Amanda Dobbins

So good, so good, so good.

Sean Fennessy

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Amanda Dobbins

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Sean Fennessy

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Amanda Dobbins

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Sean Fennessy

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Amanda Dobbins

I'm Amanda Dobbins and this is the

Sean Fennessy

Big Picture 8 conversation show. About Diane Keaton. Today on the show, we are building a hall of fame for Diane Keaton, one of the great actresses to emerge from the new Hollywood who had a film career that lasted more than half a century and includes several of the greatest American films ever made. We will dive right into some movie news and her entire career right after this. This episode of the Big Picture is presented by Amazon Prime. One of the best things about streaming is that you never just pick a title, you pick a feeling. And prime makes that easy. With great entertainment and fast shipping that brings the moment to life. Prime helps you experience the feeling you're craving. Shows you can't wait for and deliveries you don't wait for. One click away from streaming to fast shipping. It's on Prime. Okay, Dobbins, since you're dressed like Diane Keaton, this is your episode. And so it's fitting that we discuss the Minions before we talk about it.

Amanda Dobbins

Dumping all the responsibility on me. That's fine. I'm ready to offer a qualified defense. So of the box office performance of the 8th, 12th, 49th installment of a franchise, I think it's the 7th that I'm spiritually but not financially or professionally connected to in any way.

Sean Fennessy

Minions and Monsters opened over the fourth weekend. How was your July 4th weekend?

Amanda Dobbins

It was great. And it was filled with things that were not going to the movies, which is, I think, an issue for many Americans. I went to several parties, thanks to everyone. I didn't host any. I went to many parks. I watched many soccer games. I didn't attend the local Cineplex. So nor did anyone else.

Sean Fennessy

Nor did I. And if I'm not going to the movies, that's a bad sign. I think there's a lot of variety of factors, but yeah, Minions and Monsters came in five day cumulative $61.4 million. That's the lowest in the franchise's history. Only $36.4 million over the three day period. We didn't review the movie. It was released last Wednesday. I guess maybe we'll have a Somewhat larger discussion of it later in the month. I will say, as a non Minions person, I found it very, very amusing that after years of being ignored by critics and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Minions and the Despicable Me franchise finally made a movie that is like a Where's Waldo? Full of movie references for nerds like us.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes.

Sean Fennessy

And they were roundly rejected by general audiences. There's something kind of delicious about that.

Amanda Dobbins

It's sad. Again, I do think the timing was spectacularly bad.

Sean Fennessy

It was. And two weeks after Toy Story 5 as well. Sure.

Amanda Dobbins

And. But the World cup got really good this weekend. You know, like we were all sitting there in front of on Saturday and Sunday night.

Sean Fennessy

The.

Amanda Dobbins

So some of it, I agree, is timing. And I guess even movie nerds did not want to abandon their Fourth of July holly plants. Don't forget Taylor Swift's wedding.

Sean Fennessy

Sure. That was another cultural event that captured

Amanda Dobbins

the imaginations of millions and many of the people who have spent the last two weeks. And let me say to everyone who sent me a Minions meme, including the young woman performing in Minionese at one of the premieres, including the interview with Pierre Coffin, talking about how Dua Lipa is a major part of Minions influence. And they even sing some Dua Lipa songs, I think, listen, I see you. I appreciate you. I felt seen. But even those people stopped sending me Minions memes and started sending me Taylor Swift guest list updates. So, you know, attentions were elsewhere.

Sean Fennessy

They didn't capture the cultural zeitgeist. Now, I have a question for you about this.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes.

Sean Fennessy

We have been discussing over the last 612 months about how all of these historical franchises from the 21st century are starting to fall away in the consciousness. Now, the Minions. There haven't been as many Minions movies as Jurassic movies or as Marvel movies.

Amanda Dobbins

Right.

Sean Fennessy

But this is the seventh one. Like, is this also just a franchise getting long in the tooth?

Amanda Dobbins

I think yes. Though also you just put it up against dinosaurs and superheroes. So then tiny yellow Tic Tacs, they're

Sean Fennessy

like, hey, I'm not equating them in terms of stature, sure. But.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, that's good because they're quite small.

Sean Fennessy

But these are mega billion dollar franchise. This is a mega billion dollar franchise.

Amanda Dobbins

Absolutely. We are at the end of one generation and the dawn of another, which I think coincides pretty neatly with you and I are old and the next generation of people is rising and they don't care about the yellow Tic Tacs.

Sean Fennessy

Well, I wonder.

Amanda Dobbins

Or references to cinema or a Cameo by George Lucas.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, that's true. Well, that's. But again, that was for us. That wasn't for them. What does George Lucas even mean to 20 year olds who were seven when the first Minions movie came out? Or maybe even younger than that. That's part of it too, is sometimes the kids who are born on this stuff, they grow out of these franchises. I don't know. It's probably a lot of what you're describing though, which was that this was a very active and busy July 4th weekend for a lot of people. Not a lot of people went to the movies. You know what hung in there though? Disclosure Day with a very small drop of 27%, which I thought was interesting. I know that because I own Disclosure day in my movie fantasy league and picked up some extra points over the weekend by sticking around in the top five.

Amanda Dobbins

You also endured some like, live comment section coming at you. We both did at one of the many barbecues hosted by our friends. And that's fine.

Sean Fennessy

You know, a lot of stray shots. Stephen Spielberg, we love to talk about from people who are less talented than Steven Spielberg, but who do make movies. Very interesting experience.

Amanda Dobbins

I like a lot. They're great people, wonderful people, but they were just people. Love two podcasts.

Sean Fennessy

The Schadenfreude are running extremely deep.

Amanda Dobbins

I'm just trying to finish this canned Negroni.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. Let me just ask you one quick meta question, because I think Diane Keaton is one of the great meta stars in a lot of ways. Her Persona became her personality or her personality became her Persona or whatever. When you're at a social function and you're Amanda Dobbins of the Big Picture and myriad other podcasts.

Amanda Dobbins

Right.

Sean Fennessy

But let's just say for these purposes, the big picture.

Amanda Dobbins

Sure.

Sean Fennessy

And someone's like, I've got some movie takes for you. A friend, someone you care for.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Are you like, I will turn on podcast Persona.

Amanda Dobbins

No, no, no. I sit back and relax and I'm honestly like a little bit annoyed. A non movie example of this is that when Taylor Swift got married this weekend and the press release went out, do you know Tree Pain sent out a press release detailing certain specifics from the wedding?

Sean Fennessy

How cool is it that we all know who Taylor Swift's publicist is? Really, really cool.

Amanda Dobbins

Have gotten threatening emails from her before. So anyway, as it's, as it's happening and I'm, you know, logging onto the jam session doc and making my notes or whatever, and my beloved long suffering husband sitting next to me offers an opinion about he Thought that Friday was a weird day to get married. And I was pretty rude. I was like, I don't. I'm not working right now. I'm prepping, and I don't need your opinion. So for my loved ones, I'm pretty rude.

Sean Fennessy

Okay.

Amanda Dobbins

For everyone else. But that's really just Zach. I don't think I would do that to anyone else. And then I did apologize. Although I said, I think Friday. A wedding on Friday is the least weird part of this wedding.

Sean Fennessy

I can't disagree with that. I got to say.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Sometimes I really feel for Zach. It's just not nice.

Amanda Dobbins

I apologize. I. When I'm wrong, say that I'm wrong. And I said, I'm really sorry.

Sean Fennessy

Well, you were right. Yeah, you can be right about that opinion. But it's how you deliver your rightness. Right? That's the challenge.

Amanda Dobbins

And I was focused. You know, he, like, he came into my space. It was like the one time that he asked me to read a piece, to, like, pick which lead he wanted, and my hands went towards the keyboard, and there was just like an eh sound. And I was never allowed to edit anything again. Cause I went into his space. That's not allowed. So we gotta know the rules. But for someone I'm not married to, personally or professionally, I just let them talk. This happened recently where a bunch of people were talking about the drama at a party, and they weren't like they were new acquaintances. So I just sat back and let it go.

Sean Fennessy

Nothing to be gained there.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And just let them talk. And I was like, oh, really? Interesting.

Sean Fennessy

The worst version for me, and I say this with affection, is when everyone knows what I already think because they listened to an episode and then they just tell you they want to rebuttal. Even if they agree, they just want to rebut all the points, which, you know what? It's an occupational hazard of this wonderful profession of ours. All right, let's pivot away from this frivolous chit chat and let's get down to the real, real work, because this has been real work, what we've been doing to honor the great Diane King.

Amanda Dobbins

I don't think that we understood what we were taking on when we put this on the calendar.

Sean Fennessy

No. So Keaton passed away last fall, and we've taken some time to do this, and I think we both knew we wanted to do it. But I also knew that I had quite a few holes in terms of covering Diane Keaton's career. Because it's not just that it's been so long. And as we've talked about, folks like Robert Duvall and Robert Redford who've passed in the last year or so. I think I knew I had some blind spots with those actors, but I know with Diane Keaton that she has really not been. The films that she's been making have not been a primary focus of mine for the last 15 years. And I actually didn't realize quite how many of them there were. And yet despite that, despite having moved to like a kind of red box era where she's making a lot of films that are, if not direct to streaming or vod, feel like they are, I don't think she ever really lost status. Like, she never really got diminished in terms of her iconography and how celebrated she was. And so it seems like a pretty interesting threading of the needle there, where it's like, people like me are like, I don't know what palms is. I guess that's a movie. But I still.

Amanda Dobbins

Palms. Palms, yeah, not palms.

Sean Fennessy

These are palms. Poms. Or like pom poms, you know, I know she means a lot to you, but how have you thought about her this century? I guess.

Amanda Dobbins

No, I mean, you mentioned that she so quickly became Diane Keaton as a person and as a larger than life figure. And that is through all the work in the 70s and the 80s, but really Annie Hall. Right. And I mean, we can all see how I'm dressed and. But so there was something visual about the way that you thought of Diane Keaton, that she continued even through all the Red Box era and what, you know, she added on hats at some point and like the big glasses. But there was something that was still always aesthetically Diane Keaton, even if she was in a movie that you've never heard of with Richard Gere and William H. Macy and Susan Sarandon.

Sean Fennessy

Did you watch that one, Weddings and Other Disasters? Is that what that's called?

Amanda Dobbins

I don't remember. Or maybe it's big. Maybe I do. And Love and Other Disasters is the Jeremy Irons one.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, listen, this is the thing. And I volunteered to be Captain Redbox and I think I saw it all.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, well, we're gonna have plenty of time to talk about all of it.

Amanda Dobbins

So you're watching all of this, and it is virtually like those movies didn't happen in terms of cinema history. But she's still making her diet. You know, she has her mannerisms. She's very recognizable as a physical performer. And she played into the Diane Keaton of all of it all. There was, like, an aura maintenance that she did until the end of her life that I think helped.

Sean Fennessy

Do you think that you will eventually evolve toward hats and oversized glasses?

Amanda Dobbins

I thought about getting a hat last week, and I was going to. I was going to go for the something's got to give bucket hat. I do feel on, like, the spectrum of hats. Bucket hats are more where I'm bucket hat and baseball cap as opposed to, you know, bowler hat.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. But bowler hat would be a bold choice. Or, I mean, if you just walked in one day wearing a bowler hat with a cane.

Amanda Dobbins

I have to be honest. I do. I'm not, you know, I'm not a milliner, so I think that's what it's called.

Sean Fennessy

You're not a milliner.

Amanda Dobbins

But. So I don't know the terminology for the various. It wasn't a fedora that she gravitated towards. I did some of the 70s and 80s stuff that I revisited. I was just like, writing notes, like, full on style, just absolutely dynamite.

Sean Fennessy

One of the most influential fashion figures in film history, without question, but also very difficult to replicate. I say that with no disrespect to what you're attempting today, but she had a singularity that was.

Amanda Dobbins

This is an homage. No one can be Diane Keaton. Many have tried and failed spectacularly.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. It's interesting, too, because in the early stages of her career, she's obviously not dressing like Diane Keaton. So we'll talk about these first few films that she made. And she's just a strikingly beautiful woman. She's a beautiful actress.

Amanda Dobbins

Unreal.

Sean Fennessy

Who, I think, because of the influence that she made on the people who were making movies for her in the late 70s, started to build movies around her essence, which is something you might hear about Greta Garbo, but you don't hear as much now about modern movie stars where this sort of like, not just how they dressed off screen, but kind of what their personalities were. They're kind of that very particular je ne sais quoi that she had where people were like, how do I get who you really are into the movie?

Amanda Dobbins

Right, right. It's also a little bit because of the types of movies that she was making, but also the time period in which she was making them, which, you know, she starts in 1970 in films anyway, and is going through the women's lib movement, if you want to call it that.

Sean Fennessy

Sure, I will call it that.

Amanda Dobbins

I'm just like, we're not there yet. I just want to let you know,

Sean Fennessy

they Were liberated and now we're equal. You're free. And it's 50.

Amanda Dobbins

50 right now. On camera. Do you know whether we have an Equal Rights Amendment?

Sean Fennessy

We don't have one. Correct. Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay, good. You learned that since the last time I popped quizzed you. But so she is often playing.

Sean Fennessy

But I'm working on a new one.

Amanda Dobbins

Oh, good, thank you.

Sean Fennessy

It's called 75. 25. You get 25%.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay, good. But so she's often doing. Playing contemporary roles. I was thinking about her in terms of. In comparison to Meryl Streep, who is like kind of similar, a little bit younger, but in age range and coming up in a similar time period in a similar part of, you know, Hollywood history. And Meryl does a lot of period pieces. And Diane Keaton is sort of is reflecting more often than not what a woman or, you know, at least like the most beautiful, affluent, educated woman you've ever seen in your life was doing in the US or in New York City in 1975, 1980, 1987, et cetera. So you see people, the movies start being modeled around her, but her also navigating the world that she is surrounded by in interesting, if not always accurate ways.

Sean Fennessy

Well, it's a great comparison between the two of them, obviously. Not just because we just watched all of Meryl Streep's films for an episode earlier this year, but because Streep is best known for transformations, accent work, and for frequently playing real people. And as far as I could tell, across the 50 plus movies that Diane Keaton made, she only played a real person one time in her entire career. Just Louise Bryant in reds. I think that's right. Maybe there's one or two that I'm forgetting, but I don't think so. And you could say on the one hand, well, Diane Keaton was not as much of a transformational, transformationist actress. Right. On the other hand, it seemed like maybe filmmakers saw her as what you're describing, which is like a very contemporary, a modern woman, and that there was something kind of not very Iron lady about Diane Keaton. And so why would you cast her in a movie like that? Doesn't seem like she was drawn to those parts either, if you read interviews with her. And so even though those two actresses kind of more or less kind of, you know, Diane Keaton starts before Meryl Streep, but they kind of are a similar stature through the, through the early 90s, I would say. And then things start to shift where Meryl becomes kind of the goddess of Dramatic film. And Diane Keaton is still very active and working, but maybe doesn't hold the same, I don't know, sort of like gravitas among critics and the academy. But I liked that going through especially that stretch, like all the way through 95 or 96, where it was like, this isn't just some dopey biopic of a person that you could just read the Wikipedia of. Like, sometimes the movies weren't good, but I was watching the Good Mother and I was like, oh, what's happening here? This is a weird movie. That's interesting that you chose to do this. And so you think that her career is like only these totemic major American movies. And a lot of them are for the first 15 years, but then she's kind of in the wilderness of creativity where she's just relying upon writers and filmmakers to generate something for her that she can fit into. So she's a very present figure in my life as a movie watcher. My wife's favorite director is Woody Allen or Woody Allen and Hitchcock really. But she always has. She had Woody Allen movies on, I remember, for the first 20 years of our relationship. And so I've seen a lot of these movies over and over again just like in proximity to Eileen Cooking Dinner. And, you know, she's a major icon for Eileen too. And so she's a little bit like wallpaper to me as a person. I mean that with no disrespect, but like, she was just kind of always around in our life and it was interesting to kind of try to pull myself out of that wallpaper feeling. And I know she's a huge actress for you. And, you know, we talked about Something's Gotta Give last year with 25 for 25. So I kind of had to like, reset my brain on who she is, you know what I'm saying?

Amanda Dobbins

In a similar way, to the extent that, you know, because she is Woody Allen's foil in so many of their movies together and she's kind of like the stand in for Woody Allen. And then she moves on, but keeps doing romantic comedies or, you know, comedies about people and relationships and talking and not character work, not stunts that. And then she leads into the next generation or two of romantic comedies or at least, you know, movies starring women talking about feelings so that she. That is the lens and that's how I know her as well. Even though, again, I was really startled to see her filmography post 2015. But so same where she's just kind of always existed. And I guess that's another way in which Meryl kind of looms large because they're from the same generation. And Meryl is, you know, has always been like the woman from the Iron lady or some version of it. And Diane Keaton has always been like this slightly neurotic and daffy, but always capable, like, aspirational woman in, like, in a. In a comedy or just in a normal movie. In a. In a movie about people.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

She.

