Read Woody Allen’s Tribute to Diane Keaton

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The Free Press has published Woody Allen’s beautiful obit for his longtime friend Diane Keaton. It sounds so weird to say it that way. Of course, they were more than that. He writes of her as only someone who has known her for over 50 years could.

As time went on I made movies for an audience of one, Diane Keaton. I never read a single review of my work and cared only what Keaton had to say about it. If she liked it, I counted the film as an artistic success. If she was less than enthusiastic, I tried to use her criticism to reedit and come away with something she felt better about. By then we were living together and I was seeing the world through her eyes. She had huge talent for comedies and drama, but she could also dance and sing with feeling. She also wrote books and did photography, made collages, decorated homes, and directed films. Finally, she was a million laughs to be around.

For all her shyness and self-effacing personality, she was totally secure in her own aesthetic judgment. Whether she was criticizing a movie of mine or a play of Shakespeare’s, she held both to the same standard. If she felt Shakespeare had gone wrong—it didn’t matter who or how many sang his praises, it was her own feeling that she went with, and she didn’t hesitate to put the knock on the Bard.

He closes it this way:

She went on to date a number of exciting men, all of them more fascinating than I was. I went on to keep trying to make that great masterpiece that I am still struggling with when I last looked. I kidded Keaton that we’d wind up—she like Norma Desmond, me like Erich von Stroheim, once her director, now her chauffeur. But the world is constantly being redefined, and with Keaton’s passing it is redefined once again. A few days ago the world was a place that included Diane Keaton. Now it’s a world that does not. Hence, it’s a drearier world. Still, there are her movies. And her great laugh still echoes in my head.

You can read the full piece here.

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