(gentle music)
- What's up, guys?
Michael here to talk about the only filmmaker
who would turn an innocent dairy indulgence
into something totally sinister.
- I drink your milkshake! (slurps)
I drink it up!
- That's right: Paul Thomas Anderson,
husband to Maya Rudolph,
reformed '90s bad boy, and undoubtedly
one of the most interesting filmmakers of our time.
Every frame, sound, and word in PTA's filmography
feels totally intentional, and so analyzing his work
seems more fitting for a PhD in film studies
than for this humble YouTube channel.
But in the spirit of better appreciating
his latest installment, "Licorice Pizza,"
we thought it'd be worth looking at a couple
of intersecting themes that seem to permeate his films,
specifically family and capitalism
and the uneasy tension between the two.
So climb aboard our culty ship
and descend into our bubbly oil well
in this Wisecrack Edition
on how Paul Thomas Anderson portrays capitalism and family.
And warning: various levels of spoilers ahead
for several of his films, so maybe treat yourself
to a PTA marathon before you keep watching.
But before we get into it, I wanna make sure that you notice
the Wisecrack hat and shirt that I'm currently wearing.
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Thank you guys so much for all your support,
and now, back to the show.
Now, let's start by taking a brief look
at "Licorice Pizza," which explores a blossoming romance
between two youngsters in the 1970s San Fernando Valley.
You have teen Gary, a serial entrepreneur
and child actor who does not seem bound
for thespian greatness, and there's Alana,
the wayward twentysomething who seems to lack purpose.
They form an unlikely bond as they co-navigate
the most difficult task a young person can face:
hanging on to your youthful naivete
before being sucked into the weird, ugly world of adulthood.
They also manage to start a waterbed company
and avoid getting murdered by a psychosexual freak
played by Bradley Cooper.
♪ Ah ♪ (poignant music)
Perhaps more so than most directors,
Anderson's work is thematically diverse and wide-ranging,
encompassing heavy drama-
♪ But it's not going to stop ♪
a subversive romcom-
- So you, you bought all that pudding
so that you could get frequent flyer miles?
- I know, yes. - That's insane.
- [Michael] a neo-noir-
- What I mean, what I believe is that you killed his father.
- and so on.
Still, at first glance, the heartwarming
and at times very sweet "Licorice Pizza"
might seem like a strange pivot.
After all, it comes from the brain
behind intense, gutting films
like "There Will Be Blood," "The Master," and "Magnolia."
But upon closer examination,
it's really right at home in his repertoire,
and not just because it takes place
in Anderson's beloved San Fernando Valley.
See, Gary and Alana, along with Gary's goofy friends,
create a sort of surrogate family,
and it's one founded in part out of their own estrangement
and/or lack of emotional fulfillment in their own families.
Gary's dad is out of the picture, and the kid's mom
feels more like a business partner than a maternal figure.
Alana's deeply out of place
in her conservative Jewish family,
and her interactions with them tend
to devolve into impressive screaming matches.
- Listen, young lady.
You don't bring this idiot to Shabbat dinner here!
- Listen, Dad, he's an atheist and an actor and he's famous!
- But he's Jewish?
- He was gonna take me out of here!
- This is fitting.
The families are at the core of much of Anderson's work.
For his part, Anderson even told "The Village Voice"
that "it's the simplest, most direct way I can say it:
my movies are about family."
And those explorations of biological family
are defined by dysfunction.
In his early film "Boogie Nights,"
Marky Mark's Dirk Diggler has an abusive mother
who bullies him until he flees home.
- [Dirk's Mother] You're a loser!
You'll always be a loser.
You couldn't even finish high school
because you were so stupid, so what are you gonna do?
- [Michael] Similarly, the film "Magnolia" is anchored
in failed father-child relationships that simmer
with long-term hatred over abandonment and abuse.
- (beep) you. - No, please, listen to me.
Listen to me. - (beep) you.
- Listen to me right now, Claudia.
I am dying.
I got sick, and I fell down.
- (beep) you! Get the (beep) out of my house!
- [Michael] And "Punch-Drunk Love" features
a deeply dysfunctional family of siblings
with seven overbearing sisters
sending Adam Sandler's Barry into a state
of perpetual submission punctuated by violent rage.
In the absence or complete breakdown of biological family,
many of Anderson's characters
seek out surrogate familial relationships.
"Boogie Nights" shows Dirk finding
an unlikely makeshift family in the world of pornography.
The film makes these intentions abundantly clear.
- I love you, Mom.
I want you to be my mom, Amber.
