Let’s Remember Diane Keaton Her Way, Okay?

By Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

Photo Ruven Afanador

Three days since Diane Keaton died at age 79 on Oct. 11, 2025, it's been a long sad holiday weekend to process this passing so expect some typos. Al Pacino, who starred with Diane Keaton in THE GODFATHER, tells the best story about her, and how that first meeting Diane had with the legend Marlon Brandon went. They are introduced; he says: “I’m Marlon Brando.” And she says? “Yeah, alright, uh-huh, okay.”  It’s those kind of deft dodges, plus her raw talent, and all the intersections in Diane Keaton's 'life as art' that are so fascinating. Isn't there something magical about Keaton (neé Diane Hall), being born on Saturday (01/05/46), also dying on Saturday?

Screenmancer’s digital tribute to #dianekeaton using #GrokImagine - minus tears shed for this #sundayvibes (toggle off sound or RT or just keep it for free as a download) pic.twitter.com/S86lpU8ZH9

— Quendrith Johnson (@Quendrith) October 12, 2025

You don’t need a rundown of her screen credits, because ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, REDS, SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE, plus her Nora and Delia Ephron movie role, even brutal bar-cruising morality tale LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR,  are plastered everywhere as obits run worldwide on her, or just check imdb.  So we’ve decided to do something very Diane here, and remember her other work too. Not the many museum-quality photographs, many books she authored, or considerable interior design expertise - but the strange stuff. Those scrapbook moments of a high creativeness in a charmed life that stood for women who stand out, who she stood up for in real life.

Diane Keaton was all that and more, author, photographer, biographer of her family… there for the women who stood out… who she stood for in life.

— Quendrith Johnson (@Quendrith) October 11, 2025

First the facts: reportedly, her cause of death is small cell carcinoma, having had skin cancer appear from her 20’s on. It might sound shocking. but not unexpected for Sunny California in the sunblock-free 50’s. Born Diane Hall, she grew up in the fairly affluent suburban Santa Ana, Calif, about an hour and 10 minutes from the Hollywood sign, and from the place that would make her famous.

Having left Southern California for New York, NY at only age 19, Diane (now movie star Keaton) told Johnny Carson in a 1977 guest appearance that she “didn’t know anything about LA and Hollywood” growing up. That’s because an hour drive in SoCal during the 1950’s and 1960’s was not only miles away, but a culture shock away from “the Orange Curtain." That would be arch conservative Orange County; Liberal LA and Hollywood sat in direct opposition to these Republican ‘burbs.

Probably not why she left a cushy home to rough it at the YWCA, though, as she’d later reveal that living on her parents’ dime at the NYC “Y” meant that could pursue acting under renowned teacher Sanford Meisner. Mesiner is a good segue here into what kind of actor Diane Keaton is,  because she’s a different flavor from those Actor Studio, Method Actors (read: Marlon Brandon, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe) with their “sense memories.”

Sanford “Sandy” Meisner had his own Meisner method, which pretty much said actors don’t have to wring their private guts out like Method Acting, but could actually invent their own version of characters. Y

ou can see echoes of her Meisner exploration even in this 1970’s early Johnny Carson guest appearance clip, where she invents herself right in front of a studio audience.  Watch this party trick where Diane Keaton appears in a suit, bold choice for the sexist times, does a performance-art style interview before she takes the stage to sing “A Lull in My Heart” with actual tears coming through.

This is pure Diane Keaton, real and surreal, surface and depth in the same breath.

Diane on Johnny Carson - natural talent - in the patriarchy What We Love About Her Work

Anyway, "la-tee-dah" about her career and acting details, the Oscar for ANNIE HALL, even decades of gems. What we loved about her work is Her. Magnificent Diane Keaton, who stood up for women who stood out. She spanned that uncomfortable bridge between the pre-feminism and post-feminism eras. Diane Keaton was our champion where Hollywood pushed Marilyn Monroe, or a Pamela Anderson version on girls, and James Dean or a Tom Cruise version on boys.

Keaton’s artistic presence is also comforting to all the miscellaneous odd-lot folks out there too, the ones who can't find an identity in even today's screen idols. Or older ones, like recently departed Robert Redford, Liz Taylor or even Bradley Cooper.  Ironically, Bradley Cooper shares a birthday with her, Jan. 5, and is also a pure artist of her stripe, though he is not one of the icons, Warren Beatty, Robert de Niro, or Jack Nicholson, that she's starred opposite; or the genius comedians like Jane Fonda, Bette Midler, and even Reese Witherspoon that she's worked alongside.

Consider the cycle of her life?

Diane Keaton comes into this world on a Saturday and exits on a Saturday, and leaves us with her 1987 directorial debut, HEAVEN - in which she actually has a sign-off like a death greeting. Although it’s a documentary, it feels like a great work of fiction.

Keaton basically made a Dali-style montage of interviews based around oddball questions: “Are You Afraid To Die?” “Is There Sex in Heaven?” “How do you get to Heaven?”

The full film is included here because Diane Keaton may have been recognized worldwide for her hit Hollywood star turns, but wait till you see what went on in her truly creative mind after the curtain went down, in the privacy of her own creative mind.

Mystical and magical, HEAVEN looks like it is a feature made by Diane Arbus, a photographic eye that focuses on facial tics, verbal quirks,  repetition clips from Metropolis, Ronald Colman’s kiss in Lost Horizon, which she told Letterman in 1987 on its release that the Shangri-la smooch was her favorite kiss in HEAVEN.

This is a Diane Keaton Tribute is for the rest of us, not the mainstream “Oscar-winner Diane Keaton died today” coverage; but for the out-there fashionistas, Lost Horizon dreamers, girls who wore suits before it was chic, the punk rock Pageant candidates, hand-dyed textile artists, the no-commercial-potential musicians, magazine collage makers. All the weird kids who grew up knowing their weirdness is an asset, or would be someday, somehow, like Diane's. So let's join her in HEAVEN, watching a film but seeing her one more time... in the strangely, and now-timely, film that by Director Diane Keaton. 

Let’s All Go to HEAVEN - from Director Diane Keaton

Ad Astra Diane Hall aka Diane Keaton (1946-2025)... Always Loved, Always Our Diane.

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