Annie Hall

Alvy Singer:
Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.

Alvy Singer:
My grammy never gave gifts. She was too busy getting raped by Cossacks.

Annie Hall:
La-di-da, la-di-da, la la.

Alvy Singer:
That was the most fun I've ever had without laughing.

Annie Hall:
It's so clean out here.

Alvy Singer:
That's because they don't throw their garbage away, they turn it into television shows.

Annie Hall:
So you wanna go into the movie or what?

Alvy Singer:
No, I can't go into a movie that's already started, because I'm anal.

Annie Hall:
That's a polite word for what you are.

Duane:
Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist,I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving... on the road at night... I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The... flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.

Alvy Singer:
Right. Well, I have to - I have to go now, Duane, because I, I'm due back on the planet Earth.

Party guest:
Hello? I forgot my mantra.

Alvy Singer:
What's with all these awards? They're always giving out awards. Best Fascist Dictator: Adolf Hitler.

Alvy Singer:
Here, you look like a very happy couple, um, are you?

Female street stranger:
Yeah.

Alvy Singer:
Yeah? So, so, how do you account for it?

Female street stranger:
Uh, I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.

Male street stranger:
And I'm exactly the same way.

Alvy Singer:
I see. Wow. That's very interesting. So you've managed to work out something?

Alvy Singer:
There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.

Alvy Singer:
I don't want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light.

Alvy Singer:
Don't worry. We can walk to the curb from here.

Annie Hall:
Sometimes I ask myself how I'd stand up under torture.

Alvy Singer:
You? You kiddin'? If the Gestapo would take away your Bloomingdale's charge card, you'd tell 'em everything.

Alvy Singer:
Annie, there's a big lobster behind the refrigerator. I can't get it out. This thing's heavy. Maybe if I put a little dish of butter sauce here with a nutcracker, it will run out the other side.

Annie Hall:
Oh, you see an analyst?

Alvy Singer:
Yeah, just for fifteen years.

Annie Hall:
Fifteen years?

Alvy Singer:
Yeah, I'm gonna give him one more year, and then I'm goin' to Lourdes.

Alvy Singer:
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.

Alvy Singer:
Love is too weak a word for what I feel - I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F's, yes I have to invent, of course I - I do, don't you think I do?

Alvy Singer:
Yeah, grass, right? The illusion that it will make a white woman more like Billie Holiday.

Annie Hall:
Well, have you ever made love high?

Alvy Singer:
Me? No. I - I, you know, If I have grass or alcohol or anything, I get unbearably wonderful. I get too, too wonderful for words. I don't know why you have to get high every time we make love.

Annie Hall:
It relaxes me.

Alvy Singer:
You have to be artificially relaxed before we can go to bed?

Annie Hall:
Well, what's the difference anyway?

Alvy Singer:
Well, I'll give you a shot of sodium pentathol. You can sleep through it.

Annie Hall:
Oh come on. Look who's talking. You've been seeing a psychiatrist for 15 years. You should smoke some of this. You'd be off the couch in no time.

Alvy Singer:
I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final, you know. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me. When I was thrown out, my mother, who was an emotionally high-strung woman, locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of Mah-Jongg tiles. I was depressed at that time. I was in analysis. I was suicidal as a matter of fact and would have killed myself, but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian, and, if you kill yourself, they make you pay for the sessions you miss.

Alvy Singer:
Well, I didn't start out spying. I thought I'd surprise you. Pick you up after school.

Annie Hall:
Yeah, but you wanted to keep the relationship flexible. Remember, it's your phrase.

Alvy Singer:
Oh stop it, you're having an affair with your college professor, that jerk that teaches that incredible crap course, Contemporary Crisis in Western Man...

Annie Hall:
Existential Motifs in Russian Literature. You're really close.

Alvy Singer:
What's the difference? It's all mental masturbation.

Annie Hall:
Oh, well, now we're finally getting to a subject you know something about.

Alvy Singer:
Hey, don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.

Annie Hall:
We're not having an affair. He's married. He just happens to think I'm neat.

Alvy Singer:
"Neat." What are you, 12 years old? That's one of your Chippewa Falls expressions.

Annie Hall:
Who cares? Who cares?

Alvy Singer:
Next thing you know, he'll find you keen and peachy, you know. Next thing you know, he's got his hand on your ass.

Annie Hall:
You've always had hostility towards David, ever since I mentioned him.

Alvy Singer:
Dav - you call your teacher David?

Annie Hall:
It's his name.

Alvy Singer:
It's a Biblical name, right? What does he call you, Bathsheba?

Annie Hall:
So I told her about, about the family and about my feelings towards men and about my relationship with my brother. And then she mentioned penis envy. Do you know about that?

Alvy Singer:
Me? I'm, I'm one of the few males who suffers from that.

Alvy Singer:
With your wife in bed, does she need some kind of artificial stimulation, like, like marijuana?

