Taglines: Anniversaries should be spent with the one you love… Even if you aren’t married to them.
Same Time, Next Year movie storyline. A man and woman meet by chance at a romantic inn over dinner. Although both are married to others, they find themselves in the same bed the next morning questioning how this could have happened. They agree to meet on the same weekend each year. Originally a stage play, the two are seen changing, years apart, always in the same room in different scenes. Each of them always appears on schedule, but as time goes on each has some personal crisis that the other helps them through, often without both of them understanding what is going on.
Same Time, Next Year is a 1978 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Robert Mulligan. The screenplay by Bernard Slade is based on his 1975 play of the same title. The film stars Alan Alda, Ellen Burstyn, Ivan Bonar, Bernie Kuby, Cosmo Sardo, David Northcutt and William Cantrell.
The movie is structured as six episodes, each occurring approximately five years apart. Between the scenes are shown a series of photos that depict cultural and political events that had ensued in the years between each segment, such as Harry S. Truman, Nikita Khrushchev, Lucille Ball, Elvis Presley, and John F. Kennedy. The episodes are period-specific, often making references to what was actually happening during the time portrayed. For example, in the segment set in 1966, Doris is caught up in the protest movement at Berkeley, while George takes a Librium and reveals that he’d voted for Barry Goldwater, and later that his son had been killed in Vietnam.
Exteriors for the film were shot at the Heritage House Inn, a well-known resort and bed & breakfast in Little River, California, seven miles south of Mendocino, California. The shell of the cottage was built on a temporary foundation overlooking the Pacific Ocean, but the interior was filmed on the Universal Studios sound stage in Los Angeles. After filming was completed, Universal paid for the shell to be relocated to a permanent foundation and the interior was outfitted with the studio furnishings.
The cottage became a popular romantic getaway, so popular in fact that the Heritage House eventually partitioned the cottage in half and added a second bathroom to the opposite end. One half of the cottage was called “Same Time” and the other half called “Next Year”. The Heritage House closed due to foreclosure in December 2008. The “Same Time, Next Year” cottage still stands, updated and remodeled, and the Heritage House reopened in the Summer of 2013.
Paul McCartney had composed a title song for the film, which he recorded with Wings, that was not used. He later released it as the B-side of a single in 1990. The theme song ultimately used was “The Last Time I Felt Like This,” written by Marvin Hamlisch and Alan and Marilyn Bergman and performed by Johnny Mathis and Jane Olivor.
Same Time, Next Year (1978)
Directed by: Robert Mulligan
Starring; Alan Alda, Ellen Burstyn, Ivan Bonar, Bernie Kuby, Cosmo Sardo, David Northcutt, William Cantrell
Screenplay by: Bernard Slade
Production Design by: Henry Bumstead
Cinematography by: Robert Surtees
Film Editing by: Sheldon Kahn
Costume Design by: Theadora Van Runkle
Set Decoration by: Hal Gausman
Music by: Marvin Hamlisch
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: November 22, 1978
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