“All alone or in twos, the ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall.”

I had to watch Licorice Pizza a second time because I wasn’t sure what I watched the first time. I knew the movie was great, but I also know the definition of great is very subjective. This review/analysis from The Royal Ocean Film Society (ROFS) is very good. I didn’t realize the film pays homage to American Graffiti and that’s a movie I remember watching with my mum when I was very young. I love Licorice Pizza because it doesn’t hide the transmogrification of “innocent” young adults to adulthood (once-young hearts into tar). I’m Gen X and now live what I laughed about in 1990 something when I read Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland:

“Later, as you get to be my age, you will see your friends begin to die, to lose their memories, to see their skins turn wrinkled and sick. You will see the effects of dark secrets making themselves known — via their minds and bodies and via the stories your friends — yes, Harmony, Gaia, Mei-lin, Davidson, and the rest — will begin telling you at three-thirty in the morning as you put iodine on their bruises, arrange for tetanus shots, dial 911, and listen to them cry. The only payback for all of this — for the conversion of their once-young hearts into tar — will be that you will love your friends more, even though they have made you see the universe as an emptier and scarier place— and they will love you more, too. Zero balance (a getcracking term from the KittyWhip® manual).”

I’m really fascinated by the era of the movie as well. It’s the end of Hollywood’s Golden Age when stars like Lucille Ball are in the twilight of their careers. The country is still analog, but on the cusp of a technical/digital revolution that will soon re-shape the world. It’s 1973 and Walt Disney World, Starbucks, and the New York Islanders were just established. Gary is a hustler but not condemned to the fate of other childhood actors as those roles fade and they enter adulthood. ROFS thinks Gary will roll from hustle-to-hustle / failure-to-failure, but my view is very different. The 70s were certainly a dark period in American history, but Gary’s pinball arcade is probably going to be the first in Southern California with Pac-Man. Gary may even end up working for the marketing department at ATARI or on the cover of Cash Box magazine.

According to ROFS, the movie also influenced by Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Alana possesses the innocence and naïveté of Stacy Hamilton (you’re such a delicate creature), the toughness of Charles Jefferson, the free spiritedness of Jeff Spicoli‡, and the work ethic/maturity of Brad Hamilton.

But for me, she’s the quintessence and beautifully captured in this quote:

To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.

And this inevitably goes back to the idea of misfits, and how we all hopefully find each other like magnets (or at the very least that one) and escape the walls.

One other movie not mentioned by ROFS is Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. Although that film takes place in the 60s, it is really the end of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Rick Dalton was probably eating at the Tail o’ the Cock when Jack Holden was there with Alana.

‡Three movies with the execrable Sean Penn.

Flyer for Winner (1973), Midway’s very first video game, a licensed version of Atari’s Pong. Source: Pan-Man: Birth of an Icon.