Back to the ’70s with Paul Thomas Anderson
writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson is a shaggy love story set in California’s San Fernando Valley in 1973. The protagonists are 15-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, a frequent Anderson collaborator) and the aimless, slightly older Alana Kane (Alana Haim of the rock sister-trio Haim). “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a song-and-dance man,” a precocious Gary tells Alana before igniting a series of schemes—having her chaperone him on the press tour for a movie he appears in, starting a waterbed company, opening a pinball store—meant to win her heart. Anderson had directed several music videos for the group Haim before he cast its youngest member, who steals from seasoned Hollywood vets like Bradley Cooper, Sean Penn and Tom Waits.
