Top 5 Diane Keaton Scenes (#1051)

flawed film Spotting poll. You've read Sam's weekly newsletter that goes out to film Spotting family members, and I just want to know, did you own at least one of those movie soundtracks in the nineties, and do you still own any of those movie soundtracks?

tribute to Diane Keaton. It's always tough, or we always debate this when we want to pay tribute to a performer. Do we do movies, do we do characters? Do we do scenes? And we did ultimately decide that we wanted to do scenes. That has been oura of late. It really allows us to dig into what seems essential about these performers. What is it that makes them special? How did the process go for you, Josh?

to go about it. But I think by choosing scenes, I was also able to look at other movies that maybe we wouldn't say, you know is the first character that comes to mind with dian Keaton, but show really well what she was good at, and the thing that I came around to with her, I wouldn't say it was a revelation. Sometimes we'll do these adamant and realize I had a misperception of this performer, or maybe just

a slightly skewed idea. I think I came to better appreciate what my understanding of her was, which is this presence in most of her movies. She had a feisty feminist.

a tricky balance, right. We think of maybe feminist characters as being take charge figures or you know, kicking in the door, and I don't know if Keaton often led with that sort of sensibility, but that doesn't mean she didn't have that inner again feistiness about around these principles of her character's experiences as women.

had these dry spells in her career. And it happened in the eighties, and then she came back right and then she went a long time before she had any really big hits, and then she had some more hits in the two thousands, and then she was hot again. And it's something where I think when you look at

her filmography, it's a little disappointing. As good as she was, and as good as she is in so many movies and in so many roles and performances that we're going to talk about, you wish that someone with her talent had five to ten more great movie on her list. Don't you.

she didn't just kind of go through the motions. She

really does perform it. It's a little eerie, Josh, because it's not really about her career, though that is covered and I'm going to mention some parts from the book where she covers it, but it's mainly about her family, and it's really about mortality because her father's death and her mother's death are largely the impetus for the book, and the framework what she quotes from extensively are her mother's journals, which her mother kept for several decades, and

that's really profound. And there's even a part where one of her young kids and she's writing this book in her early sixties. She didn't adopt children until her fifties. One of the kids asks, and I don't remember the exact phrasing, but ask something like, Mom, will you still lay in bed with me when you're eighty? And all I'm thinking about is how she died when she was seventy nine. Yeah, there, You know. It's tough. It's tough

to hear that. It's tough to hear her read that, you know, and seems like, I.

and through some portion of her twenties. She eventually did overcome it with therapy. But when she was dealing with this, she would consume something, you know, tens of thousands of calories per day. It was it was almost like a full time job. How she had to buy the food, sneak it back to her apartment in New York, and obviously eat it, and do this all in secret. It was something that was a great shame for her that

she finally revealed in the books. So all of that was with something really interesting to hear how she dealt with that issue. And you know, for me, she's known for her chattiness. I love the word you use, her flightiness. There is plenty of that in my scenes. I didn't fully realize, Josh, until I was maybe three quarters of the way through my notes. I had already picked all my scenes, how much I was drawn to how expertly she uses her face and silences pauses. I mean, she

really was a master. So with that, I can't wait to hear your number five, all right?

would not in the target market. It could have been like a VHS watch at someone else's house more likely, But I did give it a revisit for this list, and I don't know, we'll see. I think you watched it too. What you thought of the movie overall? I don't know if it held up incredibly well. It was extremely broad and really more of a screwball fantasy than than any sort of pointed feminist critique for me. But I'll say, if it holds up at all, it's because of Keaton and what is she she is bringing to

this part and this story. She plays a J. C. Wyatt, who is a New York City management consultant, and she's basically on the fast tracked partnership thanks to her smarts thanks to her workaholic attitude, until she unexpectedly inherits a toddler.

would go down like this in any world. Somehow Keaton makes it work when she's handed the baby. I love how her instinct is to immediately kind of drop the kid out of frame, like not to the floor, but just like you would when you're handed a book or something you don't that's a pain to be given where.

amusing touch. I got to say too. Throughout this movie, the toddler's played by twins Christina and Michelle Kennedy, and Little Elizabeth is the girl's name in the movie. They're kind of amazing how they interact with adults, and they actually add a little something to their scenes as well,

and Keaton of course plays off that beautifully. I also want to give a little crewdit here to the director Charles Schier for this airport sequence, because just a nice touch where the camera pushes in at the end for that moment when the girl kind of mumbles something, and that's where Keaton just did a panic, says mother mother, So really nice little bit of filmmaking to add to the comedy there. Speaking of Shier, he wrote Baby Boom with Nancy Myers, and there's a line in here from

Jac's boss. He tells her Something's got to give. And of course, yeah, that'll become the title of a Meyers written and directed Keaton's starring film. Maybe they'll come up later. Just two thousand and three, Something's got to Give with Keaton there and Jack Nicholson. So yeah, we'll see what happens when it comes to the rest of our picks. But Baby Boom was a fun rewatch solely on the strength of Keaton.

times in nineteen eighty seven, in nineteen eighty eight. It's a film that was on HBO constantly. My family, my parents enjoyed the movie quite a bit. We almost surely recorded it our own VHS copy off of HBO, so when it went off HBO, we could watch it whenever we wanted. And I was thinking about this too. It was it had to be my introduction to Keaton. It had to be my first Diane Keaton. Yeah, that makes sense.

Uh huh. Now you said, if it works, it's attributed to her, But let's not forget that Sam Shepherd's pretty great and almost everything he's in and I do think their chemistry is part of what works here. I'm a romantic. I'm a romantic.

She's taken a few minutes to think it over, she has stepped out, but the reality is that she knows, and we as the audience know, or we feel like we know, based on her body language, that she's taken

the deal. She's taking it right. And speaking of body language, one of the great comedic bits, one of the great little bits of physical comedy in the Boardroom by Keaton is how she starts bouncing her legs up and down so quickly under the table once the money starts getting mentioned, like one of the business guys has to comment on it because he doesn't know where that noise is coming from. But it's just her bouncing her knees underneath the table.

