Annie Hall: The Original Cut?

[Harold Gervais]

I have a friend of mine who trades DVD's & tapes of questionable nature. He doesn't sell, mind you, just trades with other film traders. Anyway, he & I were chatting last week about holy grail discoveries. For him it is Woody Allen's original cut of Annie Hall. As I understand it, Allen wrote, shot & edited Annie Hall to be a murder mystery where the Christopher Walken character played a much larger role in the film. Both my friend & I have heard of a bootleg of Allen's original cut floating out there somewhere in the ether. My college friend claims to have seen parts of it as a party in LA 10 or 12 years ago. Has anyone hear heard of just such a cut or of someone who has seen it or possesses a copy. I'd think the whole thing would be a movie urban myth but my friend has always been dead serious about it and swears he saw some of it at that party he mentioned. So any help please. And I thank you.

[lord_clyde]

If this were true it would be much more than a holy grail find. Sounds like it would be a completely different movie though.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

I have a friend of mine who trades DVD's & tapes of questionable nature. He doesn't sell, mind you, just trades with other film traders. Anyway, he & I were chatting last week about holy grail discoveries. For him it is Woody Allen's original cut of Annie Hall. As I understand it, Allen wrote, shot & edited Annie Hall to be a murder mystery where the Christopher Walken character played a much larger role in the film.

Hmm... well, the murder mystery part reminds me (obviously) of Manhattan Murder Mystery which was also co-written by Marshall Brickman (and also starred Allen with Diane Keaton). So, maybe, initially, Allen thought of doing Annie Hall like that, rejected it and then later revisited the idea with that movie.

[cafeman]

Hmm... well, the murder mystery part reminds me (obviously) of Manhattan Murder Mystery which was also co-written by Marshall Brickman (and also starred Allen with Diane Keaton). So, maybe, initially, Allen thought of doing Annie Hall like that, rejected it and then later revisited the idea with that movie.

This is exactly what I heard. That Annie Hall was started from the script for Manhattan Murder Mystery, but then deviated more and more from it that it ultimately became a completely different, basically improvised movie, and that Woody only later returned to the real script for it and made Manhattan Murder Mystery very close to the original script for what turned out to be Annie Hall.

[Lino]

It's all true. From imdb.com:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075686/trivia

The film's working title was "Anhedonia" - the inability to feel pleasure. United Artists fought against it (among other things, they were unable to come up with an ad campaign that explained the meaning of the word) and Allen compromised on naming the film after the central character three week's before the film's premiere.

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.

One scene cut from the film is a fantasy sequence of Annie and Alvy visiting hell. This scene was rewritten 20 years later for Allen's Deconstructing Harry (1997).

Some of the murder mystery elements that were meant to be part of this film were transferred by Woody Allen to his later film Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), which also co-starred Diane Keaton.

Anyone reading any book about Woody Allen would know this by now. And if that tape exists, what I wouldn't give - or would give - to see it. A completely different film, no less. Better? Who knows and chances are we never will.

[Cinesimilitude]

I started reading Woody Allen on Woody Allen a while back, it was good, but not enough to get me through my workday. I only made it up to Manhattan, I'm gonna have a read through the annie hall section later on today.

[Faux Hulot]

For more on this, track down the book When The Shooting Stops, The Cutting Begins, by Ralph Rosenblum. He was Annie Hall's editor and has some revealing anecdotes about the experience. I'd quote him here but I loaned the book out years ago and never got it back.

[justeleblanc]

I was under the impression that the Murder Mystery plot really only existed in earlier drafts of the script, and they weren't filmed.

[jorencain]

I was under the impression that the Murder Mystery plot really only existed in earlier drafts of the script, and they weren't filmed.

No, they were filmed (as far as everything I've read has said). See the above quotes from IMDB. Woody has also talked about it it in interviews; saying that the romantic comedy aspect really took shape during editing, and that's when the film became what it is.

[Ishmael]

Marshall Brickman's essay on the back of Criterion's laserdisc of Annie Hall clears up the mystery.

"The first cut of the film was, I recall, about two hours and fifteen minutes. The release print is 94 minutes, including titles and end credits. What was excised in the editing process was primarily material which, while funny (to the authors, anyhow), distracted from the emerging tale of Annie and Alvy and the pull their relationship seemed to be exerting on the story. The editing process became a search for how to use that relationship as a spine on which to hang all the other observations and material dealing with life as it was back then in New York, in the rosy '70s. The surprising thing to me is, after viewing it again: it all seems intentional, each scene inexorably leading to the next; whole, inevitable in its style and rhythm. And with an emotional kicker that I'm not sure was ever in the script. And all this in spite of the deleted forty-five minutes -- a tribute, I think, as much to Woody's consistency as to Ralph Rosenblum's editorial expertise."

http://www.chaumurky.net/criterion/indepth-17.html

[Harold Gervais]

I can only suppose that what is floating out there is a bootleg of a very early work print. I'd still like to see it.

