Manhattan (1979)

I agree about Mariel. And great use of Gershwin!

"I'm beautiful, and I'm bright, and I deserve better!"

--Diane Keaton

That's what I said about you guys before -- you have very odd taste in women. Mariel Hemingway was not then, nor has she ever been, attractive.

Mariel and her baby voice. All three of those sisters were corrupted by daddy.

I was molested. In Queens.

Meryl doesn't like this movie.

I watched this for some college course back in the 90s but remember nothing about it except it was in black and white. I should rewatch it and check out Annie Hall as well just to see Keaton in her prime.

Manha'an.

Mariel Hemingway was the most gorgeous twink in movie history.

I've always found her ugly.

I just rewatched Annie Hall in memory of Diane.

To be honest - there were some parts that I know that were very fresh for the time of the film, but I don't think she necessarily deserved the Oscar for this. She was better in other films.

Still enjoyed it - particularly seeing the 1975 'style' - clothing, furniture, apartments - which still looks good in retrospect.

The weird thing about Keaton's famous movies with Woody Allen was that, except for PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM, they made them all together after their romantic relationship had pretty much ended in 1972 By the time she did SLEEPER, she had already moved on to Al Pacino, whom she met and fell in love with during THE GODFATHER. And then by 1978 (when she was filming MANHATTAN) she was with Warren Beatty.

I went to Sam Goody's and they were playing the soundtrack album.

R12 - I honestly didn't know she dated Woody before Annie Hall. So was that their relationship put to film?

In Out Came the Sun, which will be released on April 7, Hemingway claims that Allen attempted to lure her to Paris once she turned 18—two years after she had filmed Manhattan. “Our relationship was platonic, but I started to see that he had a kind of crush on me, though I dismissed it as the kind of thing that seemed to happen any time middle-aged men got around young women,” writes Hemingway. The actress suggests that Allen attempted to act upon the crush by flying to her parents’ home in Idaho and inviting the teen to Europe.

[quote] [R12] - I honestly didn't know she dated Woody before Annie Hall. So was that their relationship put to film?

A lot of it is. Diane Keaton's real name was Diane Hall, and everyone in her family called her Annie as a nickname. And she really dressed like Annie hall does in the film--and she was apparently this odd mixture (like Annie was) of a lovable ditz and a very canny and sharp woman.

r11 she won the Oscar because she had also done Looking for Mr. Goodbar that same year. I think the combo helped her win.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar was really her greatest performance and holds up better than Annie Hall.

She's stunning and haunting in Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

Didn't Merly dislike Woody after he corrected a line reading by saying, There is a comma in that sentence!

Not that I think they are a believable couple anyway.

Mariel Hemingway losing the Oscar.

At some point Mariel lost the teensy babyvoice she used in her early movies.

Saw it a couple of times when it came out and loved it. Shortly after it opened and I had seen it I was in standing room at the Booth theater watching The elephant Man with the original cast. I turned around and she was in back of me they had squeezed her in because the entire theater was sold out. I went to her and told her how much I loved her in the movie and she gave me a very shy smile and said thank you. Haven't seen it since. Very bittersweet for me because I was a teen having a relationship with a man in his late 30s. So I found it incredibly moving.

Mariel was a fine teen actress. Lipstick and the TV I Want To Keep My Baby are excellent performances but she never grew into movie womanhood.

R23 - who is the she you write about?

Streep filmed her scenes for this during gaps in her “Kramer vs. Kramer” schedule.

R16 - wow - mind blown. I was a bit too young to appreciate Annie Hall when it came out.

Never knew it was just a film about Diane with Diane playing herself.

As a gay man, I thought Mariel Hemingway stunningly beautiful, but in an undeniably masculine way. She would've made a very convincing drag king.

In retrospect, I think Mariel's performance in Star 80 was underrated. I know it was a bomb and supposedly killed Bob Fosse's career, but I absolutely loved that movie!

Any MH fans here who haven't seen it should give it a chance.

Mariel did a Law & Order where she played an Anna Nicole Smith type character. It's one of my favorite L&O eps.

Mariel seems like a very gentle and kind person. I can see her not being able to swim in the nasty waters of Hollywood.

Both Mariel and Margaux had strange and off-putting voices - Margaux's lisp was really distracting. Mariel's baby voice is annoying.

my mom took me to see Manhattan when I was 10. I seem to remember seeing Meryl interviewed on TV I think and she was very clearly OVER people asking her about Mariel. Mariel was getting tons of attention and the interviewer asked Meryl about Mariel and Meryl got all Grand Dame and said very grandly, "I've never even MET the CHILD" it was funny.. especially cuz Meryl was probably in her 20s back then

I don’t think Woody Allen even remembers me,” Streep told Ladies’ Home Journal in an incredibly candid, few-fucks-to-give interview from 1980:

“I went to see Manhattan and I felt like I wasn’t even in it. I was pleased with the film because I looked pretty in it and I thought it was entertaining. But I only worked on the film for three days and I didn’t get to know Woody. Who gets to know Woody? He’s very much a womanizer; very self-involved. On a certain level, the film offends me because it’s all about these people whose sole concern is discussing their emotional states or their neuroses. It’s sad because Woody has the potential to be America’s Chekhov. But instead, he’s still caught up in the jet-set crowd type of life, trivializing his talent.”