Sean Fennessy

She frequently plays middle class or upper middle class people, too. She doesn't play, like, she's not playing a hobo in Ironweed opposite Jack Nicholson. You know what I mean? When she goes opposite Jack Nicholson, he's playing Eugene o'. Neill. So it's an interesting kind of Persona that she crafted for herself. She's from Los Angeles. She was born in 1946. She was raised in, I think, Santa Ana mostly. Her mother was Mrs. Highland park, something she talks about frequently in interviews. She studied at Santa Ana and Orange Coast College. And then she studied at Neighborhood Playhouse under Sandy Misner. And that hugely informed the kind of actress that she was. And she talks about this all the time, about being an actor of reactivity, of looking what the other person is giving you while performing and bouncing off of that. And so that's an interesting thing. Cause a lot of actors who use the Meisner method and work that way oftentimes are only as good as their scene partners. And so in some of her films, you can feel her, like, not being as alive as you want her to be. Cause she's like, maybe I'm not having a good time making this movie. And then other times, well, this is the most electrifying scene in movie history that I'm watching right here. So it's an interesting thing. She did start on the stage. She was in the first production of hair in 1968. She was effectively in the chorus. She was like a vocal performer. And she talked in many interviews about how she was like, I liked these songs. I didn't really know what was going on. But then one year later, she gets cast in a Broadway production of Play It Against Sam, which was eventually adapted into a film. And she was cast opposite Woody Allen. And that's where they met and started working together and created this very long partnership. And he is the most significant creative collaborator. They've made eight movies together over the years.

Amanda Dobbins

Who's number two?

Sean Fennessy

Number two is Nancy Meyers, of course. She wrote three films for her and directed one. Would have liked her to direct one more with I Could have Gone Looking. Going through the filmography, I was like, I could have gone for one more Nancy and Diane movie.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. You know, but then again, instead of the Nancy, instead of Diane, she just used Meryl. Yeah. Which I like. I really like it too. Meryl's obviously not the problem in that film. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. There are problems. And then, of course, she made three movies with Francis Ford Coppola.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Three Godfather films. And I don't think she recurred with any other directors. Is that possible? Maybe the Book Club director was this. Did the same fellow direct both Book Club movies?

Amanda Dobbins

I am Googling Book Club 2 right now, which I saw in theaters. So I come by this honestly, but yes. Yes. Congratulations to Bill Holderman, who directed Book Club and Book Club.

Sean Fennessy

That's right.

Amanda Dobbins

The Next Chapter. Of course, she.

Sean Fennessy

Of course. Yeah. She notably did not work with many of the hallowed new Hollywood figures. Never made a movie with Scorsese, Never made a movie with Altman, Never made a movie with Friedkin. She almost made a movie with Spielberg that fell apart, though. They have a very interesting connection that I'm not sure if you're aware of. No Kubrick, no Polanski, no Milos Forman. She didn't work with any of those directors. And I wonder if it's because a lot of those people often made movies not set in the modern times. Yeah. And that she was a very modern woman and they didn't necessarily fit into the kinds of films that they were working on. Okay. What defines her as a star? We talked about her Persona and her style.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

What else do you think makes a Diane Keaton performance?

Amanda Dobbins

Well, so when she. At the Oscars this year, when in the End Memoriam segment, it was, I believe, Rachel McAdams who introduced her. And she was referenced over and over as a comedian, which I think she was first and foremost and probably the most celebrated and respected of her generation in terms of people like, who did comedy. But the way that she did comedy is what made her so special because she understood that comedy is just another vessel to, you know, another way to emotions. And so she is sort of playing things for laughs. But I wouldn't say that she knows that she's funny, but what she is doing is she is processing emotions through absurdity and comedy, which many people, including myself, do, as opposed to, you know, through tears and wailing and beating your chest and closing yourself off from the world. So she does plenty of drama and is very good in a lot of it. But most of her comedy roles also have a lot of drama in them. And I think that they are what she is remembered for. When we think of the way that Diane Keaton acts is just like a. A pathos in being funny that opens it up to everybody.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. I think she has become a bit underrated as a dramatic actress because so much of her iconography is indebted to those comedy roles. And also because you pointed this out to me and this was a really good note, that she's so similar to De Niro in that De Niro has made a lot of movies in the last 20 years where you're like, robert

Amanda Dobbins

De Niro made this movie, including a movie with her. Did you watch that one?

Sean Fennessy

I certainly did not. Okay. And. But we're willing to forgive those movies. We don't really think too hard about those movies. We're like, yeah, but he made the Deer Hunter. Like, it's okay. And for her, it's very similar where it's like she made Annie hall or she made Manhattan or she made on down the list that we'll talk about. But going back and either rewatching or watching for the first time some of the more dramatic films that she made, I think maybe because some of those movies in the 80s didn't really work. They weren't financially successful. And she was also kind of pivoting her career a little bit where she starts directing more. Eventually she has a family. She starts making some of those choices. And you can see her kind of not getting the respect. Also, she's a woman who's just getting older in Hollywood, so maybe doesn't have as many opportunities. Or maybe she's being. She's going up against the Meryl Streeps and the Jessica Langs and the Sissy SpaceX and all of her contemporaries who are maybe considered more heavyweight dramatic actresses. But I loved a lot of the stuff she does in the late 70s and early 80s. I think she's really, really good in that. In some of that. More steely material, too.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. But she's the big exception for me is Reds, which she's just like, electric and perfectly balanced against Warren Beatty and then against Jack Nicholson. And it's kind of the fulcrum between the two. And there are no laughs in that. That is just straight up. That is, we're saving the world and saving each other in an Ernest, dare I say, Boomer sort. Love Reds.

Sean Fennessy

Were you laughing a lot during looking for Mr. Goodbar?

Amanda Dobbins

No. But at the end, you're like, what the hell is happening here?

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

No spoilers, you know, so there. But there Is something. There is something surprising and naturalistic about that performance that, you know, in reds, she's like, wearing a corset, you know, and she's very good at it.

Sean Fennessy

God bless.

Amanda Dobbins

You ever worn a corset?

Sean Fennessy

What do you think?

Amanda Dobbins

I don't know. I thought maybe for your back, like, you know, I've worn a brace. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Does that count?

Amanda Dobbins

You're pretty close.

Sean Fennessy

I've never been, you know, stitched in, tied in. Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

That's not something. I also don't have many people helping dress me every day. Do you have that?

Amanda Dobbins

I don't. I actually. I don't really like it when people, like. I don't like having my hair played with. I don't really like being fussed with in any way, but I do.

Sean Fennessy

Interesting.

Amanda Dobbins

We share that after a C section, they recommend that you wear a bracelet to, like, support.

Sean Fennessy

No kidding?

Amanda Dobbins

Well, yeah, because things are, like, a little loosey goosey. And I did sometimes have Zach or like, a doula, like, pull it tight. So I've had that experience.

Sean Fennessy

Must be nice. Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

No, it really hurts because I just had surgery. It's fine.

Sean Fennessy

Great. Speaking of loosey goosey, one thing I also noticed in reading some interviews with her is that she was very. Didn't think she was a very good improviser and didn't like to improvise, but she did like to be what she called loose with the script. Which means one of the great things about her as a performer is she has a very particular series of vocal affectations where she gets kind of, like, startled in the middle of a sentence or stammers or. You mentioned crying. She could just, like, hit a tear note and then pivot back to seriousness very quickly. And she had a real dexterity with her own emotions and her own, like, even, like, patternistic phrasing within a script. And she talks about this a lot in a lot of interviews about working with Nancy Meyers, who's a very, very rigorous writer, who's very Preston Sturgis, where it's like it's every word matters. And she talked about the push pull of trying to do her thing inside of someone's more tightly woven corset of language.

Amanda Dobbins

You know, it's the Fincher Sorkin, the people coming. You know, the skills coming against each other is what makes it better, which is great. I think she also does that in terms of just behaviors. On my rewatches and even a couple movies I saw for the first time, there are things that she does on screen. The most famous one that I only noticed because Nancy Meyers Instagrammed about it once was in Baby Boom when she picks up the baby at the airport and then gets out of the car and she holds the baby under her arm like a sack of potatoes. And Nancy Meyers said that was not in the script. That was not something that like Diane Keaton just instinctively knew that that would both be really funny and communicate something about the character. But there were other.

Sean Fennessy

Not the safest thing I've ever heard.

Amanda Dobbins

I mean did. That's the point. She just inherited a baby out of nowhere. So. And you know, she's a high flying management consultant or something.

Sean Fennessy

Absolutely.

Amanda Dobbins

Sure. Like we all were in the late 80s. There's another scene in the. What's the mel gibson movie?

Sean Fennessy

Mrs. Soffle.

Amanda Dobbins

Mrs. Saffle. When spoiler alert. At some point she has reason to part with a ring. And the way that she decides just to get the ring, like there's. It's not planned, you know, maybe it's written in the script that she gets rid of her ring. But you can imagine anyone else doing it like this very like symbolic, you know, like now is the moment has come when I'm. And she just like tosses it off to the side in a perfect, perfect Diane Keaton way. So she like as you said, and some of it's the Meisner method, but the. She's in the moment and doing her thing.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, I think charisma is an overused word for movie stars, but she also has a thing where, you know, she fell in love with many of her co stars. She really, like a lot of filmmakers, became ensourceful by her. She has like, she just has something

Amanda Dobbins

we use a lot for men, but not that often for women, which I think, I think it's completely accurate here. But she did kind of have that thing in an era of movies, you know, not that movies have caught up, but where like everyone else in this league, in this era was a man, except for Meryl Streep. And she just, she had something that brought them all in and made everyone want to look at her.

Sean Fennessy

One thing that I noticed going through some of the films too is that, you know, all the way throughout her career she's frequently playing the wife or the girlfriend. You know, in some of the best movies of all time, she's stuck with those roles and in some bad movies she's stuck with those roles. But it does feel like Woody Allen in particular was inspired to just write better parts for her because he's kind of casting her like in Love and Death. She's just like the girlfriend, you know, she's very funny in that movie, but she doesn't have, like, a deep reservoir of complexity. She's just the hot girl that he really wants to be married to. And you can feel him, like, almost challenging himself because he's inspired by her. Because she is such a unique person, a singular personality, that I think because he writes parts that improve her screen Persona, she then gets to do more challenging things over time, too. Like, she gets to kind of transform into the woman who can dress like that confidently on screen, and that's also unique. And we can talk about the complicated legacy of these Woody Allen movies, too. I think we probably have to. Yeah. Because she's someone who, like, stood by him through everything. She always, till her last days, was like, he was a very special person to me. He gave me extraordinary. I was in love with him. He gave me extraordinary chances. And obviously, talking about Woody now is much more complicated than it was some years ago. Okay. The other thing I wanted to point out about her before we go through the list is that she was a film director.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

She directed many movies. She directed music videos. She directed some stuff I did not realize she directed. And that's also unlike the female stars of her era. I was looking at the real kind of rock solid female movie stars of the 1970s. Streep, Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn, Ellen Burstyn, Ally McGraw, Raquel Welch, Pam Grier, Susan Sarandon, Vanessa Redgrave, Glenda Jackson, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek. None of these people directed movies. And maybe they wanted to, and they weren't given the opportunity. That's certainly possible, but Diane Keaton.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

She directed a documentary about the afterlife called Heaven, which is fascinating. She directed two Belinda Carlisle videos. She directed an episode of Twin Peaks.

Amanda Dobbins

Excuse me, you just you yada yada' ed Heaven as a place on earth.

Sean Fennessy

Wonderful song and video. I've got nothing against it. She directed a very strange episode of Twin Peaks in season two, when things are kind of going off the rails. But when you watch Heaven, that documentary, which the DP of that movie is Frederick Elms, who was David Lynch's DP in the 1980s on a lot of stuff. And it's a very David lynch documentary. And then she made this TV movie called Wildflower, which is the first known performance, as far as I can tell, of Reese Witherspoon on screen.

Amanda Dobbins

Yep.

Sean Fennessy

It's also shot by a Polish cinematographer named Janusz Kaminski. Heard of him in 1992, when Steven Spielberg was getting ready to make Schindler's List, he was looking to work with a new cinematographer, someone who understood that part of the world. And he called Diane Keaton and said, who did you work with on Wildflower? Which I saw on the Lifetime network and really liked. And she said, Janusz Kaminski gave him his phone number. And Spielberg has made movies with Kaminsky ever since.

Amanda Dobbins

Incredible. That's an amazing data point.

Sean Fennessy

I'm really good.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

It's just a fascinating thing. So, like, as a filmmaker, she has great influence on cinema history.

Amanda Dobbins

So are you aware of her late in life, like, interior design, Pinterest? A little bit.

Sean Fennessy

Only through permission.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. And, you know, like, I have the interior design book. But she's clearly a very visual person. Right. Like, and it's clearly very exacting in terms of how she sees the world, what speaks to her, how you put things together. And, you know, film is a visual medium, so it makes sense to me in that way that she's always been drawn to arranging things just so. And then the other thing is that she had kids much later in her life, which I would just, you know, you mentioned everybody else. I think that it is probably easier to direct films if you're not in charge of having small children.

Sean Fennessy

And it's after Baby Boom, when she's sort of like, she realizes in the early 90s that she wants to have a family. She doesn't really think she wanted to have a family before that, right?

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, I think so. But I think she adopted, like, in her first. I believe so. You know, that's how it goes.

Sean Fennessy

She's a real one about that, too. She's like, it's the hardest thing in the world, raising children. If you read an interview, she's very frank about that. And, you know, after that film Wildflower, which was a TV movie, she did go on to direct two more feature films that were released on Strong Heroes and Hanging Up. So, yeah, I mean, four Academy Award nominations. She, of course, won Best Actress for Annie Hall. I could find a couple of places where she should have gotten more throughout her career. Many, many Golden Globe nominations. You know, what I didn't see was Amelia Earhart. The Final Flight, where she played Amelia Earhart. Did you watch that?

Amanda Dobbins

I didn't, because that wasn't in the Red. That's a TV movie. There's also. There was another TV movie late in her career that was only released in the uk, so I didn't make it to that.

Sean Fennessy

What was it called?

Amanda Dobbins

Arthur's Whiskey.

Sean Fennessy

Oh, yeah. It is streaming.

Amanda Dobbins

It is streaming. Okay, well, I'm sorry I didn't get there, but otherwise, I think I got to most of the. Almost all of it.

Sean Fennessy

I counted 57 feature films and she had two, four, six, seven TV films. The TV films, some of the things that she made are not available. That's the other thing I'm looking at. Sister Mary explains it all, for example. I couldn't find that one. A couple things are just not streaming. And when I make a big show about physical media and whatnot, this is a little bit of what I'm talking about. Great actors work not available in the world. Anything you want to say before we start going through the filmography now?

Amanda Dobbins

I'm excited. I'm nervous. What are your preconceived notions right now of what do you think it's going to be in it?

Sean Fennessy

I didn't do this. I didn't pre haul. I try to not pre haul.

Amanda Dobbins

I don't either.

Sean Fennessy

I don't know what your relationship is to the Woody movies. Annie hall is a forever movie, automatic, whatever. So that goes in no matter what. But the other ones, you could make the case that these are the most important movies of her career. You can make the case that they're not aging well.

Amanda Dobbins

Sure, yeah. But you can't also. Well, you can't put eight movies by one director in a whole movie.

Sean Fennessy

I think it's a question of how many do you want to put in. Right? Like, is it 2? Is it 4? Is it. I don't know. We're going to find out. So let's begin.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

After appearing in Played Against Sam, she gets cast in her first movie. It's called Love and Other Strangers.

Amanda Dobbins

Lovers and Other Strangers.

Sean Fennessy

Excuse me, Lovers and Other Strangers. It's. It's a romantic dramedy about a young couple and all of the crazy people and their family around them. It's probably best known for launching Richard Castellano, who she would soon co star with again in The Godfather 2. Years later, he was Academy Award nominated for this movie. She's got a solidly sized part. She's the sister of the lead. She is Bonnie Bedelia. Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

So first of all, Bonnie Bedelia, you waited too long to say that.

Sean Fennessy

So hot. But Listen, also, in 1970, she was so hot

Amanda Dobbins

and continued to be Diane Keaton. At that wedding, I found myself freeze Framing it, being like, I would like to look at this eyeshadow, and how can I? But she's so beautiful. She looks very cool. I mean, she's just not the major part of this.

Sean Fennessy

You can see that she already is pretty comfortable on screen. She has this kind of semi daffy, semi confident Persona, pretty much locked down from the first movie, which is really interesting. The movie itself is pretty forgettable, I think.

Amanda Dobbins

And also, she's. Again, this is a movie about two people. It's centered around weddings. So two people who are about to get married and then comparing and contrasting all the different relationships surrounding them. And so she is the married, but wants a divorce because her husband didn't remember her birthday. You know, like, dissatisfied. It's 1970. You know, the women's lib. Exactly.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

Second wave. Here we go.

