Los Angeles, California
Last weekend, a friend cryptically texted me: Another of our beloved, favorite actresses lost. No clue. My brain flashed through possibilities which I won’t list (kinda gruesome). Reminded of pre-internet days when good friends had postulated the usefulness of a toll-free service 1-800-deadyet, I googled: Who died today? And Diane Keaton’s name and photo came up. I texted my friend, Cindy: News is reporting that Diane Keaton has died. She was the first person I thought of when I heard the news. Later, when I pondered this, I remembered the nights w/ Tom, Cindy and Michael at our first home. They were our best and closest friends and we spent many a summer night with them on the patio of that first home, back in the day when we listened to albums on a turntable. And the Gershwin-based soundtrack from Woody Allen’s film Manhattan was a frequent musical backdrop to our evenings.
After Cin texted me back, I responded: I’m still not over Redford! And it did seem vastly unfair to lose another icon from our younger days in such rapid fashion after the first. But alas, we have learned that life is like that in its inequities.
So, Diane Keaton. Le sigh. I first saw her in the film Play It Again, Sam. I saw it with David, my college boyfriend, at a long-gone movie theater out at Valley Circle in Calabasas. It is very possible that we had come there to see Harold and Maude and that PIAS was the second feature (the ‘70’s version of ‘binging’). It wasn’t long before we had seen Diane Keaton in The Godfather and another Woody Allen film, Love and Death.
After my relationship with David ended, Annie Hall was one of the early films Tom and I saw together shortly before we married. But my favorite Diane Keaton film is Reds. I saw it at a theater in Westwood with Cindy and Michael on Super Bowl Sunday in 1982. Tom was working that weekend and couldn’t join us. Before leaving to meet them for the movie, my mom called. When I told her I was just leaving to go see that film, she responded (SPOILER ALERT!): He dies in the end. Which, if you knew my mom, you would be inclined to remark in unison with me: That is So Betty…
Reds is a complex and interesting film, with one of the most memorable scenes in over a hundred years of filmmaking. It is the scene where Louise Bryant searches for Jack Reed at the train station in Moscow, her face reflecting the death and destruction she surveys until she and Jack find each other and embrace. Scenes like that, epiphanies in film viewing, are why we watch and study fine films. It doesn’t get a lot better than that. Ok, maybe Rick and Ilsa.
Losing Diane Keaton is shocking. But as Cin and I reflected recently, time is passing. We are no longer the thirtysomethings who worked out at Jane Fonda’s, had breakfast then shopped at the Gap at the Sherman Oaks Galleria. Our mothers were right, I remarked. It does go fast.
I watched Annie Hall last week. I actually own a dvd of Reds, so when the time is provided (it’s a very long film), I will watch that too. Hard to believe she is gone. I’m still not over Redford. Le sigh…
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