Diane Keaton One of a Kind, a Tribute

Diane Keaton 1946-2025

Celebrity deaths hit us in different ways. Some don’t hit us at all because while we were aware of the person we might not have known much about their work or not liked what we did know. Such was the case of me with the deaths of people like Paul Walker and Kurt Cobain. 

The age of the decedent can also matter. The death of someone in their nineties is sad but feels inevitable, but someone who was in their twenties feels tragic.

Our feelings vary based on how much we knew of the person outside of their work. Sometimes we feel a connection to a celebrity perhaps because we’ve seen so much of their work or because we’ve “gotten to know” the person through articles, interviews, podcasts and the like.

Last month I was saddened enough by Robert Redford’s death to write about it on this blog. I’d been seeing him in films since I was a teenager and he was in several pictures that meant a lot to me. Besides, he was a good all-around chap whose politics aligned with mine.

But that pain was minimal compared to how I felt yesterday when I learned that Diane Keaton had died. In a post from April 2023 I wrote about my favorite actresses and named Ms. Keaton my favorite of the second half of the 20th century.

Last night the missus and I watched her Oscar-winning performance in Annie Hall (1977) Allen. (No idea how many times I've watched Annie Hall but it must be close to or over twenty). It was a brilliant performance and I’ve always been impressed that the Academy rewarded her for a role in a comedy. But she brought such depth and humanity to the role, a genuineness and charming eccentricity and style. She was sexy, lovable, cute, nerdy, fun and wise all in one role. I remember a friend once complaining that she got an Oscar for essentially playing herself. And is that easy? Even for a professional actor? I don’t think so. Besides, despite their similarities, Diane Keaton and Annie Hall were not the same person.

Ms.Keaton brought a different vibe to another Woody Allen film, Manhattan. Here she was far more worldly, cynical, overbearing yet at times vulnerable. A woman searching for her true self and true love and stepping on toes along the way. Manhattan is an interesting movie because it’s a comedy with dramatic elements or a drama with comedic bits. Actors will tell you that doing the comedy bits is tougher. Diane Keaton was a master at it. She excelled in comedic roles for Allen in pictures like Play it Again, Sam, Sleeper, Love and Death and Manhattan Murder Mystery (a vastly underrated film). Yet she was also the wife of Mafia Boss Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in The Godfather and The Godfather Part 2. She was never impressed with her performances in those films and felt she was miscast. I think most filmgoers disagree. I’d go so far to say that she was perfect for the part. Ms. Keaton captured the post World War II trustingly naive young wife. But she also embodied the woman who's seen enough, has her internal come to Jesus moment and splits.

Around the time she made Annie Hall Ms. Keaton was in a very different film, Looking For Mr. Goodbar (19770 R Brooks, is dark,  psychological drama about a woman in a continual search for sexual partners. It's not an easy watch but through Ms. Keaton's performance it is accessible. The film was flawed but her performance was not.

One of her greatest roles was in Reds (1981) Beatty, in which she played journalist and activist Louise Bryant opposite Warren Beatty’s John Reed. It was a demanding role in a long movie and she was excellent throughout more than holding her own opposite such powerhouses as Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Paul Sorvino, Maureen Stapleton. It’s difficult now to think of Louise Bryant without imagining Diane Keaton. She was the strong-willed feminist who could love deeply and earnestly amid the incredible political tumult that she was both reporting and influencing. 

Diane Keaton was a film star. Sure she was a terrific actress, yes she was beautiful. But more than that she seemed relatable and fun. Men would picture her in bed, but they could also imagine having a long chat in a cafe over coffee. Browsing in a bookstore with her. Laughing with her. Maybe that’s the key. Sure you’d want to make love to her, but you felt you could also look forward to long, loud belly laughs together. Beautiful but accessible. Sexy and funny. Diane Keaton defied labels. She was more her own person than ninety-nine percent of the actresses in Hollywood have ever been.

You could watch her opposite Woody Allen, Al Pacino, Warren Beatty and any other actor lucky enough to share the screen with her. One of a kind. She seemed perfect and it’s unimaginable that she’s no longer in this world. We are so much poorer for her absence.