Sean Fennessy

That's gonna be a red. I would say.

Amanda Dobbins

I agree.

Sean Fennessy

And that takes us right to the Godfather.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

1972.

Amanda Dobbins

So Godfather, Godfather part two and Godfather part three.

Sean Fennessy

You want to talk about all of them right now?

Amanda Dobbins

Well, I thought we could say none

Sean Fennessy

of them go in.

Amanda Dobbins

I thought that we could enact the Robert Duvall rule, which is that I believe one and two. And then Tracy also tried to put three in because he made the wise decision to not be in three.

Sean Fennessy

Yes. Which I thought was entertaining. Diane Keaton did not make that choice.

Amanda Dobbins

She didn't make that choice.

Sean Fennessy

She appeared in the film.

Amanda Dobbins

Not a big no person, as I understood it.

Sean Fennessy

Well, she had weak spots. You know, I think she was very. And she talked about working with Coppola and the difference between working with Coppola and other filmmakers and what she was able to get away with with other filmmakers. And that Coppola was an extremely formal filmmaker and his sets were very formal and controlled. And the Godfather movies and horror are so interesting to talk about. Long running, bit unrewatchable is about how Bill thinks it's changed over time.

Amanda Dobbins

So for a while, I remember, because I'm kind of team Bill on this. Okay.

Sean Fennessy

It's a terrible take.

Amanda Dobbins

No, no, no. So he thinks that Kay doesn't make sense as a character. I think, and I'm supporting this by my friend Meg Spillane and the entire Spillane family that Keaton is miscast as this. Now, I'm not saying we can't put it in the hall of fame.

Sean Fennessy

I find this to be terrible. I find what Bill said to be terrible. I said find what you said to be. She is. She is the perspectival character. She is the outsider brought into this world.

Amanda Dobbins

I understand that.

Sean Fennessy

A waspy person introduced into the Sicilian way of living in this crime family. And she is her fluster and frustration and her being, you know, Set aside at critical moments in the story is so key to unlock if she's not in the movie, if a character like that is not in the movie, played by someone like her.

Amanda Dobbins

So the character is essential. The. The ca. I just do not believe that Diane Keaton, for all of her fluster and daftiness and, you know, I don't know what's going on. Is that that clueless or that weak of a person. And. And. And Keaton doesn't play it as someone who's being weak on purpose. Like, Keaton does not play it as a. I'm pretending not to see what I know is happening.

Sean Fennessy

So.

Amanda Dobbins

And the movie is organized. Her around Michael closing the door and her being like, oh, my God, can I believe this?

Sean Fennessy

Well, yeah, I can't.

Amanda Dobbins

Cause you're Diane Keaton. You know, what's up? And so that's.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, that's you bringing it to the movie. X post facto. This is her second film. She did not have a confirmed screen presence at this time. So you have to consider the contemporaneous release of the movie and what we think about her when we watch the movie. And when we're watching this movie, in all likelihood, unless you saw her on Broadway or in Hair, you were like,

Amanda Dobbins

you just think she's a raspy girl.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. So to me, that makes sense in retrospect. And we can have retrospective opinions all the time. We do it regularly.

Amanda Dobbins

Oh, it's an abortion, Michael. An abortion. That's. But the scene when she can't see them in the kitchen, and Godfather 2, she's lights out. Amazing. And that's why Godfather 2 is so good.

Sean Fennessy

If you wanted to make the case to me that the Godfather should not go in, but The Godfather Part 2 should go in. To me, it was an abortion, Michael scene is amazing now. It's amazing because it is like it's surfacing. Finally. The thing that you're thinking while you're watching Godfather 1, in Godfather 1, you're like, this girl can't be this stupid. She has to get out of here immediately.

Amanda Dobbins

It's not this. I want to be clear. Love and respect bill Simmons. Number 16, Limitless, Number 1, Devil Wears Prada. On this matter, it is not the character. It is not the script. It is not Diane Keaton, the person who I love and admire. It is that I think Diane Keaton does not fit the role.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, we're going to yellow the Godfather, which is the funniest thing you could ever do in a Hall of fame conversation.

Amanda Dobbins

You're going to Agree in the Godfather too then. But that's fine if you want to like build up the tension.

Sean Fennessy

Where do you stand on plate again, Sam? 1972, same year.

Amanda Dobbins

I had never seen it till this last week and this was the one where I was suddenly just like googling, you know, double breasted blazers. Here we are. I already had this.

Sean Fennessy

She's already digging into her style and she looks.

Amanda Dobbins

But it's also, it's not costumey yet. She is just dressed to the nines and looks awesome. I liked it. I mean, I too love the film Casablanca and, you know, base my life on it. And were it the 60s and I had the opportunity to write a play and then make a movie that's like making me into Casablanca. Sure. Great way to spend my time. I don't know if it needs to go in.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, it's an interesting question. So it's the rare movie starring Woody Allen, not directed by Woody Allen. Herbert Ross directed the movie. It is based on Woody's play that he co starred with Keaton with three years earlier. It's a very nicely made movie. Owen Roisman shot it. It has all of this kind of interesting framing because Humphrey Bogart, not played by Humphrey Bogart, plays this kind of angel on the shoulder of the Woody Allen character who's a film critic who is recently divorced and is being encouraged to start dating again by Humphrey Bogart and also his friend's wife. If we put it in, it would be about like, this is the union point of Alan and Keaton. It's a good movie. I don't know if it's a great film.

Amanda Dobbins

Right. But it's the play that brought them together anyway, so we're a kind of couple steps. You can yellow it, but I don't

Sean Fennessy

think we'll yellow play it against you. Okay. 1973 sleeper.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes.

Sean Fennessy

Now, one of my mom's favorite movies at the time, I think considered a revelation. One of the early Woody Allen movies, sci fi spoof satire in which he's cryogenically frozen and awoken many, many hundreds, thousands of years later, only to discover an absurd society in which he is operating as a robot to survive Diane Keaton. This is where I'm like, he's just writing a part for the girl that he thinks is pretty and funny and not writing for the great Titanic actress Diane Keaton. I think this movie holds high esteem amongst people who were alive when it came out. But it was never one of my movies for Woody and I love many of Woody's movies and I think that's

Amanda Dobbins

beautiful for the people that were alive when it came out.

Sean Fennessy

So we're just gonna. Red sleeper.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, do you want to yell at again? Listen, it was your mom's. It's, you know.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, I'm not gonna.

Amanda Dobbins

We don't need to be rude.

Sean Fennessy

No, she's not making this list. This is our list. This is our hall of fame. It's just that there are other Woody movies that I would want to fight for, so I would just. Red sleeper.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay. Godfather Part two, green.

Sean Fennessy

I agree. Godfather Part two is green.

Amanda Dobbins

Would you like to see?

Sean Fennessy

It was an abortion, Michael. Let me just tell you something about that. I read all about it. Keaton and Pacino were madly in love with each other multiple times over their lives.

Amanda Dobbins

I know.

Sean Fennessy

They got together, they broke up. They got together, they broke up. They've both called each other the loves of their lives. That scene in particular, they completely ripped up the day that they were shooting it. I think she said they shot it for like, eight hours. That it took a lot of rehearsal to figure out how they wanted to do it. Most of it is Pacino entering psycho silent mode, where that image of him with his eyes widening and the camera holds on him a lot while she's giving her performance and explaining what happened to their child, I think is great, and I've always thought was great. But the thing is, is that the Godfather, you gotta remember, is a pot boiler. It's like melodramatic material.

Amanda Dobbins

I don't have a problem with the scripts.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. All right.

Amanda Dobbins

And I. You know, abortion is a weird word to yell just phonetically, you know, so I understand that, but it was an abortion. Okay?

Sean Fennessy

Women's Lib is about being able to say that word out loud. So get on board, because I'm here to liberate. All right.

Amanda Dobbins

I don't think in 74 it was. I think that was before it got turned on and then turned off again.

Sean Fennessy

Who turned it off? 1975. Love and death.

Amanda Dobbins

It's not funny, but I liked Ikea and I laughed my pain.

Sean Fennessy

But do you think love and death is funny?

Amanda Dobbins

This is the Russian one.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, I think it's funny. I don't think it needs to go into the hall of Fame, but I think it's funny.

Sean Fennessy

That's interesting.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay. Do you want to put it in?

Sean Fennessy

Well, this is sort of what I'm talking about with the Woody thing. So Woody is at the beginning of his career. He's kind of riffing on genres, right? He's like, oh, I really like Casablanca and Bogart movies. I really like Sci fi. I really like.

Amanda Dobbins

He and Bob Rushton are doing the same thing at the same time in different ways now.

Sean Fennessy

Woody eventually evolves out of this approach. He starts doing other stuff. He continues to be inspired by Bergman and Fellini, but everything gets a little bit more high minded. And then he settles into his own style of just like people in apartments in New York. Yeah, this is. I guess this is kind of one of his last, I guess, like MAD magazine style movies where he is at the center of one of several Russian novels. Slash Russian plays.

Amanda Dobbins

What is your favorite Russian novel?

Sean Fennessy

I mean, I've read Crime and Punishment, if that's what you're asking.

Amanda Dobbins

I haven't.

Sean Fennessy

You know, I've read Brothers Karamazov. Both of those were in college. I haven't thought about them since.

Amanda Dobbins

Did you take a Russian's class?

Sean Fennessy

I read some Gogol.

Amanda Dobbins

Oh, nice. Okay.

Sean Fennessy

I did not take a Russian class. Russian lit class. I mean, it's very intimidating.

Amanda Dobbins

I agree. I've always found it sort of insurmountable. Except for Anna Karenina, which I famously have read and thought was quite good.

Sean Fennessy

I haven't read Anna Karenina. I would like to one day. I don't know. I mean, as a person who's very trapped by my own ethical quandaries, I think they're interesting. But it's a little late for me, I think, to start digging.

Amanda Dobbins

I know. I would like for it to happen for me, but I just. I don't know. I don't know when that's going to happen.

Sean Fennessy

I think Woody was at the ripe old age of 25.

Amanda Dobbins

I haven't watched season four of the Bear, so I'm just not going to get to the great Russian works.

Sean Fennessy

If that is really the Thunderdome for you, you're in a lot of trouble with a lot of things.

Amanda Dobbins

Or season five. What season is it?

Sean Fennessy

I don't know. It's season five now, I believe.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, I don't know if that's the last one. They yelled at each other at the restaurant at the end, you know. Forks Closed by Olivia Colman. I saw it. Okay.

Sean Fennessy

Thanks for weighing in on that. Love and Death. Yellow or red?

Amanda Dobbins

Yellow.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, thank you for yellowing it. We'll return to it. 1976. I will. I will. For now.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay. This is another one I had not seen.

Sean Fennessy

Nor had I. I didn't know this movie existed until we.

Amanda Dobbins

I didn't either.

Sean Fennessy

This is. You gotta consider. This is. After three Woody Allen movies and two Godfather films, she chooses to make this movie.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. But did you see Elliott Gould in this movie?

Sean Fennessy

Well, yeah. I mean, I suspect that's why she wanted to make it.

Amanda Dobbins

Sure.

Sean Fennessy

L equals a big star at this point. It's a marriage comedy about two people who are kind of going their separate ways in an attempt to salvage their marriage. They attempt an experimental approach to be a little bit more loose in their arrangement. Would you just say?

Amanda Dobbins

Sort of. But then there are also ground rules. Fascinating to watch after the invite. And it's, you know, very connected. There's a lot going on there.

Sean Fennessy

Absolutely. And this is the time of Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice and this kind of like evolving notions of post 68 free love and what is a modern relationship. But the tone of the movie and the filmmaking are pretty bad. Like, pretty dopey. Yes. And it's not very sophisticated. But they both have a lot of star power.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. And they do have chemistry, even though her character in particular. So this is 76 when it's released, but, you know, they go to sex. Sex therapy at some point and there are a lot of jokes at the expense of her prudishness. And she's uncomfortable. And it's not really quite as updated as some of her other characters will be or reflective of the times.

Sean Fennessy

But he's a premature ejaculator.

Amanda Dobbins

That is true.

Sean Fennessy

Which.

Amanda Dobbins

That was also an incredible moment for Zach to walk into the. To the room while I was watching it. He was just like, hey, what's going on here?

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

And he was like, is that Alia Gould talking About premature ejaculation?

Sean Fennessy

2 things to recommend this movie, which is absolutely red and is that there's no chance it's going in. And I didn't even watch this to Prepare for the 76 movie draft because I was just like, what is this? No one likes this movie. One, Paul Sorvino as the lawyer best friend who sings opera throughout the movie and is very entertaining. I really enjoyed him. Two, Victoria Principal on fire. Just very, very, very hot as the woman who lives in the building. Like the apartment next door. The movie itself, I think, is very forgettable and there's a reason why we had not seen it before. 1976. Again, Harry and Walter go to New York. Another film with Elliott Gould as well as James Caan and Michael in this movie.

Amanda Dobbins

Heard of them.

Sean Fennessy

A period drama set, I guess, turn of the 20th century, about two rapscallion criminals who help a famed thief rob a bank. Rob One of the most. What's it called when you can't break into something impenetrable. Impenetrable. I guess maybe that's not the word I'm thinking of. But Michael Caine plays the thief. Gould and Con play the. The low level criminal vaudevillian entertainers. And Diane Keaton plays a journalist.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

And this movie stinks. It's directed by Mark Rydell. Apparently it had a really good script by W.D. richter, who went on to write a lot of great movies. Directed a couple cool movies, too. But apparently that script was massacred. I think James Caan used to call this movie when he was still with us. Harry and Walter Take a Dump. Should tell you a little bit about its reputation.

Amanda Dobbins

Another shining example of women doing journalism in movies. Yeah. Which is just a very storied, very illustrious group of women setting an example for all of us.

Sean Fennessy

Do you think that's because men are comfortable empowering women in those roles, especially in films in the 1970s, because they think women are always asking annoying questions? Could be right. What other job would they be doing if they had to have a job? Okay, Harry and Walter. No, no. Out. 77. Annie Hall.

Amanda Dobbins

Yep. Green.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. I forgot how long it takes to get to Annie hall and Annie Hall.

Amanda Dobbins

Right. I mean, he's talking about himself for a while, but, you know, it's a Woody Allen movie.

Sean Fennessy

It's Alvy this and Alvy that for about 35 minutes. And then she shows up. And, you know, I wouldn't say that she's not. She's not doing the Diane Keaton Persona as much in this performance, if you know what I mean by that. Yeah, because she's a little bit of like a magic pixie dream girl. And the movie is very comic, but also played very straight. And, like, it's often about not just them coming together, but them coming apart.

Amanda Dobbins

Right.

Sean Fennessy

So it's kind of an interesting artifact because it informs everything that she does after this. But I wouldn't say it's like everything she does.

Amanda Dobbins

That's where it starts. And it's. So she. I mean, she has not. She doesn't have anything to play against yet in terms of Annie Hall. And I think for the rest of her life, she, you know, she wins an Oscar for this performance. Like, she is Annie Hall. You know, we're all wearing the ties and the vests, and so she. And we, the audience are watching her against this particular performance. But this. Yeah, this is a little more, you know, again, naturalistic. When they're sparring or when they're doing lobsters, there's. They're just kind of Doing it.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. It almost feels like documentary. It's like handheld camera and everything is. You know, he starts working with Gordon Willis and, like, these films take on this slightly more elevated artistic feeling. And her performance is terrific. And it's totally like. It's the birth of a major star. I just found it interesting how it's not quite as. It's not as dopey as the early stuff or as daffy as the later stuff. You know what I mean by that?

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. Well, it's. I mean, and to our point, about Woody Allen as her most important collaborator, which is absolutely true. And they're kind of finding their thing together in real time in this. And so I think he's creating a situation in which she is learning this whole new mode of performance and of comedy. And then again, you know, as time goes on, you start to iterate on it.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, I agree. Annie hall, easy one going in 1977, the same year she makes looking for Mr. Goodbar. Now, this is based on a very famous novel at the time about a young single woman who is a teacher who teaches disabled kids, blind kids, deaf kids, to learn how to read, write and speak. And she is interested in exploring her sexuality, let's just put it that way.

Amanda Dobbins

Once again, women's lips.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. And I commend her for pursuing these ideas on screen. This is a really unusual movie, and it has. Its reputation, has waxed and waned over the years. It's very bracing because of the ending that you talked about. And if you haven't seen it, maybe skip over this part.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. And also, I think because of, again, we all grow up with a different Diane Keaton and a different understanding of both sexual freedom and also what's safe to do in New York City at night, which, again, I'm laughing because I'm. You know, because it's messed up. So I think that it's a cultural artifact, this movie, like. And. And as much like, sociologically as it is in terms of, you know, the cinematography or her performance. But it's fascinating, and that it's Diane Keaton doing it really is essential in a way that I'm like, this should definitely be yellow and maybe it should be green.

