Play It Again Sam Mask Off

Play It Over 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 iv chief players reprising their roles from the stage (Woody Allen, Tony Roberts, Diane Keaton, and Jerry Lacy). Allen could take directed the flick, and had already directed three films (What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), Accept the Money and Run (1969), and Bananas (1971)), but had decided to move on to other original projects. He reportedly spent about x days adapting the play for the big screen with co-writer/director Ross. It remains as one of the virtually quintessential, appealing and popular 'Woody Allen' films of all-time. Withal, it was devoid of whatsoever Academy Accolade nominations.

The film's championship has been the reason that many falsely claim that the line was actually spoken in Casablanca (1942). The moving picture was notable as the beginning pic pairing Allen with his on- and off-screen partner Diane Keaton (they were directly teamed together in 6 films). They appeared in seven more feature films together, besides including:

• Sleeper (1973)
• Dearest 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 moving picture critic (for Film Quarterly), Allan Felix (Woody Allen). He was cocky-deprecating, neurotic, shy, fanatical about films, and obsessed over the film Casablanca (1942). He tried to model his beliefs after the personality of its tough guy actor Humphrey Bogart. In the movie's resolution, a complicated honey triangle with Allan's two all-time friends was finally resolved during a re-enactment of the airport farewell scene in the 1942 film. The tagline on film posters declared: "Information technology's nonetheless the same old story, a fight for dearest and glory." Some other stated the obsessed connection between Allen'south character and Humphrey Bogart:

"By twenty-four hours, he is Woody Allen...But when night falls and the moon rises, Humphrey Bogart Strikes Again."

Information technology came in an intermediate and more than accessible stage in Woody Allen's career, between his earlier gag-filled hits such as: Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), and Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex* (*Only Were Afraid to Enquire) (1972) (he was working on this film during filming of PIAS), and his later on more polished works in the late 70s including Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979).

Throughout the film, there were many great one-liners spouted past Woody Allen'south character, such every bit:

- (nigh Television set dinners): "Who bothers to cook 'em? I suck 'em frozen."
- "If they're cute, they're crazy, you know? Great beauty drives a woman crazy."
- "I hate the embankment. I don't like pond. I don't like the sun. I'm red-headed, I'chiliad fair-skinned. I don't tan - I stroke!"

[Note: A predictable spin-off, the romantic one-act Affect of Pink (2004) from Canadian writer/director Ian Iqbal Rashid (his debut feature motion-picture show), portrayed the Woody Allen graphic symbol as a young Canadian gay man in London beingness advised by a ghostly Cary Grant (Kyle MacLachlan).]

The Story

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Prologue: Casablanca Viewing

During the film's opening credits, 29 twelvemonth-one-time SF film magazine critic Allan Felix (Woody Allen) watched a theatrical screening of Casablanca (1942) in a movie theatre with his oral cavity agape during the famed airport farewell conclusion sequence. He remarked (in phonation-over) as he walked out: "Who am I kidding? I'm not like that. I never was, I never will be. That's 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 be humid the cotton at the acme of the canteen to become the actress").

[Annotation: In the play, Allan worked for Moving picture Quarterly. In the pic, Allan was employed with Motion picture Weekly.]

Flashback - Allan's Marital Breakup with Nancy:

In a flashbacked scene while existence very depressed and with low self-esteem, Allan recalled how he broke-up and divorced his wife Nancy Felix (Susan Anspach) after 2 years of marriage. She mostly regarded him as sexually inadequate:

I tin't stand the marriage. I don't discover yous any fun. I feel you suffocate me. I don't feel any rapport with you and I don't dig you physically. Oh, for God's sake, Allan, don't accept it personal.

Although Allan was entirely disoriented by the divorce, he clung to hopes of a better future with other women and fantasized 'stepping out' or inviting 'broads' up to his flat: "Why should a divorce bother me so? Oh hell, maybe I'grand better off without her. Why not? I'm young, I'm salubrious, I've got a expert job. This could be my run a risk to step out a piffling chip. If she can swing, so can l. I could turn this place into a nightclub. I'll get broads upward hither like you lot wouldn't believe. Swingers, freaks, nymphomaniacs, dental hygienists." Yet, 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 desire a new life. I want to go skiing, I want to go dancing, I desire to go to the embankment, I want to ride through Europe on a motorcycle. All nosotros ever do is see movies....You lot're one of life's great watchers...I'chiliad non like that, I'm a doer. I want to participate. Nosotros never express mirth together.

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

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 about being a tough, cocky-confident, desirable and virile man, and about how to treat dames.

Dames are uncomplicated. I never met one that didn't sympathize a slap in the oral cavity or a slug from a forty-five....Take my advice, kid, and forget all this fancy human relationship stuff. The world is fulla dames. All you gotta practise is whistle.

Allan's Supportive Married Friends - Dick and Linda:

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

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

Dick advised that Allan had much to expect forrad to now that he was single:

Await at the bright side. You're free. You'll get out, in that location'll be girls. You'll go to parties. You lot'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 "usually don't have great minds." Every bit he discussed his dilemma with them, Allan had a fearful daydream of Nancy riding on the dorsum of a motorcycle with a "tall, strong, handsome, blueish-eyed blonde human" before they laid down outdoors to make beloved.