She goes to the bathroom, she's in front of the mirror and she says it.

But she does end up walking into the boardroom and declining the offer and Josh in twenty seconds, it's twenty seconds of screen time walking down the hallway from the bathroom to the boardroom, and Keaton has to convince us in those twenty seconds that it takes that everything she has chased the entire movie, her entire career, is worth rejecting, because it would mean sacrificing the type of love she's built with her daughter, the type of life she's built,

the home they've built, the man she's in love with. That she would be sacrificing that love, that life, all just to be back in the rat race. And we have to believe that she has thought about all of that and come to a new decision. In those twenty seconds, you get a little bit of a wistful bill CONTI score, but that's it. And I'm going to give Charles Shier, the director, some credit here myself, because the camera is just on Keaton and it's a subtle tracking shot that

just pulls back as she walks forward. And I think a lot of directors here wouldn't have trusted the audience, and maybe wouldn't have trusted the actress, would have gone for the schmaltz, and they would have felt the need to layer in shots of the baby, shots of Shepherd moments from the movie that we've seen of them laughing and loving, so we were absolutely clear that that's what she's thinking about, that that's what she's processing, and that's

why she's about to walk into the boardroom and reject the deal. But he doesn't need to do that, Josh, because he's got Diane Keaton, and she does deliver all of that. We see it play out on her face in those twenty seconds, the fast confidence gait as she walks out of the bathroom that gets slower, and her eyes tilting down and around instead of forward where she was focused right on that door, the breath getting a

little heavier. There is this one look and she does this in every great scene of Keaton's I found there's one moment like this, Josh. There's one look and gesture she makes. And in the YouTube clip that I'm going to post on our top five page and I'll post in the show notes. We'll link to that top five page, or if you just go to YouTube and google it, google Baby Boom an investment opportunity. It's the moment on her face at the six minutes seventeen mark. Okay, it's

just something very very subtle. She does with her mouth and with her eyes that you sort of feel like Keaton can only deliver. And that's the moment where she's registering that she now knows what to do, that it's clicked, she gets it, and after that the confidence is back, the eyes are forward again, but the mission is different. And then of course the boardroom rejection itself is a lot of fun because all of those chauvinus in the room get there, come up, and so that we've kind

of been hoping for as viewers the entire time. So bathroom to boardroom is my favorite. It's my favorite Diane Keaton acting moment in the film for sure.

show to review that one. I had to see it, and I had to see it on a big screen, and I was starting to get worried that it was going to leave and make its way to streaming and DVD. So this past week I did that. I rushed to the closest theater to me to get that big screen experience. And yeah, we'll have to talk about The Bone Temple at some point because it is a wild, wild movie. I know most of our listeners feel the same way.

I mean, they watch a lot of stuff at home, but it is that big screen experience that they prioritize. They go to the theater regularly, and those listeners need to sign up for Regal Unlimited because they could see something like The Bone Temple for free. Regal Unlimited is the all you can watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. And right now Regal

is offering film spotting listeners endless movies for less. If you sign up for Regal Unlimited and use the code film spot twenty five, then you're gonna get ten percent off a three month subscription. Regal Unlimited is the only truly limitless movie subscription pass. You can see any standard two D movie anytime. There are no blackout dates or restrictions.

a group while walking down the street. Michael Murphy's Yale is with them as well, so there's four of them and they're discussing quote unquote overrated artists.

cheap handwaves, Vincent van Gogh. She's really really going for it here, yes and pronouncing it, you know, the Dutch way.

I've described her before as the Woody Allen tonic I need in their movies together, and certainly that's what she's doing here in the scene from Manhattan.

scene that that makes it problematic. It's the fact that Mary even calls out the fact what do you do? And she says, I'm in high school and she books Knabokoff. Okay, but we'll move on from Manhattan. It's not going to come up on my list, even though I feel the

same way about the film that you do. So here's another one where I fear we're going to have some overlap, and it's a scene from the movie Reds, directed by Warren Batty, who in the book she talks about this there really were kind of three great loves of her life, three great romances, and the most fleeting of them because I don't know to what extent other than Anette Benning Warren Batty ever had any real significant romances. You know,

she had a relationship with Warren. She had a relationship with Woody Allen obviously, and then the man that she most was enamored with and wanted to marry, but he would never reciprocate that desire anyway. But they were very much in love for a long time is al Pacino. Actually. But back to Warren Batty and Red's. I use this scene during our top five Jack Nicholson scenes, and I thought, why not just approach it now from the other perspective,

because it's a two hander. She plays Louise Bryant, who was the suffragist and a journalist, leaves her husband to marry the charismatic John Reid played by Baty. They meet some more activists like Eugene O'Neil, the playwright played by Nicholson, and Greenwich Village, and then they end up moving out to whereas it Provincetown in Massachusetts to get involved in the theater. O'Neill's there, right, and she's doing some acting there in his plays. What's interesting about this, Josh, is

that she got nominated for Best Supporting Actress. She didn't win, but she got nominated for it. I know you love this movie now that you've seen it. I've always loved this movie, and I really love this performance. In the book, she doesn't dwell on the making of the movie much, but most of what she says about it is how hard it was to make and how she didn't work well with Warren, not because of any romantic involvement that they had previously, but just because he was a perfectionist

and that's his reputation, right. That's not the way she likes to work. He was one of those perfectionist directors who shot forty takes of everything. This is how she describes it, 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. Yeah, that's what it was, a response to the effect of Warren Batty. Well, you know what a performance that's a response to the effect of Warren Batty, I guess is still pretty darn

