by Diane Keaton
4. When is the T Magazine article out?
5. How about hiring Dorrie to scout out Navajo pictorial blankets? She knows the dealers better than anyone.
6. I don’t know how I dropped the ball on Westmark School’s Get Ready for 9th Grade assembly. I have to go. Should I take the 405 or Mulholland? Anyway, it starts at 2 o’clock. We’ll discuss.
7. Stephanie, you’ve got to tell me the truth—how many flights do we have to take for the Unique Lives Lecture Series Tour? Who can I rehearse my speech to besides Jessica Kovacevic, who’s already been tortured one too many times? I’m starting to get nervous. Speaking of nervous, I don’t think I can keep trying to memorize my speech while jogging on the streets of Beverly Hills. The Starline Bus Tours unfailingly drive by while I’m in the middle of rehearsing the final section—you know, when I sing a bit of “Seems Like Old Times.” It’s awful. I feel like an idiot. Is this speech going to work? Be honest. There’s something inherently wrong about addressing my female contemporaries on the subject of me. It’s too much. It reminds me of Katharine Hepburn’s autobiography, Me.
8. Duke made a Nespresso for Jimmy, the car washer, yesterday. By the way, he’s back from the hospital. You’ll never believe this; he told me hiccups were the only symptom he had before his gallbladder was removed. Anyway, he wants a sponsorship for his bowling team. What do you think? I say yes. Most important, Duke was proud of himself for, number 1, making the coffee and, number 2, appearing to be generous.
9. Starting Tuesday, I drive Dexter to swim practice at 4:45 a.m. This means I can sit in the backseat of my mobile office and work on the rewrite of the memoir. I’m way behind. What to do? At least I’ll get in a full two hours without interruptions. Starbucks opens at 5. I’ll need it.
As for Dorothy
I am thankful for the beautiful, round full moon last night.
I am thankful for the weekend Jack & I just had in Ojai.
I am thankful for the good feelings I have all at once for no reason.
I am thankful for the friends who respond to me.
I am thankful for my work at Hunter’s Bookstore.
I am thankful for my new independence with money.
I am thankful for my more orderly, clear mind.
I take pride in being me, Dorothy D. Hall.
Loving Jack
Number 1. Seeing him is beautiful.
Number 2. We both realize how important we are to one another.
Number 3. The other evening we looked at one another, held hands, and communicated our feelings of love and need.
7
DI-ANNIE HALL
Wake-Up Call, 2009
Getting up at three-thirty a.m. to catch a flight to L.A. after spending six weeks in New York shooting Morning Glory doesn’t help the vertigo. As I spin my way to the Nespresso machine, waiting for the crystals in my ear to readjust, I think of that first shot on the first day. One minute I was on a mat in a fat suit, playing with a four-hundred-pound sumo wrestler; the next I was on a gurney, in a neck brace, looking up at the machine taking pictures of my brain. Like Humpty Dumpty, I took a great fall.
I think of the nurses at Columbia Presbyterian checking every three hours to see if I was alive. I think of the fall that took Natasha Richardson’s life and know I’m lucky. I think of Duke, who said, “Mom, did you lose your memories?” I think of the people I worked with. There was Roger Michel, our bear of a director; beautiful Rachel McAdams; and legendary Harrison Ford. I think of the $65 million he made in 2008, beating out Johnny Depp for the title of number-one box-office winner; that’s pretty good for a sixty-five-year-old man. That’s a lot of money. I think about money and worry like Dad used to. I worry about Emmie, our seven-year-old shit-eating dog. I worry about Randy’s liver, and Robin’s daughter, Riley, with her new baby, Dylan. I worry about Duke’s lack of boundaries. I worry about Dorrie’s antiques business and Dexter’s teen years. But mainly I worry about how long I can keep it all going. Which, of course, makes me think of the Unique Lives Lecture Series Tour, where I found myself on the road in Minneapolis, Des Moines, Boston, Toronto, Montreal, and Denver, in Carrie Underwood’s new tour bus. What about all those women, my contemporaries, my sisters, in all those auditoriums listening to Diane Keaton—that’s me—give a Unique Lecture on the subject of being a woman over sixty? When Stephanie Heaton (not to be confused with Keaton) and I spent the night in Carrie’s bus, we pulled over to grab a Starbucks at the World’s Largest Truck Stop, and I thought, Okay, I’m no Harrison Ford, but I’m making my way, and it’s never boring.
