Licorice Pizza (with Matt Pollock)

This week, P.T.August continues with P.T.A.'s most recent output, and for the second time this year we're joined once again by the people's champion Matt Pollock to talk about a movie he has been smitten with since its COVID-era theatrical release: it's 2021's Licorice Pizza, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, and starring Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, Benny Safdie, Skyler Gisondo, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Harriet Sansom Harris, and the entire Haim family. A collection of mostly true stories from 1970s L.A. embued with the golden glow of Anderson's own That One Summer childhood nostalgia, its led by two extremely winning performances from a pair of actors both making their big screen debuts. While not without its controversies, it's a dreamlike hazy hangout movie we all loved quite a lot. If you'd like to watch the film before listening along to our discussion, Licorice Pizza is currently streaming in Canada on Crave and across the globe on the Criterion Channel at the time of publication. Other works referenced in this episode include Twisters, Targets, Scanners, Kim's Video, Michael Clayton, Saturday Night, The Ladies Man, Coneheads, It's Pat, Rebel Ridge, Hold The Dark, Green Room, Blue Ruin, Clueless, Dazed and Confused, Wild Wild West, An Evening With Kevin Smith, A Star Is Born, Maestro, Warrior, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, The Curse, Good Time, Coffee and Cigarettes, Down By Law, Rumble Fish, The Outsiders, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Mystery Men, Domino, Seven Psychopaths, Special When Lit, Pinball: The Man Who Saved The Game, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood..., among countless others. We'll be back next week with more P.T.August as Travis Woloshyn joins the two-timer club, returning to talk another fumblingly comic detective noir as we watch Joaquin Phoenix and Katherine Waterston in 2014's Inherent Vice! Which is shockingly not currently streaming, at least not in Canada, so... good luck. Try the library! Until then, we'll see you at the movies!!