effective the way that manifests on screen. She also mentions Josh that it took shooting the train scene, which is the reunion moment in this film for those two characters, for her to find any or to take any pride in the character. And that scene alone took like sixty five takes, but she did. That's where she finally broke through with her own character, and the way she frames it like she stopped judging the character and finally loved

the character. The reason she didn't like her, I do want to mention this, She says that she wasn't prepared to play Louise Bryant. She was less romantic than she had 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. She says that her pursuit of John Reid was suspect and frankly laced with envy. I hated her. It was a problem. Wow,

that's how she described the character she was playing. So I don't know what point in the shoot they shot the train scene, but it took that for her to get over this cross that she was bearing for Louise Bryant. So you can see I think in this scene with Nicholson, with Eugene O'Neil in Provence sound why she might have struggled with this character. The number of emotions that she has to evoke in what is a five minute scene

is daunting. She starts off as the fawning actress, and then she turns sore and apologetic, and then she's seductive and trying to assume power, and that's all Josh within thirty seconds or less. And then and then she's defiant and abrasive, and the way Bryant, the character of course Keaton portraying her, betrays herself. There's a line where she says, you may feel that way I don't about something that he has zinged her with, and she says it with

some smugness, like she's kind of above it all. You know, she's refuting his charge. And I love I love what she does. And this is something that she does playing Mary too. She plays Mary in Manhattan, a character who is not insecure or who projects confidence. Notice how her posture is like perfect. She's very rigid, the way she walks in this scene, in this moment when she has to project this confidence. All of a sudden, when the camera cuts back to her, she's like she's sitting back

in the chair, her shoulders are completely back. In this whiskey bottle that's been a prop throughout the scene, she's now holding it and she's holding it off to the side in her hand like she's a pirate with a whiskey bottle. You know, it's almost like she she's all of a sudden, got this this machismo about her. Almost it's it's anything but you know, a quote unquote feeble woman.

And and then he he says something else about how he would treat her, and and how John isn't John Reid isn't possessive enough about her, and she describes that as a waste of time. And and Keaton, she tells you that the case characters lying just by looking away. She looks away and you see in her eyes how this, how this registers with her, that she's trying to deny it. But it's clearly hitting it's clearly striking a chord, it

is hitting a mark with her. And I mentioned the whiskey bottle because it's it's changing hands and it's it's moving around in this scene. I would I would recommend to any actors or actresses out there, any performers out there, if you need a scene study and you're doing anything about how to incorporate props and do a scene, watch the watch this scene and watch how the whiskey bottle is used, because it it's a key part of the movie.

She hands it to him at this point, but Josh, the moment of the scene, the moment the dagger, it's Nicholson's best moment, but it doesn't work without Keaton's response. I I focused on this during the Nicholson Top five when he says to her, it's it's still just maybe honestly one of the best, one of the best written lines in all of movies, because it's romantic as hell, it's sexy as hell, but it's also mean.

because love's that easy. Sure, But it's almost like that gesture in Baby Boom in the hallway, just this silent, small moment that you feel like, somehow only she could deliver. And here, at this point in the scene, it's the most wounded this character has been and the most vulnerable the character has been. And then she's back to rustling papers and trying to act like she's in complete control. The difficulty it would have been or how difficult it

would have been to play Louise Bryant. I can see, I can see why she might have struggled with this character. But you watch scenes like this and you feel like you feel like Keaton was in control of the character somehow.

need to get to a few other picks first. So at number three, I'm going with this line from The Godfather Part two. At this moment, I feel no love.

tells him she's leaving and she's taking the children. Kay, as many people know, is essentially the conscience of these movies, but often in the background, right and just she's the observer here. Finally, she directly calls him out, telling him

he's become blind to his own moral decay. And I want to talk about stillness too, Adam in terms of the performance, and focus on how still she is in this scene, because, as we've touched on, very common to think of her as being in motion verbally in motion, physically in motion, something with her arms, or even just just circling the room in a scene. She's frequently walking around a room.

But her control doesn't last last that long. There's a lot of as the red scene you just described, there's a lot of fluctuations and variations and up and ups and downs in this long scene. So he brings up their lost baby, which he thinks was a miscarriage, and she just goes fierce at this point.

And there is a real nastiness to the performance here because this is where Kay is hitting Michael absolutely where it hurts, because he has this mythological, reverential idea of the family right, completely hypocritical, we all know, but to him in his mind, it's all about the family, and she's she's used what power she had to obliterate that. So I do think Keaton has asked to use very different tools in the Godfather films. I just think she

does it incredibly well. So wanted to go with a scene from one of them.

as that character. She was nothing like that character, and she does admit that the character doesn't kind of exist, that there's very little to that character, and that does seem fair based on what we see in the movie. That said, the moments that she gets like this one Keaton delivers. Keaton makes up for that in moments Yeah, like this one for sure. And you know, it's funny about Keaton. We were talking about how maybe when you look at the totality of her filmography, you don't see

it's top heavy. You see a couple of amazing movies and amazing performances, and maybe not as much depth as you would really like. But I think about iconic moments, and I think about memorable lines, and maybe this is only really memorable to me. But to go back to

your Manhattan scene, forget, you know, Van Gock. I will always hear in my head, Mary, I'll always hear Keaton saying I loved it at Radcliffe, but you get over it, You absolutely get over it, you know, just the way she says it, her cadence, and I will always hear, like, I can't see. Here's where we're different, Josh. Here. I mean, we're different in a lot of ways, but we've talked about this. Here's where we're very different. You just talked about that scene and you did not, at any point

feel compelled to go it was an abortion, Michael. I would have had to say it that way. I would have had to try gen mimic why ruined? Why would I read because the great because trying to mimic it. Because I can't. I can't have those words in my head and not try to say them that way. That they that sentence can't be said any other way. That's that's how it sticks with me. Right, So there's another one of these coming up. So she's given us some great,