Old man on street:
We use a large vibrating egg.

Pam:
Sex with you is really a Kafka-esque experience.

Alvy Singer:
Oh. Thank you.

Pam:
I mean that as a compliment.

Alvy Singer:
I think, I think there's too much burden placed on the orgasm, you know, to make up for empty areas in life.

Pam:
Who said that?

Alvy Singer:
It may have been Leopold and Loeb.

Alvy Singer:
Are you going with a right-wing rock 'n roll star?

Alvy Singer:
Honey, there's a spider in your bathroom the size of a Buick.

Alvy Singer:
I did it. I killed 'em both.

Alvy Singer:
What's the matter? What are you sad about? What did you want me to do? Capture 'em and rehabilitate 'em?

Alvy Singer:
You know, I don't think I could take a mellow evening because I - I don't respond well to mellow. You know what I mean? I have a tendency to - if I get too mellow, I - I ripen and then rot, you know.

Alvy Singer:
I don't want to put a wad of white powder in my nose. There's the nasal membrane...

Annie Hall:
You never want to try anything new, Alvy.

Alvy Singer:
How can you say that? Whose idea was it? I said that you, I and that girl from your acting class should sleep together in a threesome.

Annie Hall:
Well, that's sick.

Alvy Singer:
Yeah, I know it's sick, but it's new. You didn't say it couldn't be sick.

Annie Hall:
Alvy, you're incapable of enjoying life, you know that? I mean you're like New York City. You're just this person. You're like this island unto yourself.

Alvy Singer:
I can't enjoy anything unless everybody is. If one guy is starving someplace, that puts a crimp in my evening.

Alvy Singer:
I remember the staff at our public school. You know, we had a saying, uh, that those who can't do teach, and those who can't teach, teach gym. And, uh, those who couldn't do anything, I think, were assigned to our school.

Alvy Singer:
They did not take me in the Army. I was, um, interestingly enough, I was, I was 4-P. Yes. In the, in the event of war, I'm a hostage.

Annie Hall:
You're what Grammy Hall would call a real Jew.

Alvy Singer:
Oh. Thank you.

Alvy Singer:
In 1942 I had already discovered women.

Miss Reed:
That's the second time this month. Step up here.

Alvy at 9:
What'd I do?

Miss Reed:
Step up here.

Alvy at 9:
What did I do?

Miss Reed:
You should be ashamed of yourself.

Alvy Singer:
Why? I was just expressing a healthy sexual curiosity.

Miss Reed:
Six year old boys don't have girls on their minds.

Alvy Singer:
I did.

Alvy Singer:
Well, I never had a latency period. I can't help it.

Alvy Singer:
I'm so tired of spending evenings making fake insights with people who work for "Dysentery."

Robin:
"Commentary."

Alvy Singer:
Oh really? I had heard that "Commentary" and "Dissent" had merged and formed "Dysentery."

Allison:
I'm in the midst of doing my thesis.

Alvy Singer:
On what?

Allison:
Political commitment in twentieth century literature.

Alvy Singer:
You, you, you're like New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, the socialist summer camps and the, the father with the Ben Shahn drawings, right, and the really, y'know, strike-oriented kind of, red diaper, stop me before I make a complete imbecile of myself.

Allison:
No, that was wonderful. I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype.

Alvy Singer:
Right, I'm a bigot, I know, but for the left.

Robin:
There's Henry Drucker. He has a chair in history at Princeton. Oh, and the short man is Hershel Kaminsky. He has a chair in philosophy at Cornell.

Alvy Singer:
Yeah? Two more chairs they got a dining room set.

Alvy Singer:
I though of that old joke, y'know, the, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" And the guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much how I feel about relationships. Y'know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and, but, uh, I guess we keep going through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.

Alvy Singer:
My "Grammy" never gave out presents. She was too busy being raped by Cossacks.

Alvy Singer:
Sun is bad for you. Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat... college.

Mom Hall:
How do you plan to spend the holidays, Mrs. Singer?

Alvy's Mom:
We fast.

Dad Hall:
Fast?

Alvy's Dad:
No food. You know, to atone for our sins.

Mom Hall:
What sins? I don't understand.

Alvy's Dad:
To tell you the truth, neither do we.

Alvy Singer:
How can you say that?

Alvy Singer:
You're just upset. You must be getting your period.

Alvy Singer:
Lyndon Johnson is a politician, you know the ethics those guys have. It's like a notch underneath child molester.

Alvy Singer:
You're an actor Max, you should be doing Shakespeare in the park.

Rob:
Oh I did Shakespeare in the park Max, I got mugged. I was playing Richard II and two guys in leather jackets stole my leotard.

Rob:
Imagine my surprise when I got your call, Max.

Rob:
Twins, Max! 16 years-old. Can you imagine the mathematical possibilities?

Rob:
Oh, I did Shakespeare in the Park, Max. I got mugged. I was playing Richard the Second and two guys with leather jackets stole my leotard.

