Play It Again Sam Art Gallery Scene

Play It Again, Sam (1972)

Groundwork

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Play It Again, Sam (1972) is managing director Herbert Ross' adaptation of Woody Allen's own original, scripted 1969 Broadway play, with the four chief players reprising their roles from the stage (Woody Allen, Tony Roberts, Diane Keaton, and Jerry Lacy). Allen could have directed the film, and had already directed three films (What's Upwards, Tiger Lily? (1966), Take the Money and Run (1969), and Bananas (1971)), but had decided to move on to other original projects. He reportedly spent about 10 days adapting the play for the large screen with co-author/director Ross. It remains as one of the most quintessential, appealing and popular 'Woody Allen' films of best. Even so, it was devoid of any Academy Award nominations.

The film's championship has been the reason that many falsely claim that the line was actually spoken in Casablanca (1942). The film was notable as the offset film pairing Allen with his on- and off-screen partner Diane Keaton (they were directly teamed together in vi films). They appeared in seven more characteristic films together, also including:

• Sleeper (1973)
• Dear and Death (1975)
• Annie Hall (1977)
• Interiors (1978)
• Manhattan (1979)
• Radio Days (1987)
• Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

The hilarious comedy followed the romantic trials and life of a San Francisco flick buff and film critic (for Motion picture Quarterly), Allan Felix (Woody Allen). He was self-deprecating, neurotic, shy, fanatical about films, and obsessed over the film Casablanca (1942). He tried to model his beliefs later on the personality of its tough guy actor Humphrey Bogart. In the film's resolution, a complicated love triangle with Allan's two best friends was finally resolved during a re-enactment of the airport cheerio scene in the 1942 film. The tagline on film posters declared: "It'due south still the same former story, a fight for beloved and glory." Another stated the obsessed connectedness between Allen's graphic symbol and Humphrey Bogart:

"By 24-hour interval, he is Woody Allen...But when night falls and the moon rises, Humphrey Bogart Strikes Once again."

It came in an intermediate and more attainable phase in Woody Allen's career, betwixt his before gag-filled hits such as: Have the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), and Everything Y'all Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972) (he was working on this flick during filming of PIAS), and his afterward more polished works in the late 70s including Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979).

Throughout the film, in that location were many neat 1-liners spouted by Woody Allen's character, such as:

- (about Television set dinners): "Who bothers to cook 'em? I suck 'em frozen."
- "If they're beautiful, they're crazy, y'all know? Slap-up dazzler drives a woman crazy."
- "I hate the beach. I don't similar swimming. I don't like the dominicus. I'1000 red-headed, I'm fair-skinned. I don't tan - I stroke!"

[Annotation: A predictable spin-off, the romantic comedy Touch of Pinkish (2004) from Canadian writer/manager Ian Iqbal Rashid (his debut feature film), portrayed the Woody Allen graphic symbol as a young Canadian gay human in London existence advised by a ghostly Cary Grant (Kyle MacLachlan).]

The Story

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Prologue: Casablanca Viewing

During the flick'south opening credits, 29 year-sometime SF film mag critic Allan Felix (Woody Allen) watched a theatrical screening of Casablanca (1942) in a moving picture theatre with his oral fissure agape during the famed airport farewell conclusion sequence. He remarked (in phonation-over) as he walked out: "Who am I kidding? I'm not similar that. I never was, I never volition exist. That'south strictly the movies." Lying on his bed nether a poster for Casablanca, he was introduced as a self-professed, insecure, depressed "aspirin junkie" and neurotic individual: ("Next thing, I'll exist boiling the cotton at the tiptop of the bottle to get the actress").

[Notation: In the play, Allan worked for Motion-picture show Quarterly. In the film, Allan was employed with Film Weekly.]

Flashback - Allan's Marital Breakup with Nancy:

In a flashbacked scene while beingness very depressed and with low self-esteem, Allan recalled how he broke-up and divorced his married woman Nancy Felix (Susan Anspach) afterward ii years of wedlock. She mostly regarded him as sexually inadequate:

I tin can't stand the marriage. I don't find y'all whatsoever fun. I feel you suffocate me. I don't feel any rapport with you and I don't dig yous physically. Oh, for God's sake, Allan, don't have it personal.

