Then Again Part 5

Even Grammy Hall was interviewed by the local Highland Park newspaper. She had her picture taken with a photograph of Woody in her right hand and one of me in the left. "People say I'm in the clouds, I ain't in no clouds. I'll tell you one thing about the Academy Awards. It's something big for a small family. That Woody Allen must be awfully broad-minded to think of all that c.r.a.p he thinks of."

2009.

Before I opened my computer in the parking lot today, I relived one of my favorite memories. It's the one with Woody and me sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum after it's closed. We're watching people parade out of the museum in summer shorts and sandals. The trees to the south are planted in parallel lines. The water in the fountain shoots up with a mist that almost reaches the steps we sit on. We look at silver-haired ladies in red-and-white-print dresses. We separate the mice from the men, the tourists from the New Yorkers, the Upper East Siders from the West Siders. The hot-pretzel vendor sells us a wad of dough in knots with clumps of salt stuck on top. We make our usual remarks about the crazies and wonder what it would be like to live in a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Met. We laugh and say the same things we always say. We hold hands and keep sitting, just sitting, as the sun begins to set. It's a perfect afternoon. There were many perfect afternoons with Woody.

Woody never chose to join me in the sad-sack nostalgia of temporal concerns. He didn't regret the past or try to bring back perfect afternoons that most likely weren't perfect except in memory. He's never spoken of his Academy Awards with an ounce of pride. He doesn't speak of them at all. Even funny is preferred without sentiment. He loves to dish it out. And the deal is, n.o.body does it better than Woody. He's mastered the put-down. I just wish he would do it more often, like he did at my Lincoln Center honor a few years back.

Lincoln Center Tribute "I got a call asking if I would say some nice things about Diane. I said, Yes, I can think of some nice things. Keaton for one thing is punctual. She, she, she'll always show up on time, and she's thrifty; she knows the value of a dollar. She, um ... what else can I say about her ... She has wonderful handwriting. She's ... I'm reaching. Uh ... She's, uh, beautiful. She was always beautiful. She's remained beautiful over the years. She's not beautiful in the conventional sense of the word beauty. By the conventional sense I mean 'pleasing to the eye.' She has great conviction in her own taste. She always dresses with the black clothes and the hat and the sensible shoes. She looks to me like the woman who comes to take Blanche DuBois to the inst.i.tution. It's grammatically incorrect to say someone is 'the most unique' or 'so unique,' but, you know, Diane is the most unique person that I've ever known. That could be interpreted as weirdness but she's, you know, she's truly one of a kind ... I think."

I miss Woody. He would cringe if he knew how much I care about him. I'm smart enough not to broach the subject. I know he's borderline repulsed by the grotesque nature of my affection. What am I supposed to do? I still love him. I'll always be his Lamphead, Monster, Cosmo Piece, his simple-is-as-simple-does housemeat, and Major Oaf. How do I tell "Uncle Woodums" about my lurve, I mean loave, I mean loof? How can I tell him to please "take care of all your fingers and toes and think sweet thoughts, write if you get a chance, and hang by your thumbs"?

Annie Hall changed my life. When the movie proved to have the kind of legs I'd fantasized but couldn't envision ... I made a U-turn and withdrew. As much as I appreciated the accolades, I wasn't prepared for the discomfort-or, rather, the guilt-that came with it. I tried going back home. I drove down to my parents' new house on Cove Street at the beach in Corona del Mar. I hung out with Mom. We took pictures of suburbia with our new Nikon F's. Dorrie and I went to swap meets. Randy was writing, and Robin was employed as a visiting nurse caring for the elderly. Warren was getting more serious about directing the love story of John Reed and Louise Bryant set against the Russian Revolution.

I went back to New York and hung out with my friends Kathryn Grody and Carol Kane. What did I think I would get by refusing all the attention I had wanted for so long? This new life was scary. Instead of taking it head-on, I tried to deny fame for as long as I could-maybe too long.

Woody's first drama fit right into my program of avoidance. Interiors was, let's just say, not commercial. Miscast as a brilliant writer in the vein of Renata Adler, I smoked cigarettes and knotted my brow in an effort to seem intelligent. The words Woody wrote didn't fit on the lips of my experience. The only things that distracted me from my discomfort in the role were legendary Geraldine Page and Sandy Meisner's favorite actress, Maureen Stapleton.

Every morning Geraldine Page trudged to the set in rags, lugging two shopping bags full of mending. She'd bend over, pull out her husband Rip Torn's old clothes, and patch his pants while she was in the makeup chair. I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that one of the greatest actresses in the world was a bag lady. If anything, her homeless appearance added to her charisma. When Woody gave her direction, she smiled, nodded her head politely, then completely disregarded everything he said. Before one of her extremely emotional close-ups, I stood next to the camera, about to feed her my lines, when she point-blank asked me to leave. As I watched from a distance, I understood. My presence would have stolen her freedom. Maybe all that Neighborhood Playhouse sharing with your fellow actors, all that living truthfully together in the given imaginary moment, wasn't for everyone. Geraldine Page was an acting genius. Rules don't apply to genius.

Maureen Stapleton, on the other hand, had the appearance of a more predictable approach. She wanted the other actors to be there for her close-ups. With her big round Irish face, Maureen seemed to be suspended in a permanent state of surprise, or frenzy. How did she do it so effortlessly? No one knew. At the end of shooting one day, I waited for her in the teamster van. She was a big woman. Her body didn't have much give, but she managed to lift it into the seat next to me and said, "Someday you'll be old too, Diane."

