Jack Holden?

The references to the Korean War film "The Bridges of Toko-San" and Grace Kelly are dead give ways.

---

Indeed, moreover , the original movie title was The Bridges of Toko-RI. So you've got TWO near-miss fakes; Holden and the movie he starred in (in 1954, less than 20 years before Licorice Pizza takes place.)

Why the fictional name? Legal reasons?

---

I think the dialogue with Alana in the restaurant was from the movie, “Breezy”, starring William Holden. I’m not sure why they would change the name, either. Maybe the character was only inspired by William Holden.

----

We're told that PTA based Licorice Pizza on a combination of influences, and one of them was a man named Gary Goetzman (born 1952) who would have been a bit older than the Gary Valentine character in the movie (18 in 1973) but...close enough.

Today Goetzman is a producing partner with Tom Hanks(so the real kid's chutzpah really paid off), and was a child actor and...I figure that a movie that is SO specific with "guest star reality figures" (Jon Peters and "Jack Holden") must reflect real life brushes that the kid Goetzman had with Peters and the REAL Holden. In the movies, these scenes are rather sketchy and ambiguous in their comedy set-ups; they don't pay off as suggested they will They FEEL like real life, not "movies."

Jon Peters is still alive and reportedly read the script and gave his blessing to the portrayal.

Holden is not alive (dead of an alcoholic fall and hitting his head on a nightstand while sleeping alone) and perhaps his heirs did NOT want to bless this portrayal of Holden -- hitting on a much younger woman while "testing" her from Breezy, quoting dialogue from The Bridges at Toko RI(er san) to burnish his rep and for use in seduction, and his cockamamie motorcycle jump.

But...we don't know.

BTW Breezy came OUT in 1973 so there was not really time for Holden to have the girl read the script...unless he'd already MADE the movie(Directed by Clint Eastwood) So again, maybe a little "casting couch bit."

maybe the Holden family didn't want to endorse Sean Penn in the Holden part. Holden and Penn were rather miles apart in their prime -- the likeable, boyish Holden is not really well served by the moody oh-so-serious Penn. (Outside of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.)

CONT

The restaurant scene has nothing to do with Breezy. The scene before that, where she's auditioning, is basically a scene from Breezy (Alana recites the exact same dialog as Breezy does, has a guitar, etc.)

Agreed.

But the "specificity" of the "guest stars" (played by guest star name actors) being Jon Peters and William Holden(under another name) suggest to me that the real-life person Gary Goetzman (now Tom Hanks producing partner) upon whose stories PTA built some of the script must have run into Peters and Holden sometime in his 70s youth. Otherwise...why would they be in the movie? Or perhaps PTA met them as a kid. We'll never know if the Peters and the truck or Holden and the motorcycle really happened, but SOMETHING must have happened.

I very much like our having OUaTiH and Licorice Pizza now in existence together. The stories are set 4 years apart, and on different sides of the hill (though Brad Pitt lives in the Valley) but together, they are nice, entertaining nostalgia pieces for both those of us who lived there then, and a new generation today.