Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty

by Diane Keaton

  I’ve never known a “great moment,” or the sudden awareness of everything becoming crystal clear. I’ve never experienced a devastating tragedy. But I heard Gregg’s words. I listened. His story entered my thoughts through the sound of his voice in my ears. It was unlike other perceptions of beauty, which in my case usually come with the word NEED. Hearing Gregg did not make me try to one-up him with my own tale of woe. There was no thought of casting myself in his story, as if I could somehow make it mine, as if I were the narrator. This wasn’t like listening to music. It was more like an act of love. And, like love, it came with a price. Contrary to what I’d always thought, being an audience is active. If you want to be an active listener, it’s best to say one thing, and one thing only, and that is this: “What happened next?”

  The day turned out to be anything but ordinary. School was over. The kids were back home. It was almost dinnertime. Duke was mastering his “I’m just trying to be a better person.” Dex was taking selfies on her iPhone. I forged my way to the treadmill in the basement. The new house has speakers in every room. I turned the treadmill to 45, almost a jog, and started learning lines from the movie I was about to make back east. As my character, Leah, I was saying, “Sometimes life outlives love. After Eugene died, I never thought I would love again, but—” when I suddenly heard No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” blasting all the way from the kitchen.

  I tried to keep my mouth shut. But a few minutes later, subjected to the sound of Flo Rida rapping, “If you like my body, touch me, touch me, touch me, touch me, touch me,” I’d had it. That was it. “Turn it off! Dexxxxxter, turn it off. NOW!” No response. I got off the treadmill and ran to the stairs. “DEXTER. Did you hear me?” No response. The sound of talking made me pause. It was Dexter and my friend Lindsay. They seemed to be having a good time. Then Duke joined in, too. Then I heard them laugh. After that, the floor started vibrating with the sound of feet moving, and I heard more laughter. I guess the point is, how will I know if I like or dislike a sound, much less a song, if I refuse to hear it? How will I experience Gregg Korbon’s story if I don’t turn up the volume and listen? I’ve been called impatient by Russell O’Connell, the tutor, but he wasn’t wrong. He was right. And that’s when I said to myself, “Let it go, Diane. Let them go.” And I did, I let them go.

  I was speaking to the graduating sixth-grade class at UCLA Lab School. My speech included a brief appreciation of the school’s acclaimed research and innovation in children’s education. It seemed to be going well when I mentioned how honored we were to have UCLA’s chancellor, Gene Block, at our gathering. Marc Shaiman, my accompanist, started riffing on the piano. I took his cue and began to sing “God Bless America.” I heard a couple of boos. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a few people, including Dr. Block and his wife, Carol, leave. Apparently “God Bless America” was the wrong choice for our progressive elementary school community. Others stood up and left as well. Mortified, I was barely able to get through the song.

  Afterward, as soon as I reached the car, I called Carol Kane, crying. She was in the middle of a meeting with potential backers for her one-woman show on Bette Davis and didn’t have time to talk. Later, at the Grill in Beverly Hills, I ran into Warren Beatty. Why hadn’t he thanked me for the speech I gave at his AFI tribute two years ago? I knew I was no Elaine May, but still, a word of gratitude? I excused myself and went to the bathroom, where there was no toilet paper. Worse, the toilet wouldn’t flush. I tried to clean up the mess with my hands, but the water in the bowl started rising, and so did everything else. I ran to the sink, grabbed several paper towels, and found Hillary Clinton dancing with a naked man in the stall next to mine. A loud noise terrified me. I woke up screaming. The burglar alarm was going off.

  “MOM! MOM!” Duke ran into the room. “I’m scared, Mom.”

  “I know, don’t worry, Duke. Don’t worry.” He grabbed my hand as we rushed to the panel in the hallway. When I looked to see which room had triggered the alarm, there was no explanation. Squeezing my hand, Duke said, “Did you hear that, Mom?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The noise coming from the kitchen?”

  “There’s no noise in the kitchen, Duke. Trust me, we’re fine.”