[GringoTex]

And the Director's Cut jumps the shark!

Really, Woody had complete freedom to make whatever he wanted to of Annie Hall. What the hell is the interest in the rough cut? I could have made tapes of about a hundred different rough cuts of Linklater's films (as I worked post-production on them) and then tried to pass them off as Holy Grails 20 years down the road.

But I'm not the filmmaker.

[Lino]

What the hell is the interest in the rough cut?

People love deleted scenes (I am one of them) and given the reluctance on Allen' s part to include any extra material on his DVDs apart from trailers, I think this is perfectly understandable from a fan's P.O.V.

[Harold Gervais]

What the hell is the interest in the rough cut?

People love deleted scenes (I am one of them) and given the reluctance on Allen' s part to include any extra material on his DVDs apart from trailers, I think this is perfectly understandable from a fan's P.O.V.

Pretty much, yeah. If a movie started out as one thing and got radically changed to end up as something else, I'm curious to see where it started at. Doesn't change what I think of the final piece but it does give it an added perspective.

[jorencain]

Plus, this is "Annie Hall" we're taking about, not "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion". It's such a landmark film that it would be fascinating to see how it developed and where it came from.

[exte]

...duh! Who wouldn't want to see it?

[Gordon]

a fantasy segment at Madison Square Garden featuring the New York Knicks competing against a team of five great philosophers

No way! Oh, the mind boggles! Schopenhauer? Nietzsche? Outrageous.

$300 for anyone who can come up with a VHS tape or DVD-r. No, seriously.

[devlinnn]

I doubt the existence of any boots, but Woody has said he has kept all the material from all of his films not used on what he calls the 'black reels'. This would include the original September with different cast, Michael Keaton's brief work as the lead in Purple Rose and the early, more dramatic cut, of Take the Money and Run (hopefully). I doubt we will ever see this stuff, but we can dream...

[jorencain]

He has said that the original "September" has vanished. In "Woody Allen on Woody Allen" he said that he has no idea where it is, and that he thinks it no longer exists. That's really a bummer because "September" is one of my favorite Woody Allen films.

[montgomery]

I have an early draft of the Annie Hall script. It has many, many things not in the finished film, and it's also (in my opinion) much inferior to the finished film BUT--it's more or less the same movie, i.e. not a murder mystery. I know the film did start off as a murder mystery, but it's clear that this script was the basis for the shooting of Annie Hall. I absolutely do not believe there is an "alternate" cut of Annie Hall that's a murder mystery. And I'm not sure that Allen ever said that there was one (although I've heard him talk about the murder mystery origins many times), and I wouldn't believe it until I read it. In fact, I'm not sure I'd believe it even if I did read it.

[justeleblanc]

mont, i have a feeling you might be right.

[godardslave]

I have an early draft of the Annie Hall script.

and how, pray tell, did you obtain such an item!!?

[montgomery]

I bought it in a store in Hollywood about 8 years ago. This store sells nothing but screenplays. I also got the script for Love and Death, which also has many things not in the finished film, and which is actually funnier than the film, in my opinion (I also got Bullets Over Broadway, which is almost identical to the film, with a few minor differences here and there). The L&D script is more or less the same as the film, but with a lot of funny outtakes. The Annie Hall script, although containing most everything that ended up in the movie (and much more--it's a long script), seems so different from the finished film. I haven't looked at it in awhile, but it's much more gag-oriented, not unlike Family Guy, cutting from gag to another, but, like the show, lacking emotional impact or depth. It basically seems like one long stand-up routine. Also, the screenplay comes across as EXTREMELY narcissistic and mean-spirited. Now, I'm a huge Allen fan and love all his films (until after Husbands and Wives, his last masterpiece) and Allen fans are used to his narcissism, but endeared (or manipulated) by it. In the screenplay, he comes across as bitter and resentful and I must admit it left a bad taste in my mouth, and sort of turned me off of the film. In any case, I see how Rosenbaum and Gordon Willis are as important to this film as Allen. We tend to consider Annie Hall Allen's first "serious/mature" film, but if the screenplay is any indication, it didn't really start off that way.

[godardslave]

interesting, and a nice buy.

just to be clear, are these the original hand written manuscripts, or just reproduced copies by a 3rd party?

Is an original script such as this reasonably expensive?

[justeleblanc]

interesting, and a nice buy.

just to be clear, are these the original hand written manuscripts, or just reproduced copies by a 3rd party?

Is an original script such as this reasonably expensive?

hand written? you got to be kidding me. i assume this is a copy of an early draft. i would assume they go for no more than 15 bucks. they're fairly easy to come by.