Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today, we remember actor Diane Keaton, who has died at the age of 79.
Chapter 2: What is the significance of Diane Keaton's career?
We'll listen back to my 1997 interview with her. Among the things we talked about were her performance in Annie Hall, for which she won an Oscar, and her role on The Godfather. First, we'll hear an appreciation from our TV critic, David Bianculli. Diane Keaton, over her long and distinguished career, demonstrated her ability to excel in a number of different venues.
She acted in dozens of film comedies and dramas, earning Tony and Oscar nominations along the way. She wrote more than a dozen books, including a memoir, and directed documentary and scripted movies as well. She was a gifted singer, as evidenced by her unforgettable rendition of Seems Like Old Times in Annie Hall. And for that same 1977 Woody Allen film, she won an Academy Award as Best Actress.
Chapter 3: How did Diane Keaton prepare for her role in Annie Hall?
She played the title role of Annie Hall, a woman who meets a neurotic writer and comic named Alvy Singer, played by Woody Allen. Over the course of the film, Annie and Alvy fall in love, then fall out of love. On a plane trip back from L.A. to New York, we hear their thoughts as they sit there silently. Silently, that is, until Annie addresses Alvy directly and finally speaks her mind.
As does he.
I have to face facts. I adore Alvy, but our relationship doesn't seem to work anymore.
I'll have the usual trouble with Annie in bed tonight. Why do I need this?
If only I had the nerve to break up, but... It would really hurt him.
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Chapter 4: What were Diane Keaton's early influences in acting?
If only I didn't feel guilty asking Annie to move out. It'd probably wreck her. But I should be honest. Alvy, let's face it. You know, I don't think our relationship is working.
I know. A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know, it has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.
Annie Hall made Diane Keaton a major star, and the outfits she put together for that character made her a major fashion influencer before influencers were a thing. But by then, she'd already been in films and had a notable stage career. Diane Keaton appeared on Broadway in the late 1960s, first as a member of the ensemble cast of the rock musical Hair, and eventually as the female lead, Sheila.
However, she turned down the bonus money to appear naked in certain scenes. In 1969, she earned a Tony nomination for her role in Woody Allen's comedy Play It Again, Sam, a role she repeated on film in 1972. That same year, she played Kay, the wife of Al Pacino's Michael Corleone, in the first Godfather film.
In the 70s, she re-teamed with Allen for a series of classic comedies, including Sleeper, Love and Death, and Annie Hall, as well as the more somber Interiors and Manhattan. She earned Oscar nominations for three other films, Red's, Marvin's Room, and Something's Gotta Give, and maintained a career moving from comic to dramatic roles.
She was impressively relatable and believable in both, and her on-screen chemistry with her co-stars occasionally blossomed into off-screen chemistry as well. Her real-life romantic relationships included Woody Allen, Al Pacino, and her Reds co-star Warren Beatty. Keaton's screen comedies included The Father of the Bride movies, The First Wives Club, Baby Boom, and Manhattan Murder Mystery.
Her dramas included Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Marvin's Room, which is the film which Diane Keaton and Terry discussed in 1997. So at this point, I'll turn it back to Terry. David Bianculli is a TV historian and Fresh Air's TV critic. He'll be back later in the show to review a new documentary about actor John Candy. Now we're going to hear the interview I recorded with Diane Keaton in 1997.
We talked about several of her films. We began with a clip from Marvin's Room, which had just been released and earned her an Oscar nomination. Keaton and Meryl Streep starred as sisters with opposite temperaments. Keaton played Bessie, who has dedicated her life to taking care of her father ever since a stroke left him bedridden.
Streep played Lee, who's cut herself off from the family to establish an independent life. After Bessie is diagnosed with leukemia, Lee returns to visit for the first time in years. Keaton's character, Bessie, confronts her.
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Chapter 5: How did Diane Keaton's role in The Godfather shape her career?
I think I'm kind of a chicken actress, and I think that people really have to keep saying, you can do it, you can do it. And it really tells you. I mean, as an actress, it informs me how much I desperately need a director who cares. It's so important to have somebody watching me. I mean, you constantly are battling with yourself when you're acting in a part.
At least I am, because it's just not that easy for me.
It must be interesting now that you're directing more, too. Even in the directing, though, I have a tendency— Yeah, but now you can act as your own director in a way, and you're wearing two hats.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Terry. No, no. Okay. No way. I don't think you really have—I'm not one of those people who I have a third eye or anything. I mean, when I'm acting, I'm acting, and I need help. And when I'm directing, I'm watching. I'm looking. I'm observing. And it's entirely different. And it's an entirely different place. And I really don't feel that the two live together.
I mean, for me, I can't. I have to be feeling it or otherwise I'm dead flat and just nothing. And if I'm not feeling it, then I can watch. But how can I watch when I'm trying to be there? I'm the person who they just said, you know, you're going to die. I have to be there. I don't have a good enough imagination, which is why it's harder for me. Like when I see Meryl Streep, I go, oh, my God.
She's got everything. She's got a brilliant imagination. She has a great depth of emotional life. She has this amazing ability, and this also goes for Leonardo DiCaprio, to mimic and mime and do voices and accents and all this. And she does it in her life. Plus, she has a great conceptual mind. It's just a little bit, not a little bit. It's a lot harder for me.
Well, you're not doing— I think naturally—you know what? I'm going to get back to answering your question. I think that I'm more inclined to live comfortably in the world of humor.
Aha, then drama.
Yeah. Oh, well. I mean, everyone's told me that, too, so I think it's true.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did Diane Keaton face while acting in Marvin's Room?
Oh, appliances. Oh, please. You know, just the best appliances ever and, you know, luggage and all those great things. did you want to be unhappy homemaker No, I did not want to be a happy homemaker. Uh-uh. That did not appeal to me. But I did want to go on stage. I saw that that was something that did appeal to me.
There she was in the theater, and I saw the curtain open, and there was my mother. And I thought, hmm, I think I like that for myself.
It's funny. So you kind of got the wrong message here. I did.
I got the total wrong message. How like life.
Yeah, she was presented as the picture of domesticity, and you interpreted that as show business. Oh, yeah. Leave it to me. One of your early roles was in Hair. And every profile I've read of you, every written profile... Yeah, I didn't take off my clothes.
Exactly.
Every profile mentions that during the nude scenes or nude scenes in Hair, that when everybody else was naked, you were wearing a body stocking. And I couldn't help but wonder if the cast... I wasn't wearing a body stocking.
No, no. The situation was that we were all under this huge tarp or something doing, you know, and we were lying there and there would be holes in the tarp and people would stand up at the appropriate moment and you sort of just stand naked. That was how that was. And I just remember lying under the tarp and seeing all my friends get naked over the course of time. And I just didn't want to do it.
It just didn't seem worth it to me at the time. I didn't want to do it. Standing naked in the dark and getting cold just didn't seem like fun. That's the only reason I didn't do it. It just wasn't worth it.
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