Trailer
Plot summary
Emmet Ray plays jazz guitar in the 1930s and makes a handful of records, but he is often late to his quintet's shows, or missing from them, because of drink. He spends freely, pursues women and shoots rats at the garbage dump. He worships Django Reinhardt, and once fled a nightclub when a rumor placed the guitarist in the audience. In a German restaurant he passed out when Reinhardt came in for a meal. Out with drummer Bill Shields he meets Hattie, a quiet laundress who cannot speak. The two grow attached despite the difficulty of talking, though Emmet holds that a musician of his standing should never settle on one woman.
Cast
Show all 15 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sweet and Lowdown (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- After his 1969 directing debut, Woody Allen wrote The Jazz Baby, a drama screenplay about a 1930s jazz musician. United Artists executives, who had expected a comedy, were stunned and disliked it, so Allen wrote and directed Bananas instead.
- Woody Allen originally planned to play jazz guitarist Emmet Ray himself but cast Sean Penn instead; he had also considered Johnny Depp, who was busy. Penn had a reputation for being difficult, yet Allen said he "had no problem with him whatsoever."
- Woody Allen told Samantha Morton, who played the mute laundress Hattie, to play her part like Harpo Marx. Morton asked who Harpo Marx was, so Allen told her about him and she went back and watched his films.
- Sweet and Lowdown was the first Woody Allen film edited by Alisa Lepselter, who has edited all of his films since. She succeeded Susan E. Morse, who had edited Allen's films for the previous twenty years.
