This is the trailer to Woody Allen's 1984 Broadway Danny Rose, which is to the Catskills-Borscht Belt entertainment scene what This is Spinal Tap is to heavy metal music and documentaries. It's probably the funniest movie Woody Allen has ever made, and the last time you can really see him acting -- not just showing up and being "the Woody Allen character."
The premise: Danny Rose is a small-time theatrical manager. Very small time. His acts? A blind xylophone player, a dancing penguin, an elderly balloon-folding duo; a woman who plays music from glasses filled with water at varying heights -- and has-been Italian singer named Lou Canova. Almost out of nowhere, a nostalgia craze kicks in, and Lou is in more demand on places like cruise ships. Problem is: he's got a big ego, a bit of a drinking problem, and he's fallen in love, even though he's still married.
The crisis: Milton Berle is going to see Lou's act at the Waldorf Astoria, and if he likes the act, Lou will get a spot on a tv special and be Milton's opening act at Caesar's. But Lou wants Danny to bring his mistress, Tina, and pretend she's Danny's date until after Lou's wife goes home. Danny reluctantly agrees, but finds that Tina doesn't want to go, because she thinks Lou is two-timing her. ("No, darling -- he's cheating only with you!" Danny pleads.) Tina, a sharp-tongued interior decorator with some mob ties in her past, eventually leads Danny on a hilarious wild-goose chase that ends with them being kidnapped by hoodlums and escaping into the warehouse where the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons are stored. This leads to this:
Yep. it's that funny.
I won't spoil the ending for you, but I'll go back to the beginning: the entire movie is a flashback. A bunch of veteran comics -- Will Jordan, Corbett Monica, even Woody's manager, Jack Rollins -- are sitting around a table at the Carnegie deli, talking about the life and remembering Danny, and telling hilarious stories. Sandy Barron tops them all with the story of Danny and Lou and Tina. During the story, we sometimes cut back to the comics in the deli. The final shot brings us back to the outside, in a loving black and white tribute to Manhattan that's just as sweet as the one that finishes Allen's 1979 classic.
What makes this movie so funny? It just seems so wonderfully believable. Allen's Danny is a perfect schlep, full of confidence despite clearly being a failure. He shows off a picture of "me and Frank," but he's not even in the picture, telling Tina, "I was just off the frame." He gathers his clients together for a Thanksgiving feast -- of frozen turkey tv dinners. When he speaks of acts who've gone to bigger and better things after leaving him, you can see the heartbreak despite his persistent optimism. The mob types may be just that, but there is something so funny about them when you see them all at a party that Tina visits. (Look for Michael Balalducco at the party -- he's tearing money, and he's got what's still my favorite line in the film.) The music is also funny and touching; the original songs were written by the man who plays Lou, Nick Apollo Forte, a real lounge singer cast despite having never acted before. (It is said that Danny Ailleo, who'd worked on one of Allen's plays on Broadway, lobbied to get the part, but Allen wanted someone who really was a lounge act; to make up for it, Allen wrote a part for Aiello for his next film, the part of the brutish husband Monk in The Purple Rose of Cairo.) Nothing like a little "Agita" to get you through the night.
Supposedly, Woody Allen stopped making howl-out funny movies in the late seventies; after Annie Hall, no more outrageous cartoony films like Sleeper or Bananas. But Broadway Danny Rose is just as hilarious as those "early funny films," yet somehow manages to make what happens to Danny quite believable, and heartfelt. The whole thing is still up on YouTube. Go get it!
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