Cecilia is a waitress in New Jersey during the Depression and is searching for an escape from her dreary life. Tom Baxter is a dashing young archaeologist in the film "The Purple Rose of Cairo." After losing her job Cecilia goes to see the film in hopes of raising her spirits. Much to her surprise Tom Baxter walks off the screen and into her life. There's only one problem..Tom isn't real. Meanwhile Hollywood is up in arms when they dicover that other Tom Baxters are trying to leave the screen in other theatres. Will Tom ever return and finish the film or will he decide to stay in the real world?
Written by
Ricky Darbonne
Plot Synopsis:
-------------------

It looks like we don't have a Synopsis for this title yet.
Be the first to contribute! Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Synopsis submission guide.

After this film was previewed, word got back to Woody Allen that if he just changed his ending, he could have a big hit. Allen declined, saying that the ending is one of the reasons he made the film.
------------------------

Woody Allen has said more than once that this is his favorite of the movies he's made. (Later, Match Point (2005) will be his favorite).
------------------------

Jeff Daniels replaced Michael Keaton in the lead male role. Keaton was originally cast footage was shot for ten days. Director Woody Allen decided it wasn't working feeling, that Keaton, despite a good performance so far, was miscast being too contemporary for the part and was not fitting well into this period movie. Keaton had taken sizable salary cut to do a film with Allen. Apparently, Keaton was to appear in another later Allen film to make-up for this disappointment, but to date (April, 2018) this has yet to occur.
------------------------

In an interview in a Belgian magazine, Viggo Mortensen said that he was very proud to have played a small role in this movie during a difficult time of his life. When he proudly took his entire family to a movie theater to see it, he was extremely disappointed to find out that all of his scenes were cut from the final movie.
------------------------

Woody Allen has said of this film: "It was the one which came closest to my original conception".
------------------------

According to the Cannes Film Festival website, Woody Allen said of this film when it played there in 1985: "The seduction of fantasy, as opposed to the pain of real life, is a theme that has appeared in my work time and time again. This was something I never realized. It was pointed out to me by critics and friends over a period of years. The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) is apparently my latest expression of this idea. (Some others were Play It Again, Sam (1972), Zelig (1983), Stardust Memories (1980) and my short story "The Kugelmass Episode"). I think this time I really did this subject the most entertainingly that I ever have and if you agree, I will not bother you with this theme again. Thank you".
------------------------

According to Eric Lax's book, this movie is one of Woody Allen's favorite films of his own. They are in order: Match Point (2005), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Stardust Memories (1980), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), and Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993).
------------------------

Part of this movie was filmed at the now-demolished Kent movie house where as a child Woody Allen would frequent the 12 cent picture shows there, and which Allen has said was "one of the great, meaningful places of my boyhood".
------------------------

The film was inspired by a number of influences. These were Buster Keaton's 1924 silent comedy Sherlock Jr. (1924), the 1941 comedy Hellzapoppin' (1941), Federico Fellini's Lo sceicco bianco (1952) and Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author".
------------------------

Reportedly, actor Danny Aiello was so disappointed when he didn't get the Lou Canova role that went to Nick Apollo Forte in Broadway Danny Rose (1984), that Aiello apparently was depressed for two weeks. Woody Allen then made this up to actor Aiello by casting him in The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), this being Allen's next picture after Broadway Danny Rose (1984). Aiello had previously appeared in Allen's The Front (1976) in 1976 and then later co-starred in Allen's Radio Days (1987) in 1987.
------------------------

Jeff Daniels opened a playhouse in his hometown of Chelsea, Michigan called "The Purple Rose."
------------------------

The film was selected to screen out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1985 and was awarded the International Film Critics Prize by FIPRESCI.
------------------------

Woody Allen has frequently said that Eve Arden is his favorite comedic actress, and he very much wanted to collaborate with her on this film. Allen offered Arden a part, but unfortunately she had to turn it down in order to care for her ailing husband.
------------------------

According to the book 'Woody: Movies From Manhattan' (1996) by Julian Fox, Woody Allen demanded the film shoot in Piermont Village which is "a bleak town on the Hudson River....The shoot there stretched from a scheduled ten days to a chaotic three-and-a-half weeks. This was due to the early arrival of winter blizzards, just after the storm windows had been removed from the main street shops, ready for filming. For the sake of authenticity, storefronts and window displays had been altered in advance, the shopping area was sealed off and many locals suffered huge financial losses. Even seven months after the crew's arrival, reported Nick Rosen in London's Sunday Times, contractors were still trying to put the town back to normal".
------------------------

Cecilia (Mia Farrow) mentions Okay America! (1932) while discussing Lew Ayres' career with her sister (played by Farrow's real life sister Stephanie Farrow). The female lead of Okay America! (1932) was the Farrows' mother Maureen O'Sullivan.
------------------------

Jeff Daniels, Mia Farrow and Danny Aiello all later appeared in Woody Allen's film Radio Days (1987).
------------------------

Though classified as a comedy-fantasy-romance by the IMDb, the picture is also part of a group of films known as "Depression Era Dramas".
------------------------