Sean Fennessy

I think it's one of her great performances. The movie is kind of uneven. It was not seen for a very long time because it has an extraordinary soundtrack and there were a lot of music rights issues. And it's a great snapshot of this combination of disco and rock in New York because she's going to clubs all the time. The stuff that doesn't work for me is there's so much flashback material that's like, here's her trauma. This is a really unkind way of framing it, but it's kind of like this is why this woman appears to be a whore. It's kind of like really silly the way that it tries to psychologize a woman just wanting to have different kinds of romantic and sexual experiences. If you made a movie like that now, you wouldn't include any of that stuff. You'd just be like, this is a woman who's trying to figure her life out and who she's really interested in being with and spending time with. And it takes some really gnarly turns. But her performance in the movie is great and it is very different basically from anything else that she does. Can you think of another movie that is even a character that's in a similar vein to this one?

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, I'm scrolling through the Redbox era, but the answer is no. There were a couple late period ones where it's a little bluer than I expected, but not to this level.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, she's very.

Amanda Dobbins

Let's yellow it.

Sean Fennessy

Let's yellow it for now. I think we'll come back for a green personally, even though.

Amanda Dobbins

Do you want. Listen, make your calls, shoot your shot, you know.

Sean Fennessy

Well, we got a lot of stuff to get through 77 through 82. When she passed, I tweeted this. I was like, this is one of the great period. This is one of the great runs for an actor in Hollywood history. The films that they have in a row. So 78 is interiors, another Woody Allen film. Woody's like real foray into Bergman esque drama. Very straight laced movie about three sisters and their relationships and their dynamic, their relationship to their parents, to their significant others and to each other. Keaton plays a poet.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes.

Sean Fennessy

Who is the sort of. I think she's the eldest and she's sort of like the one to whom the others are compared.

Amanda Dobbins

She's not the narrator, but she's the stand in, as close as you can be to the observer because she's obvious she's a part of the family and is dealing with a lot of this stuff. But it's the other two sisters who are really the one other sister and the parents who are going through it. And so she's, you know, doing the reactivity thing. But she's like a little on the sidelines.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, yeah. And it's a much more somewhat muted performance. The movie is weird. It's like sometimes it's very quiet, and other times it's very hysterical. I like this movie. It is often considered one of Woody's masterpieces. It's not one of my favorites, though.

Amanda Dobbins

I like it. But I sort of have a soft spot for the Woody Allen movies that Woody's not in, so.

Sean Fennessy

Aha. Interesting. I'm more than happy to yellow it.

Amanda Dobbins

No, no. I don't think we're gonna have room for it, but I like it.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. All right. So red for interiors. 1979 Manhattan, I guess.

Amanda Dobbins

Do you have to? Do you have to?

Sean Fennessy

Well, let's talk about her in it.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. Okay.

Sean Fennessy

So the movie is obviously about the Woody Allen character going through this crisis of who should he be dating? And he's very attracted to this young girl, which is part of the reasons why this movie is both famous and infamous. Very celebrated at the time, a very big hit. One of the most gorgeously filmed movies of the 1970s. Keaton plays the wife of his very dear friend who's played by Michael Murphy. And they fall in love.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

And they begin an affair. And he thinks that he has kind of found this illicit love in his friend's wife. And there's a very wonderful scene where she tells him that she wants to go back to her husband that I think is, like, amongst her best performances. And he's very funny in the scene and doing Woody stuff. And she's not breaking. That's one of the great things about her as an actress is she never tries to get on his level comically. She's doing her own thing. She's not the reason to watch the movie. It's kind of a weird one for a Hall of Fame. It's a very legendary film that has been made complicated by contemporary history.

Amanda Dobbins

She is more central to the film than Meryl Streep, who was also in this movie. But we didn't put it in Meryl's hall of Fame, even though Meryl kind of walks away.

Sean Fennessy

She only has two scenes.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, but they're great. And she's a great counterweight. Everyone is perfectly cast in what it is. You know, I understand the problems with the film then and now. I mean, that's another interesting thing, because there are. I rewatched another when we get to it, I'll remember. I mean, you and Woody Allen, pretty weird about sex, even without all the other stuff that's going on. So you're watching it and you're like, is everything okay here?

Sean Fennessy

But this is the real. Like, the flag is waving, and you're like, what the Fuck.

Amanda Dobbins

But that's the point of the movie. And when it's contained to a film, you know, it's what makes it interesting. I know.

Sean Fennessy

We were just talking about a big movie that we just saw. And it's a little bit of a. Like when an artist tells you something, believe them thing, you know?

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, totally. I agree. I mean, I guess. I guess she's not that central to it.

Sean Fennessy

So I will say yellow. We're gonna have a lot of yellows that we're gonna have to come back to. Annie hall and The Godfather Part 2 seemed obvious, and I think this next one is very obvious as well. Reds, which is this mega film co written and directed and produced by Warren Beatty. It's his epic portrait of Jack Reed, the journalist who was there for 10 days that shook the world and the Bolshevik Revolution and this changing hopeful potential for socialism or even communism around the world or in the United States. And it's this kind of globe trotting historical piece. And she plays Louise Bryant, a writer, journalist at that time. And they have this kind of torrid epic. On again, off again. You're my forever person, but are you. Love affair.

Amanda Dobbins

But also, Jack Nicholson is over here playing Eugene o' Neill and absolutely. Just shredding apart everyone's life.

Sean Fennessy

One of the single greatest movie scenes.

Amanda Dobbins

If you were mine, I wouldn't. I mean, come on.

Sean Fennessy

I know. And she. You know, it's really interesting because she's dating Warren Beatty.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

You can almost feel the real person falling in love with Jack Nicholson in the scene.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Their performances are so good that they seem like not performances. And this is a very different kind of part for her. It's a real performance. It's not. She's not relying on any of her stuff either. But it's different from looking for Mr. Goodbar.

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, so much of it is in still shots of her reacting or just looking at the camera and feeling all the emotions and not spoken, which is not really what you associate with Diane Keaton or with the filmmakers she usually works with, you know, very dialogue, heavy gesturing and just been all over the place. But no, she's really emoting. And it's all you need in those scenes. Also lit beautifully.

Sean Fennessy

So it's an amazing film. One of the craziest things about this movie is that it did not win Best Picture and Beatty won for Best Director, but Chariots of Fire won Best Picture this year, which is they had

Amanda Dobbins

to run on the beach.

Sean Fennessy

Fucking weird that that happened. If you haven't seen Reds, I cannot recommend A movie.

Amanda Dobbins

More.

Sean Fennessy

It is a. A big, gigantic three hours quarterhouse of a movie. Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

Magical.

Sean Fennessy

But it's fantastic. So reds is green.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Had you seen Shoot the Moon?

Amanda Dobbins

I had not.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. So big one for us, I would say.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. This was tough. Tough. Sit. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

This is a movie. One of the harshest and most direct films about divorce. Diane Keaton and Albert Finney play a couple who have three children. Four children. Many children. Four children. Four children. And when we first meet the couple, Finney is a novelist and journalist who is about to be celebrated with a book award of some kind that is televised. Did you pick up on that? His children are able to watch. I'm not sure if they're airing book awards on television these days or if

Amanda Dobbins

they ever did, but the I Heart Podcast Awards.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, we gotta get those on NBC. And the movie is about. He's already having an affair and they're falling out of love. And I think their characters in the movie are basically at the period of life that we're at, which is the place where a lot of people end up getting divorced, which is when you have a lot of young kids and you're really stressed about your career and money and does my partner still care about me? And who am I in this world? And the movie's super duper frank about their feelings for each other, about what's pulling them away from each other. Albert Finney, I don't know if we're doing the Albert Finney hall of Fame anytime soon, but he's ferocious in this movie. She's tapping into something a little different. This is the first time where I felt like she wasn't a young ingenue in a movie. Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, some of it is just situational. You get some of that.

Sean Fennessy

You're a mom of four. And she's still. She's in her early 30s, I think when she makes this movie. Right. She's pretty young, but she's made to be playing older in a way.

Amanda Dobbins

Right. And she's also. I mean, she is a mother in the Godfather movies or chooses not to be. In the case of Godfather 2, that one time that was her choice, even though it wasn't legal.

Sean Fennessy

That's right.

Amanda Dobbins

Then or now. And depending on what state you're in, because what a special place.

Sean Fennessy

Jersey. Was she in Jersey?

Amanda Dobbins

I don't really know. I mean, they were in Cuba for all. No, it's Godfather too.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. These are fictional characters, but for the

Amanda Dobbins

most part, she's not playing people who are saddled with like a quote, unquote traditional American domestic life, but by which I mean, like a mother, two children.

Sean Fennessy

Yep.

Amanda Dobbins

And, you know, this is also, again, 70s, 80s, so that is more a. More quote, unquote, traditional portrayal in movies of what an American woman does. And. Yeah, so it feels different. This was tough for me. You know, it was one of those. It's not that it's bad or that she's bad. It was just uncomfortable.

Sean Fennessy

It's very bracing. If you're a cod. If you're a child of divorce. This movie was released the year I was born. I would say I didn't watch my dad do the things that he does that Albert Finney does in this movie to his kids. But there's a couple scenes that are really traumatic and really confrontational. I think the ending is kind of a mess and it kind of brought the whole movie down for me a bit. And I thought I had seen it, but maybe I hadn't seen it. I'm still trying to sort through. Maybe I saw, like, parts of it on cable when I was growing up, but not the whole thing. It's Bo Goldman's first script and he was kind of basing it on something that's interesting to look at. It comes out five years after looking for Mr. Goodbar. And it's kind of like a lot of these people that got together in the 70s and they were like, ah, we actually. We shouldn't be together.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

And we're creating hell on Earth because we did end up getting together and having kids.

Amanda Dobbins

Right. And also, everyone's gotten a lot less uptight about the legal ramifications of this.

Sean Fennessy

That's right. And this was at a time when. Yeah. There's just a ton of divorce happening in the United States. Good film.

Amanda Dobbins

Not going in.

Sean Fennessy

Two Globe nominations for Keaton and Oliver Finney. You don't think it's going in. You think.

Amanda Dobbins

You gotta yellow it.

Sean Fennessy

Okay.

Amanda Dobbins

You can yellow it.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. I think it's a good performance. What did you think of Peter Weller?

Amanda Dobbins

I spent the whole time trying to be like, what do I know Peter Weller from? And then, what do I know him from?

Sean Fennessy

Remind me. RoboCop.

Amanda Dobbins

No, there was something else besides RoboCop, but I was taken aback by that as well.

Sean Fennessy

1984, the Little Drummer Girl.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

I hadn't seen this.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, now you have. But you still haven't seen the TV series starring Florence Pugh, directed by Park Chan Wook.

Sean Fennessy

I haven't.

Amanda Dobbins

Have you read the novel? I haven't adapted from a John Lecrae novel.

Sean Fennessy

What A crazy movie.

Amanda Dobbins

So how much of that is just. This story seems real crazy. And how much of it seems is based on the execution of the themes and characters?

Sean Fennessy

I think the execution is like. It goes awry.

Amanda Dobbins

Sure does.

Sean Fennessy

I do think there's some real flaws in the design of the story.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

The movie is about an actress, an American actress living in London who has sympathy towards the Free Palestine movement in the dispute between Israel and Palestine. And she's very pro Palestine. She's going to rallies and speaking engagements where she's hearing more about this. And this is happening in a world where she's sort of being surveilled by I guess the idf, for lack of a better phrase. The Mossad.

Amanda Dobbins

The Mossad, I think.

Sean Fennessy

And she gets drawn into their plan to disarm and capture well known terrorist freedom fighter. However you want to describe this character by flipping her sympathies, but because it's known that she is a sympathizer to the movement, that she would be able to infiltrate that world. But it's very confusing because she's sort of being pressured into taking this role.

Amanda Dobbins

Right.

Sean Fennessy

Because why that part of the story never really lands. And it's an interesting performance for Dan Keane because she's playing an actress who has to keep giving these performances inside the movie. She's a very batty woman who's like looking for love. And she sort of falls in love with this Mossad agent who draws her into the scheme. But then she has to. It's a really weird movie.

Amanda Dobbins

So two catastrophic things happened in 1984. Number one, Diane Keaton got that perm. And number two, she was given the role of the little drummer girl, which if I thought she was miscast in Godfather, I mean, that's nothing. That's an. Agree to disagree.

Sean Fennessy

I really thought you were gonna say number three. I was born

Amanda Dobbins

according to who you talk to.

Sean Fennessy

Terrible haircut. She's definitely miscast.

Amanda Dobbins

She's just out of her. So, I mean, I am thrilled to have you trying to explain Little Drummer Girl.

Sean Fennessy

Did I get that right?

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, more or less.

Sean Fennessy

But it's a really strange story.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, it's just, you know, Lecrae writes like spycraft movies and this is about two competing spy agencies, or, you know, a spy agency and then the objects of their spying and they're using this young woman and her ideology, like, as a pawn. And it's about how, you know, like, is anyone. Right. Is anyone doing, you know, using any. Doing anything for quote, unquote good. Like, and. But it's about also her impressionability and the impressionability of young people and about how ideology can be so easy, easily manipulated, or can be malleable. And so, you know, when you have a very young Florence Pugh playing that or when it's in a novel, which also. I mean, that's the other thing. It's very hard to. It's a very baroque novel that gets. It's hard to be condensed into a film. But I think Diane Keaton is just not vulnerable or believable enough.

Sean Fennessy

I feel like she has the flightiness that you would need for someone who would kind of like the thing that I just don't understand. And maybe the Park Chan Wook adaptation will help me make more sense. I'm probably not going to read that novel at this point in my life now, having seen the movie. Pretty good, but seen the story pretty good.

Amanda Dobbins

You should. Absolutely. So you know who plays the agent who recruits her? The Israeli agent.

Sean Fennessy

Is it Alexander Skarsgrd? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Many people are saying he seems like he's in Mossad.

Amanda Dobbins

Daniel Craig was in Mossad in the movie.

Sean Fennessy

Exactly. Thank you for making my point. We keep doing this Hollywood. Anyhow, I think I just couldn't. Klaus Kinski is in this movie. I thought he was very, at least entertaining as the sort of chief Mossad strategist who's kind of forcing her to do this work, but not holding her against her will, but not blackmailing her. There's just something about the mind game that never really clicks correct in the film. And if that doesn't work, then the movie doesn't work.

Amanda Dobbins

That is the movie.

Sean Fennessy

There are times when I think her performance is interesting. I'm spending a lot of time on this because I'd never seen this movie before. So this is me unpacking it. But. But Eileen and I watched it together and we were just like, what?

Amanda Dobbins

Right. Yes.

Sean Fennessy

Why?

Amanda Dobbins

Well, but I'm sorry. Once you see the perm, you're just like, what?

Sean Fennessy

I know she makes a lot of bad choices. The movie, though the story, Le Carre's story does still have a tremendous amount of resonance, though, which is the sort of, like the sort of pointlessness of it all. You know, this sort of. You get to this feeling of like, no one can win. And there's. Why are we spending all of this time, pain and life toll on this conflict? Because no one will move one inch.

Amanda Dobbins

I recommend both the novel and the miniseries. I mean, that's the other thing where that's. I think it's six hours. Because, again, it's hard to consolidate something this intricate into a movie, and they didn't really succeed.

Sean Fennessy

I'm sorry to make you spend so much time on a red.

Amanda Dobbins

No, no, no. I mean, I'm excited to talk about it. The perm also applies to the second film in 1984, Mrs. Saffle, which she kept. Did you notice that she still has that perm?

Sean Fennessy

It didn't occur to me because I didn't watch them together, but that makes. That's a really good point. And that's not a contemporary. Contemporary haircut, as far as I can tell.

Amanda Dobbins

No, I mean, it's an 80s situation, for sure.

Sean Fennessy

By the way, Little Drummer Girl was directed by George Roy Hill. Yeah. You know, people were saying Just a Crazy Miss 1984, Mrs. Softel, directed by Gillian Armstrong, the Australian filmmaker. And this is a movie about a warden's wife who falls in love with a prisoner.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

And well.

Amanda Dobbins

But who is the prisoner played by.

Sean Fennessy

Is mel Gibson in 1985. Very, very handsome Mel Gibson.

Amanda Dobbins

Once again, it's like a. Before We Knew.

Sean Fennessy

Yep. She loves a problematic male co star and his brother, Matthew Modine, and they hatch a scheme to escape. And they do escape.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes.

Sean Fennessy

Interesting movie. Not ultimately successful, in my opinion. I think she also, again, just like Little Drummer Girl, this is a challenging part. Kind of sympathizing and believing and understanding this woman and again, making herself a person who's very vulnerable to the wiles of a dangerous man. And that's like two movies in the same year where she does that.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

And Shoot the Moon is a little bit of this, too. Shoot the Moon is a little bit of like, how did this man get me in this position where I have become a prisoner of my own life?

Amanda Dobbins

Right.

