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'''Anything Else''' is a 2003 motion picture that tells a story of a young writer who meets a dysfunctional young woman in New York City. The film was written and directed by Woody Allen, produced by his sister Letty Aronson, and stars Jason Biggs, Christina Ricci, Woody Allen, Erica Leerhsen, Adrian Grenier and Danny DeVito.

Contents

Plot

Marketing

Trivia

External links

Plot

Jerry Falk (Biggs) is an aspiring writer living in New York City who falls in love at first sight with Amanda (Ricci) and dumps his girlfriend to get with her. Seeking advice, Jerry turns to the aging struggling artist (Allen) who acts as his oracle -- and that includes trying to help sort out Jerry's romantic life.

Marketing

Dreamworks launched a $10 million marketing campaign for the movie that was centered on the appeal of Biggs and Ricci to attract a teenage audience to the film. Trailers, TV ads and posters for the film seemed to hide the fact that the film was written and directed by Woody Allen, perhaps due to his last films being underperformers at the box office. Roger Ebert noted in his review of the film that "It's as if they have the treasure of a Woody Allen movie and they're trying to package it for the ''American Pie'' crowd." Yet the film was a flop stateside, opening at #12 its opening weekend and grossing only $3.2 million. As always for Allen's films, it performed better overseas, grossing $10.3 million, but could not make back its $18 million shooting budget or the $10 million Dreamworks spent marketing the film.

Trivia

★ ''Anything Else'' is only the second Woody Allen film to be shot in anamorphic, the first being ''Manhattan''. It also has the honor of being the first film released with all prints having cyan optical soundtracks (the new standard for analog sound on film prints).

★ Was the opening-night selection at the 60th annual Venice International Film Festival.

★ When he cast him and during most of the shoot, Woody Allen was under the impression that Jason Biggs was Jewish. Allen was surprised to discover that he is in fact Catholic.

External links

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