The Kennedy Assassination, Many Historians Can't Handle the Truth

Kennedy moments before the fatal shots

I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of U.S. historians are cowards. I recall reading an otherwise brilliant Pulitzer Prize winning biography of J Edgar Hoover in which the author asserted that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of President John. F Kennedy. It is little different than noting that the Earth is flat. The Warren Commission’s fatuous conclusions have been repeatedly disproved for decades. The Commission was set up by then president Lyndon Johnson solely to establish Oswald’s guilt and thus avert a crisis in the country in which real questions were asked about the events of November 22, 1963. There have been hundreds of books — ranging from the amateurish to the scholarly — that have picked apart the commission and the lone gunman theory. There was a United States House Select Committee on Assassinations held from 1976 to 1978 that concluded that President Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy and that acoustic evidence suggested a second gunman might have been involved, implying a probable conspiracy. That was actually pretty weak sauce. Countless authors and researchers have come to much stronger conclusions backed by sound evidence that there were multiple gunmen in Dallas that. The CIA’s fingerprints were all over the assassination and the participation of the Mafia is not just likely but probable. 

Note these facts from assassination researcher Carl Oglesby:

* Oswald's description was broadcast over police radio within fifteen minutes of the assassination. No one knows how this description was obtained.

* No interrogation records were kept for those arrested at Dealey Plaza, or for Oswald.

* The pictures of Oswald holding a gun appear to be faked.

* JFK's body was removed from Dallas before an autopsy could be performed there.

* JFK's corpse left Dallas wrapped in a sheet inside an ornamental bronze casket. It arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington in a body bag inside a plain casket.

* The autopsy photographs of JFK's wounds differed radically from the descriptions of the doctors at Parkland Hospital.

* A whole tray of evidence, including what was left of the president's brain, remains missing from the National Archives.

* The pristine condition of "the magic bullet" suggests it was planted.

* Numerous films made by witnesses to the event were confiscated.

* Many more witnesses have died than would normally be expected, many in mysterious circumstances.

* Both the FBI and the CIA concealed important evidence from the Warren Commission.

It is noteworthy that the bizarre theories, the ones that strain credulity come from the advocates for the lone gunmen theory. No better evidence is needed in then the “magic bullet” theory. The theory posits that a single bullet fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository by Lee Harvey Oswald, struck Kennedy in the back, exited through his throat, then entered Connally’s back, broke a rib, exited his chest, shattered his wrist, and embedded in his thigh. The idea is not only implausible but downright silly.

A few years ago documentarian Errol Morris put forth evidence that he felt debunked the notion of multiple gunmen by presenting an interview with the supposed “umbrella man.” The umbrella man was a mysterious figure seen in photos and film footage of the JFK assassination standing on Dealey Plaza holding a black umbrella, despite the clear, sunny weather in Dallas that day. His presence near the motorcade route and his unusual behavior—raising and possibly twirling the umbrella just as President Kennedy’s limousine approached—sparked decades of conspiracy theories. Many speculated he was signaling the gunmen -- probably because it was pretty obvious that he likely was.

Decades later a man confessed to Morris that he was the umbrella man. He explained his behavior during the assassination by claiming that he was there that day to protest the president’s father’s appeasement policies toward Nazi Germany when he, Joseph Kennedy, was ambassador to England at the outset of World War II. The umbrella, he explained —evidently with a straight face — was meant to represent another appeaser, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. 

In other words we are to believe that over twenty years after the war someone decided to show his displeasure with Joseph Kennedy by holding up an umbrella as the president’s motorcade went by reasoning that JFK would see said umbrella and immediately think: “damn, that’s clearly a reference to my father and his efforts to appease the Nazis, he sure showed me.” It's amazing that Morris and others actually believed that nonsense. I also suppose that in this scenario the umbrella man calmly sauntered off as bullets flew and everyone else fell to the ground because his mission was accomplished and all this gunfire had nothing to do with him. 

Utter claptrap. 

Bear in mind these facts:

After the shooting people, including police officers, ran and pointed to the Grassy Knoll. Within forty seconds of the assassination Oswald was found (by a police officer) on the FIRST floor of the Book Depository, calmly drinking a soft drink.

The Secret Service was ordered off the Presidents limo at the airport for unknown reasons by unknown people. There is video of this and the agent being called off is clearly perplexed, as this goes against his training, and the plans for that day. The parade route was changed. Why did the limo not go straight down Main Street to the freeway? Instead it jogged over to in front of the Book Depository.

Kennedy is violently slammed BACKWARDS when he was shot in the head, this is easily visible on the Zapruder film. An intact, nearly pristine bullet was "found on a stretcher" at Parkland Hospital just after the President was brought there. 

The Secret Service washed down and removed evidence from the limo within one hour of the assassination. The car was driven across country and the interior rebuilt without any real examination. The President’s autopsy was performed by two doctors who had never done an autopsy. The President was given an autopsy that was not adequate for a Skid Row bum, let alone a murdered head of state. 

Oswald’s hands were tested for gunsmoke residue and the test was negative.

