What exactly was Licorice Pizza? A record store? A restaurant?
Was it a single business, or a franchise?
It was a Southern California record store chain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Abdrewes
Not sure other than it appears in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
It appeared in Fast Times At Ridgemont High because they had a location at the Sherman Oaks Galleria which is where the interior mall scenes were shot.
I personally preferred going to Tempo Records (another Southern California record store chain) over Licorice Pizza:
I didn't favor chain stores but patronized many independent record and video shops whenever I vacationed in LA and San Francisco. I vaguely recall the Licorice Pizza name, but didn't go to any of their stores.
I know PTA shoots more than enough and uses that footage for trailers. But I hope we get his special of using leftover stuff for little vignette like features.
I know PTA shoots more than enough and uses that footage for trailers. But I hope we get his special of using leftover stuff for little vignette like features.
do you think we get another fake ad like we got with magnolia or punch drunk?
I know PTA shoots more than enough and uses that footage for trailers. But I hope we get his special of using leftover stuff for little vignette like features.
I'd honestly love if the complete Jon Peters gas station freakout is included as a bonus.
I read a great interview with the DP this morning, where he goes into some details about the filming. How they used these old lens to achieve the look.
What was your approach in crafting the visual aesthetic of Licorice Pizza? In terms of movement, composition, grain, color palette, etc., and influences from other films.
With Paul what’s great is he’s got this whole screening room set up at his house. So he can screen 35mm or 70mm at his home. And he knows all the studios and who controls their film libraries. So he’s like, “Hey, I wanna look at a couple movies as reference.” Okay, cool. So, you roll over to his house, and, I got a picture of it, there’s like 15 different prints lined up sitting in his garage, and you’re like, “What’s all this?” And he’s like, “Well, I want us to look at American Graffiti and Manhattan, but I got a print of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for the kids, Jaws, this other thing…” I’m like, “Where’d you go to get these, the library?” And he’s like, “No no, I just know so-and-so over at Paramount.” Nobody watches these prints, so they’re like, “Oh yeah, send a courier over! We’ll pick it out!” And I’m like, “Do people do this on a regular basis?” “Nah, not really anybody. I mean, Quentin [Tarantino] does it, Chris [Nolan] does it.” I’m like, “This shit’s just sitting in the vault?” He’s like, “Yeah! Nobody’s watching it, so they’re like, ‘Yeah, take it! please!’”
So when we did this movie, he was like, “We gotta watch American Graffiti.” So we watched the damn thing like three times. And that was really the strongest visual reference. Then, we looked at Manhattan—you know, the Woody Allen movie—because there’s a lot of interesting walk and talk in that particular production. I mean, it’s like everybody steals from everybody else or gets inspired by everybody else, whatever you wanna call it. There are literally shots in Manhattan and the visual language of that film where it’s like, “Okay, let’s use that here.” So in the walk and talk at the beginning of the movie, where he’s asking for her number and he messes it up a few times and they’re just walking, there’s a shot in Manhattan when––well, you know, Manhattan is considered an amazing work of black and white cinematography, and it is! And everybody looks at the classic shot of the Queensboro Bridge and all this kinda stuff. But what we were looking at is these walk and talks and how Gordon Willis handled them. He would just put a light over camera, and he had all sorts of stuff going on in the background, and he just went with that. So we duplicated that. Normally on a movie now, you’d light up all the backgrounds and do all this crazy shit. We didn’t do any of that. We were like, “Let’s just let it go black.” Like American Graffiti. Because American Graffiti, you look at that movie, and they had no money. Haskell Wexler was like, “Dude, I got no money. So we’re just gonna light their faces and whatever happens in the background, hey bonus!” And that’s what happened. So, we embraced that.
When you’re talking about the aesthetic of it, for starters we’re already shooting film. Paul sits down with Dan Sasaki over at Panavision, who’s their lens guru. I mean, in a world of digital, lens choices and lensing have become more and more important. And Dan is this total propellerhead who goes in and is like, “Hey, I’ve got this glass from this Gordon Willis set of lenses back in like 1970. Let’s put that in something.”
So you shot with 1970s glass?
Yeah, we used old ass glass, all this crazy stuff. I mean, there’s a Gordon Willis set of lenses we used on Phantom Thread, we used on Inherent Vice, it’s just around. Paul owns his own lenses. And depending on the movie, what format we shoot, spherical or anamorphic, Dan at Panavision will anamorphize it or put it back to spherical. So Dan comes to the party with a bunch of lenses. He’s like, “Okay, look I’ve got this kind of thing I made up.” And you look at this thing, and it’s a total Frankenstein lens. But we put it up, we test with it. “What’d you think?” “Ah, it’s pretty cool!” “Okay, cool, well let’s shoot with that thing.” So, we end up with three 50mm lenses, each doing three different characteristics, depending on what visuals he wants. We shot primarily with C series, which is an old school anamorphic. That’s why you get the nice blue flares, like when they’re walking out onto the golf course.
Did you intentionally try to recreate the anamorphic blue streaks from Punch-Drunk Love? Or is that coincidence?
It wasn’t so much about Punch-Drunk Love. It was more about, like, “What sets the tone for the 70s?” And this anamorphic aesthetic was absolutely in that wheelhouse. So, he wanted these anamorphic lenses, he wanted some of these other elements. You know, he worked heavily with Dan on creating that lens, and Erik Brown the first AC, because Erik is a total lens geek also. I mean, look let me tell you. We did the initial test for The Master and in rolled three carts, each of them filled with like 50 lenses. And I’m like, “There are one-hundred-something lenses in front of me… are we gonna test all this stuff?” He’s like, “Oh yeah!” and I’m like, “What the hell did I get myself into?” But, I mean, that’s what he’s looking for when you’re talking about visuals. And in a world where everything is about 4K, super clean, get as much information and resolution on the screen as you can, he’s like, “We need to degrade the image a bit. Let’s make it so it has some texture to it. Let’s make it so it has some more connection to the audience.” So, that’s kind of where a lot of that came from on the lensing.
The whole Jon Peters sequence is hilarious - definitely the best set piece here. But the rest of this film is just kind of meh. I'd definitely rank it towards the bottom of PTA's output.
Will this movie get a 4K UHD Blu-ray disc release?
I really hope so. They'll probably go with the same release strategy as Phantom Thread. The UHD for that film was announced later than the BD and released about a month after the BD.
I really hope so. They'll probably go with the same release strategy as Phantom Thread. The UHD for that film was announced later than the BD and released about a month after the BD.
I really hope so. They'll probably go with the same release strategy as Phantom Thread. The UHD for that film was announced later than the BD and released about a month after the BD.
I am so hoping. I loved this film and want it badly on UHD.
As others have mentioned, a UHD may be announced later. The news archive shows Phantom Thread BD was announced 2/7/18 and the UHD was announced on 3/20/18. The actual releases were about a month apart.
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