The solitary year of shooting Reds in England was an emotional two steps back and no steps forward. I wasn't prepared for playing Louise Bryant, someone far less romantic than I'd imagined. She became my cross to bear. I didn't like her. There was nothing charming about her will to be recognized as an artist in her own right. Her pursuit of the magnetic revolutionary John Reed was suspect and, frankly, laced with envy. I hated her. It was a problem. Rather than face the challenge, I did what I usually do under pressure: I backpedaled.

On the set, Barry, the hairdresser, would joke about farts while rolling my hair in curlers, as thirtyish Paul slapped on the makeup. Occasionally Jeremy Pikser, one of the writers, would join me for lunch and talk about iconic characters he couldn't stand, like Scarlett O'Hara, who was nothing more than a selfish brat. I don't know, I probably got the message wrong, but it seemed like he was trying to tell me something.

Everyone knew I didn't take well to Warren's direction. It was impossible to work with a perfectionist who shot forty takes per setup. Sometimes it felt like I was being stun-gunned. Even now I can't say my performance is my own. It was more like a reaction to Warren-that's what it was: a response to the effect of Warren Beatty.

It took the tragic reunion of John Reed and Louise Bryant at the train station for me to find a sense of pride in playing such a provocative character. Warren waited through something like sixty-five excruciating close-ups before I finally broke through my self-imposed wall of defiance and let go of my judgment call on a woman I needed to love in order to play. Shooting the scene was an experience I couldn't have foreseen. Because of Warren's tenacity, suddenly, against all odds, love came rus.h.i.+ng through when Louise Bryant saw John Reed's face approaching hers at last. Reds was an epic with themes enriched by human ideals. John Reed sacrificed his life for his beliefs. But for me, it was imperfect love that was at the heart of Warren's movie.

PART THREE.

9.

ARTISTIC.

Focus It was the eighties. I was nominated for an Academy Award for Reds but lost to Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond. My next movie, Shoot the Moon, was released to mixed critical success. The Little Drummer Girl tanked big-time. Mrs. Soffel with Mel Gibson also bombed. Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart, with Jessica Lange and Sissy s.p.a.cek, was sweet but did little business. Somehow, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro agreed to have a meet/greet for their upcoming film Cape Fear. They went with Jessica Lange. Other projects, including Almost Human, Reform School, Klepto, Whatever Happened to Harry, and Book of Love, never saw the light of day.

It's not that I didn't work. I worked in Canada, Los Angeles, Finland, Spain, Russia, Great Britain, Greece, Napa, Israel, Germany, and Southport, North Carolina. It's just that for the most part my contribution to the art of filmmaking wasn't particularly inspired. When I wasn't on the road I continued to live in New York. Warren, having won his Oscar for best director, was here and there, until there won out. Woody met Mia Farrow and began a new alliance. Without a great man writing and directing for me, I was a mediocre movie star at best. I didn't have a publicist. I chose not to brand out with an Annie Hall line of clothes. I didn't have a manager, nor did I want one anymore.

When I wasn't acting, I pursued a variety of visual hobbies under the umbrella of "art." My friend Daniel Wolf even agreed to give me a show of paintings based on religious pamphlets I'd collected at swap meets. I commissioned a Kansas City sign painter named Robert Huggins to put my ideas on several billboard-size canvases. When Religious Commissions proved to be inexplicably bizarre, I took photographs a la Sandy Skoglund, most famous for Radioactive Cats, which features green-painted clay cats running amok in a gray kitchen. In honor of Sandy, I a.s.sembled a tableau setting in my living room that resembled the view from an alpine ski lodge, complete with fake rocks bought at a prop shop and genuine-looking crows flying overhead. Nine willing ballerinas in pink tutus and masks agreed to stand in front of my homemade diorama and have their photograph taken. It became glaringly apparent I was no Sandy Skoglund, so I took portraits of friends like Carol Kane sitting inside boxes with polka dots framing their faces under patterned light casting shadows. I also wrote lyrics to songs that were never recorded. "She sits in a Chinese restaurant. She's c.r.a.ppy. She's a creep; she looks at him. She's lost too much sleep. And a one, and a two, a one two three. Two different worlds ... We live in two different worlds ... Our hearts ..." Et cetera. I started photographing people on the streets, a la Diane Arbus. As if that wasn't enough, I began cutting and pasting four-by-six-foot collages. One, called Face Lift Off, featured Bette Davis's head being hoisted up into G.o.d knows where. Don't ask.

Warren, now a friend, would remind me I was a movie star. Focus on that. I didn't listen. Cindy Sherman had arrived on the scene and, with her, the decade of appropriation. I wanted to be part of it. I kept telling myself I was an artist. The awful truth was, no matter how hard I tried, I was an actress who hadn't been in a comedy since Manhattan in 1979.

On the Road I took some of Warren's advice and went looking for a movie to produce. After reading Somebody's Darling, the story of one of the few bankable female directors in Hollywood and her best friend, I took the train to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and met my own soon-to-be-friend Larry McMurtry at his store Booked Up. Larry, with his feet on the desk, listened to my pitch. Not skipping a beat, he said he'd give me the option and he'd write the script too. Six months later it was finished. That's the kind of guy Larry is. My agent secured a meeting with Sherry Lansing, the head of Paramount, who did not mince words when she told me the project was not commercial. That was it for Somebody's Darling, but not for my friends.h.i.+p with Larry.