Although Allan was entirely disoriented by the divorce, he clung to hopes of a ameliorate future with other women and fantasized 'stepping out' or inviting 'broads' upward to his flat: "Why should a divorce carp me so? Oh hell, perhaps I'one thousand better off without her. Why not? I'k young, I'm good for you, I've got a expert job. This could exist my chance to pace out a little scrap. If she can swing, and then can l. I could plow this place into a nightclub. I'll become broads up hither similar you wouldn't believe. Swingers, freaks, nymphomaniacs, dental hygienists." However, he was still hung-up about the specific day that they separated, when she described how she was an active 'doer' and he was just a passive 'watcher':

I want a new life. I desire to go skiing, I want to become dancing, I want to go to the beach, I want to ride through Europe on a motorcycle. All we e'er do is see movies....You're i of life's groovy watchers...I'1000 not like that, I'one thousand a doer. I desire to participate. We never express mirth together.

When she proposed contacting his lawyer, he responded: "I don't have a lawyer. Have him call my doctor."

The recently-divorced, shy, insecure and neurotic loser Allan sat in his room, where he was counseled by the trench-coated, fantasy ghost of his film idol Humphrey Bogart (flawlessly interpreted by Jerry Lacy). He was given hard-boiled, cheesy romantic advice nearly being a tough, self-confident, desirable and virile homo, and almost how to treat dames.

Dames are simple. I never met i that didn't understand a slap in the mouth or a slug from a forty-five....Accept my advice, child, and forget all this fancy relationship stuff. The world is fulla dames. All you gotta do is whistle.

Allan's Supportive Married Friends - Dick and Linda:

His married friends, difficult-driven, workaholic Dick Christie (Tony Roberts) and pretty neurotic model-wife Linda (Diane Keaton) arrived and agreed to aid Allan find another woman to share his life. They both wanted Allan to succeed in dating women.

[Note: A running joke was that harried, overworked businessman Dick often called his office assistant George and left messages and telephone number to written report his whereabouts, i.e., "This is Mr. Christie, I'm at The Hong Fat Noodle Company..."]

Dick advised that Allan had much to look forward to at present that he was single:

Wait at the bright side. Yous're free. You'll become out, there'll exist girls. You'll go to parties. Yous'll have affairs with married women. Sexual relations with girls of every race, creed and color.

But when Dick and Linda asked specifically what Allan preferred, he answered: "I like blondes. Little blondes with long hair and short skirts and boots and large chests and bright, witty and perceptive," but Linda advised that women with large breasts "normally don't have great minds." Equally he discussed his dilemma with them, Allan had a fearful daydream of Nancy riding on the back of a motorcycle with a "tall, strong, handsome, blue-eyed blonde man" before they laid down outdoors to make love.

Disastrous Arranged Dates for Allan:

The nerdy Allan was about to experience many disastrous and fumbling blind date scenes and rejections. Dick and Linda arranged an viii pm double-dinner-date for him with Linda's photographer's assistant Sharon Lake (Jennifer Common salt), who had starred in a "very arty" 16 mm hole-and-corner moving picture - that was titled "Gang Blindside."

• the excitedly-worried Allan delivered Bogart-similar words to himself to eternalize his confidence, as he stood in forepart of a mirror earlier his blind appointment with Sharon and imagined himself as a macho-homo: ("They say that dames are elementary. I never met one who didn't empathize a slap in the mouth or a slug from a .45. Come hither, Sharon")
• when in the bathroom preparing for his double-engagement, he doused himself with also much Canoe later on-shave lotion and wrestled with his hair dryer, equally he remembered how he had been rejected on previous dates
• Bogart appeared to passenger vehicle Allan to be more confident: "You lot're startin' off on the wrong pes, kid...You lot're lettin' her get the best of ya before the game even starts"; Allan imagined conquering his fears and sexually-satisfying a Fantasy Sharon (Mari Fletcher) in his chamber with his masculine amuse: (Sharon: "Oh, Allan, you are fantastic! Up until tonight, the doctors had told me that I was frigid. Oh, I want to thank you for proving them wrong")
• to print the real-life Sharon before she arrived at his identify, he had clearly placed books half-open in his living room, and displayed his purchased $twenty dollar 100-k track medal; when Allan actually met Sharon, he was then anxious that he nervously greeted her with a grunt and a wave; he and so failed to impress her by attempting to be "cool" and by making pretentious statements: ("I dearest the rain. It washes memories off the sidewalk of life"); he ended up swinging his arm wildly - gesturing and sending an Oscar Peterson record out of its anthology cover to crash against the wall, and as he leaned over a chair, he clumsily tipped it over
• later in the evening during their Chinese restaurant (Hong Fat Noodle Co.) double-date, the over-broken-hearted Allan made an embarrassing attempt to be excessively macho to impress Sharon, simply ended upward appearing bizarre when he demonstrated how to shovel rice into his mouth with chopsticks - he then thought to himself, merely seemed to completely misread his date: "She likes me...I tin read women. She wants me to come on with her. She digs me. She'south playing it very cool. I'm gonna come on with her after"; however, she soon excused herself from the date due to a sinus headache, and close her apartment door on him