great line readings. But for my number three, I'm gonna go back. I'm gonna go back to Jack and Diane. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna call it a great movie, Josh, but this is the homework that I did that I did find the most rewarding, especially because I found out a few days later in the book that it's the movie she calls her favorite of all of her movies. It is Something's got to Give Now. Context is a major part two thousand and three. She was fifty seven

and by her own words, she was washed up. This movie brought her back, that's part of it. But working with Nicholson again, she talks about as this magical energizing experience and which you can feel, you can feel, and she goes into great detail about how difficult it was for her. In one one key scene, it's that it's a scene where they come back in from where you really see them connecting and you see the romance really spark and they come in from the storm, and it's

when they have their first kiss. She talks about how it was almost impossible for her. She kept screwing up lines because it was impossible for her to separate Diane and Erica the character from her. So that's that's what it felt like for her to make that movie. Now there is another part of it. It's I think, just a great story to mention and speaks to the generosity of Nicholson. She said that on the last day of the shoot, Nicholson came up to her. They have this

great time together. Nicholson came up to her and whispered something in her ear, a sentence, a phrase or something, and she didn't really understand it. She kind of heard a word or two, but really didn't get it, and just kind of, you know, laughed or whatever. And they embraced and he went on his way, and then the movie came out and it's a big hit. And a year later, or however long it is later, she goes to the mail and a check shows up and the checks goot as she you know, I think she described

that the checks got all these zeros after it. And the thing that Nicholson whispered to her on the last day of the shoot was that when he was negotiating his contract for the movie. He gave her some of his points on the movie that weren't in her contract, So instead of just getting a salary for the movie, he gave her at least a point on the movie.

She got a percentage because of Nicholson, and so she got very rich off of Something's Got to Give, which was another reason why she was eternally grateful to Nicholson in that movie. Now I have to say, Keanu Reeves is the younger doctor who's madly in love with her. He might actually be my favorite performance in the movie. But the scene that I'm going with the scene that

really stuck with me. And you know, so far, I have largely picked scenes where her heavier emotional side comes through, even though she is largely known as this comedic actress. But the Baby Boom scene is one where we watch her transform kind of from comedy to drama before our eyes. And I think this scene is also so full of

pathos that I really identify that with with Keaton. It's the scene right after they have finally slept together, and this this night together has been incredible everything she and it seems he could have hoped that it would be. But then you have the awkward moment of where do

we go from here? What do we do now? And Nicholson's character says, I think I should go back to my room, and she has to take that in and process what that means, what he's really saying when he says that, because he's he's staying at her house, he was initially just a guest at her house. Long story if you haven't seen the movie. He's saying, I think I should go back to my room, and she says, all right, you usually send the girl home, but I

am home. The realization the moment Keaton has to realize what he's really saying, that he is, as he describes himself, an old dog who can't be taught new tricks, and and she has to think about what what could she have expected? You know, every everything she is expressing without expressing it literally is how could I? How could I have been so stupid? Right? But also she can't help the way she feels, and and that's the conflict that you just see in every in everything she's doing here

in this scene. She's trying to be so mature about it because she is mature. She is this mature, intelligent woman. But but she has feelings for this man that are almost like, you know, a teenage girl, you know, or almost like she feels like she's falling in love for the first time, and she's so wounded by this. And and here again, I'm drawn to gestures and pauses. She says, hey,

it's perfectly whatever, perfectly whatever. She suddenly tilts her head and smiles just for a flash, like it reminded me of I don't know, I'm gonna really date myself, even though I wasn't. I wasn't alive when these movies were on. I'm just aware of them. But it reminds me of like a Nette Funicello or something like Beach Blanket Bingo. Like she does this quick gesture with her head, like a bob of her head and kind of you know, bobs her hair, like she's trying to express it's fine,

everything's great. Let's let's just move on with our lives. But Josh, just as quickly as she does it, it's over, you know, and she's back to the reality of the devastation of the moment. It's such a clear contradiction of how she's really feeling, an expression of who she knows. She's supposed to be in the moment who she wants to be, that she's a big girl, that she can take it, but but she can't and and I can't

do it justice anymore. Just just watch the scene. Just watch the scene, and then and then after that, watch her say, Watch Keaton say, this was a great night for me. It's heartbreaking. That scene. It's it's funny, it has elements of humor. I even think that that bob of her head is kind of funny. But then it goes, it goes right from that instantly into heartbreak. And that's what Keaton can pull off in a scene without it feeling ever like that. It's inconsistent at all. I really

like something. It's got to give.

Allen have great repartee. They're very much working you know, as co equals as a team in their scenes. But there's not a ton of moments where the spotlight is just on Annie, which just you know, she is the title character. So you would have thought, maybe I expected in my memory that there were more of those. We get one, though that works that way at least one. There's probably more than one. But there's this brilliant scene that I'm picking.

those characters by any Hall. I think of those characters by Gerwig. As delightful as they are, they're not always self aware. But you get a sense that Annie is as she's telling this story, she's realizing that, yes, this is a silly story, but it's not. It's dark, and I'm kind of silly for handling it that way, but I don't care.

twirl as she's telling this story. And then the faces she pulls, and the different faces when she's again amusing herself, realizing she shouldn't be amused by herself and she shouldn't be laughing.