As I wheel my suitcase into the hallway, I start to think about what’s waiting for me back in L.A. Oh, God, school again. Already? Duke in third grade, Dex in eighth. Not possible. I think about the restoration of the Wright house I bought before the recession hit. I think about the complications of selling Mom and Dad’s two oceanfront homes after the seawall collapsed down the block. I think about Dorrie, who doesn’t want to sell; Robin, who does; and Randy, who’s oblivious.
I throw on some Diane’s Tuberose lipstick by L’Oreal. I think about walking barefoot in Central Park at nine P.M. last night, looking at fireflies while Duke and Dexter laughed themselves down the stainless-steel slide. Will this be the last year Dex allows herself to play like a kid? I think about Duke dressed up in a box seat, watching Billy Elliot tap-dance his way across the Broadway stage. It makes me wish I could live in New York again. I think about waiting in line on Fifth Avenue outside Abercrombie & Fitch with Dex, as she dreamed of boys, and suntans, and love, and kisses. I think about the morning we rode bikes over the Brooklyn Bridge, one of our country’s greatest engineering feats in the greatest city of them all. I think of the 59th Street Bridge in Manhattan and the block of brownstones Woody and I walked past in the East 70s from Annie Hall. I don’t want to leave this city. I want to stay. I want to go back to another day, not unlike today, where I also found myself up at three-thirty A.M., only then I was waiting to be picked up for my first day of shooting the Untitled Woody Allen Project in the spring of 1976.
Annie Hall
ALVY: You want a lift?
ANNIE: Oh, why? Uh, you got a car?
ALVY: No, um … I was going to take a cab.
ANNIE: Oh, no. I have a car.
ALVY: You have a car? I don’t understand why … If you have a car, so then why did you say, “Do you have a car?” like you wanted a lift?
ANNIE: I don’t, I don’t, geez, I don’t know. I wasn’t … I got this VW out there. (To herself) What a jerk, yeah. (To Alvy) Would you like a lift?
ALVY: Sure. Which way you goin’?
ANNIE: Me? Oh, downtown.
ALVY: Down … I’m going uptown.
ANNIE: Oh, well, you know, I’m going uptown too.
ALVY: You just said you were going downtown.
ANNIE: Yeah, well, but I can …
Make Work Play
Filming Annie Hall was effortless. During breaks, Woody would carry around a pack of Camels, take one out of his shirt pocket à la George Raft, flip it into his mouth, blow smoke rings, and never inhale. No one had any serious expectations. We were just having a good time moving through New York’s landmark locations. As always, Woody concerned himself with worries about the script. Was it too much like an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show? I told him he was nuts. Relax.
If a scene wasn’t working, Woody would do what he always did: rewrite it while Gordon Willis was setting up the shot. Rewrite frequently meant re-edit. Woody didn’t hold his words in high regard; as a result, there was no excess fat in Annie Hall. The choice of Gordon Willis as cinematographer was a turning point and an unerring example of Woody breaking the rules. Like many funny men, he had a borderline contempt for comedy. But, unlike others, he used that attitude to invent a host of witty visual approaches that gave Annie Hall weight. With Gordon at his side, Woody stopped being afraid of the dark. He learned how to shoot split screens and flashbacks with style. Gordon helped teach him to
choreograph the master shot so it could be used to deliver the variety and impact an audience needed without cutting to close-ups. These innovations were new for comedy. Annie Hall, all dressed up in shadow and light, moving through time without a lot of arbitrary coverage, was seamless.