Every other month or so, I would hop on the Amtrak to D.C., where Larry and I would hit the streets in his Cadillac. As usual, I had a creative task that consumed me. One time it revolved around a series of photographs on taxidermied animals. Leave it to Larry to know some people who owned a pair of stuffed sheep joined at the hip. Traveling became a metaphor for our friends.h.i.+p.

On one of our road trips through Texas, I told Larry about my dream of living in Miami Beach, where it was forever humid and hot. Sometimes, I told him, I thought about moving to Atlantic City or Baja California. Then again, what I really wanted to do was pack it in and move to Pasadena near the arroyo, right by Greene and Greene's Gamble House. Larry listened with a Dr Pepper in one hand, the steering wheel in the other. When we found ourselves on the outskirts of Ponder, Texas, a big sign told us that Bonnie and Clyde had been shot within the city limits. Warren Beatty-my high school crush; my Splendor in the Gra.s.s. It was impossible to wrap my mind around the fact that we met, became intimate, and spent a year making Reds. Drifting back to 1967, I remembered Mom's home movie of Bonnie and Clyde, starring Randy as C. W. Moss, Robin as Bonnie, Dorrie as Blanche, and me, Diane, as Clyde Barrow. I had outright refused to be Bonnie. h.e.l.l, no. I didn't want to be Bonnie. I was going to be Warren Beatty. Who in their right mind wouldn't? And that became our central problem. I wanted to be Warren Beatty, not love him.

The facts of my life felt more surreal than any dream. As we pa.s.sed through Ponder, I rolled down the window. Out of the dust that enveloped our silence, Larry's words started coming and going. "It's so plain in Nebraska, I can't tell you, it's just totally plain. Last week I crossed the Missouri on a tiny toll bridge and the little old woman toll keeper was so lonely, she made me stop and eat a doughnut with her. 'It's punk here in the wintertime,' she said. 'I sit here all day just grinding my teeth.' " Then he'd be quiet for a while and begin again. Larry was a born storyteller. I think about those times, the lull of the engine, the endless horizon, and Larry's words dangling. It turned out we shared something the filming of Somebody's Darling could never have given us: a friends.h.i.+p and the road.

Memories Dear Diane, My book has a total of three pages. So far my diggings have turned up a bit of pain I can't avoid but funny remembrances too. Many thoughts I kept so private dwell on my anger toward authority figures that never came out as anger. Writing this is not a pleasant pastime; in fact the book is seldom touched, because I'm trying to be accurate & honest.

I'm not writing about the years you kids were growing up. I don't want to be guilty of "the good ole days" trap. All I need to do is sift through the photos of us, and I sink into a nostalgia of the WORST kind. In Memories it's not like that; I'm writing of things that shaped me. I remember a common thought I had about not doing things my parents did when I grew up. I would make chocolate instead of yellow cake. I would laugh & talk a lot. I would keep romantic love alive. I would be loving rather than impatient with my kids. I thought these CHANGES WOULD take place- It's a day to speak of today-so sparkly & beautiful-Jack bought himself a 12 ft. sailboat yesterday. He is happy. We will be sailing later. I have a strong feeling of fun ahead.

Love, Mom Mother didn't finish her memoir, Memories. Memories. Lost memories. Memories unfinished. A book called Memories. It was almost as if G.o.d's will had taken over Mother's future. I didn't notice. I was too busy to register the significance of taking on the task of writing a memoir or to be encouraging enough to help. I don't know if I actually read Mother's letter. I have no recollection. I was content to a.s.sume Mom was free from the drama of raising us kids and now she had all the time she needed to devote to her artistic pursuits. Of course, I made sure I didn't know what was going on. I had other more important things on my mind.

Sometimes this house is so quiet-I can't figure how it got to be, or why. I walk around as if looking for noise. I speak to the cats, one at a time, or together. The windows draw me to look out; around the yard; check the pool; is the light still on or off? At another time this oversight drove me crazy. Where are all those things and people who brought their sounds to me? I don't mind being alone. I like it most of the time. When it closes in on me a touch too much, I just walk out of the place, get in the car, and go for a drive.

Seeing as a Way of Being After ten years in New York, things continued to stand out, like the photograph Woman Seen from the Back by Onesipe Aguado, at the Met. What does she see facing the wrong direction? I wanted to see it too. The picture was taken in the nineteenth century, yet the distance between her past and my present seemed to collapse. It's hard to believe a woman's back made it clear that seeing rather than being seen could be something so extraordinary, but it did. The power of photography's ability to evoke rather than explain inspired me. Nothing has changed. Books like Now Is Then, The Waking Dream, and Least Wanted are links to artists who forged a path into their imagination. At least, that's what it seems like to me.

Marvin Heiferman was the director of Castelli Graphics when he gave me a little show of photographs I had taken in hotel lobbies around the United States. "Reservations" included photographs of a broken-down, empty Amba.s.sador Hotel, where Mom had been crowned Mrs. Los Angeles; the Stardust Hotel lobby, where Dad invested and lost every penny when I was twelve years old; the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach; the Pierre in New York; and the Biltmore in Palm Springs.

Thanks for Nothing A few years later, Marvin and I decided to collaborate on a book of publicity shots from old movies. It took us to bas.e.m.e.nts and warehouses throughout Los Angeles, where we hunted down large-format photographs of movie stars posed in scenes from South Pacific, La.s.sie, and Bigger Than Life, with James Mason, to name a few. Plowing through thousands of discarded four-by-five-inch color transparencies, I couldn't help but wonder what had happened to Joan Crawford, James Mason, Annette Funicello, and even Elvis. Inanimate and waxy, they looked like the taxidermied animals from the series of photographs I had taken with Larry.