Diane Keaton scenes, it's great and all. If we can sit here and try to find, like we always do with these top five, top five lists, these little personal moments that speak to us that quite honestly, very few people listening may actually be able to immediately recall when we mention them. How about including a moment that is one of the most memorable cinematic moments of the nineteen seventies. And I'm going to give you, Josh, because it's short. I'm going to give you the scene as it appears

in at least the screenplay version I found online. Kay Anthony say goodbye. Your mama loves you, Anthony, Goodbye. She restrains any tears. She's become too strong for tears. Kay starts to go, picks up Mary, kisses her, and starts to go. New view. She steps out the kitchen door. Then she cannot help herself, crouches down outside and calls to her son. Kay Anthony kiss me once. Then she looks up and slowly rises her view. Michael has stepped into the dining room. He seems older somehow, as though

some sickness has taken more years away from him. View on Ka looks at him instinctively, she takes a step back. View on Michael slowly steps toward her. View on Ka another step back. The door is still open. View on Michael. He moves closer to the door, stops, looks at her,

and then closes it, obscuring any view of her. Minute a little bit over a minute, Pacino and Keaton just looking at each other, no dialogue heavy, and it's sad enough that she that Kay has to sneak in to see her kids because of the scene that you talked about Josh and what she admitted to there, what she confessed to. Then you've got her son Anthony taking his emotional cues from daddy with holding his love and affection

for his mother. I don't know if this line from the script was ever really meant to be translated to the screen, the line he seems older some how, as though some sickness has taken more years away from him. We're gonna see that with Michael and with Pacino. I'm going to counter and say, if you rewatch this moment, at least for me part of what makes the scene extra tense and emotional is that I don't know if al Pacino actually has ever looked hotter in any movie ever.

Like when he's walking towards the door, he's wearing that maroon shirt. Is that camel hair, Josh, I don't know. You're a scarf guy. He's wearing like a camel hair scarf and jacket. Yeah, he's He's still put together. He's pretty dapper.

we are not sure. We are not one hundred percent sure how this is gonna end where this is going to go. Whether or not Michael in this moment might actually show some compassion for her, the possibility is there, and honestly, something about how how great they both look, how beautiful they are, And with some passage of time between the scene that you described in this one, you think about this, this crevice between them. We know it can never be breached. We know that because of what

she's done, Michael's never going to forgive her. But somehow, like I said, in this moment, just for this fleeting few seconds, it seems like it's possible. And Josh, it's really only like three seconds of screen time, all just with her eyes and her face, Kay expresses that hope. She expresses the hope that he might he might invite her in, or he might say something with any hint of warmth towards her, and then the hope is completely

drained from her. And of course the way she expresses the fear of him initially too, the hope is completely drained. You see the death of that hope, and the despair sink in because you know, even if she and Michael can never heal, you think maybe there's some room for her and her kids. You see that, you see that dissipate completely. And then of course you've got the symbolic echo of this scene to the door closing on Kay at the end of Godfather One, when Michael has made

the dawn makes the scene even more impactful. It's it's it's just an incredible bit of acting from from those two heavyweights in that moment.

Keaton handles brilliantly. All right, my number one, And yeah, it's coming, it's coming from Reds. I just watching Reds the entire movie. I really went for, but Keaton in particular here as as you said, the activist and writer Louise Bryant not a quintessential Keaton performance. I'd put it up there. Maybe overall, taking the movie in totality, not

just considering scenes, but maybe her best. Fascinating to hear you describe how she described it in her memoir and that experience, and you know, just sometimes what an actor's experiences compared to what we end up getting on the screen, how those things can differ. I honestly I wrestled with what scene to go with here, Adam, which is why

I do think this might be her best performance. I definitely considered because I was familiar with it from your pick in our top five Jack Nicholson moments, the ones you talked about, she is, you know, Nicholson's equal in making that scene work. As you said, I love this is just a moment, so it wouldn't count as a scene. But very early on, this is when Louise is in Portland. She's still married to you know this, this kind of dismissive husband, and he's trying.

this is at the point she's met John Reid. She has this little art studio she goes to and they're hanging out there and she has to juggle his flirtation with her, which she's open to but also wanting to be taken seriously as an artist. And so watching Keaton juggle all of that, there's a great moment. And here's where Bedia's director, you know, helps out. The camera is

on them and she's on a couch. They're on a couch, I think, and then she leans over to pick up her portfolio away from him, and the camera kind of slides with her and her arm and kind of like pushes him away visually, just to catch that tension. But she's so good in that scene as well. I'm going to go with another one though, between Keaton and Beattie, who you know, as you said, here director star and

you know, just really making this his magnum opus. This scene is early on in their relationship and she's trying to figure out what sort of writer she actually wants to be at this point, and he's moving to New York, So he invites her to move with him.

because here's here's something else I like about it. It seems to me that the best of Keaton's career has come while she's had to juggle a male co star expertly, of course, Woody Allen, al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, and then Warren Batty here And to be clear, I do think Baty is an especially generous collaborator on Reds. Did not know that what you shared about, you know, is perfectionist tendencies as a director, but I think, you know, you can also see this generousness as a fellow performer and

as a director too. Yeah, I mean kind of goes back to what we were saying about and what you mentioned about these maybe gaps in her filmography or long stretches. You know, she didn't get the chance to be the focus of a film very often, but man, when she was, when she was clicking, she proved she didn't need that focus to rab our attention or our affection. And you

see that in this performance as as read. She may not have had a lot of affection for Louise Bryant, but but she managed to get me to have it.

What does this mean? She's she's processing and trying to navigate in the aftermath of it, what she thinks she is or what she should be and having to face that it's uncertain and that he's going to get to define it for her and go back to something like Baby Boom. Josh, that's all about what role do you decide to play? Are you the tiger lady executive or are you the domesticated mom? Right? And you have to

pick between them. It's funny how in movies and in real life men don't ever have to choose between those roles.

really negates fruitful parenthood for men and women. Like it's just that the women are expected in the movie, right to make it, to make it work.

a little bit earlier, but you had it. You're absolutely right. Okay, So number one, I am going with Annie Hall and you not only have in common with The Godfather and The Godfather Part two of movie movies that that star or feature Diane Keaton and that were Best Picture winners, but also shot by the great Gordon willis one of the reasons that Annie Hall is elevated from your average romantic movie of the time or what we you know, think of as a romantic comedy. It's funny what you

said about your reservations watching it. Any Hall for me was a transfer normative film. It's a film I don't even know how many times I've seen and have always had the same experience loving it. According to Letterbox, the last time I saw it was nine years ago. It didn't feel like it was that long ago. Was nine

years ago. That was the first time where I'll borrow your word, that was the first time where I actually noticed some groaners, where I actually noticed some jokes not landing with me the way they used to land with me. That said, when I was watching scenes from Anny Hall in preparation for this list, I'm watching Alan and Keaton together cooking lobster. I'm watching Keaton inviting Alan over to kill the spider in her apartment. I'm watching the great

Honest subtitles scene right where after they've met. Yeah, that's a nice having a drink and you know, am I smart enough for him? And he doesn't know if he's smart enough for her? As he keeps you know, all those all those things. Every scene I watched was like, well, I could, I could pick this scene. These are all fantastic. I'm gonna keep the theme going of iconic seventy scenes.

