how do I stay fresh and respond honestly to how I'm feeling as opposed to trying to give people the thing that I think that they want from me? He doesn't really seem stuck on that, which I have always admired. No, and that is another exciting thing about Licorice Pizza. It's just all the things that he can do and how well he can do them. And there is enough sort of familiarity with the world of Paul Thomas Anderson still there that you're excited and responding to a long career that you've loved. But it's just like, oh, yeah, you want to make this type of movie?

Great. It's going to be great. It's been interesting watching him speak in some interviews recently and say, yeah, I've got a couple of films basically written or things I want to do. And he doesn't seem to be be he's not anguished over the future either you know he's like I'm gonna keep making movies it's been a hilarious listening to him talk in ways that sound quite familiar to myself about how he's got a pretty posi relationship with some of the mainstream entertainment in the world right now Venom 2

Check Plus Shang-Chi he enjoyed it he lives a Marvel household. He has no anxiety about any of those things. He has a kind of like, he has a very Valley Girl vibe about the way that he's talking about things right now. And I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. It's very like, yeah, it's cool. Sure, whatever, man. And I also aspire to that.

I have a little bit too much East Coast neurosis, I think, to ultimately get there. But I like the way he's moving through the world right now. Right. And again, it's like also a phase in his career where it's like, let's enjoy this. Let's see what we can make because we're interested in it and what we can see because it's, you know, interesting or pleasurable. It is. So there are a few things that we have not really discussed here. He made a he made a short film called anima with tom york a couple of years ago he made a really interesting documentary called junun um with johnny greenwood in 2015 you know there's some short films obviously cigarettes and coffee was the original text for hard eight there was the um the boogie nights kind of the dirk digler

story this sort of like mockumentary many of that stuff most of that stuff is all available either on streaming services or on youtube i would encourage people to check that out we're not gonna that's not part of the rankings here right we're just doing the nine feature films that paul has made and um i mean should i just should i just be like here's what i'm thinking like how do how do we do do you have do you have anything do you really need something are you gonna be like i need this to be in the top four? Phantom Thread. Let me see if I have Phantom Thread in the top four. I do.

Okay. Okay. And I think that's the only one that I will like. I would be really mad if you were like number nine Phantom Thread. And I don't think that you would do that. I wouldn't do that. I think Phantom Thread was brilliant. Phantom Thread and Parasite and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood I think are the only recent like five star 100% this movie.

I guess Get Out would be in that conversation too. Very few movies like that in the last five years. I think whether Licorice Pizza is one of those movies is an interesting conversation because it almost like

defies the terms of this kind of a conversation. Yeah. Where it's like, if you don't like it, that's cool, man. Like that's kind of how it feels. Like if you don't like There Will Be Blood, it's like, well, don't like it, that's cool, man. Like, that's kind of how it feels. Like, if you don't like

There Will Be Blood, it's like, well, you don't get it. You know, there's something like angry about it. And I don't even know who's disembodied voice I'm using right now. Probably just my own.

Right. But with this movie, it feels like Licorice Pizza's like, that's cool, man. Just go next door and check out Shang-Chi. You know, whatever you want to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I guess another one that I thought of, but I don't need to say because i know what's going to be in your top four is boogie nights yes so like but like that would be insane if it there's one critical question here that that we'll get to but here's here's what i'm thinking for these rankings okay and we can workshop it in real time yeah number nine i think sort of by necessity has to be heart eight because it is the sort of least ambitious and the first film that pta is making i like that film quite a bit, but it is not, and it clearly indicates

where he's going and what kind of characterization he cares about. And the John C. Reilly character in particular, I think kind of is a meaningful stand-in for PTA at the beginning of his career. He's like waiting for somebody to come and be like, hey man, here's how you do it. Here's how you go through life and go through the world. Philip Baker Hall is amazing in that movie. And I cherish that performance. I think the Gwyneth Paltrow character and the Sam Jackson character are kind of weird. And it seems like he is also working

through some youthful complications about how to characterize those kinds of people and those kinds of actors in his movie. So to me, it's number nine. But at the same time, he did get Gwyneth Paltrow and Sam Jackson in his first movie. I mean, the dude can write.

He can write his ass off. If you've ever read one of his scripts, you know he's one of the best writers around. So he obviously has always been able to get young and interesting performers to participate. I'm putting a movie that we have not talked about at all for not really like any specific reason, but we haven't mentioned Inherent Vice.