Sean Fennessy

And just thematically, I find that interesting because her career takes a different turn. You know, she pivots away from these kinds of parts and becomes more about her own independence. But in this period of time, she's kind of weirdly reflective of the Reagan, like homemaker Nancy Reagan. This is the vision of women after the 70s.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes. And also, I mean, again, the roles that are available to you that I think you're either. I'm thinking of what Meryl Streep does at this time where she's just like a bad mom or like a mom that failed in, like, 40 different time periods and 40 different iterations. And she and Diane Keaton, meanwhile, is just a woman who, you know, got done dirty by all the men around her. But weren't they handsome?

Sean Fennessy

They were Handsome. Mel Gibson's very hot in the movie.

Amanda Dobbins

You, like, really get it. And again, there are moments in this movie where I think all of the warden stuff and kind of the establishing, you know, reasons for her wanting to leave make sense, but are stodgy. And once again, you're like. You're Diane Keaton. Look at you. Why would you do this? Even with this perm.

Sean Fennessy

She's married to Edward Herman. Sure, he's a bit more boring for

Amanda Dobbins

her, who is also in reds with her. There's a lot of people keep popping up. But once she goes off with Mel Gibson and, like I said, she throws the ring away. And there are these moments of connection and really just chemistry between her and Mel Gibson where I was like, okay, I see what you wanted to do here. It's not going in.

Sean Fennessy

I'm glad I watched it. For the historical record, but it's red. 1986. Crimes of the Heart.

Amanda Dobbins

Now, this is our first Sam Shepard, but not our last.

Sean Fennessy

I didn't love this one.

Amanda Dobbins

I didn't either. This was a.

Sean Fennessy

Now, you're the Southerner here.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. Well, listen, this is just, you know, this is darker. Steel Magnolias, right?

Sean Fennessy

It is. I mean, it's very stagey. It's based on a play. I have a little bit of a Bruce Beresford. He's like a. He's like a. He's like black licorice for me, a little bit. I love Tender Mercy is the movie he made. But, like, you know, he made Driving Miss Daisy and Double Jeopardy and a lot of stuff that I really don't like. And this is, I thought, very saccharine and very overperformed. She plays one of three sisters. The other sisters are Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek. Obviously, all great actresses, but it's just a lot of post Tennessee Williams.

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, there was a whole raft of these in.

Sean Fennessy

The Fried Green Tomatoes was in this mix.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, there's some. Isn't there an Altman one where they all get back together at a diner, all the women. And it's just like a lot of Southern women come back for one weekend. And often Sam Shepard's there, which you can't complain about. And none of them leave the weekend truly fulfilled. But maybe they better understand each other.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. I'd love to know what Tracy Letts thinks about this play. Cause it was a Pulitzer Prize winner. Beth Henley's play. It's just not a very filmic movie. It doesn't really have a lot of style. And I'm not sure Diane Keaton screams Mississippi to me.

Amanda Dobbins

Just putting that out there. Yeah, it's a good thing.

Sean Fennessy

Jessica Lang, Sissy SpaceX, sure.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes, Mississippi. And she's doing her best with it, but she's also. She's tasked with doing Mississippi and like, sad outcast sister, you know, she's the loser sister.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, I guess they're all losers in their own way, but they're having some struggles. Yeah. She is the one who just stays at home taking care of people.

Sean Fennessy

So I would make this red.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, of course. Okay.

Sean Fennessy

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Amanda Dobbins

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Sean Fennessy

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Amanda Dobbins

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Sean Fennessy

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Amanda Dobbins

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Sean Fennessy

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Amanda Dobbins

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Sean Fennessy

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Amanda Dobbins

Get the Venmo debit card.

Sean Fennessy

Venmo stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. See terms at Venmo Me Stashterm. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank. NA 1987 shows a small cameo as a singer in radio days. A reunion with Woody Allen. That is not going in. That's red. 1987 baby boom.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes. Did you rewatch this?

Sean Fennessy

I didn't, but we did it on the Nancy Meyers episode, which I guess is almost five years ago, which is kind of crazy.

Amanda Dobbins

That's insane.

Sean Fennessy

But I like this movie. I think it also features, well, one. This is it, right? This is where it's the new Diane Keaton.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes, this is the. She's with Nancy and Charles Schreier, her. Her ex husband and her producing and writing and Directing partner for many years. This is so, you know, new new team kind of establishes her and. And I guess sets the template for all of the romantic comedies to come. And once again, Sam Shepard is here. The story is that she is yuppie in New York and, you know, career focused and then inherits a baby like you do. And she gets elbowed out of her job because they don't support working mothers. Like to thank everyone here in this room and at home for supporting working mothers.

Sean Fennessy

That's right, I do.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. You guys are allies. Thank you. I saw Lucas throw the double thumbs up.

Sean Fennessy

You're goddamn right. Good job, Lucas.

Amanda Dobbins

Not one thumb, but two.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. And you want Women's Lib 2.0.

Amanda Dobbins

But James Spader, who is also working at her company, is not an ally. And so she moves to Vermont, buys a beautiful dilapidated house for what reason, we don't know. With the baby.

Sean Fennessy

And then would have avoided that if I were her, given what transpires.

Amanda Dobbins

And then has to create a new life, which eventually involves hooking up with Sam Shepard, the local pediatrician. And cause all pediatricians and or sports surgeons look like Sam Shepard as you're learning. And then becomes an applesauce empire. Like starts an applesauce empire. And so in the end she can have it all because she has the baby, she has a career, and she has a really handsome doctor.

Sean Fennessy

Yep.

Amanda Dobbins

And that kitchen's really good in Baby Boom. Also, just to locate it for everyone,

Sean Fennessy

I rewatched some parts of this last night just to kind of remind myself of its vibe. And you know, I don't know if you think this is the most famous scene, but her meltdown in front of the. Well, in front of the man attempting to fix her. Well, I think it's one of the funniest things she's ever done. And it's so unbridled and it's so. You know, she's very tight in a lot of movies. That's the thing about her, right. That neuroses that you're talking about. And she kind of like lets go. And she starts melting down in front of this guy. And she's very funny despite melting down. And like you can. Very gestural, very like making a lot of noises like. Like stuff like that. And the person that she reminded me of most was Albert Brooks. You know that there's like a certain kind of comic person on screen who can get away with this, who we like when they do this. And it's interesting, she works with Meg Ryan a little later in her career and she's trying to get Meg Ryan to give a Diane Keaton performance and she can't get her to do it, which is really interesting. But she's great in this, I think. This is obviously a green.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, it has to be.

Sean Fennessy

And a big hit and kind of set the template for really the rest of her career.

Amanda Dobbins

And again, it is reflective. I find this fascinating to watch. You know, like my mom in 87 was also like in corporate America, trying to be like it is another time capsule. And what it reflects is not realistic or ideal in either case. But it's amazing stuff, really fascinating. If you haven't seen it in a while, it's a really rich text.

Sean Fennessy

Same year she directs that movie Heaven, which I think is worth checking out. I think you can see it for free on YouTube or Kanopy right now. I of course bought the Blu ray. Sure. It's 85 minutes. It's just a reflection documentary in which she interviews regular people and asks them what they think happens when you die. And it's intercut with this hyper, fast moving series of images and sequences from early movie history. And she uses it as. It feels like a precursor to YouTube or TikTok or something. The way that it's edited together, it's really interesting and not at all what you would expect from her as an artifact of her life and interest. I think it's very much worth checking out. Not going in the hall of fame. 1988. The good mother.

Amanda Dobbins

What the fuck? Yikes.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, let's talk about it really quick. If it's not going in, it's red. The Good Mother. It's directed by Leonard Nimoy, who of course was Spock on Star Trek and he directed two Star Trek films in the 1980s. And then he directed a movie called Three Men and a Baby, which was a big hit in 1987. And they were like, this guy knows how to make movies with little kids. Let's give him this movie. And this movie is about a woman who is divorced, who has custody of her six year old daughter. And they have a very close relationship. And the mother, played by Diane Keaton, is a little socially awkward and she meets a man played by Liam Neeson and they fall in love. They fall in love and she discovers her sexuality. They have a very physical relationship. Then one day. You guys know about this movie?

Amanda Dobbins

You know what happens in this movie?

Sean Fennessy

No, no, I do. I have never heard of this movie.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

One day, Liam Neeson's in the bathroom and a little girl, Molly, goes in the Bathroom.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

And it's pretty, it's not shown explicitly, but made clear that he reveals to her his private parts and that she maybe touches them, but doesn't she?

Amanda Dobbins

Isn't she curious?

Sean Fennessy

She's curious, yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

Of course.

Sean Fennessy

He's not forcing her to do anything.

Amanda Dobbins

Right.

Sean Fennessy

But she's six.

Amanda Dobbins

Sure.

Sean Fennessy

I mean, yeah. Listen, the reason that this happens is because Keaton and her daughter take a bath earlier in the movie and he's present for that. And he thinks that Keaton's character is trying to live a slightly more evolved vision of comfort with our own bodies. But then this leads to the six year old sharing this information with her birth father who becomes outraged.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. And then it becomes just.

Sean Fennessy

And then it's like Kramer versus Kramer, you know? What a weird movie. And played very straight the whole time. The whole time. It's a crisis drama, you know, it is like.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, no one can. There's no levity. There's no, you know, no evolved parenting whatsoever. Certainly no evolved legal systems.

Sean Fennessy

No. Is it. Who are the lawyers? I'm trying to remember who played the lawyers in the film. I think it's Jason Robard and shoot. Who is. Oh, and Joe Morton are the two lawyers. Crazy strange film. Ralph Bellamy's in this movie. It's an artifact of a different time, of a panicked time in our culture. This is not something I would do in any direction. There's not a thing done in this film I would do.

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, I think that I agree across the board, but this is an interesting one now. I mean, I don't, I think this would be unwise and basically everything everyone's doing, but I don't know what to do. My kids just run into my room while I'm getting dressed now.

Sean Fennessy

Well, that happens, of course.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, sure, but like, at what age I'm gonna be like, is, you know, but not.

Sean Fennessy

But don't be like, come over here and touch this.

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, that's true.

Sean Fennessy

Come on.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, I, I, I agree with you.

Sean Fennessy

Okay.

Amanda Dobbins

I agree. But that's the provocation.

Sean Fennessy

We can move on from the good mother. 1990, the Lemon Sisters. I watched this on YouTube yesterday.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay. I rented it from Videots.

Sean Fennessy

Did you really?

Amanda Dobbins

I did.

Sean Fennessy

Good for you, supporting our local video store.

Amanda Dobbins

I thought it sucked.

Sean Fennessy

It's really bad now. It's a little hard to judge this one, so.

Amanda Dobbins

But her clothes are so good. And I want to dress just like her, even though she is playing, once again, the saddest of three friends, not sisters in this case, who lives in Atlantic City. And is maintaining her dead father's, quote, unquote TV museum, which is just a bunch of stuff that was on a 50s or 60s TV show Once Upon a time.

Sean Fennessy

Yes. These three women who are friends, Carol Kane and Katherine Grody, are like a musical trio. Ellie Gould in this movie again.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. But now they've cast him as dad. Elliott Gould. It happens so fast. I was like, this was only 10 years ago. I know.

Sean Fennessy

Well, that is what happened to his star in a lot of ways. You know, one day you wake up and you're Rachel Green's father on television. I didn't think this was very good either. However, this is a somewhat early Miramax movie that was shelved for, like, two years and effectively killed Joyce Chopra's directing career, who made smooth talk in 1984, which is a very good movie adaptation of a Joyce Carol Oates story. And then, like, Joyce Chopra, like, never made another feature film. So let's just say, for the sake of argument, Harvey Weinstein did this.

Amanda Dobbins

I was gonna say let's.

Sean Fennessy

It's Red.

Amanda Dobbins

Put two and two together. Also notably features Diane Keaton singing and dancing, which we'll come back to.

Sean Fennessy

Yes. Not the first time we've seen her on screen doing this, but she does a bunch. Just like Meryl.

Amanda Dobbins

Mm.

Sean Fennessy

1990. The Godfather Part III. I think it's Red.

Amanda Dobbins

I think it's Red.

Sean Fennessy

I think she actually gives a good performance and definitely doesn't embarrass herself in this.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, but what are you gonna do?

Sean Fennessy

What are you gonna do? 1991. Father of the bride now. Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay, so we already have baby Boom. And she is, though. She what?

Sean Fennessy

No, keep going. This is great.

Amanda Dobbins

So I think this is one of the great films of my lifetime.

Sean Fennessy

Is this really her movie, though?

Amanda Dobbins

It's not her movie. You know, once Again, it was July 4th this past weekend, so we all posted The George Banks, aka Steve Martin, hot dog and hot dog. One speech, which we just have not resolved.

Sean Fennessy

It's the six and eight.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, I just. Well, now for me, it's five and six.

Sean Fennessy

Like, five and six.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. Well, you know, for him, I think it's eight and 12.

Sean Fennessy

Oh, okay, okay.

Amanda Dobbins

Listen.

Sean Fennessy

They're doing it on purpose.

Amanda Dobbins

They're doing all sorts of permutations. Of course they are. It's like the apple. You need a new chord thing 35 years before Apple or whatever. It's absolutely infuriating. Incredible, Incredible performance. And then that scene does lead to. He's arrested by the grocery store cops and Diane Keaton as his wife Nina comes to bail him out of jail, and they have, like, a nice moment. She is a good foil and she's a good mom. But the movie is called Father of the Bride, so she also looks so hot in it. And she's pretty young when she makes changes. She's my ish age, which is like, that's. She does tough. When I realized that, the way she's being styled.

Sean Fennessy

And I'm sure she has some say in this, but you know the color of her hair. She lets her hair go a little gray. She's not fighting to be a glamorous.

Amanda Dobbins

She wears a suit for the wedding.

Sean Fennessy

For willfully being a mom again. Kudos to her for that. Okay, so father of the bride is red. I'm stunned. I'm stunned.

Amanda Dobbins

We can't yell it, just out of

Sean Fennessy

respect, but I thought you would maybe make the case for Father of the Bride Part two, because that's more of her film.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, we're not there yet, but we'll do it.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, well, yellow Father of the Bride, out of respect for all the fathers out there.

Amanda Dobbins

Have you watched that movie since Alice showed up on the scene?

Sean Fennessy

Since I became a father of a daughter and maybe one day a bride.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

No.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. Fucking get ready. Bill made me do that rewatchables when I was, like, seven months pregnant. Just like crying on a zoom.

Sean Fennessy

It's the best.

Amanda Dobbins

It was wonderful. It's just an absolutely beautiful movie. A masterpiece.

Sean Fennessy

1993 Manhattan murder mystery. Now, this is a beloved movie.

Amanda Dobbins

I was. I mean, if we're gonna make the case, how many Woodies do we have right now?

Sean Fennessy

We just have one, I think, just Annie Hall. A lot of yellow.

Amanda Dobbins

I like this because it's a different phase of Diane Keaton, but it still also keeps the Keaton and Woody Allen thing. And she's as much the star of it as he is.

Sean Fennessy

Absolutely.

Amanda Dobbins

It's very funny. What a great pantsuit.

Sean Fennessy

I think it's green.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay, great. Me too.

Sean Fennessy

I mean, this is kind of a daffy comedy about two people who think that there are terrible murders happening in their building. Living in New York City. It's kind of a little bit of a. Like, what if these people stuck together and 20 years later they became the slightly annoying couple who live next door to you in New York?

Amanda Dobbins

Very aspirational in that way.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, Very annoying sort of person. If I didn't watch them in a movie, but very happy to be watching them in a movie. Okay, that was easy. 1993 again. Look who's talking now. She's the voice of Daphne.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes.

Sean Fennessy

Did you see that movie?

Amanda Dobbins

I did. I think I saw this in theaters.

Sean Fennessy

I think I did too.

Amanda Dobbins

Is Daphne one of the dogs?

Sean Fennessy

Dogs,

Amanda Dobbins

Daphne. Yeah, Right. Dogs. You're right. That's what they. Eh, Yeah. I mean, Good job.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. Red. 1995. She directs but does not appear in Unstrung Heroes, which is based on the true story of Franz Lids, who is a journalist and writer. And it's a story about his own life where his mom became very sick and his father, who was a brilliant man, sent him to go live with his uncles. And so in the movie, it's Andy MacDowell's mom, John Turturro's dad, Mori Chaykin and Michael Richards play his uncles. And I'm doing this all off of memory.

Amanda Dobbins

Wow.

Sean Fennessy

And it's pretty sentimental. This is gonna sound weird cause there's a lot of problematic people throughout her career, but Michael Richards is very good in this movie. The two uncles are very eccentric. Maury Chaikin's character is sort of a hoarder. Michael Richards character is a little bit of a conspiracy theorist, but it's mostly about a young boy. It's cool that she adapted this. Franz Lid's not a huge fan of the movie of his own life. It's a little complicated. Not what you want.

Amanda Dobbins

I don't think this is going in.

