Every­thing we know about Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza

Though it looked for a moment like the pesky pan­dem­ic that just refus­es to end would pre­empt a lot of the cin­e­ma pro­gram­ming for the remain­der of the year, many dis­trib­u­tors are hold­ing fast to their sched­ul­ing plans and mov­ing for­ward with cau­tion. A lot of the titles with fates in ques­tion have been trot­ted out over the past few weeks at Venice, Tel­luride, and Toron­to, but one remains a mys­tery – as he’s pre­ferred to play it with his last few fea­tures, Paul Thomas Ander­son is keep­ing his new movie under wraps.

As best he can, that is. Though the first trail­er has yet to appear online, Ander­son sent prints on 35mm reels to the Prince Charles Cin­e­ma in Lon­don and the New Bev­er­ly, the Amer­i­can Cin­e­math­eque, and the Aero in his native Los Ange­les, where the trail­er has been play­ing pri­or to some of the director’s favorite films. (To name a few: Beav­is and Butt-Head Do Amer­i­ca, Repo Man, Kiss Me Dead­ly, and Amer­i­can Graffiti.)

Turns out that the film, once believed to be titled ​‘Sog­gy Bot­tom’, has been mer­ci­ful­ly announced as Licorice Piz­za instead. The title refers to a chain of record stores pop­u­lar in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia dur­ing the ​’70s, a big indi­ca­tor as to the time and place of the set­ting. It’s there that the sto­ry of a child actor (Coop­er Hoff­man, son of Anderson’s con­stant muse Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man) try­ing to hit the big time while jug­gling life as a high school­er will unfold.

While the specifics of plot remain unclear, it’s come out that Bradley Coop­er appears in the trail­er as the real-life Jon Peters, a hair­dress­er-turned-pro­duc­er who sup­ple­ments his income by deal­ing drugs on the side. Also fig­ur­ing promi­nent­ly into mat­ters is rock star and past PTA col­lab­o­ra­tor Alana Haim, por­tray­ing the roman­tic oppo­site to Hoffman’s char­ac­ter, as well as film­mak­er Ben­ny Safdie, play­ing pro­gres­sive politi­cian Joel Wachs. The cast is also said to include John C Reil­ly, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Maya Rudolph, and Books­mart break­out Skyler Gisondo.

Our own Han­nah Strong has caught a glimpse of the trail­er, and while she’s been sworn to secre­cy for the most part, she’s let slip that David Bowie’s voice sound­tracks the footage, and that the loose, lovelorn vibes most close­ly evoke Boo­gie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love. Sit­u­at­ing anoth­er film in ​’70s SoCal means that the com­par­isons to the for­mer film are inevitable, but if we know any­thing about Ander­son, he’s not one to repeat himself.

In the States, the pub­lic won’t have to wait long to drink in anoth­er PTA peri­od piece: accord­ing to an offi­cial state­ment ​“MGM (via Unit­ed Artists) will open Licorice Piz­za in lim­it­ed release Novem­ber 26. The dra­ma will reach its nation­wide expan­sion Decem­ber 25.” Hope­ful­ly, the UK won’t be kept wait­ing for too much longer.