Diane Keaton

Other than Annie Hall, of course, because Annie Hall is in an exalted class of its own.

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In Shoot the Moon, she's brilliant in every room of the house.


"It's already packed"

Updated On: 9/13/13 at 12:41 PM

Since Annie Hall is off the table, I'll go with Sleeper and Love & Death.

I felt bad how somewhat perfunctory Kay Corleone was written in The Godfather saga. She has good moments, no doubt, but I felt like Talia Shire had much more to do in the arc of the Corleone circle whereas the Kay character was always outsider. The movies are brilliant but thank goodness Keaton had Woody Allen movies in the 70s that shot her to star.

My favorite actress. I think her three best dramatic roles are, in order: Reds, Marvin's Room, Shoot the Moon.

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I also have this weird thing about "Annie Hall."

At the time, I totally got why she was so praised and won the Oscar, etc. It really was "Diane Keaton" arriving at her very best screen persona.

My "problem" (if you want to call it that) is that she's played variations of "Annie" so many times since then, and her indelible persona from that film has carried over into other work. So now, when I go back and watch Annie Hall, I'm sort of underwhelmed. She's not doing anything so special anymore, because she's done that character, to various degrees, many times since then.

But at the time, when the film was released, it was a "first," with everything coming together for her, and it was very, very special.

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Updated On: 9/13/13 at 02:48 PM

With Annie Hall the movie sort of as it went on went from being more of Woody Allen's own neurosis, the movie's original working title Anhedonia, to becoming more about her. It is well-detailed by his editors that what the script had and what the final cut was is pretty drastic. Allen saw something there but yes, it is just as much her biography in the movie as it is his. I think the original script had a murder subplot with more screwball hijinks.

I think I get what you're saying, best, about ANNIE HALL.

To me, it's pretty clear that the entire film is a love letter to Diane Keaton as a woman, actress, lover, friend, and all-around funny person from Woody. It's hard to call what she does in that movie a performance, but it certainly is and it certainly is indelible/iconic/incredible/whatever you want to call it. It's just that the role, the movie, and the way the movie wants the audience to perceive Annie is so filtered through Woody's view of Diane that it feels way more personal to who she is. It is, I'd say, by definition her 'wheelhouse' as it were as an actress; ANNIE HALL is everything she's capable of. And I mean that in the highest compliment, not as a slight. It contains every color in her palette.

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Updated On: 9/13/13 at 03:40 PM

it seems to me she was once a great actress, but maybe beacause she hasnt been offered any good roles, the last 10 years or so she keeps playing that overbearing mother character from Family Stone/Somethings Got to Give/Mammas Boy

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I should add that I didn't like the film version of "Marvin's Room," but for the simple reason that I saw a brilliant production of it at the Tiffany Theatre in Los Angeles (twice) that put both Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep to shame. They didn't even scratch the surface of what was possible with those two characters. And because of that, because I had seen what was possible, it was an enormous letdown.

The ladies I saw on stage? Mary Steenbergen and Jean Smart.

EDIT: for link ...


Variety's rave review of the production I saw.

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Updated On: 9/13/13 at 05:26 PM

Another pitch for SHOOT THE MOON. She and Albert Finney are such totally different actors, but they play off each other like magic.

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Roscoe, that clip borrows a lot from Beckett! Wow, I am directing a series of Beckett short plays and was amazed how that clip reminded me of segments of PLAY!

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Loving all the "Baby Boom" love here. It really is a guilty pleasure of mine. I've seen it many times.

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