Storytelling for the Screen: “Licorice Pizza” (35mm)

Licorice Pizza (2021) is writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s lively and earnest love letter to 1970s Los Angeles and Hollywood. A loose, episodic coming-of-age story, the film shifts seamlessly between intimate moments and comic detours, returning to the obsessions that have defined his cinema: ambitious strivers, eccentric outsiders, and the strange allure and nostalgia of American life. The film follows Alana Kane (Alana Haim) and Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) as they grow up, fall in love, and scheme of ways to make money in the San Fernando Valley in 1973, encountering aging movie stars and other restless teenagers in their orbit. Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, Tom Waits, and Benny Safdie round out a revolving cast of colorful characters that Gary and Alana come across as their lives become increasingly entangled. Warm and irreverently funny, Licorice Pizza distills Anderson’s knack for expansive ensemble storytelling and richly drawn characters into one of his most playful films.

The Carsey-Wolf Center is delighted to welcome UCSB Film and Media Studies alumnus and recent Academy Award winner for Best Film Editing Andy Jurgensen back to the Pollock Theater for a special 35mm presentation of Licorice Pizza. After the screening, Jurgensen will join moderator Ross Melnick (Carsey-Wolf Center, UCSB) to discuss his work as the film’s editor.