by Diane Keaton
In her journal, Mom wrote, “Randy’s Chap Book, Dreams of Mercurius, was handed to me today—Gary Young published 300 copy’s. This is a goal I’ve directed long moments of thought toward him for years, and this is only the beginning.”
Stephen Kessler’s review had a great effect on both Mom and Randy. I don’t remember paying too much attention. I’d been overwhelmed with work and had just been in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. I remember being happy for Randy, but wondering why one of the more oblique poems was his choice for the title. Mercurius, a god of abundance and success, also served as a guide to newly deceased souls entering the afterlife. Success and abundance, like the kind Dad worked so hard for? Guiding the dead to an afterlife? I didn’t get it. Anyway, I didn’t have time to elaborate. The opportunity the director Richard Brooks had given me to play Theresa Dunn, a masochistic young woman unconsciously seeking out death while looking for love in all the wrong places, consumed me. Meanwhile, Mom couldn’t resist sending me a brand-new poem, one that Randy had just finished:
In the field beneath the Milky Way,
beneath the darkness, cool & perfect,
lying like a great whale
beached in a dream,
I listen to the owl
lift out of the sycamores
and cry like a soft white bell—
Dear Randy,
This is a completely beautiful interpretation of an observation. I’m overwhelmed at the twist of fate which made me one-half of a genetic act bringing you into life. I’m proud to be your parent because of what it means in terms of who you are. I feel this rumbling inside me every time I read your work. I don’t like to call them “poems” because that word has a tone of frothy, mind wanderings, and I don’t in any way equate that to what you write. I’m sorry I have such a difficult time expressing myself regarding your work, which is of great importance. I dread the day when I won’t be a part of your poetic process, but I realize it will come, and I promise to deal with that when it happens. I admire the way you ignore us dullards who get a gleeful expression as we tell you of misspelled words, etc….like that’s of such importance. What silly needs we have. Don’t ever lower yourself to our level—technical correctness is mechanical, but your words are the precision tools of a genius.
Love, Mom
* * *
—
Excited by Randy’s success, Mom enlisted me to send a batch of his new poems to my friend Larry McMurtry, for his take.
Dear Diane,
I’ve been reading your brother’s poems. There’s quite a bit of technical variety in them, lots of wonderful rhetoric. They would make an interesting book, and yet there’s a direction to most of the poems that’s limiting them. I can’t tell whether it’s accidental, temperamental or what. Most of them have an iconic strategy: he sets up a figure (potter, gardener, fisherman, saint) and, in establishing the icon, often sort of blocks the poem from getting really particular. He seems to go naturally to the “you” poem, the second person voice, but in about half a dozen poems, he allows the “I” to come in. These poems are much more impressive and dramatic, I think, though I’m not simply equating the “I” with Randy. In reading a whole group of them, one gets a sense of a guy sort of directing the reader away from himself. He’s hesitant to use his own personality. Yet, when he does, or seems to, it works very strongly. I’m still digesting. He wrote a couple of quite good poems. Randy sure moves on his own track, and no other.
Love, Larry
Randy was spared Larry’s response, but not Mom’s, which was, as expected, glowing:
Dear Randy,
Your poem silverado canyon has moved me to the point of wanting to write you a long, personal epistle about my thoughts concerning you and your writing, but most especially the effect your words have on me. As I read your delicately worded poem I got a vivid picture of you and the complexities of your thinking. I can only imagine what it must be like to have a vision of the world that expresses itself in thoughts like:
ONCE UPON A TIME
Father is doing a handstand on the beach.
His thin, muscular legs dangle backwards over his head.
Once, a long time ago I studied the photograph.
His face was not where it should be.
Even after turning the picture upside down something was wrong;
How could he hold the world in the palms of his hands?
It frightened me then. It frightens me now.
Father upset nature. At least in my mind he did.
