Trivia for
Annie Hall (1977) More at IMDbPro »

• Alvy's (Woody Allen's) sneezing into the cocaine was an unscripted accident. When previewed, the audience laughed so loud that director Allen decided to leave it in, and had to add footage to compensate for people missing the next few jokes from laughing too much.
  
  
• Woody Allen originally envisioned this movie as a murder mystery, with a subplot about a romance. During script revisions, Allen decided to drop the murder plot, which he and Marshall Brickman later revitalized in Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993).
  
  
• During the lobster-cooking scene Annie runs and retrieves a camera to take pictures of Alvy dealing with the crustaceans. Later, when Alvy runs over to Annie's house to smash a spider, the series of photos Annie took is on the wall in the background.
  
  
• Diane Keaton's real name is Diane Hall and her nickname is Annie.
  
  
• Sigourney Weaver's screen debut, in a non-speaking part as Alvy's date near the end of the movie.
  
  
• The jokes that Woody Allen tells in front of the audience at the University of Wisconsin and on "The Dick Cavett Show" (1968) are from his stand-up comic days.
  
  
• Annie's outfits, which caused a brief fashion rage, were Diane Keaton's own clothes.
  
  
• When waiting in front of the movie theater, Alvy Singer says, "I'm standing out here with the cast of the Godfather," to Diane Keaton, who was in the cast of The Godfather (1972). Additionally, one of the men who bothers him for the autograph is played by actor Rick Petrucelli, who had a small role in The Godfather as a thug who protects Michael en route to the hospital.
  
  
• In the scene where Alvy questions people on the street about what makes a relationship, a large crowd can be seen in the background watching the filming.
  
  
• Ben Stiller comments how he likes the scene when Alvy has to meet Annie's family in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies: America's Greatest Movies (1998) (TV) and how it relates to him personally because he always was very apprehensive meeting his girlfriends' parents. Stiller starred in Meet the Parents (2000), which revolved around that very idea.
  
  
• Alvy calls the two fans that pester him at the movie theatre 'Cheech'. In Bullets Over Broadway (1994), also directed by Allen, Chazz Palminteri's gangster character is called 'Cheech.'
  
  
• 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 Woody Allen compromised on naming the film after the central character three weeks before the film's premiere. Other titles suggested were "It Had to Be Jew", "A Rollercoaster Named Desire", and "Me and My Goy".
  
  
• The film Alvy is waiting to see with Annie is Ansikte mot ansikte (1976) (Face to Face) by Ingmar Bergman, one of Woody Allen's biggest influences.
  
  
• "That was the most fun I've ever had without laughing" is a reference to the quote by H.L. Mencken in 1942 (and later Humphrey Bogart).
  
  
• 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).
  
  
• Marshall McLuhan was not Allen's first choice. Federico Fellini and Luis Buñuel were asked first.
  
  
• The completely silent credits were inspired by The Front (1976), which starred Woody Allen.
  
  
• Alvy never says "I love you" to Annie. The closest he comes is when Alvy says love isn't a strong enough word for how he feels.
  
  
• During the classroom flashbacks, one of the teachers writes, "Tuesday, December 1" on the chalkboard. December 1 is Woody Allen's birthday, and Tuesday December 1, 1942 was his seventh birthday, tying in with the school setting.
  
  
• On "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" (1993) (28 February 1995), Harvey Fierstein revealed that both he and Danny Aiello had bit parts in this classic, but their scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.
  
  
• Woody Allen originally filmed a scene in which a traffic advisory sign "urges" Alvy to go to Annie in California. Editor Ralph Rosenblum wrote that Allen was so disgusted by the scene's cuteness that he took the footage and threw it into the East River. The traffic-sign motif was later used in Steve Martin's L.A. Story (1991).
  
  
• The passerby Alvy refers to as "the winner of the Truman Capote look-alike contest" is in fact Truman Capote, who appears uncredited.
  
  
• [June 2008] Ranked #2 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Romantic Comedy".
  
  
• The movie's line "Hey, don't knock masturbation - it's sex with someone I love!" was voted as the #78 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
  
  
• Premiere voted this movie as one of "The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time" in 2006.
  
  
• When Alvy is listing the reasons he doesn't like the country, he mentions "the Manson family, and Dick and Perry" - Dick and Perry are references to Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, the two men who invaded the home of, and murdered, the Clutter family on their farm in Kansas in 1959. These events were immortalized in the novel In Cold Blood. The author, Truman Capote, appears as himself in this film.
  
  
• Cameo: [Jeff Goldblum] The party guest who "forgot his mantra".
  
  
• At 93 minutes, it is the shortest film to ever win the Best Picture Oscar.
  
  
• The house under the rollercoaster where Alvy grew up is actually the Kensington Hotel in Coney Island, Brooklyn which was located underneath the Thunderbolt rollercoaster. Allen discovered it while searching locations during filming. The hotel and rollercoaster were demolished in 2000.
  
  
• Average shot length: 14.5 seconds
  
  
• Kay Lenz was offered the title role but her boyfriend David Cassidy made the offer turned down.
  
  
• Shelley Hack's film debut.
  
  
• Shelley Duvall filmed her scenes in two days.
  
  
• Alvy makes a joke about the political magazines Dissent and Commentary merging to form "Dysentery." Dissent is a famous liberal magazine and Commentary is a famous conservative magazine.
  
  

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