Movie Moments: #57

Take the Money and Run (1969)

Comment:

I am not a Woody Allen fan and I don’t like most of his films.  Take the Money and Run is one of the ones that I do like and it is both one of his earliest and one of his funniest.  The prison break, the chain gang “cousins”, the bank heist and his “gub”, singing “Gonna see Miss Liza…”, they’re all great comedic moments. 

Synopsis:

The first “mockumentary”, the first of Allen’s films to be directed solely by him and the first to be written, directed and acted by him, it chronicles Virgil Starkwell’s childhood and his becoming a criminal.

Quote:

Bank Teller #1: Does this look like "gub" or "gun"?

Bank Teller #2: Gun. See? But what does "abt" mean?

Virgil: It's "act". A-C-T. Act natural. Please put fifty thousand dollars into this bag and act natural.

Bank Teller #1: Oh, I see. This is a holdup?

Trivia:

One hundred San Quentin prisoners were paid a small fee to work on the film during the prison sequences. The regular cast and crew were stamped each day with a special ink that glowed under ultra-violet light so the guards could tell who was allowed to leave the prison grounds at the end of the day.