Lone gunmen advocates asked us to believe that Oswald hit was successful on his first try at a moving target, rapid fire, using a clumsy bolt action -- no one has ever succeeded at such a combination of shooting challenges.

Why would Oswald have taken a bolt-action rifle out there in the first place? Why would anyone push the weapon near to its absolute limit for rapid fire shot-production? 

It is quite enough of a challenge for any shooter that he would get thrown off line with 160-grain charges ramming his shoulder with each shot.

In 1967, eleven professional marksmen took all day with that Italian Carcano gun before one of the sharpshooters from the State Patrol could learn to get off the three shots in time and hit a target.

Bottom line: anyone with a 6.5mm or 30-06 bolt-action rifle can prove to himself the practical impossibility of the story we've been sold. That is common sense -- experience overwhelms hypothetical assertion. White is never black.

And back to the pristine bullet. It’s not just suspicious, it’s incriminating. This projectile was planted, period. Where and how would anyone get a pristine bullet that had been fired from that very rifle? It takes the work of a ballistics expert and possession of the barrel from the rifle itself, if not the intact rifle. 

People say: if there was a conspiracy surely someone would have spoken by now. True. The fact is people have, a lot of them. Many are full of it and some of those may be part of CIA disinformation campaigns. But there have been highly credible witnesses who have pointed fingers and given specific information about whos and wheres and whys. But it’s been difficult to sift through it all and get to the truth. 

Besides some “establishment” historians the New York Times has been a staunch defender of the lone assassin theory. Their highly respected columnist Russell Baker once posited that people want to believe that a conspiracy was behind the assassination because it’s more comforting than imagining a lone random gunman. Others have asserted the same. Can you imagine? To suggest that people would find comfort in the notion that shadowy figures, likely linked to the government, were behind the assassination of the president of the United States. It’s as crazy as the magic bullet theory.

So who do I think killed Kennedy? The best evidence points to people within the CIA perhaps with the assistance of the Mafia. Remember it is a fact that the CIA and Mafia were in league back then. Both organizations had cause to want to see JFK dead.

As we approach the sixty-second anniversary of the Kennedy assassination the answer to the question of who killed Kennedy and why has not been definitively answered. I’ve resigned myself to the idea that we probably will never know. What we do know is that Lee Harvey Oswald was exactly what he said, nothing but a patsy, and that there were multiple shooters.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Kennedy assassination this podcast co-hosted by Rob Reiner and Soledad O’Brien is a good place to start. One of the better books on the assassination is Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs. The website JFK Facts managed by Jefferson Morley is indispensable. Morley, by the way, wrote an excellent book about James Jesus Angleton, (The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton) the most notorious of CIA agents from its early days. Angelton held the CIA's files (started in 1959) on Oswald but he never released them to the Warren Commission.

I started this post by bemoaning the fact that so many historians toe the company line and are afraid to say the obvious about JFK's murder. I'm not entirely sure why that is. I imagine that they're afraid of being labeled conspiracy nuts. Maybe it's just considered bad form.

According to a gallup polll from two years ago 65% of Americans believe that John F. Kennedy's assassination was the result of a conspiracy and that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Yet too many historians continue to cower behind some version of the Warren Report, much to their discredit.

I close by noting that in part four of his multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro ignores the question entirely. He does show that the Warren Commission was conceived by Johnson for the purpose of convincing the American people that Oswald acted alone -- nothing to see here folks, move along. Evidence be damned the conclusion was determined in advance. Caro is also unequivocal that, based on his exhaustive research,  LBJ was not, as some have suggested, responsible for Kennedy's murder. I was relieved but not surprised that Caro did not prop up the Oswald as lone assassin canard.

Would that other historians would open their minds to the truth.

A Look at Ten of My Favorite Directors, Why I Revere Them and A Film that Sums them Up

Bergman with the great cinema photographer Sven Nykvist

In this post, I’m highlighting ten directors whose work I deeply admire. For each, I’ve chosen a single film that I believe best captures their unique voice, style, and impact on cinema. 

Ingmar Bergman. My favorite. An incredible body of work. The thinking man’s director. Cerebral stories that challenge us to contemplate but are beautiful to look at. Masterpieces like The Seventh Seal, Persona and the kaleidoscopic Fanny and Alexander. Bergman told extremely human stories about how people think, celebrate, suffer and make sense of the world. Bergman explored not just minds but souls. There were eccentrics, there were the mad but there were also the classic everyman/woman looking for love, looking for meaning looking for solace. He’s oeuvre is best summed up by Winter Light which, like other of his films, explores the frustration of God’s silence.