I think it. I think it does qualify. We may meet Annie for the first time on the tennis court, but we don't really meet Annie Hall until she and Alvie meet in the lobby after the round of tennis. You want a lift? Oh? Why? Uh? You got a car? No, I'm I was gonna take a cam. Oh no, I have a car.

brought those clothes. But she was just stealing the look, she says, from women she saw who she thought look cool on the streets of New York. And the hat was actually stolen from the wife of the production designer of The Godfather, Dean Tavalius The Godfather Part two. I'm presuming his wife showed up on the set one day and was wearing the hat and she thought it looked great, and she always remembered it, and that was, you know,

the final thing she needed to complete the ensemble. And it becomes then this this classic look that even you see some people where even today is like Halloween costumes, right, or some people just just wear it because they like they like the look. And rewatching this scene if you go back, what's so great about it, Josh, is you see Alan or we will see Alan in a second, like zipping up his bag and he's turned away from

the camera. But the way it starts is that she actually kind of emerges out of frame left, like she ducks. She's not completely out of the frame, but she kind of ducks her head into the frame and is saying hi. And it just immediately sets the tone that that it's just a little bit she's she maybe is just a little bit clumsy and just a little bit goofy. You know, there's something weird about her entering the frame with a with a complete lack of confidence. It's not like she

walked in. It's almost like she knows or feels like she might be imposing on someone else's scene somehow, you know. And then when she says when she says by in a little bit, she doesn't turn and walk away to

the door like a normal person. She says bye and then backs away to the door, which clearly suggests that she's hoping he's going to continue the conversation and won't say bye back, and all of that just stuff out like makes her feel like a character, like a character on a stage, like backing into a curtain or something, or entering from stage left or something about it that I just love. And I do think it's one of

the great rom com meet cutes. And it's because of the wit of the dialogue, the undeniable chemistry between Keaton and Allen that's on display here but was on display in films prior to this as well. And it is about Keaton's ability to play a character who could be played if you just were going off the page, could be played as dumb and maybe annoying, and make her just a little awkward and make her charming. And I think it's because you actually helped unlock this for me, Josh.

It's because of the word you used, self awareness. It's because of her self awareness. It's actually built into the character. I think Keaton implicitly brings it as a performer, but it's built into the character, right, the great dialogue, you know, the way she's constantly questioning herself, going oh, oh, of course that was dumb, or why did you say that. You know, she's she's saying those things to herself, those asides.

That's what makes her extra charming, that's what makes you find her, find her adorable in that moment and that back and forth between them. The banter is what makes it work. But her self awareness is I think what elevates that scene and that that character. Oh God, what a dumb thing to say, right, I mean, you say you play well, and then right.

maid name. She had to change her name for sag reasons, you know, as that often happens, and so she went with she went with Diane Keaton, so that that comes you know, Alan wrote the script based on based on her and based on her name, and yeah, based on

her family to some extent. And she says about the character when she or the role, when she started getting the accolades and everything that was coming in, she kind of couldn't see what all the fuss was about, because she did see herself as to some extent, playing herself. She's seeing her face, her voice, her mannerisms, all these

things that kind of bothered her on screen. And you know, everyone assumed, well, this must be the relationship between the two of them just being translated to the screen, especially because she wanted to be a singer in real life, that they really did have a romance. That she was someone who was insecure and and that kind of her own word was like groping for words. She was someone who groped for words. And there you see it in

her character. We see it in a lot of her characters, right, Well, that's because that's that's a naturalness that she brings to some, not all of her characters. And her mom, in one of her journals after seeing the premiere of Annie Hall said, Annie's camera in her hand, her gum chewing, her lack of confidence, pure Diane the Hall scenes. Josh, you know,

Diane says, you know, their their comic relief. It was this generic wasp family, you know, sort of obvious caricature that she didn't pay a whole lot of attention to and no one really got offended by even though it was clearly modeled in some way off the actual Hall family, including even and you know, Dwayne is model off her brother Randy, who who did end up being a pretty

sad story. You know, he's someone who suffered from mental illness his entire life, and and that may have not been fully diagnosed when when the script was written, but with someone who dealt with mental illness and bipolar disorder, and so those elements have some truth to it. But I just have to point this out because it did make me laugh. She kind of she doesn't handwave it off, but she just kind of says what is undoubtedly true. Of course it's based on it's not meant to be

one to one. He doesn't line up one to one with all of the characters. That said, there is a part later in the book where she's describing her grandmother. I swear to you there's a part where she's describing her grandmother and some scene that's taking place and somebody they know is mentioned. And and you know, I may be misremembering some of the exact details, but someone they know is mentioned, and the first thing out of the grandmother's mouth is something like, did you know he was

a jew? Okay, so it's not it's not too far off. It can't be too far off at some point, yea, he may have. But but back to the movie, you know, the the boldness of it as as a romantic comedy it was, it was his first and and what she loves about it, and I think one of the reasons why this movie does still linger in our consciousness, one of the reasons why we may still revisit this movie. Right. She talks about in terms of being a movie where he had the courage to write a film, a romantic

movie where ultimately the message is love fades. She says, what do you let the audience feel the sadness of goodbye in a funny movie? And so for me, you know that that kind of ties into why any Hall had to be Number one why I do think it's

the defining Keaton performance. I think what we all did understand watching it, that we knew anything at all about her real life or not, how closely it seems to capture Diane Hall, with all of her quirks and her humor, but also getting at some pathos, some underlying sadness that Tinge of sadness, and I just think it's expressed more forcefully in some of the other scenes that I chose, but it is at the core of Annie Hall as well.

