Daily Dialogue — September 9, 2017

Annie: Let’s face it. I don’t think our relationship is working.
Alvy: A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.

— Annie Hall (1977), written by Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Break-Up.

Trivia: The first rough cut ran 2 hours and 20 minutes. Among the scenes later eliminated were: segments showing Alvy’s former classmates in the present day; Alvy as a teenager; a scene in a junk-food restaurant (featuring Danny Aiello); extensive additional scenes featuring Carol Kane, Janet Margolin, Colleen Dewhurst and Shelley Duvall; and a fantasy segment at Madison Square Garden featuring the New York Knicks competing against a team of five great philosophers. Christopher Walken’s driving scene was also cut, but was restored a week before the film was completed. New material for the ending was filmed on three occasions, but most was discarded. The final montage was a late addition.

Dialogue on Dialogue: The movie tells the story of a couple falling in love, then breaking up, but crafted in a semi-nonlinear manner. The writers of (500) Days of Summer acknowledge Annie Hall was an inspiration for their movie.