Watch a 44-Minute Supercut of Every Woody Allen Stammer, From Every Woody Allen Film

In dai­ly life, Woody Allen is far from the del­i­cate bun­dle of cere­bral nerves he so often por­trays in his films. He was a suc­cess­ful track run­ner in high school, and, accord­ing to Eric Lax’s biog­ra­phy, trained for sev­er­al months to par­tic­i­pate in the Gold­en Gloves. But, as with so many young pugilists, parental con­cern got in the way—his par­ents refused to sign the con­sent form to let him box.

On screen, how­ev­er, Woody Allen remains Hollywood’s reign­ing neb­bish. Jesse Eisen­berg once seemed poised to take the title, but while he is some­times ner­vous and intro­vert­ed, his per­for­mance in The Social Net­work con­firmed that he can har­ness the flash­es of inten­si­ty seen in teenage films like The Squid and The Whale and Adven­ture­land.  Michael Cera, mean­while, the sec­ond most promi­nent of the con­tenders, is a whol­ly dif­fer­ent actor to Allen—while Allen is inse­cure and all-too-vol­u­ble, Cera is sim­ply all-too-nice.

Allen’s unabashed delight in his inse­cu­ri­ties and his hypochon­dri­ac con­cern with neu­roses is the plat­form for much of his humor. He has honed the persona’s man­ner­isms to per­fec­tion, and the clip above pro­vides a mas­ter class in just one: the Allen stam­mer. By the end of this stag­ger­ing­ly impres­sive 44-minute super­cut, con­tain­ing every sin­gle one of Allen’s ver­bal stum­bles and foot-drags from all of his movies, you should have laughed, cried, and fall­en into a stu­por. Please enjoy respon­si­bly.

via Huff­in­g­ton Post

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Woody Allen Box­es a Kan­ga­roo, 1966

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Watch an Exu­ber­ant, Young Woody Allen Do Live Stand Up on British TV (1965)