Woody’s direction was the same. Loosen up the dialogue. Forget the marks. Move around like a real person. Don’t make too much of the words, and wear what you want to wear. Wear what you want to wear? That was a first. So I did what Woody said: I wore what I wanted to wear, or, rather, I stole what I wanted to wear from cool-looking women on the streets of New York. Annie’s khaki pants, vest, and tie came from them. I stole the hat from Aurore Clément, Dean Tavoularis’s future wife, who showed up on the set of The Godfather: Part II one day wearing a man’s slouchy bolero pulled down low over her forehead. Aurore’s hat put the finishing touch on the so-called Annie Hall look. Aurore had style, but so did all the street-chic women livening up SoHo in the mid-seventies. They were the real costume designers of Annie Hall.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Woody was. Every idea, every choice, every decision, came from the mind of Woody Allen.
A Screening, March 27, 1977
Jack and I held hands at the screening of Annie Hall. It was closing night of the Filmex Festival in Century City. The theater was flooded with lights and fireworks overhead. Inside, we found seats in the front row only. We chose to sit on the steps at the back of the room. ANNIE HALL. I only saw Diane, her mannerisms, expressions, dress, hair, etc., the total her. The story took second place. When she sang, “It Had to Be You” in a room full of talk and confusion, I fought back tears. But the song “Seems Like Old Times” was the hard one to take; so tender. I was exploding inside. I tried to hold it all back. She looked beautiful. Gordon Willis did a very great job on the photography. She chose her own clothes and the gray T-shirt and baggy pants were “down home” for sure. Annie Hall is a love story. It seemed real. Annie’s camera in hand, her gum chewing, her lack of confidence; pure Diane. The story was tender, funny, and sad. It ended in separation, just like real life.
The Hall family was comic relief, especially the Randy character, named Duane. Woody’s character couldn’t understand Duane’s unique problems. Colleen Dewhurst as me was not a high spot. The Grammy Hall character was nothing more than a visual gag. And Jack’s part was not impressive. The audience loved it though. They were clapping and laughing the whole way through. This will be a very popular movie.
Mom and I never discussed the Hall family as depicted in Annie Hall. What was there to discuss? I hadn’t seen the movie. When I won the New York Film Critics Circle Award, I figured I’d better get myself to a movie theater before I gave my acceptance speech. It was 1978. I went to a matinee on 59th and Third. There was a smattering of people in the theater. I didn’t hear any laughs. Like Mom, I was so consumed by the “me” of it all that I couldn’t pay attention to the story. I kept thinking, What’s all the fuss about? Predictably, I hated my face, the sound of my voice, and my awful “mannerisms.” On the positive side, I knew I was lucky. And I was grateful. I didn’t bother myself with the Hall family scenes. They were of no concern. First of all, not one character was even remotely identifiable. Weird Duane, played by Chris Walken, was hilarious but from the planet Mars. Woody’s version of my family was comic relief. He wrote a generic WASP family and built some jokes around the dinner table. I didn’t give the scene a second thought.
Most people assumed Annie Hall was the story of our relationship. My last name is Hall. Woody and I did share a significant romance, according to me, anyway. I did want to be a singer. I was insecure, and I did grope for words. After thirty-five years, does anybody care? What matters is Woody’s body of work. Annie Hall was his first love story. Love was the glue that held those witty vignettes together. However bittersweet, the message was clear. Love fades. Woody took a risk; he let the audience feel the sadness of goodbye in a funny movie.
At seventy-five, after making forty-five films in forty-five years, he’s the only director who without fail secures financing for his annual film. The deal includes complete control and final cut. It’s not that other filmmakers haven’t earned the right; it’s that, in a business incapable of tolerating failure, Woody has chutzpah. And his movies are budgeted with reality in mind. It’s a testimony to his particular brand of genius that he can still cast major movie stars while paying them minimum wage. The enticement? Five actors have received six Academy Awards from appearing in a Woody Allen movie, and ten have received nominations.
In the end it all boils down to words. Woody’s words. He’s either written or co-written every movie he’s directed. Writing is the underpinning, infrastructure, point of departure, reason, and pretext for all of it.
