There is a moment in Vanya on 42nd Street that everyone remembers, though it is not quite the same moment for every spectator. It happens shortly after the quasi-documentary opening sequence of Louis Malle's film, once the stage director André Gregory and his actors have made their way to Manhattan's New Amsterdam Theatre to rehearse Uncle Vanya. Inside, expository conversations about the building and the production suggest that the dialogue has been, if not scripted, at least prompted, creating a curious hybrid of cinéma vérité and theatre that persists as two of the actors, Phoebe Brand and Larry Pine, discuss drinking habits. At some point, probably during this conversation, each spectator will suddenly realize that the play has already begun: there must have been an unnoticed shift from the conversation of the actors to the dialogue of Chekhov's characters, Marina and Dr. Astrov, and the mind momentarily goes into reverse, trying to find the moment when it happened, before picking up the thread of the play again. It is a stunning transition.

No-one is quite sure where the idea came from. It is not, of course, in the adaptation of Chekhov’s play by David Mamet (drawing on a translation by Vlada Chernomordik) that Gregory used for this production; Gregory, credited with the idea by Malle, denies it came from him; Pine thinks it originated with one of his suggestions.