Sean Fennessy

I agree. 1995. Father of the Bride, Part 2. No, four years later. Four years later, sure.

Amanda Dobbins

So to catch people up, Father of The Bride, Part 1. Steve Martin and Diane Keaton's daughter George and Nina Banks daughter Annie gets married.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. Kimberly Williams.

Amanda Dobbins

I think you'll find she's now Kimberly Williams Paisley. I won't acknowledge that you're in this Pete Sampras era.

Sean Fennessy

Yes, that's right. Were they together?

Amanda Dobbins

Oh, yeah. For years. Like when Sampras was like. Really?

Sean Fennessy

So Bridget Wilson came in and dropped the elbow and ended it. That's nice. I would allow that to happen too.

Amanda Dobbins

So now she's married, and she and the freelancer technology consultant, which is code for unemployed, are expecting a baby. And it turns out that George and Nina are as well. And so they are pregnant. They're almost identically pregnant. Also, George has sold the perfect home in San Marino, but that's actually in Pasadena that the first wedding was held at. And so now he has to figure out how to repurchase his home and also how to be a dad in his mid-40s. But this is most memorable for a scene in which Kimberly Williams Paisley and Diane Keaton with gigantic baby bumps are led in prenatal aerobics by Martin Short. Do you remember this scene?

Sean Fennessy

Of course.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, it's literally the only thing I thought about for six months each time I was pregnant. Trying to do any sort of movement and I'm just. Yeah. And it's just like, now you got this, you know, I mean, it's the original. You got this, mama. But played for laughs. So that scene is very good. The movie is quite charming. Not as magical as the first. I'm not gonna fight for it here. We can yellow it.

Sean Fennessy

But what happens if you accidentally get pregnant at 49?

Amanda Dobbins

I think we call Kay from Godfather 2 and we go to the.

Sean Fennessy

No, it would be a challenge because 19's 49 when she makes this movie.

Amanda Dobbins

Listen. I mean, science is amazing, as are people who carry children, you know, so, like, anything's possible. It's not possible in the cards for me. That's just really not. I don't. I can't do it again.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, I'll do it. I'll carry the baby. You think you could carry the child?

Amanda Dobbins

You just like. I mean, putting aside basic, like biology questions or physiology.

Sean Fennessy

Do I have the strength and the temerity? I don't think. I mean, if you were thinking I was going to say yes, I wasn't. I can barely carry a beach umbrella at this point in my life. Okay. I don't think that movie's gonna go in, but that was a. I don't think so either.

Amanda Dobbins

We're about to get to 1996. First Wives Club.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, let me just. I'm not gonna yuck your yum, but First Wives Club, very beloved and a massive hit, very important movie in her career. And I think that kind of sets the template for most of the 21st century in terms of like the style of movie that she starts making. Not the Persona per se, but. But the style. Why don't you speak?

Amanda Dobbins

Go ahead, we're waiting. Pregnant paws.

Sean Fennessy

Well, we've yellowed many superior films.

Amanda Dobbins

Sure.

Sean Fennessy

You know what I'm saying?

Amanda Dobbins

Superior in what way?

Sean Fennessy

From the perspective of a 43 year old man who hosts a movie podcast.

Amanda Dobbins

In a sin asked sort of way.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. I mean, look, my mom got divorced in 1994 and this movie came out in 1996 and she was like, this film matters.

Amanda Dobbins

I would say of all of the text messages I get from people who think that I have any say over what is ever scheduled on the rewatchables, this is number one. Requested by like a mile. Okay, Everyone is just like, when are you going to do First Wives Club? Why? And I'm like, well, there are a number of reasons that I don't have an answer to that.

Sean Fennessy

But give us 12.

Amanda Dobbins

So it is so popular and we do consider box office and there is sort of, you know, baby boom and then into the Father of the Brides and into First Wives Clubs. She's kind of suddenly at what, almost 50, the center of like box office filmmaking for the first time.

Sean Fennessy

She's one of the biggest female stars of the time. Now it's a team up movie, though. It's kind of the Avengers of middle aged female movie stars.

Amanda Dobbins

Goldie and Bed Midler. But listen, who is front and center for you Don't Own Me?

Sean Fennessy

She is.

Amanda Dobbins

It's Diane Keaton. So that clip alone, which is wonderful to me, puts this in the hall of Fame. I think you gotta do it. I think you have to do that over Father of the Bride and Father of The Bride Part 2. Personally, I understand.

Sean Fennessy

Oh, that's so interesting. I anticipated it going in.

Amanda Dobbins

I understand that Manhattan is a quote unquote superior film. Does it honor women in the same way? Does it honor women? Does it.

Sean Fennessy

Put that on the poster of the First Wives Club 4K.

Amanda Dobbins

Do any of these movies exist in 4K? Besides like the Godfather, Manhattan?

Sean Fennessy

I'm sure no. None of the Woody movies are available in 4K. I guess maybe Annie hall is available in 4K, but not in the U.S. i mean, you can imagine there's some concern about promoting the Woody films these days. I don't think any of these movies are in.

Amanda Dobbins

Is there a Nancy Myers?

Sean Fennessy

Oh, looking for Mr. Goodbar as vinegar Syndrome. Put out a beautiful edition of it. That's really good.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, because what happens to her in that movie?

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, well, maybe that's why something's got to Give. Comes to 4K later this year.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay. That's exciting.

Sean Fennessy

Yes, it is. Especially because it was never released on Blu Ray. It was only available on dvd.

Amanda Dobbins

I think that's correct. You know, I think that maybe the gatekeepers are finally opening their eyes.

Sean Fennessy

Maybe they've been listening to you. I guess First Wives Club is green.

Amanda Dobbins

Great.

Sean Fennessy

1986, Marvin's room.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes.

Sean Fennessy

Which we recently discussed on the Meryl Streep hall of Fame. Diane Keane gets an Oscar nomination for this film. Now, I didn't revisit this this time either, so you'll have to remind me about this movie.

Amanda Dobbins

Sue. She's the sick one, right? She's the sick one and she's like the nicer one. And so Meryl is taking up more space, but Diane Keaton is kind of more the. I didn't rewatch it for this. I only rewatched it for Marilyn. I remember being impressed by her and being like, oh, you don't normally see Diane Keaton like this. Certainly after the run from Baby Boom on of playing big, broad comedy, right? And like, it's softer and emotional and she's surrounded. You know, it's Leo, it's all of these big people. But I don't. It wasn't memorable enough that I'm like, we actually have to put it in.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, I've only seen it once. I remember thinking it was perfectly fine. It's probably a little bit of the thing where she's got the First Wives Club and Marvin's Room in the same year and she's like, back, back. She's not playing the fifth lead of the Father of the Bride Part 2. She is at the absolute center of movie culture and she's playing someone with leukemia. And that's the kind of thing that affords some sympathies when voting time comes around. I would read it. I think it's. Even though it's an Oscar movie, it's not a big one.

Amanda Dobbins

I'm fine with that.

Sean Fennessy

The only thrill, we both watched for the first time for this podcast, which is yet another film with Sam Shepard. This is her third movie now with Sam Shepard, Crimes of the Heart and Baby Boom. And she plays a middle aged woman who falls in love with this guy. And they talk a lot about movies.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, they do. And also about distribution. So I texted you when he was explaining a Sony Betamax player to her. So you could watch movies at home.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, I never had a Betamax at home.

Amanda Dobbins

I obviously didn't either, but I was just like, wow, this is the only time I want to hear anyone talk about physical media at home. Distribution is when it's Sam Shepard. And then the movie kept going. She has to move. They don't really talk anymore. Other people find love. I guess it's not going in.

Sean Fennessy

This movie is a soggy piece of bread that's red for the only thrill. 1999's the Other Sister.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes.

Sean Fennessy

She plays the mother of a disabled girl who falls in love with a guy. And memorably portrayed by Juliette Lewis and Giovanni Ribisi in parts that would never be played by those actors in 2026.

Amanda Dobbins

Turn to this off, because I was just so uncomfortable. So it's not good.

Sean Fennessy

Another problematic artifact of Diane Keaton's filmography. Not Going in. That's red. It's a sweet movie. It's got its heart in the right place. It's just not. They shouldn't have done that. Yeah, they just shouldn't have done that. 2000 hanging up. This is a movie that she both co stars in and directs.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes. That I saw in theaters because I support women directors and I have the entire millennium plus one year. Because 2000.

Sean Fennessy

We're proud of you for that. This did not. This transpired in the previous millennium. But that's okay.

Amanda Dobbins

Plus one year.

Sean Fennessy

The movie is based on Delia Ephron's novel, which is something of an autobiographical piece. Or is it entirely created? I don't know how much is inspired by their actual father, but it's co written.

Amanda Dobbins

I think that they're. I mean, they're always borrowing. As we know everything is.

Sean Fennessy

The movie's co written with Nora Ephron and directed by Keaton. And it's like the Ephrons are a little drunk. That's what the movie. You know what I mean? It's like someone who doesn't quite have all their faculties.

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, it's a. To me, fascinating artifact because you have the Nancy Meyers, Diane Keaton track in the 90s and then you've got the Nora Ephron, Meg Ryan track. And both have something to do with like aesthetically, with Woody Allen. But they're exploring them in different ways.

Sean Fennessy

Kind of like deconstructing the Woody Allen idea.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. And so. But they're kind of. They're running parallel and then this whole together. I know. And it's too confusing when it's all together. It doesn't quite.

Sean Fennessy

The movie is not good. Yeah. There's a very good Walter Matthau performance in this movie as a father.

Amanda Dobbins

You would say that.

Sean Fennessy

Who is losing his marbles. He's just very funny. He's very funny. It's his last performance.

Amanda Dobbins

Keaton, Meg Ryan.

Sean Fennessy

Not a good Meg Ryan performance.

Amanda Dobbins

Not a good Meg Ryan performance.

Sean Fennessy

Dankin doesn't have a whole lot to do. Both she and Lisa Kudjo are kind of sidelined for most of the movie. It's mostly Meg Ryan's movie. But this is kind of when things are kind of slipping a little bit for Meg Ryan. I would say.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, this is after you've got. Male is 98. And then. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

So yeah, I would say it's red. Even though she directed and stars in it. 2001 Town and Country.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay. This is when I start. I have to start start clicking through every single One to remember.

Sean Fennessy

Which is which I got you up until. I mean, I've seen. I'm basically check out of this podcast circa 2008. So.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, I think everyone's. Oh, this is the one that's written by Buck Henry.

Sean Fennessy

This is one of the craziest movies of all time.

Amanda Dobbins

Oh, I'm like, this is insane. This movie's insane.

Sean Fennessy

So it wasn't originally written by Buck Henry. He was paid millions of dollars to rewrite it during production. And he famously talked about buying a home with the paycheck he got from rewriting this movie, which stars Warren Beatty. It's his last movie until Rules don't

Amanda Dobbins

apply, which you famously loved.

Sean Fennessy

I certainly do. I love Warren Beatty. I also love Garry Shandling. I also love Diane Keaton.

Amanda Dobbins

Goldie Hawn.

Sean Fennessy

I like Goldie Hawn. I wouldn't say I love Goldie Hawn. Nothing personal.

Amanda Dobbins

It's like, that's the thing where you. It's what I like about you. But also, I think that's a wrong taste, but you're a little resistant to the. To the Daffy Blonde thing. And thank you. You know, because it's not my speed. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

But also, she's very talented. Yeah, I know. She's beloved. Just not really my thing. This movie's terrible. This movie is entirely about how boomer men's central preoccupation is their own dick. That's. The whole movie is like, these guys are only interested in what they're able to conquer sexually. But it's set in this, like, farcical world of 60 year olds who are, like, obsessing over whether they're cheating on someone or being cheated on. And it's super overwritten and silly and not funny.

Amanda Dobbins

It's farcical, but there's nothing funny about it.

Sean Fennessy

No, it's really bad. It's a famous huge bomb. This is a bomb.

Amanda Dobbins

He's an architect. So they're hopping from fancy place to fancy place. And the crown molding in every home is spot on. And then no one's alive behind the ice.

Sean Fennessy

Production design and costuming is fantastic in this movie. Everything else sucks. The movie costs, like, $125 million, and it's basically just a.

Amanda Dobbins

It's quite bad. Not going in.

Sean Fennessy

It's red. Plan B. Didn't see it.

Amanda Dobbins

Hold on.

Sean Fennessy

2002.

Amanda Dobbins

Oh, I saw this when it came out, but I didn't revisit it. Okay.

Sean Fennessy

This is a sequel to that scene from the Godfather Part ii.

Amanda Dobbins

No. She kind of joins the mob sort of by accident. And then Paul Sorvino's also in it. This I remember.

Sean Fennessy

And this is where Reunion with Paul

Amanda Dobbins

Sorvino and some of the hats come in.

Sean Fennessy

I think this movie has been kind of deleted.

Amanda Dobbins

Right.

Sean Fennessy

Like, it's not really available in too many places. I guess it was released on dvd. But it does not have a big footprint. It's definitely. And this starts to happen more and more where this is gonna come up again. Actually, you know what? I don't have on my list here, but maybe I should have. I think I skipped over Running Mates. You know about Running Mates? No, it's another movie that has been kind of deleted. And I don't know why it's actually not listed here. But 1993. It's directed by. Oh. Oh, my goodness. Who is the director of the film. I can't remember. It's Ed Harris and Meryl Streep or Ed Harris and Diane Keaton. He's playing a senator. She's playing a woman who he meets. And they fall in love. And it's unclear if they can be together because he's a public person. And I tried to.

Amanda Dobbins

It's by Michael Lindsey Hogg.

Sean Fennessy

Michael Lindsey Hogg. Thank you.

Amanda Dobbins

1992.

Sean Fennessy

Yes. I don't know why it's not on the list here. It should be on the list, but I couldn't find it. I couldn't watch it.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, I absolutely couldn't. I didn't know that it existed.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. And there are a few movies like this where, like in her career, they're just really hard to track down. I'm sure there's a DVD copy or a VHS copy of Running Maze floating around somewhere. But you never hear about that movie.

Amanda Dobbins

Michael Lindsey Hogg absolutely owned in the Peter Jackson. Let it Be.

Sean Fennessy

Well, yeah, he shot the original. Get back to the show.

Amanda Dobbins

No, I know, but then he's just in. It's really good stuff.

Sean Fennessy

Is Plan B is red 2003. Something's gotta give. Is there anything you need to say about this other than its greenness? You're on the record.

Amanda Dobbins

That's true. I am on the record. I think it's another example of. This is clearly where Nancy Meyers logs on the most. And I think it is, if not literally autobiographical. Like the most autobiographical of her is the most Woody Allen esque of hers. So it uses what Diane Keaton learned in that tradition. I think. You know, it's well known that they had dialogues about how much improvisation or how much of Diane Keaton she could bring to the script. But it works Beautifully. And it would have been hard not to pick Keanu Reeves for me personally, but, you know, it works out in the end.

Sean Fennessy

Well, it's a wonderful way of closing up the red scene, you know, where Eugene o' Neill walks out on her and they're both kind of devastated. In red and this movie, they get to be together, and they're so wonderful together.

Amanda Dobbins

The Hamptons doctor turns out to be quite handsome.

Sean Fennessy

Who would have thought you didn't marry a doctor. I noticed. Yeah, it's interesting. Something's Gotta Give is green, of course. And, you know, she gets an Oscar nomination for that.

Amanda Dobbins

She should. But I think it's the only Oscar nomination for Something's Gotta Give. I don't think screenplay was nominated.

Sean Fennessy

I think you're right.

Amanda Dobbins

I think you're right, which I think is a mistake.

Sean Fennessy

She said that she's effectively playing Nancy. But one thing to keep in mind, and I've been told this by a couple of people now, is that one of the reasons why maybe starting circa 1990 through this period, is Diane Keaton was simultaneously a very established star in Star Persona and also very particular about how she wanted to appear in movies. She doesn't make a lot of period movies. She's often wearing Diane Keaton clothing.

Amanda Dobbins

Right.

Sean Fennessy

Very notable. She looks, as you pointed out at the top of this conversation, like herself a lot. And that was important to her.

Amanda Dobbins

Though this one, you know, Something's Gotta Give is a combination. This famously launched Coastal Grandma 25 years later, which is just wearing Gap clothes in neutral colors. But that's okay. Welcome, teens.

Sean Fennessy

So funny, though, because, again, she's, like, 56. She's not that old.

Amanda Dobbins

No, it's true.

Sean Fennessy

Like, that's 12 years older than me. So to be like Coastal Grandma.

Amanda Dobbins

Listen, I mean, that's.

Sean Fennessy

Am I getting close to Coastal Grandma and famously is nude in this film and looks hot.

Amanda Dobbins

She does. And that's. It's a quick shot. You know, they do it. They do it. It's tasteful.

Sean Fennessy

Maybe a positive. Why not? What's wrong with that?

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, this is from TikTokers.

Sean Fennessy

I'm admiring the heart.