I knew I was on to something major with the stuffed-animal motif. It made me think of that Roy Rogers quote, "I told Dale, 'When I go, just skin me and put me on top of Trigger.' " Which in turn gave me the idea of a t.i.tle, Still Life. Get it? My favorite example was the photograph of Gregory Peck from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. I even wrote him into my introduction.

It's hard to love someone you've never known, but it's easy to long for someone you've seen idealized to the point where you think you're in love. When you grow up, you're supposed to be able to distinguish between fantasy and real affection. For instance, I know Gregory Peck isn't going to enter my life and become an intimate part of it. Most people know that, and by the time they reach adulthood, they don't want Gregory Peck anymore. But if Gregory Peck touched them once-he touched me once-he remains a very vital part of their makeup. The ideal image of him takes on many dimensions. He becomes a representation of the frequently frustrated longings of adolescence, all those things you wanted to believe life was going to place at your feet.

After Still Life was published I received a letter from Gregory Peck. He wasn't pleased. He thought the book was stupid. On top of that he didn't appreciate being compared to a stuffed animal. It was such a lame, kitschy idea, he hoped I wasn't the mastermind behind it. He ended by saying my heartfelt introduction was total c.r.a.p.

It never entered my mind that Gregory Peck might feel bad about looking almost real in front of a fake backdrop. I was busy patting myself on the back for a book Gregory Peck dismissed as camp, and how, miracle of miracles, it captured the essence of taxidermy and how it was going to put me on the map-which one I'm not sure.

Gregory Peck is on my long list of regrets I hope to be forgiven for. I'm sorry I carelessly held him accountable for some publicist's brainstorm. I'm sorry I picked an iconic photograph that shed light on his stiff upper lip and abiding lack of affect, which hounded him throughout his career, like my own eccentricity hounds me.

In the Meantime I talked to a woman at Hunter's Bookstore who had just spent 3 days cleaning out her deceased aunt's huge Victorian house. The aunt, a spinster, had died at age 86. She saved everything ever given, sent, or found. When asked why, she said that it gave her pleasure. She wouldn't care what happened to it after she died. Her niece bought a box of heavy-duty trash bags and without sympathy pitched all of it into the dump. It was as if I was hearing this for a specific reason. All the writing I do, and all the words on paper I put away, and all the little inspirational messages I cut and save that I feel were written and directed to me and me alone, don't matter. After I'm gone, I won't care whether the family reads any of it or tosses all of it in the dump. There are some words I would want them to read though: the ones detailing my thoughts and feelings about each of them; how much I loved them, what it was about them that was so special to me; those five people who will be doing the pitching.

Imagining Heaven, the Ultimate Coming Attraction, 1987 It took a year and a half to make my doc.u.mentary, Heaven. The reception was unanimous. I suppose the most painful rejection came from Vincent Canby of The New York Times. "Heaven, a film by Diane Keaton, is the cinema equivalent of a book that's discounted to $19.95 before Christmas with the warning that it will be $50 after. If you respond to that kind of come-on, you may respond to Heaven. One's torn between wanting to kick the film and wanting to protect it from wasting all this money."

Heaven was a promise I'd longed for as a little girl. I knew I was afraid to die, but if I had to, I wanted to go to heaven. The epiphany came thirty years later, when I visited the Mormon Tabernacle visitors' center in Salt Lake City with my friend Kristi Zea. Entering the dome-shaped hall, we saw what I can only describe as a coming attraction, featuring smiling people in white robes floating in the sky. Even Kristi agreed it was a strange juxtaposition of images that could inspire only a surrealist. I may not have been a surrealist, but I was inspired. I called my producing partner Joe Kelly. I had an idea.

We got permission to see 16-millimeter copies of MGM heaven-themed features as well as obscure evangelical Super 8 short films. The more I saw, the more my appet.i.te grew, culminating with several visits to the film historian William Everson's apartment in New York, where he screened Dreyer's The Pa.s.sion of Joan of Arc, Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, Fritz Lang's Liliom and both Dr. Mabuses-and more. Not only did we gather astonis.h.i.+ng footage, we also a.s.sembled people who gave heaven the beauty of their imaginations. There was Alfred Robles, Grace Johansen, Don King, and the Reverend Robert Hymers, author of UFOs and Bible Prophecy (reprinted as Encounters of the Fourth Kind), to name a few.

When Joe and I began shooting interviews, I asked stirring questions like, "Is there s.e.x in heaven?" "Is there love in heaven?" "Are you afraid to die?" Mom and Dad and Grammy Hall were among my first interviews. Dad was convinced. "If there is something after death, and I've led a good life, I can't conceive why Dorothy and I wouldn't be together." Mom nodded her head and said, "It's a subject I don't like to think or give credence to." "Yeah," Dad said, "it's something you don't think about. I have partners that do, but I don't." Grammy Hall summed it up best: "There ain't such a thing as heaven. Have you ever seen anybody who pa.s.sed away that you loved and wanted to see? No! n.o.body ever come back and said, 'Well, here I am and I am so glad to see you.' Anybody tells you they've died and gone to heaven is a dirty liar."