Disastrous Bundled Dates for Allan:

The nerdy Allan was about to experience many disastrous and fumbling blind date scenes and rejections. Dick and Linda arranged an 8 pm double-dinner-date for him with Linda's photographer'due south banana Sharon Lake (Jennifer Salt), who had starred in a "very high-sounding" 16 mm underground flick - that was titled "Gang Bang."

• the excitedly-worried Allan delivered Bogart-like words to himself to bolster his conviction, as he stood in front of a mirror before his blind date with Sharon and imagined himself equally a macho-man: ("They say that dames are simple. I never met i who didn't understand a slap in the mouth or a slug from a .45. Come here, Sharon")
• when in the bath preparing for his double-date, he doused himself with too much Canoe after-shave lotion and wrestled with his hair dryer, as he remembered how he had been rejected on previous dates
• Bogart appeared to double-decker Allan to exist more than confident: "You're startin' off on the wrong foot, kid...Y'all're lettin' her get the best of ya earlier the game even starts"; Allan imagined conquering his fears and sexually-satisfying a Fantasy Sharon (Mari Fletcher) in his sleeping accommodation with his masculine charm: (Sharon: "Oh, Allan, yous are fantastic! Up until tonight, the doctors had told me that I was frigid. Oh, I want to thank you lot for proving them wrong")
• to impress the real-life Sharon before she arrived at his place, he had conspicuously placed books half-open in his living room, and displayed his purchased $xx dollar 100-yard track medal; when Allan really met Sharon, he was so broken-hearted that he nervously greeted her with a grunt and a wave; he and then failed to impress her past attempting to exist "cool" and by making pretentious statements: ("I love the rain. Information technology washes memories off the sidewalk of life"); he concluded 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 on in the evening during their Chinese eating place (Hong Fatty Noodle Co.) double-date, the over-anxious Allan fabricated an embarrassing attempt to be excessively macho to impress Sharon, but ended up appearing bizarre when he demonstrated how to shovel rice into his oral fissure with chopsticks - he then idea to himself, but seemed to completely misread his appointment: "She likes me...I can read women. She wants me to come on with her. She digs me. She's playing it very absurd. I'm gonna come on with her later"; however, she soon excused herself from the date due to a sinus headache, and shut her apartment door on him

Linda reassured Allan by proposing another possible engagement with Jennifer (Viva, one of Andy Warhol's X-rated screen actresses), one of her therapy group members, although cautioned by labeling her as "crazy" and "too weird for a relationship." During their appointment, Jennifer admitted that she was a sex-obsessed nymphomaniac: "Allan, I won't deny it. I'm a nymphomaniac. I discovered sex very early. I slept with everybody. My schoolteacher, my sister's husband, the string section of the New York Philharmonic. I want to accept sexual practice all the time, play all the time. Otherwise you lot're just down, and why be down? The best way to become up is sex. I'm non similar my sisters. They're so inhibited, they never desire to exercise anything. I believe in having sex as ofttimes, equally freely and equally intensely as possible." When Allan voraciously grabbed at her to buss her, she unexpectedly retorted: "What do y'all take 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 Modern Fine art) about her interpretation of Jackson Pollock's 1943 painting, 'Guardians of the Undercover': ("It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of being. Nothingness. The predicament of Homo forced to alive in a barren, Godless eternity similar a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing simply waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless dour straitjacket in a blackness cool cosmos"), and and so when he asked what she was doing on Sabbatum night, she responded: "Committing suicide" - then undeterred, he asked nearly Friday night instead!

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

The Growing Shut Human relationship Between Allan and Linda:

Allan realized that through his many conversations with Linda that she was slowly becoming the girl of his dreams. She was sensible and supportive of his qualities ("You lot've got a lot going for you. You're bright, and you're funny and I think yous're even romantic, if you'd only believe information technology. I don't see why you lot put on a imitation mask every time you lot meet a girl"), and he always felt costless and comfortable to speak to her openly. Allan realized that Linda, who frequently 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's present.

His adjacent date was with a young, short-haired, "bawdy" and sexy blonde named Julie (Joy Bang), ane of Dick's part workers who had simply broken up with her swain. Allan asked her to bring together him for a Friday evening dinner, and afterwards, she suggested that they cruise within a biker bar: "Hey, let's go in in that location and go stoned and watch the freaks." Allan was overtaken by 2 long-haired, leather-clad tough Hoods (Michael Greene and Ted Markland) when he vainly attempted to protect Julie from their rough advances at their table. (Linda learned of Allan's date during the evening and appeared jealously concerned that he might like his date.) Subsequently when he returned to the beach business firm, Allan revealed how he had been bruised and beaten upward during a fight, and Linda laughed hysterically at his clarification of his disastrous evening: ("I snapped my chin down onto some guy'due south fist and hit the other one in the human knee with my nose...I could employ a 3-human foot Band-aid until the pain subsides. (toward Linda) She's laughing and my sex life is turning into the Petrified Forest").

Upon their render to the city, both Linda and Allan returned to their corresponding, normally-lonely lives. Allan bemused to himself: "Ten million women in the country and I tin can't wind upwardly with ane." He realized that his relationship with Linda worked so well because they were familiar with each other as friends and weren't dating: "In that location's no pressure with Linda, I'm non trying to make her....It's the girls that I attempt to score with that I can't get to first base of operations with. I'm turning into the strike-out king of San Francisco."

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

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