Debut (1997)

Actors: Chapin Wilson (actor), Michael Blakey (producer), Michael A. Nickles (writer), Michael A. Nickles (producer), Michael A. Nickles (actor), Dan Bell (actor), Dan Bell (miscellaneous crew), Ellen Goldwasser (editor), S.R. Bindler (actor), Julia Wall (director), Julia Wall (actress), Flannery Hauck (actress), Douglas Matthew McMahon (actor), Matthew Holzman (actor), Georgia Nickles (actress),

Genres: Comedy, Short,

Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

Actors: Jerry Goldsmith (composer), Al Cerullo (miscellaneous crew), J.J. Abrams (actor), Heather Graham (actress), Stockard Channing (actress), Arnon Milchan (producer), Richard Masur (actor), Ian McKellen (actor), Anthony Michael Hall (actor), Donald Sutherland (actor), Daniel von Bargen (actor), Will Smith (actor), Bruce Davison (actor), Judy Dickerson (miscellaneous crew), Kay Chapin (miscellaneous crew),

Plot: New Yorkers Ouisa and Flan Kittredge are upper class private art dealers, pretentious but compassionate. Their prized possession is a double sided Kandinsky, one side that represents control, the other side chaos. They relay a story to their friends and acquaintances that over time becomes legendary. It is their encounter with a young black man who they had never met or heard of but who comes stumbling upon their front door one evening as they are courting an important investor, Geoffrey Miller, who could make them wealthy beyond what they could have dreamed. That black man is Paul Poitier, who has just arrived in the city, was just mugged outside their building and is sporting a minor knife wound to the abdomen. He is a friend of the Kittredge's children, who are attending Harvard, but more importantly is the son of actor/director 'Sidney Poitier' (qv). Tomorrow, Paul is meeting up with his father who is in town directing a movie of "Cats". Beyond the attraction of talking Paul into getting them roles in the movie, Ouisa, Flan and Geoffrey all end up being captivated by the charm, charisma, pedigree and eloquence of Paul, who the Kittredges, after tending to his wounds, invite to stay the night. Their encounter with Paul ends up being an all too familiar story, which they will soon learn, and leads the Kittredges on a search for Paul after he leaves their abode the next morning. In that search, Ouisa, in particular, begins to view critically their life and just how much compassion they really have.

Keywords: african-american, art, art-dealer, assumed-identity, bare-butt, based-on-play, based-on-true-story, bisexual, bookstore, business
Genres: Comedy, Drama, Mystery,
Taglines: For Paul, every person is a new door to a new world.

Quotes:

Ben: That's your problem in a nutshell: you're so limited.

Tess: He offered you parts in Cats? I thought you hated Cats. You said it was an all time low in a lifetime of theatre going. You said, "Aeschylus did not invent the theatre to have it end up a bunch of chorus kids in cat suits prancing around wondering which of them will go to kitty-cat heaven."

Ouisa: I am a collage of unaccounted for brush strokes. I am all random.

Tess: I will not be part of this conspiracy!::Flan: It's not a conspiracy, it's a family!

Ouisa Kittredge: There is so much you don't know. You are so smart and so stupid.::Paul: I'll be treated with care if you take me to the police. If they don't know you're special, they kill you.::Ouisa Kittredge: Oh, I don't think they kill you.::Paul: Mrs. Louisa Kittredge, I am black.::Ouisa Kittredge: I will deliver you to them with kindness and affection.

Ouisa: And we turn him into an anecdote, with no teeth, and a punchline you'll tell for years to come: "Oh, that reminds me of the time the imposter came into our house." "Oh! Tell the one about that boy." And we become these human jukeboxes spitting out these anecdotes to dine out on like we're doing right now. Well I will not turn him into an anecdote, it was an experience. How do we hold onto the experience?

Paul: It is the worst kind of yellowness to be so scared of yourself that you put blindfolds on rather than deal with yourself. To face ourselves - that's the hard thing. The imagination - that's God's gift, to make the act of self-examination bearable.

Paul: You watch. It gives me a thrill to be looked at.

Flan Kittredge: I thought, dreamt, remembered how easy it is for a painter to lose a painting. He paints and paints, works on a canvas for months, and then one day he loses it - loses the structure, loses the sense of it. You lose the painting.

Paul: The imagination. It's there to sort out your nightmare, to show you the exit from the maze of your nightmare, to transform the nightmare into dreams, that become your bedrock. If we do not listen to that voice, it dies, it shrivels, it vanishes. The imagination is not our escape. On the contrary, the imagination is the place we are all trying to get to.

Manhattan (1979)

Actors: Albert Wolsky (costume designer), Charles H. Joffe (producer), Jack Rollins (producer), Woody Allen (writer), Meryl Streep (actress), Diane Keaton (actress), Robert Greenhut (producer), David Rasche (actor), Karen Allen (actress), Frances Conroy (actress), Wallace Shawn (actor), Woody Allen (actor), Michael Murphy (actor), Woody Allen (director), Mariel Hemingway (actress),

Plot: Isaac, 42, has divorced Jill. She is now living with another woman, Connie, and is writing a book in which she will reveal some very private points of their relationship. Isaac has a love affair with Tracy, 17, when he meets Mary, the mistress of his best friend Yale. Yale is already married to Emily.

Keywords: 1970s, adultery, age-difference, bookstore, break-up, cafe, central-park-manhattan-new-york-city, clothing-store, college, comedy-of-manners
Genres: Comedy, Drama, Romance,
Taglines: Woody Allen's New Comedy Hit

Quotes:

[Looking at old meat]::Isaac Davis: Corn beef should not be blue

Isaac Davis: I feel like we're in a Noel Coward play. Someone should be making martinis.

Isaac Davis: I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics.

[first lines]::[music: the opening of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Voiceover]::Isaac Davis: Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion. Eh uh, no, make that he, he romanticized it all out of proportion. Better. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin. Uh, no, let me start this over.::Isaac Davis: Chapter One: He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street smart guys who seemed to know all the angles. Ah, corny, too corny for, you know, my taste. Let me, let me try and make it more profound.::Isaac Davis: Chapter One: He adored New York City. To him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity that caused so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams in - no, it's gonna be too preachy, I mean, you know, let's face it, I wanna sell some books here.::Isaac Davis: Chapter One: He adored New York City. Although to him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage - too angry. I don't want to be angry.::Isaac Davis: Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat. Oh, I love this. New York was his town, and it always would be.

Tracy: Let's fool around. Let's do it some strange way that you've always wanted to, but nobody would do with you.

Isaac Davis: My ex-wife left me for another woman.

Isaac Davis: She's 17. I'm 42 and she's 17. I'm older than her father, can you believe that? I'm dating a girl, wherein, I can beat up her father.

Yale: You are so self-righteous, you know. I mean we're just people. We're just human beings, you know? You think you're God.::Isaac Davis: I... I gotta model myself after someone.

Isaac Davis: This is so antiseptic. It's empty. Why do you think this is funny? You're going by audience reaction? This is an audience that's raised on television, their standards have been systematically lowered over the years. These guys sit in front of their sets and the gamma rays eat the white cells of their brains out!

Party Guest: I finally had an orgasm, and my doctor said it was the wrong kind.::Isaac Davis: You had the wrong kind? I've never had the wrong kind, ever. My worst one was right on the money.