Linda reassured Allan past proposing another possible date with Jennifer (Viva, ane of Andy Warhol's X-rated screen actresses), one of her therapy group members, although cautioned past labeling her as "crazy" and "too weird for a relationship." During their date, Jennifer admitted that she was a sex-obsessed nymphomaniac: "Allan, I won't deny it. I'one thousand a nymphomaniac. I discovered sex activity very early. I slept with everybody. My schoolteacher, my sister'southward husband, the string section of the New York Philharmonic. I desire to have sex all the fourth dimension, play all the fourth dimension. Otherwise you're just down, and why be downwardly? The best way to get upwards is sex. I'g not similar my sisters. They're so inhibited, they never want to do anything. I believe in having sex activity every bit oftentimes, as freely and every bit intensely as possible." When Allan voraciously grabbed at her to buss her, she unexpectedly retorted: "What do you accept me for?"

There was another failed pickup for Allan at an art gallery when he asked Museum Girl (Diana Davila) (in the San Francisco Museum of Modernistic Art) about her interpretation of Jackson Pollock's 1943 painting, 'Guardians of the Hush-hush': ("It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Human forced to alive in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing simply waste, horror and deposition, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black cool cosmos"), and and then when he asked what she was doing on Sat dark, she responded: "Committing suicide" - then undeterred, he asked nearly Friday dark instead!

During a visit to Dick'south and Linda's beach house, the threesome visited a discotheque, where on the trip the light fantastic flooring, Allan ogled a big-breasted blonde Discotheque Daughter (Susanne Zenor) and imagined propositioning her: "I beloved you lot, miss, whoever you are. I want to have your child," simply she soundly rejected him when he finally courageously asked her to dance - with harsh words: "Go lost, creep!"

The Growing Close Relationship Between Allan and Linda:

Allan realized that through his many conversations with Linda that she was slowly condign the daughter of his dreams. She was sensible and supportive of his qualities ("You lot've got a lot going for you lot. You're vivid, and you're funny and I call back y'all're even romantic, if you lot'd only believe it. I don't see why yous put on a faux mask every time yous meet a daughter"), and he e'er felt free and comfortable to speak to her openly. Allan realized that Linda, who often craved attention (and fawning over) from Dick, also often felt neglected and ignored. She treasured Allan's birthday gift of a plastic skunk more than Dick'due south present.

His next date was with a immature, short-haired, "earthy" and sexy blonde named Julie (Joy Bang), one of Dick's office workers who had just broken up with her boyfriend. Allan asked her to join him for a Friday evening dinner, and afterwards, she suggested that they cruise inside a biker bar: "Hey, let's go in there and become stoned and watch the freaks." Allan was overtaken past two long-haired, leather-clad tough Hoods (Michael Greene and Ted Markland) when he vainly attempted to protect Julie from their crude advances at their table. (Linda learned of Allan's date during the evening and appeared jealously concerned that he might similar his date.) Later when he returned to the beach firm, Allan revealed how he had been hobbling and beaten up during a fight, and Linda laughed hysterically at his clarification of his disastrous evening: ("I snapped my chin down onto some guy's fist and hit the other ane in the knee with my nose...I could employ a iii-pes Ring-Aid until the hurting subsides. (toward Linda) She's laughing and my sex life is turning into the Petrified Forest").

Upon their return to the metropolis, both Linda and Allan returned to their corresponding, normally-alone lives. Allan bemused to himself: "Ten million women in the country and I can't wind upward with one." He realized that his relationship with Linda worked so well because they were familiar with each other equally friends and weren't dating: "There'due south no force per unit area with Linda, I'm not trying to make her....It's the girls that I effort to score with that I tin't go to get-go base with. I'm turning into the strike-out male monarch of San Francisco."

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Source: https://www.filmsite.org/playi.html

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