* * *
—
After staying away for as long as he could, Randy returned to Hall and Foreman. Just like old times, Dad tried to hide the disappointment he felt about Randy from Hugh and the employees, but he incessantly griped about him to Mom. Mom had moved to a higher plane in her defense of Randy. As she’d said in her letter to him, she truly believed he was a genius. That word, “genius,” for her was an irrefutable shield against the ordinary expectations of people like Dad. Given her own dreams, it must have been a place she, too, would have liked to take refuge.
Decades later, on a phone call with Randy, I tried to get him to talk about Dad. He didn’t bite, but days later wrote me:
I don’t have a pleasant memory of Dad. I was afraid of him the whole time. Remember when he spanked us, and we had to pull down our pants before he whacked our bottoms? I’ll never forget running around clutching my butt screaming. He was sadistic. You have to admit he had a sadistic nature. And I wonder where I got mine!!!! Even way back, even then I knew he didn’t get me. He would pounce on me for the weirdest reasons. Like with math. He’d ask me what one times one was. I’d say, “Two.” “Pull your head out of the sand.” That’s what he’d say. He’d say, “Pull your head out of the sand. It’s one.” “How come it’s one and not two?” I asked. He actually slapped me on that one. What did I do wrong? Why was he so pissed? I didn’t get it, so I didn’t say it right, so what? He made me feel like I didn’t know anything. I’ll tell you this. There was no way I was going to become his civil engineer son, that’s for damn sure. And those weird Toastmaster’s events where we were supposed to give speeches on subjects relating to success. Well, guess what, Dad wasn’t as brave as he made himself out to be. He too was nervous before going on. He would shake, just like me. He would shake like a leaf. Sure, he fought through all that fear, but it made for a tight, unlovable person. Money was everything to him. He kept making money and more money; that’s what he did. There was no telling what he was going to do. He proved it later on when he threatened to leave me down at the tip of Baja on a motorcycle trip he thought would bring us closer together. I was only 19. God, I hated that. Sometimes, I think Mom hated him too, especially when he would say things that made her fume, she’d get so mad she’d just shut up. Remember? I mean, she wouldn’t speak for a whole evening. One time he tore the door off the bathroom just to get at her. Now that’s anger. Dad scared me. If I did something wrong, if I was clumsy, if I was not thinking ahead, if I did not have a game plan, or an approach to say, peeling an orange, there would be trouble. If my fumbling hands made me puncture the pith of the skin so the juice dripped out he would lose it. He didn’t have patience with my awkwardness. He wanted precision in the world, and, from me, less meaningless talk.
I remember thinking about the significant difference between Randy’s and my relationships to our father. Not only was I lucky enough to be a girl, free from the crushing expectations Dad had for a son; I also had a dream. My dream had nothing to do with Dad’s world of precision and expertise. I wanted to be a movie star. I wanted people—lots of people I didn’t know—to love me.
* * *
—
On March 27, 1977, Annie Hall was screened at Filmex, the Los Angeles International Film Exhibition. Mom wrote in her journal:
The
theater was flooded with lights and fireworks overhead. It was a big deal for the closing night. Inside the theater was packed. We sat on steps at the back of the room. Annie Hall. An evaluation is always hard for me on the first viewing. I only saw Diane, her mannerisms, speech pattern, expressions, dress, hair, etc. the total her. The plot, the story, the photography, and sets took second place. I’ll have to wait for the second or third screening to see what I really think. When she sang “It Had to Be You” in a room full of talk and confusion I fought back tears. The song, “Seems Like Old Times,” was a hard one to take—so tender, I was exploding inside while trying to hold it all back. She looked beautiful all the way through. Gordon Willis did a very great job on the photography. Diane chose her own clothes. The gray T shirt and baggy pants were “down home” for sure. In reality Annie Hall is a love story, covering six years in the life of Woody Allen and Diane Hall Keaton. The screenplay ended up with many things differing from the truth, even though it seemed all too real. Annie’s camera in hand, her gum chewing, her lack of confidence—pure Diane. Woody Allen’s all too human love story, while tender, funny, and sad ended in separation, just like it did in real life.