Mm-hmm. Which I think is kind of an outlier in his career. And another movie that I'm not, I know why he made it, and I think it's good fun, but it feels like a detour. It doesn't feel a part of the project.

The only thing worse than sitting across the table from a prospective romantic partner who's like my, you know, I love Paul Thomas Anderson and there will be blood is an expression of my soul is then that person also being like, and I just really love the novels of Thomas Pynchon and reader, I married him,

but I just, it's too much for me all at once. I mean, also just like one of the lowest moments of my relationship life was I had to watch it like 2000, what is it? 14 Eagles game. And then I had to go straight to watch Inherent Vice like on some Sunday when there was like three hours of sunlight in New York.

And we got in a terrible fight on the C train platform on the way home. It just like Zach actually was, he knew I was rewatching all the movies and he kept being like, can we rewatch in here in vice? I really want to rewatch in here in vice. And I was like, get out of my room. Like, no, we're not doing it. Um, but that's all, that's all personal stuff. It doesn't, you're right. It's, it feels sort of like a side project in its in its execution as opposed to the main thrust of his career it's the movie that i think um has the most in common with licorice pizza actually because it is quite so episodic it has this sprawling cast it has these couple of dynamic people at the center of it but because it's based on a novel and because that novel is borderline inscrutable,

I've read that novel. I like that novel. But the Doc Sportello character is this odd cipher. I would have loved to have seen this movie if Robert Downey Jr. had taken the part, which was the original plan. And while I, of course, we both love Joaquin Phoenix and it's not really a judgment,

it would have just been a different flavor. And it would have been interesting to watch him wrangle someone as antic as Downey into that part tons of stuff i like about the movie that i think is funny but i don't get any of the big kind of emotional and deep feelings when i watch it um i think he tries to ascribe some of that like intensity and anger and frustration into like the relationship between doc and the katherine waterston character but like it feels unfocused to me yeah it just doesn just doesn't quite land it. Um, so that would be number eight for me. I'm, I'm good with that. I would put punch drunk love at seven. I mean, this is just where doing this

gets really frustrating, right? Because punch drunk love at number seven in the scope of things, it's probably fine, but also what a perfect little jewel box of a movie. I wonder how much recency bias is informing this because I would put Licorice Pizza at six. But Licorice Pizza feels like a movie made by a guy who finally knows how to make movies and Punch Drunk Love feels like a movie made by a guy who's trying to reset what he thinks a movie should be.

Like it's such a hard left turn away from Magnolia that, and it does have these incredible visual and sonic flourishes. The music, that kind of rainbow color palette that we keep seeing, those waves of blue and red. But it feels like an experiment in a lot of ways. Well, but it's a successful experiment. It is. And that's the other flip side. It's like you can't really make licorice pizza until you have figured out and like really landed the plane on Punch Drunk Love and several other movies.

But I don't think you can do licorice pizza without Punch Drunk Love. When we look back in the annals of film history, which of these movies do you think will be more beloved, licorice pizza or punch drunk love well i think people are just going to live with licorice pizza in a way that punch drunk love is hard to really live with day to day just because it is brittle at times and there is a lot of like anger in it and we will you know as soon as licorice pizza is available on streaming it will it will also be memed and there will be scenes and things living on it on the internet forever. It is both a whole movie and something that you can definitely parcel out and enjoy in 15 and 20

minutes. And that's just kind of how we consume things now. So that's, but again, that's less about the movies and more about, I don't know, the future of technology. Shoot me. The reason I would ultimately take Licorice Pizza is because I just think Alana and that characterization

is just deeper and better than the Emily Watson character. Yeah, of course. She's obviously a terrific actress, but again, it feels like a man writing, yes,

like a little bit of a manic pixie thing. And it's like, why does this beautiful, interesting young woman love Barry? I still can't quite figure that out. Feels more like a fantasy than like something grounded. And maybe that's just what I want at this phase of my life. But so I'm going to go Punch Drunk 7 and Licorice Pizza 6. I can live with it.

So Magnolia goes to five. And I think some people would be like this is his least successful movie or it should be number eight or something like that but again it's so it's it's it's accomplishing so much sometimes you can like you know when you you're a homework extra credit person i bet you know you always did the extra extra credit homework right like maybe in high school but i that's one of if i could give any advice to any young person listening, it's do all of the work and don't do the extra credit. Do everything that you need to do as well as possible. But I've been trying to divorce the extra credit part of my life.

