What's Up, Tiger Lily? | |
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Theatrical re-release poster
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Directed by |
Woody Allen Senkichi Taniguchi |
Produced by | Charles H. Joffe |
Written by | Woody Allen Louise Lasser Len Maxwell Julie Bennett Frank Buxton Mickey Rose Bryna Wilson |
Starring | Woody Allen Louise Lasser The Lovin' Spoonful |
Music by | The Lovin' Spoonful |
Cinematography | Kazuo Yamada |
Edited by | Richard Krown |
Production
company |
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Distributed by | American International Pictures |
Release date
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Running time
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80 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | ~$400,000 |
What's Up Tiger Lily? | ||||
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Soundtrack album by The Lovin' Spoonful | ||||
Released | September, 1966 | |||
Genre | Folk rock | |||
Label | Kama Sutra | |||
The Lovin' Spoonful chronology | ||||
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What's Up, Tiger Lily? is a 1966 American comedy film directed by Woody Allen in his feature-length directorial debut.
Allen took a Japanese spy film, International Secret Police: Key of Keys, and overdubbed it with completely original dialogue that had nothing to do with the plot of the original film. By putting in new scenes and rearranging the order of existing scenes, he completely changed the tone of the film from a James Bond clone into a comedy about the search for the world's best egg salad recipe.
During post-production, Allen's original one-hour television version was expanded without his permission to include additional scenes from International Secret Police: A Barrel of Gunpowder, the third film in the International Secret Police series, and musical numbers by the band The Lovin' Spoonful. This experience helped convince Allen that he should secure creative control for all his future projects. The band released a soundtrack album. Louise Lasser, who was married to Allen at the time, served as one of the voice actors for the "new" dialogue soundtrack, as did Mickey Rose, Allen's writing partner on Take The Money and Run (1969) and Bananas (1971). In 2003, Image released the film on DVD, with both the theatrical and television soundtracks. The DVD also offers the 11 minutes of TV footage as a separate bonus.
The plot provides the setup for a string of sight gags, puns, jokes based on Asian stereotypes, and general farce. The central plot involves the misadventures of secret agent Phil Moskowitz, hired by the Grand Exalted High Majah of Raspur ("a nonexistent but real-sounding country") to find a secret egg salad recipe that was stolen from him.