The Hall family was depicted as funny, especially Duane, a thinly disguised substitute for Randy. Duane [played by Christopher Walken] was a sensitive person with a unique personality Woody’s character couldn’t cope with. Colleen Dewhurst playing me was not a high spot. She didn’t come off well. Grammie Hall was a sight gag. Jack’s part was not impressive, or appealing. The audience loved it all. This will certainly be a very popular movie.
* * *
—
After Woody and I went our separate ways, Warren Beatty came into my life. It was a new world order. People, politics, endless conversations late into the night with the likes of Gary Hart, Elaine May, Robert Towne, and Jack Nicholson, to name a few. Warren, with the help of others, was almost finished with his script about John Reed, the American journalist, poet, and socialist activist, best remembered for Ten Days That Shook the World, his firsthand account of the Bolshevik Revolution. I was going to play Louise Bryant, an ambitious, free-loving left-wing journalist. A few days before flying off to England to begin filming Reds, we shared a meal with Mom and Dad. Later, Warren described Dad as part loner, part charmer. He thought he had a “boyish” way about him. Warren took note of our similarities. Apparently, I also had Jack’s glad-handing, greeter-type appeal that couldn’t sustain endless conversations.
At the Easter Sunday dinner in Annie Hall, Mr. Hall, a stiff Republican, talks about going out to the boat basin with his son, Duane, where they loved to caulk holes. Our fictional family were middle-class white Americans who didn’t get sick. I doubt Dad appreciated the depiction, but at least he had the grace never to mention it. Besides, he had enough on his plate with Hall and Foreman.
It’s hard to imagine what working for Dad must have been like for Randy, especially after his split with Sally. Being the boss’s son was a humiliation that enhanced Randy’s determination to be left alone at any expense. As a partial surveyor, updating boundary lines and preparing sites for construction, Randy provided the necessary data relevant to the shape and contour of the earth’s surface, but he was always making mistakes. One day, Dad called Randy into his office and insisted he refer to him as Mr. Hall in front of the employees. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but, as usual, Randy didn’t say a word. He just disappeared again, this time into the town house on Tangerine.
Mom was riddled with concern when she wrote: “Randy’s into his 4th week of silence. He’s unplugged his phone. On Easter Sunday, I called to see if he was going to Grammie Hall’s with us. He said if he wasn’t here by 11 AM, to go without him. I haven’t heard from him since. Once there, Grammie Hall asked Dorrie if Randy was hitting the bottle because all too soon he was going to run out of money.”
Mom left messages on his answering machine, suggesting solutions and offering possibilities. Randy remained unresponsive. Instead, he drank bottles of Scotch and wrote about his conflicting feelings with regard to his great champion and defender:
My mother is a ghost to me, a pale Methodist phantom conjured up from the flat lands of Kansas. We floated in each other’s lives like broken compasses. I have gone nowhere. No, that is not true; I have gone to the land of muted rage, spectral skirts and disembodied voices. I would have preferred a bitch for a mother, someone solid and distasteful—at least there would be a center, a place I could leave. Mother is a puff of smoke shape-shifting in my blood.
There is always something wrong. Our conversations never jibe. I don’t know what she really means. Strangely enough we’re very close; two sailors at sea clinging to the wreckage of our ship but silent in our camaraderie, silent in the sense that she speaks Chinese and I speak Turkish. Yesterday she called me on the phone. “Randy, it’s your mom. Hi. Are you writing? Why don’t you send me some?” (Because, mother, you never understand what I’ve written and it is embarrassing to hear you say that you do.) “Well, I just called to see how you were doing. You’re okay aren’t you?” “Yes, mother.” And that was it. She evaporated. I think of her, after such conversations, as a dream that beats the body to exhaustion, a dream repeated throughout a lifetime.