And Lotti Da Josh, the expression where you try to, you try to with words wash away whatever might be meddling in your life at that moment. Lotti Da Lotti Da La La. That is my number one.

He sent me an email with this pick. As a certified defender of the family Stone, my pick for favorite Diane Keaton scene comes from that modern Christmas classic where Keaton, Sibyl, the matriarch of the Stone family, finally hashes it out with her eldest son played by Dermott Maroney, about both the drama with his fiance and coming to terms with

Sybyl's cancer diagnosis. The way Keaton maneuvers from playful banter to emotional sincerity is a masterclass in range and grounding a character in the moment.

woody Allen slashing mar Bergman film. If I was going to go with another Alan choice, though it would be in Manhattan, I definitely would have considered the Academy of the overrated, or it probably would have been the Queensboro Bridge sequence, the night they spend out together where they really get to know each other and spend all night, and of course the iconic shot that everyone thinks about with that movie. The others I've mentioned other scenes from

Anny Hall. Other scene or two I mentioned Boom, I go with one in my top ten from The First Wives Club. I really like the scene. And here's where we get that character, especially Josh that she plays. Annie is very flighty, and part of the character that the other two women you know, played by Goldie Han and Bett Miller, they give her so much grief for is how nice she is and and she's kind of gullible

and can be taken advantage of. And so when that character finally does get fierce, when that character Annie finally stands up for herself and gets back at her husband by buying out her husband's advertising business, it's it's kind of a it's kind of a relative a spiritual successor scene to the boardroom scene in Baby Boom, just a smaller version that with just her and her husband buying her husband out. It's really good. So I go with

that from First Wives Club again. Email tell us your choices, feedback at film spotting dot net, and you can go to film spotting dot Net see all of our picks see links to our clips just click on film spotting dot Net slash list.

ten episodes so wonderful to hear the diverse perspectives. It truly is an annual highlight from which my wife and I line up for our weekly Sunday night movie nights. Great ooh love that idea, Bob.

our next Film Spotting Advisory Board meeting coming up. We're going to discuss and ultimately decide our next Film Spotting Marathon topic. That's coming up February twelfth, very soon. We are looking forward to that. And in addition to keeping us doing what we're doing her on Film Spotting, being a Film Spotting Family member does come with perks. You get to listen early in ad free, you get our weekly newsletter, you get to be part of the great

Film Spotting Family discord, you get monthly bonus shows. And in February, Josh, we are going to do blind Spotting. We're gonna find three titles, probably nineteen forties madness titles that we haven't seen that we need to catch up on some homework, and we'll ask our family members to vote, and that's the movie we'll see and talk about. Should be fun.

a lot more great work. She was incredibly active as Shits Creak shows still And you know, Adam, we sometimes talk about character actors supporting you know, actors, However, you want to classify someone who's had the roles like she has had, Sometimes we'll say, you know what, one of those people when they showed up on the screen, you just immediately got excited.

at it. You could do that with John Candy, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Rick Moran, Andrew Martin, Dave Thomas, Joe Flaherty the original cast members there and Yeah, five time Emmy nominee for acting, most recently just last year for the network, and she did win for the final season of Shit's Creek and that show. We don't need to say more about it, but I don't know. I don't know if it's one of those things. It feels to me like one of those shows that I hope it doesn't happen,

if it hasn't happened already. There that there almost should be a backlash too, because it's too universally loved. I know people who are our age, so many people our age who love it. I know people who are in their twenties and thirties that love it, yeah, and then I and then I know plenty of people that are our parents' age, right, Yeah, who love it. And so it's just one of those things that crosses generations.

at any of these points. It's not like we rejected it. We just just overlooked it. For it's thirtieth. We've decided we can't overlook it any longer, we are going to give our namesake finally the sacred cow treatment. Now, to be clear for any new listeners of the show, we did not call the show Film Spotting because at the time we were necessarily myself and Sam, we were so such gigantic fans of the movie Train Spotting. We both

liked the movie Train Spotting. We thought it was a pretty cool movie, and we certainly thought it was cool enough that if our name referenced that that movie, that worked. But the reference wasn't necessarily what what drove us to the name, and and quite honestly, what drove us to the name is we needed to finally pick a name, and it was the best of all the options we had, which is sometimes where you end up.

That's why I rewatched it, And that was only the second time I had seen it since watching it originally.

will hear us nominate three films. Each one of them has to be a former Marathon title, one of them has to be a film that's already gotten the Sacred Cow treatment, and then one has to be a title that's never been reviewed on the show. It's not a Marathon, it's not a Sacred Cow. It wasn't discussed when the movie came out, so it can't be something from the last twenty years that was talked about on the show.

It is just a movie that one of us thinks is really great and pantheon worthy but has never gotten its due. Here on the show, we come with three of those, and we try to will down those nine choices eventually to two with the help of Film Spotting Nation. Everybody gets a vote, two of those go into the pantheon.

the pantheon, even if you have previously nominated them. I mean, look at it this way. Last year, the movies that went in were Singing in the Rain in Sherlock Junior. Sherlock Junior was Sam's nominee. It was going to be my nominee, but he beat me to it, so I had to pivot and go with another silent film, and I nominated Sunrise, a Song of two Humans. I think I nominated Singing in the Rain. So the two the three films you nominated are all three available, right? Yeah,

okay from last year? All right, you could revisit them. Feel free that's good. If you have a film you think should be in the film spotting pantheon, or you have any thoughts on train spotting, you could write us feedback at film spotting dot net, or you know, send us an audio or video message feedback at film spotting dot net. And now we get to everybody's new favorite recurring segment on film spotting. Where in the world is Josh.

