The best movie role, but why one quote for preservation by Diane Keaton? Author: Terence Rajivan Edward (or 161__Rajivan, if that helps) Abstract. Movie stars: don't they want as much fame as possible? But why then does Diane Keaton, who passed away yesterday, leave only one memorable quotation behind (or so it seems to me, with my limited research). I look into this matter, proposing that it is a strategy to ensure that one quote has no distractions from it. Presumably, advisors to movie stars have learnt over the years. I also reflect on the excellent movie Annie Hall, how the quote relates to it, and how the film relates to my own life. I hope this is not indelicate. Draft version: version 2 (29th May 2026 slight edits; version 1 12th October 2025) Software used (freeware): Google docs, google.com (probably I inspected quotation sites and forgot to record them - apologies to them and all pro film analysts!). A puzzle and military solution. Imagine an anthropologist studying a remote tribe. He is studying their customs and their beliefs and their social structure, taking notes to report back what he found. But while he is there, the tribe become involved in warfare with another tribe. The anthropologist is concerned. He also knows a lot about tribal warfare and tactics. He is funded by a government institution and it has lots of information about this. They turn to him for advice and he provides instructions. Do they follow these? With his information, it seems sensible to, at least to us. Maybe the only way to achieve their ends in this situation is to listen to the anthropologist. Below I don't want to talk about anthropology, but the material above will be relevant. I want to talk about film. A famous actress, long at the centre of the American film world, died yesterday. She starred in a film which many of us love and on which I shall have much to say, by some standards anyway. I looked through Keaton's quotes available online and there is one that stands out far above the rest: "Without a great man writing and directing for me, I was a mediocre movie star at best." Don't actresses (or actors) want as much fame as possible and is not the way to achieve it to have more memorable quotations? I am not the only one to ponder the issue of why not more of these. A 2011 review of her biography for The Guardian newspaper, by Catherine Shoard, is struck by the absence. Shoard writes, "What's significant is that Keaton feels moved to waste space with such generic soundbites rather than risk her own." I wonder to what extent being an actress is like being in a military-like project. The military analogy can be used to address the issue in at least two ways, the first of which is not so helpful. First, when we think of getting and maintaining a place in the movie business as a military-like project, we might think of it like this: there is a family who get involved with the American film business, perhaps at an early stage, and then the next generation and the generation after must devote themselves to it, like generations of an army holding onto a territory at perpetual risk of invasion. In which case, Keaton may not herself be interested in fame. She enters the acting business as yet another soldier from her family or from her overall social network. (The business is famously nepotistic.) But even if so, is it not a good idea for this metaphorical soldier to produce more of these memorable quotes? Second, over time tactics are refined, including for how to ensure one is quoted. Each quotable line produced by a movie star and every time it is attended to is studied by the military-like people involved in this industry, and strategies are improved. The actresses from decades past had quite a few sparkling quotes. But one imagines an authority figure saying, "With your achievements and the way of the world, you will be lucky to have one quote which people attend to. And the best way to achieve this is to write one memorable statement for others and for everything else you say to the public, outside of the movies, to be as dull as possible, to prevent detracting from that statement." (Simon Baron-Cohen says that women on average have brains more oriented to empathizing and men on average have brains more oriented towards systematizing, but there must be so much system in being an actor. "These are rules for which scripts you can consider more carefully," etc.) A great man? I am sure this is a careful strategy by the Keaton team: to have no utterances to distract from the one memorable quote. But who is the great man who by his directions elevates her above mediocrity? It is surely Woody Allen, her most famous role being in Annie Hall, which he also starred in and directed. But note that Allen himself did not make one really good film and the others awful, so that posterity will have no doubts about what it should be focusing on. He has several rewarding films, though I guess this will be regarded as the best. (Even if you disagree, there seems no intention to make all the others awful.) Why not go for the Keaton strategy? Not sure, but one watches Allen's films and has a feeling of engaging with the works of a single mind, despite all the other individuals involved. (He is an auteur - is that the term, I should use?) Probably for that to happen, one has to really try with multiple films. The quotation Keaton leaves behind may be used as a key to comprehend what is going on in the film Annie Hall. Annie Hall seems extremely attractive as the potential wife or partner of an artist or writer (a symbol of style and power?), and has a wonderfully adventurous personality (or that