Woody Allen. Fifty films that range from classic comedies like Bananas, to serious meditations such as Match Point with many films like Manhattan straddling both worlds. Allen is a master of comedy but he can also tell Bergman-like stories of personal angst and self exploration. Also like Bergman, many of his movies center around relationships. Allen the director’s best friend is Allen the writer. He has given himself fantastic scripts to work with. He gets great performances from his casts -- especially women --ranging from Diane Keaton to Cate Blanchett to Penelope Cruz. His work is best summed up by Midnight in Paris. Beautifully shot, rich with great performance, an original premise, much humor and much to think about.

John Ford. I could be perfectly happy watching Ford films with no sound or subtitles. They are exquisitely shot whether you’re seeing the colorful Vista Vision of The Searchers or the glorious black and white of Young Mr. Lincoln. No one was better at framing a shot. He made the wide open spaces of Monument Valley even bigger by making the interiors so claustrophobic. His pacing was always perfect. You’d be hard-pressed to find a yawn in one his films. The wordless opening shot of The Long Voyage Home is one of the best in cinema as his poignant closing shot in The Searchers. Though not a Western, his work can be summed up by the brilliance of The Grapes of Wrath, a visual masterpiece that makes the oh-so human stories being told all the more memorable.

Preston Sturges. They all came out in one great rush in the first half of the 1940s. Several of the greatest screwball comedies ever made. From The Great McGinty to Hail the Conquering Hero Sturges made pictures that mixed highbrow wit with slapstick that never quite went over the top. He was another director who benefitted from his own screenplays. He was a master of telling unique stories: a comedy director who wants to make socially relevant films, a faux war hero being promoted by real heroes, a pregnant teen who doesn’t know who the father is, a nobody who goes from being political muscle to corrupt governor. They’re all fast-paced, fun and memorable. Sturges work is epitomized by The Lady Eve where a smart and sexy con artist (Barbara Stanwyck) seduces an ale scion (Henry Fonda). Hilarious complications ensue.

Aki Kaurismäki. He tells stories of resilience, people overcoming misfortunes (accidents, beatings, amnesia, poverty). His characters are not especially beautiful, far from glamorous. They are often stoic, outwardly placid, but always relatable. The great Finn’s films are a visual treat with beautiful color palettes and spot on framing. The stories are rich with irony but there’s nothing broad, no gratuitous violence no slapstick. The stories are simple yet compelling. Kaurismäki the director’s greatest asset is Kaurismäki the writer. His work is summed up in his most recent film, Fallen Leaves. Awkward love, hurdles for both main characters to clear, a Chaplinesque ending.

Martin Scorsese. You think of the gangster films or the gritty urban dramas like Taxi Driver. But the man also made Age of Innocence a sumptuous period piece with delicate and devastating performances from the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer. At his best in his early days Scorsese was a grand master of using the camera to better tell his stories. The freeze frames, the slow motion, the odd angles, were all used in service of enhancing the story-telling. Raging Bull is a great example. His films was always raw and honest. The best of the lot was Goodfellas which is for me the best directed film of all time. Scorsese brought all his talents to creating this indelible story so rich with memorable scenes and characters.

The Coen Brothers. The Big Lebowski, No Country For Old Men and A Serious Man. Three completely different films from the same creative minds. It’s as if they refuse to in anyway repeat themselves so they go out of their way to make something different every time. (Imagine the range of going from Blood Simple to Barton Fink.) The commonality in their pictures is that they’re all damn good and many are masterclasses in cinema. They avoid cliches like the plague. The originality in dialogue and the avoidance of standard cinematic tropes sets them apart. They’ve never been “Hollywood” directors which means they’ve always had the truth of their stories guide their story telling. Inside Llewyn Davis sums up their brilliance. It’s an unconventional story. A rising star who doesn’t rise, who indeed is hard to root for. They perfectly capture a moment in time which is revealed to us through a cadre of highly original characters.

Andrei Tarkovsky. In some respects the ultimate European art house director but one who never looked amateurish nor tried our patience. Films like Mirror and The Sacrifice invited us to think, challenged us to wonder but never left us confused. He could tell big stories like the epic Andrei Rublev or starker, simpler ones like Ivan’s Childhood. He had the brains of Bergman and the vision of Kurosawa. Tarkovsky mastered the simple shot that told so much. He let some scenes linger so we could catch our breath and he picked his spots well. I think Stalker is the ultimate Tarkovsky film. Smart, mysterious, asking us questions while giving us so much to soak in.