That certainly explains why Woody never worked with Meryl again.

More dirt from M:

“I didn’t get to know Woody Allen, really. I had two days on the film. maybe three. He was very firm. I was very surprised because his films have, to the outsider, such an improvised feel – that’s how he deals with whomever in his primary character, you know, like Diane. That all feels very improvised, but, man, on the lower echelon, we had to stick to what we were saying! I think he just hated my character. I played the wife writing the tell-all. He didn’t take anything out on me. He would just ask me to say the line how it was written (laughs). I think it’s a fair request. Harold Pinter did the same thing in ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman'” (Meryl Streep, Premiere Magazine, March 1997)

Love the film, despite it all. Although when I watch it now, during one of the last shots where he drops Muriel’s character at Dalton, I always think that Jeffrey Epstein is in the building. It was filmed a few years after he left Dalton, but it’s still where my mind goes, making the underage sex plot even weirder.

I agree. one of the most beautiful

Lol at Muriel.

R11/R17, she should have been nominated for Goodbar, but Hollywood was far more comfortable with Annie Hall. I was shocked at the time. And while I like Annie Hall a lot, best picture? No.

A typo makes you lol, R39? You must be the guy sitting behind me last night at Romy & Michele, guffawing at every non-joke.

Pauline Kael's explanation was that Annie Hall won Best Picture for the same reasons It Happened One Night won in the 1930s: it showed Americans their idealized view of themselves as likable, gallant, funny, and a little scatterbrained.

[quote]And while I like Annie Hall a lot, best picture? No.

Hey give it credit. The Academy still routinely shits on comedy.

Star Wars was the most impactful of the nominees, but hardly a “great” piece of art. The other three have not held up well—especially Goodbye Girl and Tirning Oint. Julia is gripping, but hardly to watch knowing Hellman stole the story from another woman. Annie Hall, though of its time, remains a classic, because love and loss have no expiration date.

I think Tirning Oint would have done so much better at the box office if they had just gone with the original title of The Turning Point.

I never for one minute believe that Isaac and Jill were ever married, or in love at all, or that they had a child together. I can’t imagine this regally acerbic woman would have any time for this feeble, nervous man; her long hair alone seemingly outstrips his height. Few Allen women have ever cut his self-absorption down to size with as sharp a stab as the line, “I’m free to do as I please.”

The Goodbye Girl was terrible when it came out. All three leading actors were too cute for words. I loathe Richard Dreyfuss because of that movie. And how did anybody find that smartass kid adorable? Sometimes Simon is actually very good and at others he is the very worst. You never know what you'll get.

R16, IMDb trivia strikes again. She was never called Annie. Not be her family or friends.

This interview is interesting because you can tell Katie Couric got a lot of her copy from her IMDb page and Diane corrects her on a couple of points.

That reminds me of Simon’s Chapter Two, another one with Marsha Mason the wife. I would have liked it so much better if other cast member Valerie Harper had played the lead with James Caan.

I saw Chapter Two on stage. A very good original cast. And it starred Anita Gilette.

For years, I considered Annie Hall my all-time favorite film, though I also thought Keaton should have won the Oscar for Goodbar.

Maybe that's still the case. I think because it showed her an a light unlike any more thus far, and the nudity and grittiness displayed showed she was willing to take chances, it led to offers of films she might not have gotten: like Mrs. Soffel, Little Drummer Girl and Shoot the Moon.

But in retrospect, Diane as Annie Hall is iconic in ways no one else reaches, more iconic than the movie itself. I've come to believe the Academy made the right choice.

Bump

Siskel & Ebert's rave review.

R6 I'll bet it's because Woody was coupled with a very young lady. I found that creepy myself.

[quote] Allen based the character of Annie Hall loosely on Keaton ([bold]"Annie" was a nickname of hers,[/bold] and "Hall" was her original surname).

[quote] Allen wrote the role specifically for the actress, whom he had previously dated, taking her real last name and combining it with her nickname, Annie, according to Stig Björkman's "Woody Allen on Woody Allen: In Conversation with Stig Björkman."

Keaten started on Broadway in two hits. The original cast of Hair and Play it again Sam. As far as I know she never worked on stage again. Anybody have any idea if she did?

Yes, on the previous thread there's a post about "The Primary English Class," which she starred in at the Circle in the Square in 1976.

I will always be in the second half of the 20th Century until the day I die.