clipped from www.nytimes.com

Annie Hall is a film with many great moments, and for me the best of them is the movie's single scene with Annie's younger brother, Duane Hall, played by Christopher Walken, the first of his long, brilliant career of cinema weirdos. Visiting the Hall family home, Alvy Singer — that's Woody Allen — bumps into Duane, who immediately shares a fantasy:

"Sometimes when I'm driving . . . on the road at night . . . I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-­on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The . . . flames rising out of the flowing gasoline."

It's Alvy's reply which makes the scene: "Right. Well, I have to — I have to go now, Duane, because I, I'm due back on the planet Earth."