# Sleeper (1973 film)

Sleeper is a 1973 film about a nerdish store owner who is revived out of cryostasis into a future world to fight an oppressive government.
    Directed by Woody Allen. Written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman.

## Miles Monroe

* My brain? It's my second favorite organ!
* I can't believe this. I go into the hospital for a lousy ulcer operation. I lay around in a Birds-Eye wrapper for 200 years, I wake up, suddenly I'm on the Ten-Most-Wanted List....I knew it was too good to be true. I parked right near the hospital.
* I haven't seen my analyst in 200 years. He was a strict Freudian. If I'd been going all this time, I'd probably almost be cured by now.
* I just beat a man senseless with a large strawberry!
* Do I believe in God? I'm what you would call a teleological, existential atheist. I believe that there's an intelligence to the universe, with the exception of certain parts of New Jersey.
* Oh, he was probably a member of the National Rifle Association. It was a group that helped criminals get guns so they could shoot citizens. It was a public service.

## Luna Schlosser

* I am a renowned poet. I sell 20 to 30 poems a week, plus greeting cards.

## Dialogue

    Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."
    Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
    Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?
    Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
    Dr. Melik: Incredible.
    Miles Monroe: I can't believe this! My doctor said I'd be up and on my feet in five days. He was off by 199 years!... To me, a miracle of science, is going to the hospital for a minor operation, I come out the next day, my rent isn't 2,000 months overdue. That's a miracle of science. This is what I call a cosmic screwing! And then where am I anyhow? What happened to everybody? Where are all my friends?
    Dr. Orva: You must understand that everyone you knew in the past has been dead nearly two hundred years.
    Miles Monroe: But they all ate organic rice.
    Dr. Orva: You are now in the year 2173.
    [a 22nd century historian shows Miles a videotape of Howard Cosell, an American television sportscaster]
    Historian: Frankly, we didn't know exactly what this was, but we've developed a theory. We feel that when citizens in your society were guilty of a crime against the state, they were forced to watch this.
    Miles Monroe: Yes. That's exactly what that was.
    Dr. Melik: And if you're captured, you don't know anything. Why, they could torture you for months. What could you tell them?
    Miles Monroe: Only my name, rank, serial number - and your name.
    Dr. Orva: Miles, you've got to help us!
    Miles Monroe: I’m not the heroic type, really. I was beaten up by Quakers....I never get involved in anything where I could be tortured.
    Luna Schlosser: I absolutely do not want to hear about it, Herald. This world is so full of wonderful things. What makes people suddenly go berserk and hate everything anyway? I mean, why does there have to be an underground? After all, there's the Orb, and there's the telescreen, and there's the Orgasmatron. What more do they want?
    Herald Cohen: It's hard for us to understand the criminal element. We're artists. We respond only - to beauty.
    Luna Schlosser: Please! I wanna go home! I'm getting a headache! I'm hungry! I haven't had a stress pill! I haven't had a bath in seven hours! I'm telling you, I'm not accustomed to this. I need my orb! I want to relax. Look at me! Look at me. I'm shaking!
    Miles Monroe: Gee, you know you'd be great to take on a camping trip.
    Luna Schlosser: Men go crazy over for me. I'm great physically. I got a Ph.D. in oral sex.
    Miles Monroe: Yeah, they make you take any Spanish with that?
    Luna Schlosser: What?
    Miles Monroe: Well, I don't know. I was an English major, myself. You know, Chaucer, Pope, I minored in foreplay. It's a two credit course at NYU.
    Luna Schlosser: Do you want to perform sex with me?
    Miles Monroe: Perform sex? Uh, uh, I don't think I'm up to a performance, but I'll rehearse with you, if you like.
    Luna Schlosser: Okay. I just thought you might want to; they have a machine here.
    Miles Monroe: Machine? I'm not getting into that thing. I, I'm strictly a hand operator; you know, I, I... I don't like anything with moving parts that are not my own.
    Luna Schlosser: It's hard to believe that you haven't had sex for 200 years.
    Miles Monroe: 204, if you count my marriage.
    Luna Schlosser: Sex is different today. You see, we don't have any problems. Everybody's frigid.
    Miles Monroe: Oh, that's incredible. So are the men impotent?
    Luna Schlosser: Yeah, most of them, except for the ones whose ancestors are Italian.
    Miles Monroe: Alright, I knew there was something in that pasta.
    Miles Monroe: You'd probably feel a lot safer with Mr. White Teeth back there.
    Luna Schlosser: Who?
    Miles Monroe: The Rebel Chieftain with the wall-to-wall muscles on his chest.
    Luna Schlosser: You mean, Erno?
    Miles Monroe: Yeah, Erno. It's a great name, if you happen to be the star of a vampire movie.
    Luna Schlosser: He's brilliant.
    Miles Monroe: Yeah. He couldn't be with us today. He's got to go take his handsome lesson.
    Luna Schlosser: Are you jealous?
    Miles Monroe: Jealous? Are kidding, honey? With a body like mine, you don't get jealous.
    Luna Schlosser: Certainly you don't expect me to tie myself down to one man. My love is a free gift to all the Bolshevik Brothers.
    Miles Monroe: Do what you want. You're over 21. Little Tramp!
    Luna Schlosser: We're here on business.
    Miles Monroe: Free love. I created a Bohemian monster. Next thing you know, she'll wanna have group sex with the robots.
    Luna Schlosser: Will you shut up? You're attracting attention.
    Miles Monroe: Give her a couple of books to read, and right away, she's Miss Pseudo-Intellectual, Neo-Fascist, Hegelian, Freudian Monster.
    Luna Schlosser: But Miles, don't you see? Meaningful relationships between men and women don't last. That was proven by science. You see, there's a chemical in our bodies that makes it so that we all get on each other's nerves sooner or later.
    Miles Monroe: Hey, that's science. I don't believe in science. I'm, I'm, you know, science is a, an intellectual dead-end. You know, it's a lot of little guys in tweed suits cutting up frogs on foundation grants.
    Luna Schlosser: Oh, I see. You don't believe in science, and you also don't believe that political systems work, and you don't believe in God, huh?
    Miles Monroe: Right.
    Luna Schlosser: So then, what do you believe in?
    Miles Monroe: Sex and death - two things that come once in a lifetime... but at least after death, you're not nauseous.

## Taglines

* A love story about two people who hate each other. 200 years in the future.
* Woody Allen takes a nostalgic look at the future.

## Cast

* Woody Allen - Miles Monroe
* Diane Keaton - Luna Schlosser
* John Beck - Erno Windt
* Marya Small - Dr. Nero
* Susan Miller - Ellen Pogrebin
* Mary Gregory - Dr. Melik
* Don Keefer - Dr. Tyron
* Peter Hobbs - Dr. Dean
* John McLiam - Dr. Aragon
* Bartlett Robinson - Dr. Orva
* Chris Forbes - Rainer Krebs
* Brian Avery - Herald Cohen
* Jackie Mason (uncredited voice) - Robot tailors
* Douglas Rain (uncredited voice) - Evil computer / Robot butlers

## External links

* Sleeper quotes at the Internet Movie Database
* Sleeper at Rotten Tomatoes
* Sleeper at Mojo