- [Michael] "Magnolia" is similarly peppered
with unlikely bonds
between its deeply distressed characters.
In it, a kind nurse and bumbling police officer
provide much of the emotional comfort
that biological families have failed to offer.
In "Punch-Drunk Love,"
it's only when Barry meets a patient love interest
who provides him with emotional support and understanding
that he can grow and stand up for himself.
- I have a love in my life.
It makes me stronger than anything you can imagine.
- But of course, this is PTA,
and sometimes, he wants to kick you in the kidney.
So in his films, surrogate families aren't all fun,
games, and vaguely terrifying declarations of love.
Like, the other films, "There Will Be Blood"
and "The Master," also show surrogate families,
specifically father-son relationships.
But these relationships are a lot more complicated
and at times a lot uglier than the ones
we've previously mentioned, and that's because
of a little something called capitalism,
and specifically that unique brand of American capitalism.
In "There Will Be Blood,"
Daniel, the obsessive oil prospector,
adopts his dead employee's child, H.W.,
and basically treats him like a son.
However, early on, we watch Daniel pitch himself
to small-town folks, invoking his status as a father
to win their approval.
- I'm a family man.
- [Michael] The scene gives us our first icky feeling
that maybe his relationship with H.W. is less about love
and more about practicality.
Having a son humanizes him in the eyes of the townspeople
whose land he wants to aggressively drill.
We suspect Daniel does care about H.W. somewhat.
Indeed, he seems to feel guilty about sending him away
after the child goes deaf.
- I've abandoned my child!
- [Michael] But eventually, he cruelly admits
that the relationship was rooted in economic utility.
- [Daniel] And I took you for no other reason
than I needed a sweet face to buy land.
- [Michael] Fittingly, when H.W. decides
to start his own oil business,
effectively becoming Daniel's competitor,
this severs their ties for good.
No longer business partners,
there's no relationship left to preserve,
at least in Daniel's eyes.
Capitalistic interest, it seems,
was the foundation of their family.
Notably, the film also shows Daniel's mirror image
in the character of Eli, the ambitious preacher
who creates a symbiotic relationship with Daniel,
stirring the prospector's long-suffering oilmen
into a frenzy in his evangelical church.
Daniel brings more people to the town
for brutally hard work,
those people seek comfort from Eli,
and thus both men grow rich.
In this film,
capitalism isn't just entrenched in the family.
It even invades the most supposedly sacred arena of life:
religion, and by the end of the film,
PTA seems to indicate that religion has become
just as slimy and capitalistic as oil prospecting.
He expands on this theme with his next film, "The Master,"
which is loosely based on the life of L. Ron Hubbard.
It, too explores familial relationships
at the intersection of capitalism and religion.
Freddie's a violent, traumatized soldier
who can only find comfort in sex and booze.
- Tell me what you see.
- Well, that's (beep).
A lady's (beep).
- What about this one?
- Looks like (beep) going inside of a (beep).
- [Michael] In particular, he (beep) a sand lady.
He seeks out a father figure for direction who,
in an on-the-nose move, even goes by the moniker of Master,
basically a more successful version of Eli
with a bit of a naughty side.
Philip Seymour Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd
has successfully merged capitalism and religion.
He grows rich off the wealthy patrons who seek his help
to cope with the cultural malaise and alienation
that followed World War II.
While Freddie would otherwise
be stuck at the margins of society,
joining the makeshift family of The Cause
gives him purpose and makes him feel useful,
and even though Freddie being useful
often looks pretty violent-
(all clamoring) - Freddie! No, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no, Freddie! Freddie!
- [Michael] his devotion to his father figure
helps him assimilate back into organized society.
But of course, this relationship
is still largely transactional.
Freddie's a case study who helps Lancaster
promote his theories and practice his methods
for the amusement of his followers.
- Touch it and describe it to me.
(quirky music)
- [Freddie] Uh, it's, it's wood. Wall.
- [Michael] Sure, there is a true emotional connection
between the two men,
perhaps even bordering on homoeroticism.
♪ I'd love to get you ♪
♪ On a slow boat to China ♪
But the relationship's basic structure
is a capitalist one of dominance and exploitation,
and Freddie eventually decides that he has to break free.
- For if you figure a way to live
without serving a master, any master,
then let the rest of us know.
- [Michael] Unlike "There Will Be Blood," in this case,
the son chooses to sever the capitalist relationship.
Still, the two movies function
as funhouse images of one another.
The difficulty of finding true human connection
within a capitalist framework is best explored
in these two films, but the theme is percolating
throughout PTA's earlier works.