Amanda Dobbins

Don't know that. What Something's Got to Give is. That's great.

Sean Fennessy

That's beautiful. 2005, the family stone. A lot of people like this movie. I don't care for it. What do you think?

Amanda Dobbins

I find myself rewatching this, like, every Christmas at some point, and I don't. It's just on. And then I'm like, oh, no. I gotta get to the point where Sarah Jessica Parker says, like, incredibly racist things at the dinner table. And then I got to.

Sean Fennessy

What's your favorite part?

Amanda Dobbins

Well, no, but that dinner table scene. And then I got to get to the part with Claire Dan showing up. I got to get to the part with Estrada, you know, and then I'm like, wow, I've seen this movie. And then, you know, Luke Wilson is, like, pretty hot, and getting stoned in

Sean Fennessy

the attic could have been Harrison Ford,

Amanda Dobbins

you know, it's like, so. And I. I think about this movie way more than I should for it being a not very good movie. And she's pretty mean in it. She's another mom of five or six kids, I think, including Rachel McAdams. Rachel McAdams. Pretty mean to her. This is a nice moment at the end with the framed photograph. I don't know. I guess it's not going in, but I think it's.

Sean Fennessy

You'd like to leave Manhattan on the sidelines and get the family stone in.

Amanda Dobbins

Listen, I did my homework for this, so I'm prepared.

Sean Fennessy

I'm just gonna say, you know, we've got quite a few movies left to go. We're gonna have to move quickly through.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay. You always do this. Sorry that I. Hours and hours.

Sean Fennessy

I'm not trying to wrap you up. I'm just gonna say I just wanted to count up how many greens we had.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay?

Sean Fennessy

Okay. You don't. Hold on. Hang in there, Mama. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 greens right now. And I know you have at least one more green on your mind as we go through this.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. But we can talk about that. Like, I'm not gonna say that we need to put that above Manhattan. Okay.

Sean Fennessy

Just want to say I did see 2007's because I said so, and I think it's one of the most deranged films in her filmography. Here's the plot of this movie. Movie. Diane Keaton is the mother of three girls.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes.

Sean Fennessy

Father's out of the picture.

Amanda Dobbins

Who are the three girls?

Sean Fennessy

Lauren Graham.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes.

Sean Fennessy

Who's married. Happily married. Piper Paribo.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes.

Sean Fennessy

Who? I can't tell if she's married or not, but she's got a very active sexual.

Amanda Dobbins

Does she get married at Is. Doesn't it start with her wedding? I think they might get married. I think at first it's Lauren Graham's wedding, then Piper Parabo's wedding because it's, you know, they're setting a precedent.

Sean Fennessy

The third daughter is played by Mandy Moore, and Mandy Moore can't be older than 23 years. Old in this movie. And the whole movie is premised around this Diane Keaton desperately needing this 23 year old girl to get locked down.

Amanda Dobbins

Right.

Sean Fennessy

To get married, because she needs 2007.

Amanda Dobbins

She's an aspiring caterer also. Okay, you know, or I'm sorry, she's 23.

Sean Fennessy

They're treating it like it's like I think 1500s.

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, I agree with you.

Sean Fennessy

What is the. What are the fucking sexual gender politics of this movie?

Amanda Dobbins

So Diane Keaton goes about this by auditioning prospective suitors for her daughter and she rejects Tom Everett Scott from that thing you do.

Sean Fennessy

No, she thinks Tom Everett Scott is like the best choice and he's a D bag architect. And Gabriel Macht comes in and this guy's a fucking charming music teacher who's teaching elderly people and 8 year olds how to play the guitar.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean Fennessy

And Diane Keaton's like, no, no, no, he's not okay. This movie is fucking deranged. It's the one of the most, like,

Amanda Dobbins

you just can't compare, like the presence and the chemistry of Gabriel Mock to Tom Everett Scott. I'm sorry, who's your preference?

Sean Fennessy

You prefer Tom Everett Scott? Listen, you are sick in the head. No, this movie is the most flashing green light at Gabriel Mock of all time. And they're like, what's considered. Tom's just banging both of these guys throughout the movie.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, that is her right.

Sean Fennessy

I agree.

Amanda Dobbins

Since 2007.

Sean Fennessy

I agree.

Amanda Dobbins

The women are liberated.

Sean Fennessy

But both men find out about this and they're like, you whore. Like, this is the craziest movie. This movie was not made in like 1984.

Amanda Dobbins

It was made 18 years ago. This is one of the ones where I was like, this is a lot bluer than I need it to be. For Diane Keaton talking to her three adult daughters about sex.

Sean Fennessy

Well, there's a scene in which Mandy Moore vividly recalls the exact same experience of having an orgasm to her mother.

Amanda Dobbins

Yep.

Sean Fennessy

Is that something you would do?

Amanda Dobbins

No.

Sean Fennessy

Okay.

Amanda Dobbins

It's very strange. I don't think that it should go in.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. It's red.

Amanda Dobbins

I just don't think Gabriel Macht has a lot of chemistry.

Sean Fennessy

You know, I watched this movie and that's when I was like, amanda, I might need you to take over for 2010 through 2024.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay, I did.

Sean Fennessy

So mama's boy didn't see this?

Amanda Dobbins

Yes. So this is a movie starring Diane Keaton and John Hader.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. Heater.

Amanda Dobbins

Heater header. Yeah. And then who is her boyfriend? Oh, yeah. And sure. Then Jeff Daniels. So basically, Jeff, John Heater is an older Napoleon Dynamite, but weirder, less charismatic and won't leave home.

Sean Fennessy

Weirder than Napoleon Dynamite?

Amanda Dobbins

Well, like he just doesn't have the Riz, you know, and Napoleon Dynamite, whatever you want to say about him, like, he has the Rizz.

Sean Fennessy

He had Rizzo.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes. They made a whole movie about him.

Sean Fennessy

Wow.

Amanda Dobbins

So. So he doesn't have to.

Sean Fennessy

Would you bone Napoleon Dynamite?

Amanda Dobbins

No. But you're rooting for him and you're not really rooting for John Heater, even though. So Anna Faris plays his love interest and she works at a. I don't know, she's an aspiring musician. So Anna Faris, like gives a very funny, like half assed musical performance, you know. Enjoy that forever and always. Justice for Anna Farah. Dan Keaton just tries to get her lazy son to move out of her house and then things go right. It's not going in.

Sean Fennessy

Okay.

Amanda Dobbins

Oh my God. Did you see Mad Money? No. Okay. Mad Money. So what happens is, is when I Google these, then Mad Money, the gym, you know, they're all borrowed from more familiar. So the SEO is really not. I just lost my shoe. Things are going.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, hang in there. This is what it takes to host this show.

Amanda Dobbins

Do you know who directed Mad Money Money?

Sean Fennessy

Elon Musk.

Amanda Dobbins

Cali Curry.

Sean Fennessy

Oh, I knew that. The writer of Thelma Louise. Yes.

Amanda Dobbins

This stars Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes. And. And then who is her husband? Who is her husband? It's Ted Danson.

Sean Fennessy

Okay.

Amanda Dobbins

And Ted Danson, you know, squanders the family finances. So Diane Keaton gets a job at the Federal Reserve, I think some sort of financial institution. And she sees how they dispose of money and she's like, well, that isn't fully disposing of the money. So I'm gonna hatch a crime plan with Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes and we're gonna steal all the shredded money. I'll be honest, I tuned out a little bit during the specifics of this, but it's okay. But it's sort of, you know, like a, a Langley Mission Impossible, 1996 Heist, except not at all thrilling and doesn't make sense. And then. And they do get a lot of the money back and then they get caught. But then it's okay. Not going in.

Sean Fennessy

It's not going in. So you're going to do that for all of these movies?

Amanda Dobbins

As many as I can remember. I saw Smother. So Smother is another TV movie that. And it's another One of a mom and a son. And the dynamic is unusual in that it's.

Sean Fennessy

How so?

Amanda Dobbins

Well, in this case, Dax Shepard has a very overbearing mother played by Diane Keaton. Liv Tyler is in this. Is in this movie. As well as the person that Dax Shepard is romantically involved with and someone else who I thought was too good for this anyway, it's not good because Diane Keaton just can't let go. And so now she's just. She's kind of in weird mom territory.

Sean Fennessy

Yes. Right now. Well, there's two movies in a row where she. That are. That are very similar. So that's also red.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay, that's red.

Sean Fennessy

I mean, 2010 is Morning Glory.

Amanda Dobbins

Morning Glory, which I think is a wonderful film. Kind of one of the last, like classic romantic comedies starring Diane Keaton and Harrison Ford as newscasters past their prime who are brought in to rehabilitate a morning show that is Produced by Rachel McAdams with the help of her boyfriend, CBS producer. Not CBS producer, though. It is effectively CBS 60 Minutes esque producer Patrick Wilson.

Sean Fennessy

Your boy.

Amanda Dobbins

My boy.

Sean Fennessy

Your boy.

Amanda Dobbins

So it's very. It's charming, funny, written by Eileen Brush McKenna. It's mostly focused on Rachel McAdams, but Diane Keaton is playing kind of like the like over the Hill, but with it like a little daffy, a little mad. Very funny chemistry with Harrison Ford. Also gets annoyed when he completely steals her show as he does. I don't think it has to go in.

Sean Fennessy

I see the floor to you on this.

Amanda Dobbins

It can be yellow or it can be blue.

Sean Fennessy

I like this movie, but haven't seen it in 16 years.

Amanda Dobbins

Let's just yellow it.

Sean Fennessy

Okay.

Amanda Dobbins

And it can be my blue. Out of respect though, like people now when they ask me for recommendations of little seen romantic comedies, they're like, not Morning Glory. We know. So maybe my work there is already done.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, 2012 darling companion. I did see this movie.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay, which one is this?

Sean Fennessy

This is Lawrence Kasdan, Kevin Klein.

Amanda Dobbins

Oh my God, I forgot. Yes. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

This movie's kind of a mess.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. So they. The dog.

Sean Fennessy

Diane Keaton sees a dog on the highway that's been gravely injured while she's with her daughter, played by Elisabeth Moss. They pick up the dog, they adopt the dog, and then the dog becomes a part of their family. They go on a vacation after their daughter's wedding and log cabin vacation, I guess, with their in laws and the dog runs away and disappears. And then the whole movie is about the search for the dog that's the darling companion or is it. Is it the love in our lives that we need to rediscover and relight the flame?

Amanda Dobbins

It's true.

Sean Fennessy

And the film answers that question THUDDINGLY.

Amanda Dobbins

It was quite boring.

Sean Fennessy

I didn't really like it very much. So that's red.

Amanda Dobbins

It's not going in.

Sean Fennessy

I didn't see the Big Wedding, so.

Amanda Dobbins

The Big Wedding is a remake of a Swiss French film. So maybe you should check it out.

Sean Fennessy

I just want to say, yeah, I'm really pleased with what the Swiss are doing. Big problem is we're on a plane. Well, in the World Cup.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

Because, you know, my grandfather, born in Switzerland.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. You've made us aware. Your immediate family and friends, incredibly aware.

Sean Fennessy

Yes, everyone's aware. The Swiss match is. Well, we're on a plane tomorrow, so the TVs need to work.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, just stream it. If the TVs don't work, then you just stream it, then the WI fi's got to work.

Sean Fennessy

WI fi's got to work.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

Can't miss that.

Amanda Dobbins

I have to watch, like, three David Cronenberg films, But that's what you'll be doing. Yeah, Just watch one. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

You only need to know one. No spoilers. Go ahead.

Amanda Dobbins

So this is. De Niro's in this one. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

We gotta get home for the usmnt Katherine Heigl.

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, a Seyfried Topher Grace. And so it's another one of these things where there's weddings. You know, a young couple is being married, and then Diane Keaton plays one of the parents who is having to make amends with or conceal parts of her own relationship in order to make things okay for the next generation. It's supposed to be fine. It's not really. I think she's married to De Niro. Yeah. And then. And then some other things might happen. It's not particularly amusing, and it should not go in.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. Read.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

And so it goes.

Amanda Dobbins

I mean, I saw all of these. I watched every. So this one. So this was. This is the Rob Reiner.

Sean Fennessy

Yes. I wanted to watch this. This is Michael Douglas. And I just didn't have time to watch this.

Amanda Dobbins

This is Michael Douglas and Rob Reiner. And he.

Sean Fennessy

He.

Amanda Dobbins

This is.

Sean Fennessy

This is on Netflix right now.

Amanda Dobbins

Michael Douglas is a real estate agent. A racist real estate agent. And, yeah, he says many offensive things and is kind of profiling all the couples who come to look at the home that he's selling, which, spoiler alert, turns out to be his own home. And then Dankin's his neighbor. And then Michael Douglas, in a sort of baby boom, grandfather situation inherits a grandchildren. Not inherits, but like, his estranged son drops him off. And Diane Keaton forms a relationship with the daughter, with the grandchild, and then with Michael Douglas. And then I can't remember if they sell the house and they do end up together.

Sean Fennessy

Here's the thing. The goal of these segments are not for you to entirely recap the film.

Amanda Dobbins

So Red.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, I'm going to give you guys. Give us something about the quality of her performance and whether or not it should go in.

Amanda Dobbins

She's just kind of on the side lost.

Sean Fennessy

Also, how funny is it when these movies, they come out at the end of these people's careers and it's like. And so it goes. That mean.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, that's why I'm googling all of them.

Sean Fennessy

You're gonna film a real title.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay. Five Flights Up. This is Morgan Freeman with Morgan Freeman. And this is about gentrification and also real estate.

Sean Fennessy

Weird. What a year. 2014.

Amanda Dobbins

She's really interested in gentrification, is innately tied to real estate. And this is.

Sean Fennessy

Where do you stand on gentrification?

Amanda Dobbins

This is the one where I sent you the screenshot of the painting because Morgan Freeman is a painter.

Sean Fennessy

Oh, sure. Yeah.

Amanda Dobbins

And he's working on a portrait of Diane Keaton that is revealed at the end of the.

Sean Fennessy

The Great.

Amanda Dobbins

The movie. And I like it. This is. This is a 2014 film. So I don't think the painting is A.I. i think someone has sort of, like, painted a photograph of Diane Keaton of her. But it is clearly what has been fed into all of the large learning machines in order to create the art that we see all around us in films. It's a horrifying sight. She's fine in it. She. I mean, a lot of them, she's just kind of showing up and, like, you know, doing one or two Diane Keaton, like, vocal tics. And one moment where she's like, well, I didn't really think it was gonna happen like that, you know, and she brings in, like, 30 minutes of emotion, and you're like, why did you want to do this? Not going in. Love the Coopers. This is another ensemble thing. This is Christmas. Okay. I watched all of them. Okay. Okay. So this is one where it's Christmas and she's the matriarch of the family, and they're gonna split up.

Sean Fennessy

They're completely coming apart at the seams. But kickoff is in one hour.

Amanda Dobbins

But I know I'm sweating, but. But I said I would be Red. Box captain and I do my homework. So here I am. So they don't want to spoil Christmas with a. A divorce.

Sean Fennessy

So they go, who doesn't want to spoil it?

Amanda Dobbins

Diane Keaton and her husband, played by John Goodman.

Sean Fennessy

John Goodman. I love John Goodman.

Amanda Dobbins

Listen, it's a stacked cast. Alan Arkin, you've heard Lizoman like 40 times. Amanda Seifried again. Olivia Wilde, Jake Lacey. Olivia Wilde and Jake Lacey are. She's single for reasons that pass understanding. June squibs in this. Timmy shows up for five minutes.

Sean Fennessy

Tim Chalamet.

Amanda Dobbins

Young Timothy Chalamet. Tim. Yes.

Sean Fennessy

And then I didn't know that. And then I've got a hole in my Chalamet resume.

Amanda Dobbins

So I think that they. I don't remember, honestly, I think they do stay together. John Goodman and Dan Keaton at the end.

Sean Fennessy

So is.

Amanda Dobbins

But she's like, yeah, let's talk about

Sean Fennessy

the title for a second.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Is it. Shouldn't it be Love, comma, the Coopers? Or is it just like I love the Coopers?

Amanda Dobbins

I think it's supposed to be both.

Sean Fennessy

Like, I love the Cooper family.

Amanda Dobbins

But so anyway, no, I'm not done yet because the entire movie is narrating by Steve Martin. What can you explain? Can you guess? Steve Martin's relationship to this family, which is revealed at the end of the movie.

Sean Fennessy

He's their doctor.

Amanda Dobbins

He's their dog. Okay.

Sean Fennessy

Bravo. That was worth it. Okay. 2016, finding Dory. She plays the voice of Dory's mom, I believe. Jenny. I took my daughter to see this last year at Vidiot's and I went good.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

I just gotta say, I thought it was very nice. No, I don't. Okay. But it doesn't need to go in the Diane Keaton hall of fame. And it's an unnecessary Pixar sequel.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay. Much like. Sure. Yeah. That's becoming a bit of a theme with you. But anyway.