The name of the shoe store was "O'Sullivan's Heels and Soles". The film's lead actress Mia Farrow is the daughter of Maureen O'Sullivan.
------------------------

Jeff Daniels' Tom Baxter character has the same surname as Daniels' character Biff Baxter in Woody Allen's later film Radio Days (1987).
------------------------

The first of five movies Dianne Wiest made with Woody Allen. The other four are Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Radio Days (1987), September (1987) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994).
------------------------

About eight years after the picture debuted, the film's premise was used for the later Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Last Action Hero (1993) where a screen idol comes out of reel life and into real life.
------------------------

The film takes place in 1935.
------------------------

The fourth of thirteen cinema movie collaborations of actress Mia Farrow and actor-writer-director Woody Allen.
------------------------

For the amusement park scenes, filming was brought to the classic and now closed amusement park Bertrand Island which was located in Mount Arlington at Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. The park was quite a famous one in its heyday, and had closed shortly before filming commenced on the site. Some rides seen were the originals from the park, but others were props brought in by the film crew.
------------------------

Thirteen years after this movie, Jeff Daniels would be in another movie that combines black and white characters with technicolor ones titled Pleasantville (1998).
------------------------

Around the time the movie was made and released, director Woody Allen and lead actress Mia Farrow were in a personal relationship, which had started around 1980.
------------------------

The production shoot for this film began in November 1983 whilst the picture did not debut until March 1985, sixteen months later.
------------------------

Part of the movie is in black-and-white, which is all the scenes which feature the film within a film, "The Purple Rose of Cairo". The film is one of a number of pictures which were filmed in black-and-white by director Woody Allen during his immediate post-Annie Hall (1977) period between the late 1970s and early-mid 1980s. The films also include Manhattan (1979), Stardust Memories (1980), Zelig (1983) (also in color) and Broadway Danny Rose (1984). After The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Allen would then not make another b&w film for about another six years, until Shadows and Fog (1991) in 1991.
------------------------

After Zelig (1983), this is Woody Allen's second and final film featuring Stephanie Farrow, the younger sister of Mia Farrow.
------------------------

Buster Keaton's film Sherlock Jr. (1924) was one of Woody Allen's major inspirations for the film. In tribute to the silent film comedian, Robert Talmadge, the leading man of the fictional film "The Purple Rose of Cairo", was named after his son Robert Talmadge Keaton.
------------------------

Viggo Mortensen was cast for a small speaking role in the Hollywood party scene. He was given no script or instructions, and improvised a joke when the cameras rolled. Woody Allen laughed and appeared to love it, but ultimately dropped it from the final version. Mortensen found out when he watched the movie along with the family and friends who came to see his big scene.
------------------------

The second of two Woody Allen movies in a row with the word "Rose" in the title. The previous movie was Broadway Danny Rose (1984).
------------------------

The fourteenth feature film directed by Woody Allen.
------------------------

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.
------------------------

Jeff Daniels's Gil Shepherd character has the same first name as Owen Wilson's Gil character in Woody Allen's later film Midnight in Paris (2011) made and released about twenty-six years later.
------------------------

Viggo Mortensen was cast for a small speaking role in the Hollywood party scene. He was given no script or instructions, and improvised a joke when the cameras rolled. Woody Allen laughed and appeared to love it, but ultimately dropped it from the final version. Mortensen found out when he watched the movie along with the family and friends who came to see his big scene.
------------------------

In an interview during the 1990s, Woody Allen said the meaning / message of this movie was that "life is ultimately disappointing".
------------------------

Whilst doing publicity for Small Time Crooks (2000), Woody Allen said of this picture: "[The] Purple Rose [of Cairo] was a film that I just locked myself in a room . . . [and] I wrote it and halfway through it didn't go anywhere and I put it aside. I didn't know what to do. I toyed around with other ideas. Only when the idea hit me, a long time later, that the real actor comes to town and she has to choose between the [screen] actor and the real actor and she chooses the real actor and he dumps her, that was the time it became a real movie. Before that it wasn't. But the whole thing was manufactured".
------------------------

Woody Allen does appear in this movie which he wrote and directed. He's in the very first scene as the person who is putting the letters up on the marquee. This was the second Allen picture where he directed but did not star, the first had been 1978's Interiors (1978) around seven years earlier.
------------------------

Although the film's fictional namesake has scenes filmed in the Copacabana club in New York, the club was not open until November 1940. This is not consistent with the actual film, which is set during the Great Depression.
------------------------

When Cecelia is playing the ukulele in the music store she is strumming along to the song and the song stops. She continues to strum along after the song is over, but there is no sound. The ukulele playing was obviously dubbed in.
------------------------

As Cecilia and Gil play and sing in the music store, the camera casts a shadow in the lower left that disappears as it pulls back to a wide angle shot.
------------------------

Although the film is set in 1935, the "inner" film has no specific date so the reference to the Copacobana Club, which opened in 1940, could simply be forward thinking by the director of the inner film. Also Tom remarks in New York that 24 hours previously he was in Egypt. It would be many years after 1935 that he could have done that journey so quickly by air.
------------------------

0