Sleeper (film)
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| Sleeper | |
|---|---|
 original film poster |
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| Directed by | Woody Allen |
| Produced by | Jack Grossberg |
| Written by | Woody Allen Marshall Brickman |
| Starring | Woody Allen Diane Keaton Maria Small Susan Miller |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) | 1973 |
| Running time | 88 minutes |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Sleeper (1973) is a futuristic science fiction comedy film, written by, directed by, and starring Woody Allen.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
In the movie, The Happy Carrot health food store owner Miles Monroe (Woody Allen) is hospitalized in Saint Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan for an ulcer operation (having gone into the hospital for a check of a peptic ulcer), but ends up in the liquid nitrogen tanks of an immortality institution. He is revived 200 years later in the year 2173 by a subversive organization, as he is the only member of this society without a known biometric identity. The authorities question a power surge at the institute and Monroe is arrested and escapes and lives on the run. Monroe joins the rebels as an action commando with the idle Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton, in a role similar to that of Manhattan).
The dictatorial leader of the society has been killed by a rebel bomb, but this has not been revealed publicly. The only surviving body part is the leader's nose. It is the intent of the administration to clone the leader from this single remaining part (The Aries Project). A rebel group led by the charismatic Erno Windt (John Beck) intends to disrupt this attempt by stealing and "assassinating" the nose. The unidentifiable Miles Monroe, the only man with no identity in this future age, is essential to accomplishing this task.
This early Allen movie features some memorable concepts, such as Orgasmatron booths and a related Intoxication orb (passed around at parties), confessional robots, bioengineered hydroponic vegetables (without any other part of the plant) such as hose-fed carrots as large as a canoe, and the cloning of vital organs and entire persons. Many things thought unhealthy in Monroe's time (including deep fried fatty foods and smoking) are known by future scientists to be extremely good for you.
Sometime between Monroe's time in the late 20th century and 2173 there was nuclear warfare, caused "when a man named Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear device", and due to which much history is obscure or lost. 2173 historians show Monroe some surviving 20th century artifacts (such as a set of novelty wind-up chattering teeth and a crumpled photograph of Henry Kissinger) and ask for explanations. The historians have developed mistaken theories about Howard Cosell and Richard Nixon, which Miles doesn't have the heart to refute.
Jokes include: Robots programmed to behave like Jewish tailors and gay butlers; PhDs in oral sex; a McDonald's restaurant with the sign "Over 795,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Served" (a total of fifty-one 0's - see photo); and an abandoned 200-year old Volkswagen Beetle that starts up instantly.
[edit] Production and trivia
- The movie was filmed in and around Denver, Colorado. The outdoor shots of the hospital were filmed at the Mesa Laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The "Sculptured House", designed by architect Charles Deaton, is a private home known as the Sculptured House on Genessee Mountain near the town of Genessee, a short distance west of Denver.[1] As of early 2006, the structure, known to many as the "Sleeper House", was on the market for $7.95 million.[2]
- The title may be a reference to the classic science fiction novel The Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells which also deals with a man in suspended animation who awakens in a dictatorial future against which he rebels. However, the plots of Allen's film and Wells' novel otherwise have few similarities.
- According to his book Woody Allen on Woody Allen, he originally wanted to do a 3 hour film, Part 1 of it being a New York comedy, the second half taking place in the future. The project was actually greenlit, however Allen decided to abandon the first half and just do the second.
- The soundtrack music is in New Orleans traditional jazz style, by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Allen sitting in on clarinet.
- In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Sleeper the 30th greatest comedy film of all time.
- Also in 2000, the American Film Institute listed Sleeper 80th among its 100 Years… 100 Laughs.
- The Internet Movie Database lists Douglas Rain as, "Evil computer/Various robot butlers (voice)(uncredited)," which was Woody Allen's comedic homage to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Rain provided the voice of the computer HAL 9000.
[edit] Reception
[edit] Box Office
Sleeper was a box office hit in North America, grossing $18,344,729 in its theatrical run.
[edit] Critical
Critic Pauline Kael reviewed the film positively but warily in the December 31, 1973 issue of The New Yorker. She wrote:
- The Woody Allen character suffers, in all his films, from sex in the head which he figures his body can't get for him. It's the comedy of sexual inadequacy; what makes it hip rather than masochistic and awful is that he thinks women want the media macho ideal, and we in the audience are cued to suspect, as he secretly does, that that's the real inadequacy (social even more than sexual). Woody Allen is a closet case of potency; he knows he's potent, but he's afraid to tell the world-- and adolescents and post-adolescents can certainly identify with that.... Maybe the reason he doesn't invest others with comic character (or even villainous character) is that he's so hung up that he has no interest in other people's hangups; that could be why his stories never really build to the big climactic finish one expects from a comedy.... It's likely that he sees his function as being all of us, and since he's all of us, nobody else can be anything.
In addition, Sleeper won the Hugo Award at the Washington, D.C. World Science Fiction Convention in 1974.
[edit] Quotes
- Miles: "Don't you see? Political solutions never work! That's what I've been trying to tell you! In six months, we'll be stealing Erno's nose!"
- Historian (showing Miles a tape of Howard Cosell): "We have a theory, that whenever a citizen committed a crime against the state, they were forced to watch this."
- Miles: "Yes, that's exactly what that was."
- Miles: "I bought Polaroid stock at seven, it must be up millions by now!"
- (N.B. At the time of the film's release in 1973, Polaroid was a high-flier but the company eventually filed for bankruptcy in 1981.)
- Miles: "My Brain...that's my second favorite organ!"
- Miles (when asked by Luna what the phrase "register commies, not guns" meant): "Oh, he was probably a member of the National Rifle Association. There was a group that helped criminals get guns so they could shoot citizens. It was a public service."
- Miles "It's a 200-year-old Volkswagen! (car starts instantly) Wow, they really built these things, didn't they?"
- In the film's German dub, the above Volkswagen scene provided for a special in-joke particularly for German audiences as after the car starts, it's Miles's chance to satisfiedly utter Volkswagen's original German slogan for the bug that they used for decades and that remains one of the most popular commercial slogans in Germany of all: "Tja...'Läuft und läuft und läuft!'!" (lit. "(It) runs and runs and runs.") The irony lies in that Volkswagen's German slogan was actually meant to claim thereby that their cars were truly built "for all eternity".
[edit] References
- ^ The Sculptured House. Kentwood Homes Tour. Retrieved on April 15, 2006.
- ^ Sculptured House listing on architectureforsale.com. Retrieved on April 15, 2006.
[edit] External links
- Sleeper at the Internet Movie Database
- Sleeper at Filmsite.org