After Paul Barnes, the editor, helped put the movie together, we began the preview process. Apparently the audience best suited to see a movie like Heaven came from two groups: women and "experiential" types. It turned out experientials were your "oddb.a.l.l.s," your "weirdos," and your "downtown set." This was concerning. Were there enough experiential women from downtown to make our movie a moderate success? We certainly had our fair share appearing in the movie, like the woman who said, "I've seen Jesus in the spirit. He entered my bedroom. He came from the top of the window like you roll the scroll, and he was nothing but a spirit. His chest was made out of sky, and his shoulders were made out of cloud. And he moved just like the waves in the water. All at once I heard a universal harp like ... ooohhh ... like a wind blowing oooohhh ... like the wind when it blows like ooooohhhhh. That's when he flipped over in my room. Then he floated through my bedroom and I said, 'In the bathroom,' so then he went right into the bathroom and then I said, 'In the living room.' He went right into the living room and sat on the ottoman. I said, 'In the kitchen.' But he had to go back through my dining room to get to the kitchen, and he turned and faced me, and when he turned he had on a different outfit with a little hood over his head. And that's the truth." It turned out we had more experientials in the movie than in the audience.

No matter how many critics hated Heaven, I have to say, I loved every clip and every interview. Spending time trying to make sure I made the smart choice about the right movie to appear in wasn't nearly as entertaining. But Heaven, Reservations, Still Life, and even Religious Commissions were just that: completely entertaining. I recognize that these projects wouldn't have seen the light of day if it hadn't been for my movie-star status. My forays outside the hub of celebrity felt right, almost like home, not really but sort of.

Found Heaven brought me something else: Al Pacino one more time. We ran into each other outside an editing bay at the film center where he was working on his 16-millimeter film, The Local Stigmatic, while I was finis.h.i.+ng up with the hereafter. He was irresistible, as always, and we started palling around, but it was different this time. We were older. He wasn't the G.o.dfather. I wasn't Kay Corleone. We were two people plugging away at a couple of independent films. There was a disheveled aspect to Al that was very appealing, almost familial. He invited me to come to his home one Sunday, then another and another. It was always the same. After the softball game with Al as shortstop, the usual cast of characters-Sully Boyer; Mark, Al's half brother; Adam Strasberg; John Halsey; and Michael Hedges-would drive to his house on the Hudson. The place was filled with activity. Al's three dogs ran around. Stray actors like William Converse Roberts and Christine Estabrook-in pink shorts with matching tank top-would pop in for a few minutes, while Charlie Laughton, Al's mentor, and his wife, Penny, discussed the dying role of the theater. Al would join in with thoughts of doing a workshop of Salome or Macbeth. These conversations would go on for hours and hours. Al was consumed by two things: baseball and the theater.

He was an artist. He made me think about the difference between being an artist and being artistic. I knew where I stood. I was artistic. For the first time it didn't matter. I just wanted him to love me. I'm pretty sure in Al's mind I was a friend he could talk to. As much as I loved listening, I wanted more, lots of more. Tons. I wanted him to want me as much as I wanted him.

In the middle of this love came Baby Boom. The script, about a woman who is forced to adopt a baby, was laugh-out-loud hilarious (or, as Dexter would say, LOL). Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers, the writing-directing-producing team, were talented and charming. Nancy and my soon-to-be-dear-friend Susie Becker, the costume designer, made me over. It was great to feel attractive and cute and funny again. I became J. C. Wiatt-snappy, sa.s.sy, and ready to go. What great good fortune. Or, as J. C. Wiatt would have said, "I'm back. I am back." And it wasn't Heaven that did it.

The Future Isn't What It Used to Be When I arrived at the Glendale Adventist Medical Center, Grammy Hall sat on the side of the hospital bed, ready to go home. Her white hair was pushed back with three rusted bobby pins. Her rayon pants outfit, ablaze with orange, red, and yellow flowers, was offset by the geometric pattern of her blouse, also aflame. "Dorrie's new boyfriend is a Jew. Did you know that, Diane? Also that nurse Holly's fiance is an Eyetalian. And that new aide is a Lebanon. I think she's a sister to Danny Thomas." "How are you feeling, Gram?" "It seems most of my trouble is in my head. It's that there gland. There's poor circulation in my brain, see. They took X-rays of my head. They seem to think I'm in a bad way. Don't worry, Diane; I lived a long life, too long. I'm not making many future plans, see, 'cause I don't want to live that long. That's too long to live to wait for, what ... fifteen or twenty dollars?"

I was as close to Mary Hall as she would let me be. And vice versa. She was ninety-four when she died. Back in the fifties, I hadn't cottoned to Grammy Hall. She didn't try to paint a pretty picture of the world. Her Christmas presents were awful: a year's supply of Mission Pack pears delivered to our door every month. Like I cared about pears. It was only when I grew up that I began to respect her.

True, she was unevolved, but she was not a hypocrite. She was 100 percent honest. She was a practicing skeptic, as well as a practicing Catholic. What a contradiction in terms, especially when you consider she didn't believe in Jesus or heaven. She saw through the pretense and accepted it with a shrug, saying, "It's a long drawn-out proposition, ain't it, Diane. Like I always say, it's the same old sixes or sevens." She died a devout Catholic. Hey, Gram, I'm with you; why not cover all bases, just in case, on the off chance you might be wrong?

Dorothy at Sixty-three I am a woman of medium height: once five feet eight, now five seven. I keep my records in this leather-bound journal t.i.tled 1980. I have no unpaid bills or financial obligations to meet. My present bank account number is 45572 1470. I have four issue (children). Their birth dates are Jan. 5, 1946, March 21, 1948, March 27, 1951, and April 1, 1953. Their names are Diane, Randy, Robin, and Dorrie. I am married to Jack Newton Hall, a citizen of the United States. His eyes are blue. His hair is graying. He is 6 feet tall. We live on a lot, which measures 30 by 40 feet. It is barely big enough to build a house, but we did, and we love it. We have fire and flood insurance. Neither my husband nor I have life insurance. We each drive a car. My car is a silver Jaguar, license number 1FTU749. Jack drives a Toyota mini van, license number JNH on the front with silver letters on a black background. I have signed my last will and testament. It hereby revokes all other wills or codicils at anytime previously made by me.

