Sleeper

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Sleeper
film poster by Robert McGinnis
Directed by	Woody Allen
Produced by	Jack Grossberg
Written by	Woody Allen Marshall Brickman
Starring	Woody Allen Diane Keaton Maria Small Susan Miller
Editing by	Ralph Rosenblum
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	December 17, 1973
Running time	88 minutes
Language	English

Sleeper (1973) is a futuristic science fiction comedy film, written by, directed by, and starring Woody Allen. It is loosely based on the H. G. Wells novel The Sleeper Awakes.

Plot

Miles Monroe, a jazz musician and health-food store owner living in Manhattan in 1973, is cryonically frozen without his consent, and not revived for 200 years. The scientists who revive him are members of an underground movement: 22nd-century America seems to be a police state ruled by a dictator, about to implement a secret plan known as the "Aries Project." The underground movement hopes to use Miles as a spy to infiltrate the Aries Project, because he is the only member of this society without a known biometric identity.

The authorities catch onto the scientists' project, and arrest them; Miles escapes by disguising himself as a robot. He goes to work as a butler in the house of socialite Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton). When Luna decides to have her "robot"'s head replaced with something more "aesthetically pleasing," Miles has no choice but to reveal his true identity to her. Luna is shocked, frightened, and threatens to turn Miles in to the authorities. In response, he kidnaps her and goes on the run, searching for the Aries Project.

Miles and Luna start to fall in love, but Miles is captured and forced to undergo brainwashing. He forgets that he comes from 1973, and becomes a complacent member of futuristic society. Meanwhile, Luna finds a group of commando-rebels and joins the underground movement. The rebels kidnap Miles and force him to undergo reverse-brainwashing, whereupon he remembers his past and joins their efforts.

Miles and Luna successfully infiltrate the Aries Project: they learn that the Leader was killed by a rebel bomb ten months previously, and all that survives is his nose. The nose has been kept alive, and the members of the Aries Project, mistaking Miles and Luna for doctors, want them to clone the leader from this single remaining part. Instead, Miles steals the nose and "assassinates" it by squashing it under a steamroller.

Different cuts of the movie

There are two known cuts of Sleeper. The first, seemingly original cut, contains a dinner scene shortly after Miles (Allen) and Luna (Keaton) return to the house where Miles was originally taken after revival. In the dialogue-less scene, Miles eats in time with a piano soundtrack while Luna watches him in amazement. In another cut distributed in the US, this scene is absent but another, in which Miles shaves using a high-tech mirror and accidentally tunes into the view from the mirror in another bathroom, is present in its place. The latter cut is on the MGM 2000 DVD, which has both a widescreen and full-screen version of the film, a trailer, Spanish dubbing, and French subtitles.
The network television version cuts the scene in which Miles and Luna discover a 1990's newspaper with the headline "Pope's Wife Gives Birth to Twins".

Reception

American Film Institute recognition

• 2000: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs #80

Production and trivia

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (December 2007)

• The movie was filmed in and around Denver, Colorado. The outdoor shots of the hospital were filmed at the Table Mesa Laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. There is also a cameo appearance of the main building of the Denver Botanic Gardens and of the signature concrete lamp posts. The Sculptured House, designed by architect Charles Deaton, is a private home known locally as the "Sleeper House" or "Flying Saucer House" located on Genesee Mountain near Genesee Park, west of Denver.^[1] The Mile Hi Church of Religious Science in Lakewood, Colorado was turned into a futuristic McDonald's^[2], featuring a sign counting the number sold: The digit 1 followed by more than twenty zeroes.

• The title alludes to the classic science fiction novel When the Sleeper Wakes 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. (In the Critical Text of When the Sleeper Wakes, Leon Stover states that Woody Allen actually took over the rights to Wells' book for United Artists and "wildly distorted it" in making the film Sleeper.)

• 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. However, once the project was actually greenlit, Allen decided to abandon the first half and just do the second.

• During a scene where Luna Schlosser tries to sing to Monroe a revolutionary song that she wrote, she sings the same song that the rebel leader sings in an attempt to pep his men in the film Bananas (1971).

• The soundtrack music is in New Orleans traditional jazz style, some of it by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Allen sitting in on clarinet.^[3]

• 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, in which Rain provided the voice of the computer HAL 9000.

• The Church of the Risen Christ in Denver, known as the "ski-jump" church due to its unusual high pitched roof angle, was featured in the opening scene of the movie, according to church construction contractor Johns Manville Worldwide.

Quotes

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• Miles: "That's what I've been trying to tell you! In six months, we'll be stealing Erno's nose! Don't you see? Political solutions never work!"

• 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 2001.)

• 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. It 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 back seat of the Volkswagen is a newspaper with the headline "Pope's Wife Has Twins".

• 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 is 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".

• Dr. Melik: (listing items Miles had requested for breakfast) "... wheat germ, organic honey, and... Tiger's Milk."

Dr. Aragon: "Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties."

Dr. Melik: "You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?"

Dr. Aragon: "Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true."

Dr. Melik: "Incredible!"

References

External links

• Sleeper at the Internet Movie Database
• Sleeper at Allmovie
• Sleeper at Filmsite.org
• Screen Grabs of Sleeper