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Crucial Scene: When Gary Rejects Alana

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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One of the best scenes in Licorice Pizza is the one that starts it(after the opening ode to the American Graffiti cherry bomb scene):

Gary Valentine quickly, smartly and relentlessly coming on to Alana Kane for a date. From the sunny photography to the beautiful love song("July Tree") on the soundtrack to the great writing and acting, its a "wow" kind of scene that gets this love story properly launched.

Gary moves fast ("Dinner tonight?") before Alana can walk away, answers her question "How are you gonna pay?" by revealing his acting career -- and as much as Alana keeps turning Gary down and insulting him -- HE never gives up and SHE never just walks away(she IS intrigued by this successful young actor, he DOES get to her in some way.)

All of Gary's fast-talking, high-pressure, philosophically grounded flirt patter("Fate brought us together") pays off. Alana DOES show up for a date and the off and on "age inappropriate" love story launches solidly off of that great pick-up scene.

Flash-forward to the scene where Gary and Alana have the grand opening of the waterbed store("Fat Bernies.") Alana Haim does this entire sequence in a bikini -- a nod by PTA to the fact that while Alana may not be conventionally pretty, she DOES have a fit, lithe and shapely body. For plot purposes, Alana is promoting the water bed store with her body.

This sequence splits into two parts:

ONE: The daytime. With lots of "boy salesmen" (Gary's posse) and customers, Alana takes not of Gary's meeting up with an old flame and immediately moves in with jealousy: "Hi, I'm Alana, I'm the manager here." Alana Haim delivers one line in pure Don Rickles' idiom: "Could I steal you away for a moment...I want to make sure the paper work is ...correct." But Gary brushes her off.

The old flame talks to Gary:

Old flame: Is she your girlfriend?
Gary: NO...did she seem like my girlfriend?
Old flame: Well, kinda yes.
Gary: No. She just works with me. She used to be my babysitter!

So in this daytime part, Alana's jealousy and possessiveness comes to the fore -- what do you know, Gary DOES have an older girlfriend if he wants one(though evidently without romance or sex...)

PART TWO:

Nighttime at the waterbed opening. Alana is still in that bikini(what's it been? HOURS?) and the posse are playing a listless, sexy guitar band riff while she dances slowly around the room. And now comes the key moment:

Alana comes up behind Gary. Alana reveals that she is stoned. She professes how happy she is that she and Gary "did this together." She hugs and clings to Gary from behind in a gesture that is supposedly "friends," but is actually pure love/lust.

And Gary just shakes her off, mumbles, and walks away. Into the arms of his old flame for the night.

So...what happened to the Gary of the opening pick-up scene with Alana? The guy who was head over heels? The guy who told his brother "I've met the girl I'm going to marry...and you're going to be my best man."

In the carefully managed "young love" universeof Licorice Pizza, Gary's rejection of Alana seems sadly typical: he chased her, he wooed her, he finally got her ...and now he doesn't want her.

"Men."

Me, I think it is is a little more complicated than that. First of all, Alana is stoned so perhaps Gary doesn't think that REAL love is being professed. Second, infatuated Gary may be, but both Alana and Gary spend the whole movie TRYING to honor a relationship that has to be "friends." Gary sees the opportunity to go farther with Alana...but he can't. So he shrugs her off and walks away into the arms of an old flame. Alana-- now in the pain that Gary was earlier when he saw HER with a boyfriend("Lance") -- spies on Gary and the old flame kissing(we HEAR it.) and goes home in her bikini, after first sexily kissing another guy and then to crash at her repressive house.

I think this is one of the most important scenes in the movie, because it totally REVERSES the Gary we thought we knew and creates a frustration that continues on in the movie.

And yet: look where things go. In the very next scene, Alana auditions for Jack Holden(Sean Penn) -- which Gary helped set up -- and goes with Holden to the Tail of the Cock, where Gary sees them and elects -- in HIS angry jealousy -- to position himself right across from them to "fight to get Alana back." Which he does -- after she falls off Holden's motorcycle and he doesn't even notice.

I suppose you could say that Gary and Alana is the classic "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back" formula over and over and over, but this mid-movie sequence is illuminating: again, WHY does Gary reject a woman he has spent so much time pursuing?

[–] Harlyville (24) 2 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I’m not sure how hard Gary is trying to honor a relationship that has to be “friends” only. He has pined after her from the moment he saw her approaching in the school picture line to when he announced her as “Mrs. Alana Valentine.” He pushed her to show him her boobs and lamented she won’t make out with him. This is more frustration on his part than a decision to keep things as purely friends.

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I suppose, and I like your alternate analysis here as I did in another post of yours. This is one reason I very much like Licorice Pizza and I think it should be celebrated. I said this in my other post and I'll repeat it here:

I feel that Licorice Pizza walks a fine line between being "a typical teenage romance" (but it ISN'T typical, given the age difference) and something more adult and sophisticated in content. PTA takes very seriously (he has said) the "treacherous navigation of young love," and this movie GETS that (all those painful "other people" in way of the Gary/Alana romance, all that jealousy.)

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BUT, he is not going to stop living his life regardless of his success with her, be it reconnecting with a former love or soliciting handjobs from other (equally older) women. And he is not shy letting her know that.

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Yes, it is an interesting part of the story, isn't it? The emphasis is on the other men for Alana (Lance, Jack Holden, Brian -- even Jon Peters hitting on her), but Gary is confidently connecting and re-connecting with young women all through the story (the flight attendant, the girls at the Teen Fair -- he takes them to Tail of the Cock; the old flame.)

As for "the Hand Man woman," it is left tantalizingly open to me: she says that Gary is always ASKING for hand jobs, but is she always GIVING them to him? (In a deleted scene, its clear that Alana thinks so - she rages at Gary over it.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

He probably realizes that a sexual or romantic encounter with a stoned or drunken Alana is not going to count towards winning her over for real, so he does not try to take advantage of her weakened state. Only when she clear-headedly seeks him out does he finally “go there.”

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That's a great point -- men(and boys) always have to "gauge the sobriety" of a woman coming on to them and "do what's right." I suppose the scene shows -- as does the one where Gary can't bring himself to touch the unconscious Alana on the waterbed later -- that he's "good at heart," ready to do the right thing. (Still, it kind of hurts to see the girl who so rejected Gary in the beginning -- verbally at least -- coming on to him -- its a "premature happy ending" that PTA isn't ready to give us y et.

The movie puts some good early emphasis on Gary saying to his brother "I"ve met the girl I'm going to marry...and you're going to be my best man." Emphasis on Gary's "thunderbolt" feelings for Alana at first sight; emphasis on Gary's kindly "father-like" relationship with his little brother -- we spend the whole movie watching this head to the hoped-for happy ending.