Wow. That's a profound bit of wisdom is 71 minutes into this podcast. I don't know. You get a lower reward for listening far you so so the magnolia seems fine at five then yeah i'm good with it like i said i this was the one that i was kind of like i didn't i don't know how to like sit down and re-enter this world for a re-watch and then tom cruise came on the screen and i was just like wow okay so you get tom cruise is not gonna win an oscar in his life. Oh, no. This is what happens. But like, this is one of those things where I just 45 minutes in, you know, I needed to check. Yes, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for this. He didn't win.

And then I just like get really angry that some of the greatest movie stars of our lifetime are just never going to win Oscars. And I that's that is how good Magnolia is or what Magnolia accomplishes is that it got me really angry about the Oscars. This was the Michael Caine win for Cider House Rules. And I believe this was his second Oscar win. I think he also won for Hannah and Her Sisters in the 80s. And gosh, that sucks sucks that's too bad

for him uh but you know Tom Cruise complex man I don't he does not he has not seemed very interested in the Oscars in the last 15 years so it is what it is I mean like what happens after this is like a whole other thing but it's amazing that Tom Cruise did this movie in 1999 I mean wise wide shot of Magnolia I know know. Can you be more daring as a movie star? And ever since then, it's been a little bit less interesting

every year we go along. Still love his work. Okay. So, Magnolia at number five and then we have the big four. Yeah.

Do you think that everyone agrees with me that this is the big four? That Phantom Thread, There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Booking Nights are the big four?

Yes. I think everyone definitely agrees with you on the big three. Okay. And I personally think phantom thread deserves to be up there. I don't know whether the real nerds or phantom thread was too popular and memed to be part of the big three. It's a little bit of that. I don't care about that.

It's what we were talking about before. Phantom Thread was too popular and memes to be like part of the big three. You know, it's a little bit of that, like my thing. But, you know, it's what we were talking about before. Like my thing is too important to me to like share it with other people. Right, right, right. But you're asking me what other people think, you know, which is always dangerous. Yeah, what a stupid question. Do you and I agree that it's the big four? Yes. Okay.

So then it's Phantom Thread of four. That's, I respect you. I know you want to make some changes, but I can't. Yeah, no, it's, I mean, like, listen, I knew this going in. him threat of four that's i i respect you i know you want to make some changes but i can't yeah no it's i mean like listen i i knew this going in i'm i'm really curious i was taking bets with what you were going to do on two and one so uh you just go and we'll see whether i was well i would like to hear if you have a significant different list that once we finish but let's just talk about the big three the big three there will be blood the master and boogie nights yeah boogie nights is up there with pulp fiction

among the films that got me where i am today i i would not be a movie podcaster a person with stupid blu-ray collection surrounding me a person with all these books about movies all these interviews i've done with filmmakers over the years all this questing to figure out how these people do it right uh without without those of movies and a whole bunch of other movies that we talk about over time. But the contemporaneous releases when I was a teenager, when I saw those films and was just transported and just made dizzy by them. So it's a little bit tough to figure out what to do here because to me, There Will Be Blood is the signature masterpiece. That's number one. There's no confusion to me about that. It's a little bit tough to figure out what to do here because to me, there will be blood is the signature masterpiece. That's number one.

I don't have, there's no confusion to me about that. It's the sum of all of his forces coming together at just the right time. I mean, you just, you can't not do it at number one. There is like a greatest versus favorite sometimes conversation to have, but it's,

it's there will be blood. That's true. And I think for many people, they will say, well, boogie nights is my favorite. That's the one that is the most fun to watch. Yes.

But to me, it is both achievement. It's also a a timing movie it's a movie that like think about where our country was in 2007 think about all the things that we had been through and why a movie like that resonated so deeply and how it was funded by a major studio and all of these kind of this kind of circumstantial stuff that historically when we look back on it we will see it arriving at this critical juncture so i I don't have any angst about that. Yeah. But three and two is tough.

Right now on this list that I made that I'm looking at, this unpublished list on Letterboxd that I'm looking at, I have the master at number two. I was right, but I'm disappointed. Zach and I, I swear to God, Zach and I took bets

and I was like, is Sean going to do the master at number two? And Zach was like, no, he'll do Boogie Nights for sure. Zach was like, will Sean do Boogie Nights at number one versus There Will Be Blood at number two? And I was like, no, no, no. He'll do There Will Be Blood at number one. But I was like, I think it's going to be the master. And I want your light to go ahead.