Rob:
Imagine my surprise when I got your call, Max.

Rob:
Twins, Max! 16 years old. Can you imagine the mathematical possibilities?

Alvy Singer:
I can't get with any religion that advertises in Popular Mechanics.

Alvy Singer:
Oh my God, she's right. Why did I turn off Allison Portchnik? She was beautiful, she was willing. She was real intelligent. Is it the old Groucho Marx joke that I'm - I just don't want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member?

Alvy Singer:
Hey, Harvard makes mistakes too! Kissinger taught there!

Alvy Singer:
I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.

Mrs. Singer:
He's been depressed. All of a sudden, he can't do anything.

Dr. Flicker:
Why are you depressed, Alvy?

Mrs. Singer:
Tell Dr. Flicker. It's something he read.

Dr. Flicker:
Something you read, huh?

Alvy Singer:
The universe is expanding.

Dr. Flicker:
The universe is expanding?

Alvy Singer:
Well, the universe is everything, and if it's expanding, someday it will break apart, and that will be the end of everything.

Mrs. Singer:
What is that your business? He's stopped doing his homework.

Alvy Singer:
What's the point?

Mrs. Singer:
What has the universe got to do with it. You're here, in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is not expanding.

Dr. Flicker:
It won't be expanding for billions of years yet, Alvy. And we've gotta try and enjoy ourselves while we're here. Huh? Huh? Huh? [laughs]

Alvy:
[Hearing a man behind him rambling about Marshall McLuhan] What I wouldn't give for a large sock with horse manure in it. [Turns to the camera] What do you do when you get stuck in a movie line with a guy like this behind you? It's just...maddening-

Man in Theatre Line:
[Notices Alvy and walks up to him] Wait a minute, why can't I give my opinion? It's a free country!

Alvy:
Did-did he, he can give you- Do you have give it so loud? I mean, aren't you ashamed to pontificate like that? And the funny part of it is, Marshall McLuhan; you don't know anything about Marshall McLuhan!

Man in Theatre Line:
Oh really, really? I happen to teach a class at Columbia called "TV, Media, and Culture." So I think that my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!

Alvy:
Oh, do ya? Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just lemme lemme lemme — [pulls McLuhan from behind a nearby poster stand] — Come over here for a second. Tell him!

Marshall McLuhan:
I heard what you were saying. You know nothing of my work. You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.

Alvy:
[To the camera] Boy, if life were only like this!

Alvy:
It's all mental masturbation.

Annie:
Oh, well, now we're finally getting to a subject you know something about.

Alvy:
Hey, don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.

Alvy Singer:
There's an old joke: two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. The the other joke important joke for me is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx, but I think it appears originally in Freud's Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious. And it goes like this, I'm paraphrasing: Um, I would never wanna belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member. That's the key joke of my adult life in terms of my relationships with women. You know, lately, the strangest things have been going through my mind, 'cause I turned 40, and I guess I'm going through a life crisis or something, I dunno, and I'm not worried about aging, I'm not one of those characters, you know I, well I'm balding slightly on top, that's about the worst you can say about me. I um I think I'm gonna get better as I get older. You know, I think I'm gonna be the balding virile type, you know, as opposed to say, the um distinguished gray, for instance, you know, unless I'm neither of those two. Unless I'm one of those guys with saliva dribbling out of his mouth who wanders into a cafeteria with a shopping bag screaming about socialism. Annie and I broke up, and I still can't get my mind around that, you know, I keep sifting the pieces of the relationship through my mind and and examining my life and trying to figure out where did the screw up come, you know, and mm a year ago, we were in love, you know, and and and I just, and it's funny, I'm not a I'm not a morose type. I'm not a depressive character, you know, I was a reasonably happy kid, I guess, I was brought up in Brooklyn during World War II.

Alvy Singer:
[voiceover] My analyst says I exaggerate my childhood memories, but I swear, I was brought up underneath the roller coaster in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. Maybe that accounts for my personality, which is a little nervous, I think. You know, I have a hyperactive imagination. My mind tends to jump around a little, and uh I I I have some trouble between fantasy and reality. My father ran the bumper car concession. Th-there he is, and there I am. Right. I I used to get my aggression out through those cars all the time. I remember the staff at our public school. You know, we had a saying, uh but, "Those who can't do, teach, and those who can't teach, teach gym." And uh, of course, those who couldn't do anything, I think, were assigned to our school. I must say, I always thought my schoolmates were idiots. Melvyn Greenglass, you know, his fat little face and Henrietta Farrell, just Miss Perfect all the time and uh Ivan Ackerman, always the wrong answer. Always.

Alvy Singer:
You know, even as a kid, I always went for the wrong women. I think that's my problem. When my mother took me to see Snow White, everyone fell in love with Snow White. I immediately fell for the Wicked Queen.

Annie Hall:
[repeated line] La-dee-da, la-dee-da.