I was born in Winfield City, Kansas, in Crowell County. My birth date was October 31, 1921, the year President Harding was sworn into office and Land O'Lakes b.u.t.ter was introduced to the state of New York. My father, Samuel Roy Keaton, a man of medium height, was a sheet metal worker. My mother, Beulah, was a housewife with gray eyes. They had three daughters, Orpha, Martha, and me.

At 63, I have long gray hair. I wash it with Sa.s.soon shampoo. My conditioner is Silkience. I dry it with a Revlon hand held blow dryer. I curl it with Clairol hot rollers. I bathe in HOT water. I brush my teeth with an Oro Flex toothbrush dipped in hydrogen peroxide. My teeth are sound, as is my mind. I try to drink 8 gla.s.ses of water each day. I sleep in nighties, under two white blankets with my husband beside me. In the morning I turn on the radio and immediately put on one of four warm robes. There's the one I bought at Macy's N.Y. with Diane for 50 dollars. There's the short one with six snaps down the front that Dorrie got me. There's the pink peachy robe with oriental flower designs all over it. But my favorite is my much worn purple robe from Saks 5th Ave. It really is a part of me. My feelings are wrapped inside it.

My face and neck are fairly wrinkled now. I am giving myself a great deal of personal care these days. I apply cell rejuvenator at night and skin lifter in the morning, followed by wrinkle straightener in between. I was promised a surprise at the end of 15 days. 90 days later, I see no change. I like to keep my face clean and colored up with red cheek rouge, brown eye pencil, and various shades of lipstick. I seldom forget to apply a hearty dose of cologne to my body.

We have radios everywhere, even a new one in my darkroom that tapes from tapes. A blue radio sits in my bathroom window. Jack and I each have a radio on either side of the bed. Our newest radio sits on the white countertop in our white kitchen. Listening to talk radio is a constant. I take Feldene arthritis medication for my hand and jaw. I swallow one capful of Geritol for my vitamin requirement every morning. I wear gla.s.ses for reading; one pair in every room I work in.

I've changed in ways beyond my imagination. The lack of physicality has. .h.i.t with apparent permanency. I sleep more than I did when I was younger. My dreams are evasive when I try to recapture them. I'm content to stay home all day, waiting for Jack and our evening chat with drinks and dinner. I don't need people around. We don't have guests over very much. I've lost my singing voice; even my speaking voice has gone soft and hoa.r.s.e. I can't play the piano anymore. I don't listen to music. I sit in my darkroom and play solitaire for long periods of time. I spend too much time alone. I get in my car and go out, but I'm always home by 1 o'clock.

After I change into something comfortable I get serious about monitoring the Cove. I watch cars come and go. I see who leaves and where they're going. I study Champ, Jim Beauchamp's wonderful golden retriever. His wife Martha ignores Champ. To me she misses the very essence of that brilliant creature.

There are times I feel as if I'm a true artist. At the moment I'm working on a large sheet of white cardboard I'm transforming into a collage. It's going well, but I tell no one. I have about five completed works framed and ready to go. Two have been accepted in a show at Santa Ana College. I work on the floor of my darkroom, where I spend a lot of time cutting out things I like from the Times. But I always get my housework done first. It's a habit I can't break. I make the bed, straighten the bathroom, finish the dishes, adjust the pleated blinds at the windows, plan the evening meal, make a list of things to do for that day, get dressed, and then, only then, do I turn to the work in my workroom. Sometimes I can stick with it and sometimes not. It doesn't matter because it's only for me anyway.

I have no grandchildren. I'm not sure at my advanced age that I want any little copies running around. I don't feel capable of such a responsibility.

My friends are my cats, Perkins and Cyrus. They depend on me for entertainment as well as food and lodging. Being home a lot and having no company but them is an invitation to carry on some interesting conversations. I looked at Perkins in the eye this morning as she was sitting on my bathroom sink, her two lime green eyes locked with mine, and I asked her just what exactly were her goals in life. I was curious. She spends most of the day running from things like footsteps, voices, other cats, people, rain, wind, and radio noise. I wonder how Perkins gets anything worthwhile out of life. Cyrus obeys me when I order him off the counter, but he doesn't remember to stay off permanently. He does remember to check out the refrigerator whenever the door opens. Finally it's clear to me that he remembers what he wishes to remember. Quite human.

I read the Los Angeles Times every day, Newsweek magazine weekly, and as much fiction as I can squeeze in. I have an IBM electric typewriter that I use with pleasure. I keep a daily journal. I like books, cats, nice people, good food, bourbon and sometimes gin, writing words, being alone. I LOVE: my husband, my four children, my sisters, my one day at the bookstore, sunsets, the bay in front of our house, my Jaguar, Mary Hall (now), and myself (sometimes). I have weekly visits with a psychiatrist, who is trying to help me see myself in a better light. I have two or three close friends I can talk to openly. Gretchen, Margaret, and Jo. I go months between visits with them. I don't talk on the phone much. I don't offer invitations to people, because I fear rejection. I've been rejected a number of times. I enjoy working in the darkroom and doing a variety of art projects, with nothing to show for it, of course. I guess I'm a fragmented person. I do nothing really well. I have, at the moment, no motivation.