I just want to say the fact that you had that conversation makes me love both of you even more. That just touches my heart that that would even be a topic of conversation. It's tough. And I think we talked to Bill about sports movies last week on the pod. And he said that these lists change like every day. And this would be a list that would change every day for me, depending on how I'm feeling or what I think is amazing. The thing with Boogie Nights is,

and I don't know if we're ever going to do it on the rewatchable, so I'm just going to say some thoughts here. It is the work of a person trying so hard to be someone else. There is a lot about him and his feelings and ideas in the movie, but he is trying so hard to replicate what Scorsese was capable of. And I can't see that movie now, having seen everything that I've seen in my life and not see a person working with someone else's tools. And when I watch The Master, I'm like, no one else could have made this. There's not a soul on earth

that has the ability to channel these forces, that he has this kind of style, this technical know-how, this curious mind, this sense of staging and performance, all the stuff that makes him great, and so sometimes it's about more than pure pleasure. Boogie Nights is pleasurable.

Boogie Nights is playing a song that I love. The Master is still, like I said earlier, elusive. And I respect that. And I'm such a knowing, like a know-it-all asshole about movies where I'm like,

I've seen everything. I know where this movie's going. 20 minutes in, you can't surprise me anymore. And I know that about myself. I don't really like that about myself I probably watch too many movies the master is still slipping through my fingers so I'm like I think I have to acknowledge that that is ultimately more powerful than a tune I like and it's in keeping with the career broadly speaking maybe not the latest phase I knew you were going to do this.

And I think it's okay. I feel really proud of myself. I know it'll be a struggle. I would do Boogie Nights at number two. But like I said, this is your time. And if you want to do master at two and boogie nights at three, that's that. That's what we'll do. Are there any other significant changes that you would have made? No. Um, you know,

like I think Magnolia punch, a glove and licorice pizza are all like pretty even for me. And so it's really the day that you catch me on that you could arrange some of those, but I don't feel bad about, like, I feel completely good about the list, the order that we landed on.

I can't wait for more people to see licorice pizza because I can't wait to talk about it more. I can't wait to have Chris on to talk about it. I know he's really excited to see it. Maybe we'll talk to Bill about it soon. He obviously is a huge admirer of Paul's movies. And I hope it goes into the culture. You know, I feel like this show like really pops when something that we love goes into

the culture. And it would be great to be able to just make jokes from licorice pizza on this show going forward and have people get it. I really think we can. It's just when, like, how is it going to get to the culture? And when is it going to get to the culture? I guess we will have to wait and find out soon. Let's just recap the rankings quickly for anybody playing along.

Number nine, Heart Eight. Number eight, Inherent Vice. Number seven, Punch Drunk Love. Number six, Licorice Pizza. Number five, Magnolia. Number four, Phantom Thread. Number three, Boogie Nights. Number two, The Master. Number one, Thereorice pizza. Number five, magnolia. Number four, phantom thread. Number three, boogie nights. Number two, the master.

Number one, there will be blood. How are you feeling like 45 seconds later? Bad. Yeah. Do you think Bill's going to be really mad? I don't know. Maybe this will compel him to do it on the real watchables. You know, maybe I can.

Bill, I tried. But also, I promised Sean that he could be himself. And that's what it's all about. Thank you for your incredible respect, concern, thoughtfulness through this episode and all the time, Amanda. Frankly, what a joy to podcast with you on a weekly basis. Oh, you're very nice. This is how we know that you're really in your happy place. But you're welcome, Sean. I loved getting to talk about your passions with you. I expect to see licorice pizza at least two or three more times before the year's out.

I hope you will do the same. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, a, an angry young man himself working through his feelings. It's going to be okay. You're going to make it to licorice pizza. Please tune into the big picture next week because we've been talking about

passion points and there is probably no greater meeting of our passion points. Paul McCartney is back. The Beatles are back. There's a new film on Disney plus over this long holiday weekend called the Beatles colon get back directed by Peter Jackson, chronicling the sort of final recording sessions during the album. Let it be for the Beatles. Amanda and I are pumped about this.

I hope you're pumped about it too. We're going to talk about this film at length and also our favorite Beatles albums. So if you like that little band known as the Beatles, come through. Good band. Great band. See you then. Thank you.