A Phone Call
Even though we broke up two years before we shot Annie Hall, I was still Woody’s sidekick. I can’t explain why we continued to click. Maybe, as with an old couch, we were comfortable with each other. We still enjoyed sitting in “Oldies’ Row” at the entrance to Central Park, making observations on the parade of humanity passing by. We still had fun with our “kitchen follies” and we still kept planning future projects, but things had changed. He was suddenly the comic genius. I was suddenly getting more opportunities. I met with Warren Beatty for his movie Heaven Can Wait and turned him down to hit the bars as Theresa Dunn in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. After Goodbar finished shooting, I went back to New York. When Warren called me on Christmas Eve, it wasn’t about a job.
And he kept calling. In January of 1978 Warren and I started hanging out. I told myself it was temporary. I could handle it. Sure, he was smart, lawyer-smart. And, yes, he was still a mind-blowing dream of drop-dead gorgeous. I don’t know why I thought I could manage things—well, that’s not true, I didn’t think at all. I fell. And I kept falling for a long time. He grabbed me from the first moment I saw him in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel way back in 1972. I looked up, and in the distance I saw my dream come true in person. I also saw that there wasn’t a woman within close proximity he didn’t scrutinize, except me. He didn’t scrutinize me, not then.
To Die For
Warren turned out to be a far more complex character than I could have imagined when I saw him kiss Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass at the Broadway Theater in Santa Ana. I was in tenth grade. I’d never seen anything like Warren Beatty. By thing, I mean he wasn’t real. He was to die for. And Natalie Wood? Well, she was me. I was her. When Bud and Deanie were forced to part, I was devastated. I even wrote Mr. Elia Kazan, the director, inquiring why the parents were so opposed to true love. Could he have changed the ending? What was the big deal about different social classes? He did not respond. It’s ironic; a couple of weeks ago I caught a glimpse of Splendor in the Grass on TV. There they were again, Bud and Deanie, still tormented, still in love. My own romance with Warren was not destined for the long haul either. For us it wasn’t circumstance. It was character. I admit there was a smattering of two different worlds mixed in; after all, Warren was “The Prince of Hollywood” and I was, as my dad called me, Di-annie Oh Hall-ie.
Warren was infamous. We used to gossip about his conquests after Martha Graham dance class at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Cricket Cohen knew a girl who knew a girl he picked up and took back to his hotel room at the Waldorf Astoria. Oh, my God, how awful, how humiliating. We all swore we would never fall into that kind of trap. Not us.
What I didn’t know was, once Warren chose to shine his light on you, there was no going back. Within his gaze I was the most captivating person in the world. He fed on every nuance of my lopsided face and saw beauty. It was enchanting, but it was scary too. I was straddling two lives, in two different locations. I was with Warren, but because of Annie Hall everyone still thought I was Woody’s girl.
Warren opened every door with his bullshit detector fully charged. Always searching for what lay hidden behind the façade, he was the only person who was curious enough to ask me
if my Annie Hall glasses were prescription. Nailed. While Woody encouraged my artistic endeavors with things like “P.S. Your new photos arrived. The best yet! Really!” Warren would look askance at one of my collages and say, “You’re a movie star. That’s what you wanted. You got it. Now deal with it. What is all this art stuff going to get you anyway?” That’s what I liked about him; he told it like he saw it. And he saw it with a lot of variables.
When I compare Mother’s relationship with Father to mine with Warren, there’s no question Warren’s promises were far more seductive than Jack Hall’s could ever be. After I confessed how terrified I was to fly, Warren surprised me as I was about to board a flight to New York, took my hand, walked me into the plane, sat down still holding my hand, and never let go until we landed. Once safe on the ground he kissed me, turned around, and flew back to L.A. On Valentine’s Day he bought me a sauna for one bathroom and a steam room for the other. He was full of magnanimous gestures. He also filled my head with crazy thoughts: I had enormous potential. I could be a director, a politician, as well as one of the most revered actresses in the world if I wanted. I would laugh and tell him he was out of his mind. But I loved it, every second, and I loved him, especially his insane largesse.
Diane
There was a moment when we first sat down at dinner last night when I looked at you and you seemed to have such an unfair allotment of gifts that it frightened me. Plus you had time on your side too.
You’ve made a lot of money for the movie business and your percentages for the profits haven’t been so huge that you should feel guilty about taking some of the industry’s money and making your own film. I think they’d be happy to do it.