is how it seems in earlier scenes, before she is presented by means of animation as an evil queen). Now she does almost all the work in drawing the Woody Allen character into a relationship, but he does not fit any of our conventional images of attractiveness. He is short and does not have much in the way of style (though warning: I am no expert) and does not seem handsome. What does this aspiring singer at a low level in the New York scene see in the comedy writer? The quotation provides an answer: she needs a great man to direct her and only then will she realize what talent she has. Allen does push her in certain directions. A recurrent issue in their relationship is whether she is smart enough for him – he should be happy to have an attractive woman like this, many viewers have probably thought. But is Allen a great man? Two sources of doubt: don't great men have wives who are more or less servants, enabling the man's greatness? And for a great man he spends a lot of time doing other stuff which does not appear to contribute to his field of greatness. He is no longer a youth, he has been married, he is a writer and occasional performer of stand-up comedy; should he not be slaving away on some great wordy project, as Allen himself surely did to produce this film. Instead we observe him playing tennis (where they meet), at the cinema (!), disagreeing with the opinions of New York intellectuals (with some authority, despite their having the university positions), talking with just about everyone (who is this woman who declares love fades, or words to that effect?), puzzling away at politics, and undergoing psychoanalysis. He seems more like a considerably less posh and less institution-backed New York challenger to Bernard Williams: writing papers, lecturing on different sides of the Atlantic, uttering witticisms, conducting government reviews, and seducing women. Maybe this is great for some people. Or maybe this is a point at which a relationship of equals, or closer to this, is possible. If you are 10/10, it is unlikely, but 9 and 8 together happens, yes? I doubt Keaton herself would go anywhere near the Allen character though and even this 9 and 8 reference does not fully clear up the puzzle perhaps. Art and life. Towards the beginning of this century (2002-7), I used to spend quite a bit of time in the university with a PhD student and people might have perceived that as like the film. I had not seen the film then; watching it only around 2011, if I recall correctly. This PhD student, now senior lecturer or professor, seems more controlled than Annie Hall (until you see the animation anyway). And Hall smokes drugs before and after sexual relations - to make them work for her, more or less: the relations - she laughs more, she openly disagrees more, and she talks more (there are more opportunities to?) and even publicly about her sexual complexes! Maybe they are both more like me really! I did lend my friend Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar to read and we discussed it, which resembles a scene from the movie. I was thinking that perhaps the Woody Allen character should be more troubled by Hall's perspective on Plath's poetry: that it is neat (said as a somewhat negative assessment). He is sensitive and fussy elsewhere in the film. But then I thought that Plath is great for sharing: you don't feel too bothered about disagreement. "In New York, yes," but can something like this happen in Manchester? The 19th century novel Washington Square portrays Doctor Sloper, one of the cleverest men in New York, and his family. He seems an anti-intellectual and oppressive and also provincial character to me, and he is unsurprisingly surrounded by frustrated hopes and dreams. Annie Hall seems to be offering us New York as a place for unorthodox artistic somewhat disordered intellectuals. (Have I forgotten the later scenes?) It is selling a lifestyle or a dream even. How did we get from Dr Sloper in the 1880s to Annie Hall in 1977 and can this happen here? So many not quite elite universities are referred to in the film: come here and experience this! Maybe this is the dream of the University of Manchester management. "Ivy league without the social cachet," was our founding idea, when two solid universities merged. Well, many people here probably read as much as the characters apparently do in this film, but I suspect in this spirit: let's keep an eye on what is going on here, make sure it does not get out of hand. Annie Hall or anything like it is not their dream! Final question. What do we who work in one discipline, one profession, one area or arena, make of people who work at the core of another? Are they any good? What do we make of Diane Keaton? I don't know her work well enough to give an assessment. I prefer a more naive approach to getting quoted. But speaking of strategy, should I begin research on anyone getting on in years and suitable for my collection of essays, rather than doing the research after such a person dies? One more thing: who really cares about the one beyond-the-movies quote that Keaton has, when she starred in that wonderful film Annie Hall?! References Baron-Cohen, S. 2003. The Essential Difference: Men, Women, and the Extreme Male Brain. London: Penguin. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/dec/14/then-again-diane-keaton-review James, H. 1880. Washington Square. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2870/2870-h/2870-h.htm Shoard, C. 2011. Review of Then Again by Diane Keaton. The Guardian 14th December 2011. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/dec/14/then-again-diane-keaton-review