Randy wasn’t the only one hitting the bottle. Late one night, after enjoying a few too many vodka-and-sodas, while speeding through Balboa Bay in their new catamaran, Mom and Dad were surprised when the Harbor Patrol sounded a warning to turn off the engine. An argument ensued. Dad took things into his own hands, gunned the engine, and split. When the authorities caught up, he turned off the power, jumped into the water, and swam home, leaving Mom behind on the boat. Once Dad arrived home, the police showed up with handcuffs. The president of Hall and Foreman was sent to jail for the rest of the night.
In the fall of 1980, while I was in London filming Warren Beatty’s Reds, Robin, a newly certified registered nurse visiting Mom and Dad, called me long distance. In a panic, she said she’d awoken to find Dad sleeping downstairs on the floor. Mom had red marks on her face. The door to their bedroom was knocked off its hinges. Neither Mom nor Dad explained what had happened, and she was too frightened to ask. As if that wasn’t enough, later the same day, she took Mom to see Randy at the Tangerine Street condo. They knocked on the door; no response. Mom had the key, so they let themselves in. The kitchen counters were filthy. The grime in the sink was a quarter-inch thick. The walls had holes in them. There were empty liquor bottles everywhere. Light fixtures had been torn off the wall—and the smell—the smell was unbearable. It was a dire situation.
Mom and Dad were clearly in trouble, but in her journal she kept her focus on her son:
Randy hasn’t worked since February. I’m sick with frustration. He’s dropped out of touch with everyone except Dr. Markson, a psychiatrist Jack finally let me hire to help. He’s taken the phone cord out of the wall, and totally withdrawn. I’ve been to see him twice. Both times he assured me he was all right, saying he wasn’t depressed, just working some things out. He’s through with Hall and Foreman—what he will do next is a mystery. How will he support himself? I could scream from pain. I feel as if I failed somewhere, or all along. When Jack asked $300.00 rent of him Randy sent it, which must leave him near the bottom. My head & heart are taxed to the limit. The girls and I talk about the problem, but not Jack. He won’t go into it at all. A change has to take place soon.
I’d been busy making films, more than ten of them in ten years. One of those years was spent living in London, shooting Reds. While I acted my way through movie after movie, my brother’s decade was spent drinking inside his trashed-out swinging-singles condo, with low-flying fighter jets terrorizing him day in and day out. Years later, he told me how desperate he’d been: while I was playing the firebrand Louise Bryant, he’d attempted to gas himself in the garage. At the time, despite worried reports from Robin and Dorrie, I’d ch
osen to justify my absence by being ensconced in a life that enlarged my horizons. I told myself I didn’t have time to linger on my family’s problems, and certainly not Randy’s.
Dad made a move to stop all assistance. But Mom couldn’t live with the idea of Randy facing the world without help. Randy didn’t have a job. Could he even handle one? His appearance was getting worse. He’d quickly gained a lot of weight. He didn’t give “a rat’s fuck,” as Dad put it, about the way he looked, or anything else. Dad argued that Randy’s freefall was not something they should fund. Mom eventually won out: Randy never had to work again. Jack Hall accepted his fate by issuing Randy a monthly stipend for the rest of my father’s life. Randy couldn’t have cared less about being the so-called bum Dad tortured himself over. He didn’t have the foresight to comprehend he’d gone too far into the woods to find a path back. Instead, Randy took failure and wore it the way Hester Prynne wore her scarlet letter. At thirty-five, he proudly took on the role of a destitute man who appeared to have been raised by wolves.
Strangely enough, after the release of Reds, he wrote me a letter. It was first time he’d ever written me anything that commented on my acting.
Diane,
I think you outdid yourself. You’ve done great acting in other films, but there are times in “Reds” when I wanted to stop the projector so the moment wouldn’t move so fast. Where did you learn to use your face so well? I think you ran across every emotion in the book, then threw the book away and made up some of your own. It comes off the screen like some magical honey. Anyhow, you did yourself good and you can take pride, not only in the film, but of your contribution. (This is not idle chatter. I really believe it.)