  After checking all the windows with steak knives in our hands, just in case, we still hadn’t heard from the alarm company. Where was the call within thirty seconds? Where was the concerned voice at the other end of the line reassuring us the police would come? What’s the point of having an alarm if no one calls? Screw that.

  It was three forty-five in the morning. Duke was still convinced that hooded men with assault weapons were lurking in some dark corner. So I broke the cardinal rule and let him get into bed with Emmie and me. It was a matter of life and death, right?

  An hour later, I woke up to another alarm. I looked over at my clock. It wasn’t the crickets chirping on my iPhone. It was an Amber Alert from San Diego. The suspect, a Caucasian male, was believed to be traveling to Texas or Canada with a sixteen-year-old girl. Goddamnit. Life was a nightmare. I couldn’t get back to sleep.

  At five-thirty, Duke woke up asking if he could watch Jackass on Apple TV. “Go back to sleep, Duke.”

  “You know what you are, Mom?” he laughed. “You’re a creepy-ass cracker, like that little fat girl said on TV at the trial where the man killed a boy in a hoodie.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to call your mother a creepy-ass cracker, or anyone else, for that matter, and NO you cannot watch Jackass. It’s time to go back to sleep.”

  “I’m awake. Could you make French toast for breakfast, with sliced strawberries, too?”

  “Okay. Okay. All right, but the deal is, you have to get ready for school. Got it?”

  Then it was time to wake up Dexter. Never a treat. I wasn’t surprised that she’d slept through both alarms. In 2008, she’d slept through the 5.4 Chino Hills earthquake. “Dexter. You have to get up.” No response. “Dexter, now.” No response. Forget it. I went downstairs, fed Duke, fed Emmie, and was washing the dishes when she sauntered in, speechless, fifteen minutes later. “Are you angry about something?” I asked.

  “Mom, I’m not a morning person!!!” And with that she took the keys and left.

  “Duke. Let’s go. I’ll be in the car,” I yelled. Taking his cue from Dexter, he opened the door, turned the seat warmer on even though it was September, and dropped his buttered French toast onto my favorite bowler hat on the floor. “Hey, Mom. Listen to this: Mom puts the eek in cheek, the why in my eye, and, best of all, the dart in my fart. Like it?”

  “It’s great, Duke.”

  This was fast shaping up to be the worst day ever. Okay, okay, overexaggeration. At least it was a Friday, I was thinking, and I could sleep in tomorrow, when suddenly the crickets summoned. It was Dexter in tears. She’d rear-ended a truck on the Pacific Coast Highway. I put the pedal to the metal and hit Temescal as fast as I could before hopping onto the highway. Even though Duke was wearing headphones, I heard Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” coming through loud and clear. “Let me be the one you back that ass to.” Thanks, Robin.

  After I took care of Dexter’s tears, and the angry woman’s ruined bumper, I wondered why Hillary Clinton had danced with a naked man in a bathroom stall. Dreams can be deranged. But life is a journey that seems to be going nowhere. There was no beauty to be found in its absurdity. There was no beauty, period. Why did I have to be over the hill, anxious, frustrated, overwrought, and bumbling? It was eight A.M. Goddamnit. I was exhausted. I needed help. And therapy wouldn’t do it, because of course, I’d been therapized, acupuncturized, analyzed, hypnotized, and yogatized enough for one inconsequential woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

  As soon as I got home, I decided to try the advice of Dr. Tan, my acupuncturist, and take a backward walk with Emmie in an effort to employ the unutilized part of my brain. According to Dr. Tan, this would help ward off future dementia. A person’s got to keep trying. That’s what I
said to myself. So I straightened my shoulders, grabbed Emmie’s leash, and, barefoot, began to walk backward from my house to the bluff. Goodbye, house; goodbye, giant sycamore tree; goodbye, Wynola Street.