In Response, Diane at Sixty-three I'm sixty-three, once five feet seven, now five six. The feelings and thoughts that overwhelmed Dorothy could and do mirror much of what I feel as well. Advanced age? Oh, yeah. Good at anything? I can still memorize lines. Do I fear rejection? I'm an actress. Fragmented? More than most. The difference is-Dorothy at sixty-three was finished raising her four children. At sixty-three, I'm doing what Dorothy did when she was twenty-four.

Yesterday I found Dexter and her new boyfriend of three days, Ben, on video chat. When I confronted her, it was simple: "I'm a video-chat addict, Mom." A video-chat addict? Does that mean she has an addiction to Facebook as well? How else could she have acquired three hundred fifty friends in less than three weeks? There are so many surprising aspects to Dexter, like how brave she was with Dr. Sherwood, her orthodontist, after he finally recognized that the tissue growing over the screw closing the gap from her missing tooth had to be removed, just as she had told me months ago. When we rushed to the oral surgeon, she never uttered a sound while he extracted the tooth. What a st.u.r.dy person; how resilient in the face of pain and fear; how unlike me, her anxious mother.

Then there's "Duke's World." Yesterday I picked him up after school. He barely slammed the car door shut before he launched in on how unfair it is that his friend Jasper, age seven, should have an iPhone when he, eight-year-old Duke, does not. Magnanimously, he offered to buy it with his own money. Knowing he doesn't have any money made me admire his chutzpah. When I told him I wanted to think about it, he said, "How long?" "For a while." "When?" "Duke, I'll tell you later." "Tomorrow?" "Duke, enough!" "Tomorrow??" I tuned the radio to 102.7, praying Ryan Seacrest would distract him while I looked at the newly abandoned storefronts in Westwood Village and remembered the call I got from Evelyn, a mother from Dexter's pre-K days who wanted to know if I knew anyone who needed some legal work. Her husband had lost his job. I was trying to think of who I might know, when Ryan Seacrest exceeded my wildest dreams and played Duke's favorite song, "Apple Bottom Jeans." I rejoiced in silence for a full three minutes.

When we pulled up to basketball camp at the YMCA, Duke reminded me he's too big for the booster seat, plus he wanted his usual chocolate mint milk tea warm, not hot, so don't forget the ice cubes, and did I have any Dubble Bubble sugarless gum? As I pulled away, I took one last look at my boy; G.o.d, is he beautiful or what? And then, just as I remembered that Carol Kane was going to spend the night, the phone rang. It was my partner Stephanie Heaton. "L'Oreal might want to sponsor the Lifetime screening of Because I Said So on Mother's Day." She also reminded me of the speech I hadn't memorized for the Unique Lives speaking engagement coming up. I started worrying.

At sixty-three, I have a daughter who insists she won't swim the 400 IM at the COLA swim meet. She won't. She can't. She does. Duke cries about how his SO MEAN MOM never lets him do anything he wants. At sixty-three there's the morning pill ritual: Dexter's Migravent, for headaches; my miracle Metanx vitamins; our old dog Red's five different capsules for Cus.h.i.+ng's disease, among other ailments; Duke's "Biotic," as he calls his vitamins; and our fat dog Emmie's s.h.i.+t-eating pills, which after six months still haven't done the trick. At sixty-three there's still a lot of pleasure, like cleaning out Emmie's earwax and still being allowed to stroke Duke's head in public. The endless struggle to get Dexter to kiss me at least once a week is worth it. The mountain of hugs and kisses makes things way okay. So does the thrill of still being able to give Duke a piggyback ride. The marvel of watching Dexter's intricate nightly beauty regimen is the best way to say goodbye to the day. Good times.

At sixty-three, I can't change into comfortable clothes like Mom and watch the world outside my window. I can't hurry home in retreat from the stress of human contact, as if solitude will bring peace. I know solitude is no one's friend, and retreat is not an option. But I take comfort in the fact that Mother and I will always be bound together by the need to communicate. In spite of the pain of anonymity, Dorothy realized her most valued dream. She wrote. And while she wrote she wasn't criticizing her efforts. She wasn't worried about rejection. She was engaged. She was giving evidence to the experience of being Dorothy Deanne Keaton Hall.

Dad was always telling me to think. Think ahead. Think. Think, Diane. But it was Mom's struggles, her conflicts, and her love that made whatever ability I have to think possible. She supported choices that created experiences that expanded my life. As a girl, Mom, like me, had vague grandiose aspirations, but, unlike me, no one helped her expand on them; no one could. It was the poverty of the Depression, not the fabulous fifties. It was Dorothy and Beulah. Then it became Dorothy and Diane.

10.

THIS ISN'T SOMETIMES,

THIS IS ALWAYS.

Jack Hall's Right Shoe In the middle of the G.o.dfather III shoot in Rome, I gave Al an ultimatum: Marry me, or at least commit to the possibility. We broke up, got back together, and went on to spend another year implementing our predictable pattern of breakups. Poor Al, he never wanted it. Poor me, I never stopped insisting. Thinking back on my motives makes me wonder why the rewards of reality kept losing out to the lure of fantasy.

When I look back on my failed romances, I invariably return to the memory of Jack and Dorothy dancing on a hill in Ensenada. Mom kept her mouth shut on the subject of marriage. Maybe she was afraid of revealing the dark side. We never discussed men, or what to expect from them, or how to grapple with disappointment. How could Mother offer up such advice when her own perception of men-I've now learned-was nothing if not muddled with contradictions? How could she bring up questions she had no answers for?