Federico Fellini. Where to start? Where to finish? What to include? Fellini’s film are so rich, so full of life, energy, people. Oh goodness the people.The glitterati, the intellectual, the talented, the precocious the interesting the grotesque, the bizarre. Sitting down to a Fellini movie is the cinematic equivalent of a royal banquet. See 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita, Amarcod. Even the simpler stripped down stories like La Strada contain so much. Laughter, pathos and the intellectually inspiring. To me his work is best summed up by Nights of Cabiria. A by turns heart-warming and tragic story told with both verve and empathy. The smile at the end says it all.

Sean Baker. Here’s another director who shows great respect for the human race. He does this in part by having characters who seem real, believable and are interesting. They are not all “good” people but for all their deficiencies there is humanity. Baker is a humanist director telling stories of people who have had a few breaks go against them but struggle on. Tangerine is about a transgender sex worker, Take Out follows a Chinese immigrant in New York making food deliveries, Starlet is about the friendship between two women, one is 21 and the other 85. He has films set in New York, Texas, Florida and Los Angeles.  He goes where the stories are. Earlier this year he won a well-deserved Best Picture Oscar for Anora a film that captures all that is great about Baker’s work. It is the story of an exotic dancer who finds love with a Russian oligarch’s son. Until that love becomes inconvenient for his family. It is a rich blend of comedy, drama, romance and maintaining one’s dignity.

I learned from this exercise that the best directors emphasize people. Making them seem real, relatable and interesting. They show respect for their characters and for their audience. Their stories are not dumbed down and are often challenging but never pretentious. They often elicit great performances from actors. They tell original stories that they often write themselves. They have a visual style, are masters of pacing and editing and are particularly good at picking just the right music or particular song for their soundtracks. Undoubtedly they excel at selecting their crews be they cinema photographers, editors, set designers or make up artists.

What’s next. Probably a part two. Look who I left out: Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luis Buñuel, Howard Hawks, Charlie Chaplin, Wong Kar Wai, Billy Wilder, Paul Thomas Anderson, Satyajit Ray, William Wellman, Louis Malle, Jim Jarmusch and Roberto Rossellini.

One Good Scene After Another, PT Anderson's Latest is a Real Gem

Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, One Battle After Another is a movie movie. It is a cornucopia for film goers. Rich with character, incidents, conflicts, themes, history and messages. It clocks in at two hours and fifty minutes and there’s not a yawn in it. There’s not a wasted second. It’s a nearly three hour film that’s tight and compact. It’s a wonder.

Anderson is a master of telling multi-layered stories somehow presenting complexity as compelling cinema as he’s done here and with films such as Magnolia, Licorice Pizza and Boogie Nights.

One Battle is the story of an ex-revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) who has to rescue his daughter (Chase Infiniti in her film debut) from a corrupt military officer (Sean Penn). That’s your over simplified plot summary. There is so much else going on. Relationships, plots, betrayals, deception and a fair bit of comedy along with something of a history lesson. No, One Battle is not based on a true story (its origins are Thomas Pynchon’s novel, Vineland) but it gives you a sense of the spirit of the Sixties among those who, like the Weather Underground, believed in using violence as a response to a regressive and repressive U.S.government.

Among Anderson’s gifts is an ability to draw pitch perfect performances from his cast (see Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love, Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, Lesley Manville in Phantom Thread). DiCaprio has completed the transformation from pretty boy star to veteran and oh-so reliable actor who can carry a film on his back. He has to do a lot of heavy lifting here and is fully up to the task. Ms. Infiniti is a revelation and surely a future star. Prior to this picture her credits consisted of eight credits for a TV show and one music video. She’s got screen presence and is achingly pretty. But Sean Penn steals every scene he’s in. His portrayal veers wonderfully from amazingly realistic to over-the-top spoof but he handles it brilliantly. Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall and Teyana Taylor are the other leads. Wikipedia tells me that Ms. Taylor is an  “American singer, songwriter, actress, model, dancer, choreographer, and music video director.” She seems like someone I should have heard of by now but I’ll not soon forget her performance in One Battle as the uber dedicated and sexualized revolutionary.

Like most Anderson films, this is a master class in pacing and editing. Anderson knows when to hold a shot an extra beat and when to cut. His also adept framing shots, he’s not a master like John Ford but he’s far better than most. He brought all his skills to making One Battle.

This is also a film that will resonate with people because of their current political climate (a sorry climate, indeed). There are detention centers for immigrants, military intervention in American cities and a shadowy racist right wing group that seeks what they consider racial purity and an end to immigration (at least from non-whites). I suspect that the MAGA crowd will object to the film. I’d be disappointed if they didn’t.

One Battle is the first really good new film I’ve seen this year and I hope it’s the start of a trend. That said, it’ll be hard to top.