The relationships in "Boogie Nights"
are founded on mutual capitalist desires.
Dirk's producer and father figure sees the kid
first and foremost as a commodity,
with all his muscley youth and big ambition.
- [Jack] It's easy to predict that after only two films,
that Diggler's success can only grow and grow and grow.
- [Michael] Then, Dirk's embrace of fame and fortune
leads him to seek pleasure and consumption above all else,
thus fracturing the relationships he's built.
And when he's replaced by younger, hotter competition,
he views his producer's rational business decision
as an emotional betrayal,
and so another relationship bites the dust
via the scourge of capitalist greed.
Now, the film ends more hopefully
than "There Will Be Blood" or "The Master,"
with Dirk returning to his found parents
in search of solace.
But it nevertheless explores the difficulty
of relationships that are predicated
on mutual business interest.
"Punch-Drunk Love" explores a somewhat similar predicament
on a smaller scale as Barry struggles
to succeed selling toilet plungers.
- We've been working on this, and, uh,
we have a non-breakable handle, finally.
Um, lemme demonstrate for you.
- [Michael] Despite never having boarded a plane,
he hoards airline miles via pudding cups
in hopes that tricking the system will make him
feel smart and a little less powerless.
He calls a phone sex chatline,
offering up all of his information
in hopes of finding some brief romantic solace.
He's rewarded with deranged, threatening demands
for more money that underscore what he was to begin with:
a mark for the greed of the Georgia peach
on the other side of the phone.
- [Georgia] Maybe I should call back
and talk to your girlfriend?
Maybe it'd be better to ask her for the money.
It could be really easy, you know, Barry.
I have all your information.
I have your credit card information,
all of your billing stuff- - Okay, no, thank you.
- Throughout his work,
PTA prominently features salesmen who,
by nature of their job, form relationships
with the intention of selling (beep).
As scholar Jason Sperb explains in his book
"Blossoms and Blood: Postmodern Media Culture
and the Films of Paul Thomas Anderson,"
this fits with his broader themes
surrounding family and modern capitalism.
As Sperb writes, the director is preoccupied
with "the disintegration of the biological family,
the relationship between commodities
and personal alienation, the shared financial interest
that holds surrogate families together,
and the ubiquity of salesmen in everyday life."
These salesman characters crop up again and again.
Barry's hawking toilet plungers,
Buck's selling sound systems,
Lancaster's selling a new religion,
Daniel's selling towns on oil deals,
and in "Licorice Pizza,"
Gary and Alana are selling waterbeds.
In "Magnolia," Tom Cruise's Fred Mackey
masterfully sells lonely men on pickup artistry.
He treats romance as another transaction,
sex as another commodity in a system that can be gamed,
much as Barry games his way to a million airline miles.
Fittingly for a filmmaker preoccupied
with failed father-son relationships,
PTA's child characters are also often valued
for what they can offer monetarily.
H.W., as we mentioned, provides a cute face
to temper Daniel's aggressive sales pitches.
In "Magnolia," Stanley, a child
on the "What Do Kids Know?" game show,
is treated like a meal ticket who might,
through his extensive academic knowledge,
help make his dad super rich.
And Dirk, functionally a child,
is valued by his porn family for his immense popularity,
which have made them collectively richer.
"Licorice Pizza" fittingly also features a child actor
who uses his modest success to help fund businesses
that he runs with his mother.
While Gary doesn't explicitly acknowledge this,
it's made clear that he's aged out
of being a cute and precocious child actor.
So he hustles his way into the business world.
He wanted to be a showman, but it's clear
that he's more of a classic PTA salesman.
Meanwhile, Alana is pulled towards the more adult worlds
of Hollywood and local politics to try and distance herself
from Gary's seemingly childish pursuits.
- I think it's weird that I hang out with Gary
and his 15-year-old friends all the time.
- These twin desires for success
and identity pull them apart.
But by the end of the film, spoiler alert,
Gary and Alana are back together,
running through the streets of the Valley
and seemingly running from the inevitable encroachment
of adulthood and the pressures of American capitalism.
It's a beautiful, but bittersweet moment,
as we know they won't be able
to outrun these forces forever.
At least, not if we've learned from PTA's past films.
But what do you guys think?
Does capitalism ruin families,
or are we just tripping on poisonous mushrooms?
And does "Licorice Pizza" fit PTA's overall themes,
or is it something of an aberration in his work?
Let us know in the comments.
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And as always, thanks for watching. Later.
(upbeat music)