I don't know what she was protecting. Romance maybe, but not love; not real day-to-day ordinary love with its ups and downs and compromises and demands and shortcomings. I have no idea what she thought of Warren and Al. Or of me with them. She adored Woody. He took a real interest in her creative endeavors, especially photography. As for Dad, when I asked him what he thought about men he would say, "Women love b.u.ms." That's all he could come up with.

G.o.dfather III had a lackl.u.s.ter, middle-aged feel. Everyone was older but not happier. Francis Coppola preferred to direct from the Silver Bullet, his trailer. Things picked up the day Winona Ryder arrived-with her fiance, Johnny Depp-to play Kay and Michael's daughter. Winona was rushed into the makeup trailer while we were shooting. Her tiny head looked lost in the black wig the hairdresser tried to adjust. It was almost like reliving the blond wig with d.i.c.k Smith when I was twenty-three. That evening Francis was notified Winona had collapsed, which gave him the opportunity to put his daughter, Sofia, into the role of Mary Corleone. Francis told us he had written the role for Sofia in the first place. When word got to Paramount's CEO Frank Mancuso and Sid Gannis, his Number Two, we were told they would "handle it."

The next day, "Two" flew to Palermo. At dinner, Gannis confided to Al his concerns about the Sofia Problem. Paramount didn't want her. He, Sid Gannis, was personally going to have a no-nonsense chat with Ellie, Francis's wife. Ellie? What about Francis? Needless to say, Gannis left a few days later and Sofia played my daughter, Mary Corleone.

On our way back to the hotel, Al's phone rang. Robin was on the line. It was Dad. He was acting confused. He couldn't remember Randy's name. He forgot his wallet and he wasn't even concerned. It was so not Dad. When I called a few days later, Mom told me a biopsy had revealed a stage-four glioma the size of a grapefruit lodged in his frontal lobe. She put him on the phone and I asked how he was doing. "They're going to put a brace on my head until they come across the growth. It's swollen. I have a tumor on my mind, or rather, a tumor in my brain. One of them. They tell me I'll be sitting in a cla.s.s. I'll be in a program. They say they're going to radiate me. I don't know, Di-annie, I don't know. When I turned sixty-eight it all went to h.e.l.l."

In a magnanimous gesture, Francis insisted I catch the next plane to L.A. When the 747 landed, I drove to UCLA Medical Center, where I found Dad looking the same, except for the bandage covering the top of his shaved head and the plastic tube filled with fluid that was attached to his arm like a leash. It made me think of the bird feeders you buy at Builders Emporium. He was pulling his pants up, while the television set hanging from the ceiling played his favorite show, Major Dad. I asked him how he felt. "Oh, I've lived long enough. Sixty-eight years is plenty, Di-annie."

Dad was given a treatment option: In conjunction with radiation, he could also become part of an experimental program led by a well-known UCLA doctor, who told us Dad was a ripe candidate at the right age. His cancer was fast-acting and very invasive, but he was healthy in every other respect. His doctor at UCLA felt he was a good choice for the new treatment. Robin called it the "immunvert" stimulation of the immune system or something like that. Dad decided to give the double whammy a try. Loaded with pills, Mom drove him home to get a few things before they checked in to the Royal Palace Motel in Westwood and he began radiation.

Dr. Copeland, Dad's internist and old friend, had a different take. "It's bad. The older the age, the more aggressive the tumor. The frontal lobe controls our ability to concentrate. The likelihood? No matter what therapy he agrees to, Jack will decline. He'll lose his appet.i.te. He'll sleep more. He'll become less active, more confused, and more disoriented. Eventually he will slip into a coma. His heart will stop, or he'll get pneumonia and die. It's a bad tumor."

Outside the Royal Palace, I took Dad's hand and walked with him to Arby's for a roast beef sandwich. I helped him take off his jacket. It was hot. My hand brushed up against a label on the inside of the collar, hand-printed in black ink. "Jack Hall's jacket. Return to 2625 Cove St., Corona del Mar, California." Dad was a stickler about identifying personal items. Jack Hall's robe, Jack Hall's boxer shorts, Jack Hall's pajama bottoms.

After we ate on plastic chairs drilled into the floor, we sauntered back to the Palace, a mid-sixties structure with a large neon sign welcoming travelers to its royal warmth. It looked harmless enough, but inside, it quickly revealed its true colors. Hairless men and gaunt women sat under the glare of the fluorescent-lit lobby. Defeat permeated the atmosphere. Everyone looked like boarders on borrowed time. Mom and Dad's little suite didn't make me feel better. I saw a pair of Dad's loafers next to the bed. Jack Hall's left shoe. Jack Hall's right shoe.

The Big Machine The next day Dad and I wandered through UCLA's ma.s.sive complex until we reached the radiation room. It was dark, maybe to soften the look of the afflicted. "Well, I guess it's time for the guy who does the camera work down in the dungeon to take the big picture. If he keeps zapping me in the head, I'm going to look like Yul Brynner." Sitting down, I looked over and saw Rocco Lampone, the b.u.t.ton man, from The G.o.dfather. What was he doing here? Tom Rosqui, aka Rocco Lampone, came over to say h.e.l.lo. He wanted to know about G.o.dfather III. He was sorry he'd been killed off in II. When the loudspeaker called Jack Hall's name, Tom suddenly clasped my hand. He was getting radiation too. As I steered Dad into the room with the big machine, Tom waved goodbye. He died the following year. Radiotherapy didn't help him, not for very long; longer than Dad, but not long enough.