“I wrote him a letter once, asking him to let me do a documentary about him, which he kindly refused. But I also sent him an essay I had written about The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. He wrote back and said he thought it was great in terms of the Sherlock Holmes aspect of trying to figure out what his movie was about, but I think these were things he didn’t give too much thought to. He put them in the movie because he liked them, not because he had some kind of carefully constructed scaffolding of themes and ideas. He goes where he wants to.”

“I watched it in film school at this horrible place—well, it was a wonderful place—but, looking back on it now, it was pretty terrible. They called it the “Cinema Study Center,” and it was basically thirty televisions with LaserDisc machines and VCRs hooked up to them in this little basement. You were crowded in these little cubicles next to thirty other smelly film students, and that’s where I first saw Annie Hall.”

“…it was such an interesting use of cinema. Suddenly there was a film outside of plot points. It was a film in which things happen that are so mysterious and embrace the contradictions of everyday life. You didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or get really angry. There was a tremendous sense of irony and mystery, and also the sense of a mischievous filmmaker behind all of this. So, it wasn’t just the story unfolding—”

“I’m really revealing myself right now. But even when I saw it in 2007 with John Landis and it got to that end scene with Jenny Agutter crying, I knew exactly when the music was going to cut in because I knew she goes [imitates her whimper, then the intro to the Marcels’ song]. I know this film by heart.”