Stockholm first. But actually while we're there, Adam, it'll be once again a double remote film spotting recording, so away from home, away from home, I'll be lugging the mic in my suitcase and recording in Stockholm, so not as much free time there. But when we get to Copenhagen, we'll have a couple of open nights, so this is the first week of March.

many talents. We probably framed it that way, but you know, at the end of the day, you can vote however you want to vote your options, which did not include the film that we think would have won unanimously any hall were these Kay Adams, The Godfather, Erica Barry, Something's Got to Give, Louise Bryant, Red's J. C. Wyatt Baby Boom. All four of those made our list. Josh five an a parody, The First Wives Club an honorable mention for me six Mary Wilkie on your list or seven. You

could go other and write in your choice. How did it come out?

vote was trending. Adam, and I hadn't done a lot of you know, revisiting of scenes or thinking about this. I'm kind of with you now that I see the result. And yeah, curious how Kay Adams took this vote.

a character there. Apparently our listeners think there's an incredible character there, and we certainly saw many great moments from powerful moments from that character, like we talked about in the film, and those must be resonating Josh with the audience because twenty nine percent, and of course that movie, that movie is one that's resonating with our audience. We have Michael Brandner. He is echoing a choice on my list.

Kay looking at her husband through the half open door at the end of The Godfather Ie is one of the most memorable shots in movie history. How could I pick anything else? So he's going with the first part of my mirror door shots.

punch lines. He cast her as his hilarious equal. While I have to clench my teeth now whenever I press play on a Woody Allen film for reasons that should be obvious by now, I quickly remind myself that there are so many great performances in these films to make them worthwhile, and Keaton's contributions are my favorites.

The deeply flawed poll that producer Sam and with a little contribution from me, that he is concocted for you, and by you we mean apparently you young adults of the nineties, not so much of the nineties. Kids choose life, choose only one nineties movie soundtrack deathmatch rules apply, and that that pretty much goes for any poll question here on film Spotting. So that means that whichever ones you don't choose, they go into the nineties landfill. You can't get them back. They're gone forever.

How about the Crow? Loved hearing in Sam's newsletter for family members that he was a big crow soundtrack guy, the Cure, nine inch nails, rage against the Machine, that there's a side to Sam.

Mazzie Star, Sunny Day Real Estate. Okay, bad Rushmore? Come on all those British invasion classics.

lou Reid talking heads, you two depeche Mode. If you've never heard the Until the End of the World soundtrack, this is your impetus to go check it. Okay, so haven't I think we've made the case, Adam. But with all these options for the nineties as the definitive movie soundtrack that decade, right.

I could probably say that The Days Did in Confused soundtrack, in terms of how the music is employed, might even be the most essential. But I got burned out on classic rock before I was even out of college, just having had to consume so much of it growing up. We didn't have a lot of great radio stations growing up in Iowa. It was a lot of classic rock. And even though I played some of that stuff, I played Schools Out in my band. I played Sweet Emotion

in my band. More reasons why I got burned out on classic rock. So love how it's used in the movie. Don't need to listen to The Days Did in con View soundtrack maybe ever, and I didn't. I never bought it, so for me, the only two that I owned on here and the only two that I would still put in my CD player, and I did keep almost all my CDs, so maybe I have them somewhere if I can find them in the boxes. Josh were pulp fiction and singles, and my initial instinct was to go singles.

But the thing is, it's not because of it's not because of the Seattle stuff, which is ironic, because that's that's what the soundtrack is full of, and the movie is said in Seattle, and that's what's so essential to the movie. But the reason why I love I like the par you know, state of Love and Trust is good. The reason why I love the single soundtrack so much is the Paul Westerberg tunes, and that that has nothing

to do with Seattle, right talking about it. Yeah, So I don't know if I can justify keeping the single soundtrack on there just for Paul Westerberg, which is the

primary reason why I would keep it. Pulp fiction. You think about the eclectic assortment of tunes and good songs that you you've never heard, that I had never heard but but are so damn catchy, and that we're fun to listen to, both in the context of the movie but also out of context, that that were fun to just put on your CD player and listen to, and then you know, suffused with the little moments from the film.

I was all set to say that that pulp fiction is the answer, and and I guess once I ruled out singles. Pulp fiction was the clear answer. But Josh, you know, if the Royal Tenebombs was made in the nineties, it would it would be competition with with Rushmore, but it wasn't. So you know now that you mentioned Rushmore and I completely blanked on it that that might be my pick. That might mean, but it hits that because it hits the sweet making time with creation.

is that it works on those two levels. I would say of the choices, yeah, I mean, for the record of our options, what we owned were pulp fiction, reality bites, singles, and train Spotting. I would seriously consider pulp fiction or train Spotting. Honestly, I think that's that's worth considering. That it hits on these couple of levels and then until the end of the world. As I said, but yeah, might be Rushmore for me. I might have to use that right in.

It has it has one song by a current band, and it's a cover of an old song. Days and Confused is all seventies stuff. Rushmore is is other than Mark Mothersboss stuff. It's all the Kinks and you know it's it's it's British pop. So it's not stuff that you you would equate with the nineties. Now that said, it was then very hard to field a poll. Clueless would be one that felt of its time, but it would be hard to feel the poll with a lot of choices, enough choices. If you were just going by,

it had to be all nineties music. That's what's us anyway.

Are we going to do like a fast and furious type visiting of all the Strangers movies Josh a marathon.

maybe we'll have that Dracula review. We are definitely planning that train Spotting at thirty conversation and to share our nominees for this year's induction into the Film Spotting Pantheon.