Sean Fennessy

Well, I like Pixar. What can I say? And I like Pixar's sequels, and I'm okay with that. 2017, Hamstead started watching this and decided, no, thanks.

Amanda Dobbins

Wow. You don't care about Donald Geese. Brennan Gleeson. Finding love with Diane Keaton. And also a bit of real estate and overriding the corporate real estate interest. Once again, a movie about real estate as represented by Leslie Manville.

Sean Fennessy

I. I enjoy Leslie Manville and I did get to see a little bit of her while watching it. I felt that this was an excuse for Diane Keeaton to spend three months in England.

Amanda Dobbins

That seems like a great reason to do Anything? It's not going in.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. Red 20.

Amanda Dobbins

She's a widow. She's playing a lot of widows and loner people at this point.

Sean Fennessy

2018. Book club. Yeah, I've seen book club.

Amanda Dobbins

This was a thing.

Sean Fennessy

It was a big thing. It was a successful movie. And I keep saying this reset the future for the kinds of movies that she made. But, you know, like, every 10 years she makes another movie where it's like, don't forget about Diane Keaton, who's a big star. And this was one. And this is at a time when the box office is really booming and there are always alternatives where it's like, this is an underserved audience for Basically women over 50. The movie massively over in indexed for women over 50. Probably women over 30, to be honest with you. Because book club.

Amanda Dobbins

And it was based on. They read fifty Shades of Gray.

Sean Fennessy

Yes.

Amanda Dobbins

So it was smart. Yeah, it's sort of. It's girls trip aged up.

Sean Fennessy

Yep.

Amanda Dobbins

And, you know, it's not unlike the First Wives Club template where it's just you get together a group of women of a certain age who, like, sing together. And she kind of got away from that and was trying to do rom coms with some of the greatest male actors of her generation. And they were all quite poor. So instead she decides to do this. It's good.

Sean Fennessy

It's a big team up, too. Cause it's the first time that she works with Jane Fonda and Candice Bergen and, you know, three real megastars in the 1970s coming together. And Mary Steenburgen is the fourth as well. Plus Andy Garcia, Don Johnson. You know, I don't remember being very good. I don't remember being, like, bad. It's fine.

Amanda Dobbins

It's not. And if I remember Book club two more fondly. So we can get to that anyway in a bit. So it doesn't need to go in 2019.

Sean Fennessy

Palms.

Amanda Dobbins

Palms, which you pronounce like. You're just throwing me off.

Sean Fennessy

I keep like, palm frite.

Amanda Dobbins

Palm fronds is what I hear when you say it. Palm, Franz. Yes, but it is like palm. Like, but it's not like pomfret. Yeah. Anyway, poms.

Sean Fennessy

Are you correcting me on pronunciation, Chris?

Amanda Dobbins

Is the pronunciation problem okay? Like, I'm fine. I'm like, you know, I, I.

Sean Fennessy

You got your gut French down.

Amanda Dobbins

I miss as much as I get. Right. But that's. That's life. Okay? So I texted you at 10:12 last night, and I said, right now is when I learned that this movie is not 80 for Brady.

Sean Fennessy

Yes. She's not in 80 for Brady.

Amanda Dobbins

She's not in 80 for brady. But Jane Fonda is, correct? Yes. And so I was bringing the book club together anyway. This is about. This is another. Women of a certain age team up together, this time at a retirement community because they need to re. Discover their love of life through cheerleading. She does another dance performance at the end because the. The elderly cheerleaders, you know, overcome all the various obstacles facing them, and they're, you know, all that stands between them and cheerleading. And they perform at the local regional, whatever, championships. It's kind of bring it on, but for seniors. And she's front and center, and she does, like, a funny comedy dance thing. Like, she leans into the physicality of all of it, and it is quite funny. Does she look like the Spirit Fingers guy? Like choreography while doing it? Yes, but that's the point.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. It's great.

Amanda Dobbins

Not going in.

Sean Fennessy

Okay.

Amanda Dobbins

Not going in.

Sean Fennessy

2020. Love, weddings and other Disasters.

Amanda Dobbins

I think maybe the single worst movie that I saw out of all of them.

Sean Fennessy

I was surprised to learn this film existed when I started researching it.

Amanda Dobbins

So I think it was ultimately released in December 2020, which should tell you something. And I believe that this has a 4% on rotten tomatoes.

Sean Fennessy

4%.

Amanda Dobbins

I've never seen it. That's why I noticed. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Sean Fennessy

Okay.

Amanda Dobbins

And stars. Stars Jeremy Irons, among many other people who I. Whose names I don't remember. And it's really about other people getting married and that he's the wedding planner and she is there. I think she gets set up on a date with him.

Sean Fennessy

But.

Amanda Dobbins

So first of all, it's asking me to believe that Jeremy Irons is a wedding planner. Oh, she's blind. Sorry, I forgot about.

Sean Fennessy

I was wondering, as you were speaking, what are these other disasters from the title?

Amanda Dobbins

That's not even the disaster. That's not a disaster. That's a fact of life.

Sean Fennessy

I'm not trying to silence you, but we don't need to talk about this movie anymore.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, anyway, you asked me to say something about her performances.

Sean Fennessy

You did. She's blind. That's something.

Amanda Dobbins

You know, she's playing a blind actress.

Sean Fennessy

Does she adequately perform as a blind person?

Amanda Dobbins

Well, then she explains a whole art project that she does where she. Like, she does photography by sound. And then.

Sean Fennessy

Oh, sure, that's a thing.

Amanda Dobbins

That's fairly convincing. But I would say that Jeremy Irons as the OCD wedding planner was like the bridge too far for me. So Diane Keaton wasn't really the problem. Here. Mac and Rita.

Sean Fennessy

2022. Mac and Rita. She plays Rita. Who's Mac?

Amanda Dobbins

Mac is her younger self.

Sean Fennessy

What in the world? With a different name.

Amanda Dobbins

So this movie is directed by Katie Aselton and this. And it's set, it's a girls weekend in Palm Springs. And this young woman, Mac, she's 30s and she's just a little bit lost in life. And so.

Sean Fennessy

So who portrays her?

Amanda Dobbins

I have forgotten this young woman's name. I thought that she was perfectly nice, perfectly good. This was a movie that was not good. But not incompetent.

Sean Fennessy

Elizabeth Lail.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, but who dis? It was not. It didn't.

Sean Fennessy

Oh, she's the star of Five Nights at Freddy's.

Amanda Dobbins

Sure it didn't work, but it wasn't bad if that makes any sense. And I feel like I watched so many movies that I felt were truly and previously love weddings and other disasters that this anyway just didn't work. But Simon Rex is in it briefly. And so she goes to, you know, she has some sort of aura reading thing in the desert in a tent with Simon Rex and then she gets out of the tanning bed and she's her 70 year old self as played by Diane Keaton who is honestly the least effective part of the film. She's trying. But Taylor Page, very funny in it.

Sean Fennessy

2023. We're almost done here. Maybe I do.

Amanda Dobbins

I did watch this. Oh this is, this is. Oh sure. Reunion with Richard Gere and also Susan Sarandon and William H. Macy. And this is another one where the young people are getting married and the old people have some things they need to work out. She and Gere are kind of interesting in it. It's not their problem. But it's a bad movie.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, so that's not going in. Yeah, maybe I do the big wedding. Love weddings and other disasters. This seems to be a theme.

Amanda Dobbins

She keeps Book Club 2. They're also going to a wedding.

Sean Fennessy

The Next Chapter.

Amanda Dobbins

Book club, the Next Chapter. And so they're going on a bachelorette trip to Tuscany. And I remember that Diane Keaton gets a full makeover and she buys all of these fantastic Barry esque Diane Keaton dresses. So that's fun that she gets to do that. And also at a vineyard I think at the rehearsal dinner there's a kind of cast movie wide performance of Laura Bran against Glory, which is an underrated song in my opinion.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, that's red. 2024. Arthur's whiskey. You didn't get a chance to see this film, did you?

Amanda Dobbins

I didn't So I failed this.

Sean Fennessy

So that's. We're gonna just say red because we have to. And then 2024, her final feature film, Summer Camp. Did you watch this?

Amanda Dobbins

I did. So this is. Well, I said I would do the work.

Sean Fennessy

That's great.

Amanda Dobbins

I did the fucking work.

Sean Fennessy

I'm proud of you.

Amanda Dobbins

This.

Sean Fennessy

I've not seen a collection of consecutive reds like this in all my time doing this episode.

Amanda Dobbins

This is another, you know, girls trip. But they. It's friends who used to go to camp together, and they go back to camp to refine, to find themselves.

Sean Fennessy

Okay, what'd you think?

Amanda Dobbins

I'm not a camp person. And I. You know, neither is Diane Keaton, really. Did you, like. Did you go to, like, summer camp?

Sean Fennessy

Day camp? I never. Well, sure, I only did sleepover camp for basketball. I did sleepover.

Amanda Dobbins

So that's training camp. That's different. That's serious.

Sean Fennessy

Well, I wasn't quite at that level of performance, but that was the only time I slept away.

Amanda Dobbins

This is like sleepaway camp, which is like a. You know.

Sean Fennessy

You know what I like is the film Sleepaway Camp, which is a wonderful horror film that maybe you should get yourself up on if you're gonna talk about teenage sex and death and. Kim, my ass.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, I think currently I'm not. Because you scheduled it for. While I'm on vacation. That's when the film's coming out at some point. Well, you know, I saw it in May.

Sean Fennessy

Well, pre record some thoughts. We'll play them on this episode.

Amanda Dobbins

Summer camp's not going in. I don't really think Diane Keaton was a huge summer camp person.

Sean Fennessy

Okay. The hall of fame.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Right now we've got seven greens and two, four, six, eight yellows.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

Three of these yellows must be turned green.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay, so looking for Mr. Goodbar.

Sean Fennessy

Yes, I fully agree. Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Yes.

Amanda Dobbins

Why don't we just put Godfather in with Godfather Part 2 under the Robert Duvall umbrella?

Sean Fennessy

I think you have to.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

I think it would be incomplete, but that's fine.

Amanda Dobbins

But that's just one. Yeah, that's how you guys did.

Sean Fennessy

Oh, you're. Is that how we did it? We just counted it as one film?

Amanda Dobbins

Am I incorrect on that?

Sean Fennessy

No, that is correct. Okay, then let's do exactly that.

Amanda Dobbins

Listen to that whole episode.

Sean Fennessy

Thank you very much for supporting Tracy Lutz.

Amanda Dobbins

I almost was like, should we call Tracy right now, live and be like, what should we put in the Diane Keaton hall of Fame? But he, you know, he and I

Sean Fennessy

spoke about whether or not this should be something he should participate in. But he did say to me. I can at least share this, that he was not very up on a lot of the later films.

Amanda Dobbins

Right.

Sean Fennessy

Well, neither were you, and I still aren't. Okay, so play it again, Sam. Yay or nay? Nay, I say. Nay. Manhattan.

Amanda Dobbins

Yay.

Sean Fennessy

I think. So, listen, now that gets us down to one more spot.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

See, I don't.

Amanda Dobbins

Father of the Bride, maybe we should. What?

Sean Fennessy

I think I. Would you rather have Shoot the Moon or Manhattan? Cause she's. She's the show in Shoot the Moon.

Amanda Dobbins

I'm fine with that. But you can't be like, thank you for spending so much time talking about this movie and not put Manhattan in. Then as a result, that wasn't my decision.

Sean Fennessy

I still have two blues to choose.

Amanda Dobbins

So you'll do Manhattan as blue.

Sean Fennessy

Well, that seems problematic. Okay. I was gonna say Jack. What do you think about that? That's not problematic. Come on. I don't think so either. I really like Manhattan. I've always really liked it as a movie, even though it's got some very funky stuff going on. So we'll say Father of the Bride is in.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay. You wanna do Shoot the Moon instead of Manhattan?

Sean Fennessy

If you want, maybe we'll do Manhattanie

Amanda Dobbins

hall and Manhattan Murder Mystery. Like, we have a lot of things here.

Sean Fennessy

This is her most significant collaborator.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

We have three different registers, I would say.

Amanda Dobbins

And you're right. And we do also have three Nancy

Sean Fennessy

Meyers, so that seems appropriate.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay, great.

Sean Fennessy

And then maybe Shoot the Moon as My Blue.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay, that's interesting.

Sean Fennessy

What do you think about that?

Amanda Dobbins

I'm good with that. And I will.

Sean Fennessy

Would you do Morning Glory as your blue?

Amanda Dobbins

I will probably do Morning Glory as my blue. Even though some people say that I' already let that message be known. Let me reinforce it.

Sean Fennessy

I think this is right.

Amanda Dobbins

Okay.

Sean Fennessy

What do you think about this? I'll read it off to you. The Godfather 1 and 2 exist in one slot. Just cheating. But it's okay. Annie hall looking for Mr. Goodbar. Manhattan Reds. Shoot the Moon is My Blue, baby. Boom. Father of the Bride, Manhattan Murder Mystery. The First Wives Club. Something's Gotta Give. And your blue is Morning Glory.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah, this feels correct. I think that's right. And that's what? 30. That represents 30 years of a 50 year career.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah. And then what happened?

Amanda Dobbins

Watch every one of those movies.

Sean Fennessy

I mean, more than 30 years. It's almost 40 years. Yeah, nearly 40 years. And then she made a lot of other movies.

Amanda Dobbins

What movie? Of the ones I described are you most curious about?

Sean Fennessy

None of them. Them. I like the one with the dog narrator.

Amanda Dobbins

Oh, yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Love the Cooper. Yeah, that had a good cast.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

Maybe I'll check that out.

Amanda Dobbins

I don't think that you should.

Sean Fennessy

I would also like to be full on Rob Reiner. Like, I'd like to see all the Rob Reiner movies. So maybe I'll watch that one. Maybe I do. Where you said Michael Douglas is a racist real estate agent. Is that what you're saying?

Amanda Dobbins

Well, he's certainly. Yeah, he's insensitive.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, insensitive. Well, there's a fine line there.

Amanda Dobbins

Well, it's not really that.

Sean Fennessy

Should we call him a racist or not?

Amanda Dobbins

And the character. It's not really that fine of a line.

Sean Fennessy

Got it. Any closing thoughts on Diane Keaton? Wonderful star of stage and screen, a legend.

Amanda Dobbins

This is one of the ones where even where I was watching the ridiculous movies, I mean, sometimes that was a little bit of a chore, but otherwise this was a delight. And it was a different type of movie than normally we get for hall of Fame.

Sean Fennessy

Will you be screening the Good Mother at any preschools in the near future?

Amanda Dobbins

As you know, I don't really organize any preschool events, so I'm just grateful for those who do. And I show up and then I don't accuse anyone of anything.

Sean Fennessy

Well, that just about does it. We're going to Toronto. We are. That's what we're doing for the rest of this week. Fortunately, we have pre recorded an episode about certainly one of my favorite movies of the year. I think one of yours as well.

Amanda Dobbins

Absolutely.

Sean Fennessy

Invite Olivia Wilde's new movie.

Amanda Dobbins

Go see it. Don't listen to the podcast until you see it.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, we. We spoke around spoilers for a bit and then really spoiled the movie and got into it. Cause it is really a rich text. And I've been thinking about writing about this and I'm gonna pick your brain about it a little bit when we get off, but I'm thinking about writing about and maybe we can bleed this into the show. The millennial movie masterpieces.

Amanda Dobbins

Oh, okay.

Sean Fennessy

Because that movie is very millennial.

Amanda Dobbins

Yes.

Sean Fennessy

And we're getting to the famous stuff

Amanda Dobbins

and we've reached our era. Yeah.

Sean Fennessy

It's like people are in their 40s and they're making movies. They're making the movies they want to. That's a movie clearly that Olivia Wilde wanted to make for very specific reasons. So anyway, we can give that some thought and yeah, we'll be crossing the border. Hopefully they'll let you back in the country. You think they will?

Amanda Dobbins

I did this morning put my passport in my bag so I wouldn't forget it because, like, five times last week I googled the. The adapter, power volt situation. We're all in the clear and ready to go.

Sean Fennessy

Good job.

Amanda Dobbins

Yeah. Do you know what province we're traveling to?

Sean Fennessy

Ontario.

Amanda Dobbins

Correct.

Sean Fennessy

Yeah, I did know that. Yeah. I gotta study the provinces, so when I get there, I'm not. What happens if you don't know? They murder you. What do they do?

Amanda Dobbins

Yes. Very Canadian.

Sean Fennessy

They kill you publicly. I'm excited about that. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Thanks to Lukas Kavanaugh for the production support. As I said, we will have the invite coming on the show on Friday. See you then.

Amanda Dobbins

Your package says delivered, but delivered where, exactly? The hallway, the lobby, your neighbor's apartment.

Sean Fennessy

Instead of playing detective with your deliveries, get a mailbox at the UPS store.

Amanda Dobbins

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