Take the Money and Run is a 1969 American mockumentary crime comedy film directed by Woody Allen.

[5] Virgil Starkwell's story parodies prison documentary style, using "archival footage" and "interviews" with people who knew him.

In school, he scores well on an IQ test, but his teacher relates that when he stole a fountain pen, she instructed the class to close their eyes so the thief could return it.

He was sentenced to an additional two years but was released on bail after he volunteered to receive an experimental vaccine, following which he briefly became an ultra-Orthodox Jew.

Virgil steals coins from a gumball machine (parody of Cool Hand Luke), paying for dinner with nickels.

In a parody of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, he is blackmailed by a fellow employee, Miss Blair, who forces him into a romantic relationship.

They take an old woman hostage, telling her to pretend to the police that they are her cousins and attempting to hide their chains by standing close together and moving in unison.

Virgil is tried on 52 counts of robbery and sentenced to 800 years, but remains optimistic reasoning, "with good behavior, I can get that cut in half."

This was the second film directed by Woody Allen, and the first with original footage (after What's Up, Tiger Lily?, which consisted of visuals taken from a Japanese James Bond knockoff).

Allen's decision to become his own director was partially spurred on by the chaotic and uncontrolled filming of Casino Royale (1967), in which he had appeared two years previously.

Allen discussed the concept of filming a documentary in an interview with Richard Schickel: Take the Money and Run was an early pseudo-documentary.

(One of the actors in the San Quentin scenes was Micil Murphy, who knew the prison well: he had served five and a half years there, for armed robbery, before being paroled in 1966.

[citation needed]) Allen initially filmed a downbeat ending in which he was shot to death, courtesy of special effects from A.D.

Vincent Canby of The New York Times described it as "a movie that is, in effect, a feature-length, two-reel comedy—something very special and eccentric and funny", even though toward the end "a certain monotony sets in" with Allen's comedy rhythm.

We never believe for a moment that Allen is a criminal – as we can believe, at least partially, that Keaton is a Confederate railroad engineer-so the fun is all conscious comment.