  I’m not a fan of goodbyes. I began to worry. I couldn’t see what was approaching. Was I close to the bluff? Would I fall off? All of a sudden I heard my neighbor Dolores say, “Hello, Diane.” As I turned my head and looked up, I tripped over a rock, fell down, and broke my toe. Immediately, I started screaming, “I hate you. I hate you, you fucking toe. Fuck you!” Was I crazy? It wasn’t my toe’s fault; I’d already broken four. But, come on, this was the last thing I needed. Especially when I knew my podiatrist would scold me for walking backward barefoot. To hell with it. I didn’t care; I’m not going to wear shoes every second of every day for the rest of my life. It’s one of the few remaining sensory pleasures I have, goddamnit.

  After a half hour of waiting in pain at the doctor’s office, I went on Pinterest. My obsession. My love. On Sarah Smith’s board I found a photograph of Vanessa Paradis’s gap-toothed smile and pinned it. It made me remember Lauren Hutton. I recalled sitting in the front row of Warren Robertson’s acting class in midtown Manhattan watching Lauren Hutton walk onto the stage after James Earl Jones had given an acting exercise. I could tell she was nervous. Nothing particularly stuck out from her monologue, until she made a mistake and unashamedly smiled. That’s when I saw the big black hole between her two front teeth.

  Now it’s different. Gaps are cool. But not all gaps are equal. Mick Jagger’s Georgia May has a smile that’s a sexy anomaly, like Vanessa Paradis’s. Lauren Hutton’s beamed from the depth of a glorious flaw. The flaw was its perfection. I’ve seen a lot of smiles and I’ve dished out my fair share, but Lauren Hutton’s smile, while enviable, did not make me envious. I didn’t try to steal it for myself. I recognized it as a transforming gift she’d been given. It made me want to spread the joy, and pay it forward.

  Jessica Lange keeps her smile close. That’s its brilliance. Who will ever forget Julia Roberts’s megawatt grin in Pretty Woman? Ryan Gosling’s is small but dangerously effective on women. What about the before-and-after effect of Barack Obama’s smile? You may say I’m off my rocker, but hear me out: President Obama is a man with two faces. I would venture to say no face has ever been more transformed by a smile. Every American has seen President Obama’s face bear the weight of disappointing setbacks. And every American has seen it mutate instantaneously from solemn into a kind of jubilation brimming with empathy and the humility only a great man can project. President Obama’s smile is an anomaly we’ll never see again.

  I remembered Grammy Keaton saying, “There’s an Irish colleen sitting on your face waiting to reveal herself by turning up the ends of your pretty little mouth. Smile, Diane.” I took her advice and learned that my smile was a multiservice instrument. It could express pleasure, sociability, and amusement, too. I began to understand that “service with a smile” could be a way of life. One of my first jobs was behind the candy counter at the Broadway Theater in Santa Ana, California. I smiled more than any of my fellow workers, and I noticed that people liked being treated cordially.

  While waiting in the reception area with my broken toe, I had an epiphany. Maybe my smile could help me make it through the day. Maybe I could stop being so aggravated if I wore a smile.

  Back in the car after my appointment with the podiatrist, I got a call from Sandra, reminding me that I’d promised Duke and his friends Jackson, Zeke, Ben, Atticus, and Core that I’d take them to see Grown Ups 2. What? Sorry, I told her, but I had to bow out. The last thing I needed to do was buy popcorn for six male tweens and go see an hour and a half of fart jokes.

  Then Stephanie called and asked me if I wanted the good news first or the bad. Thanks, Stephanie. That was the exact moment when the police car’s siren pulled me over on Roxbury. I sat in the car with my throbbing toe as the officer informed me I’d been holding the phone to my ear while driving. Did I know it was against the law? Giving my new method a try, I smiled. Apparently, he was not charmed. I gave him my friendly “Sorry, I’ll never do it again” smile, another try. I even complimented him on his mustache. And you know what he did? He handed me the ticket without comment and drove away. So much for Charlie Chaplin, the little tramp, and his “You’ll find that life is still worthwhile if you just smile.”

  It was five in the evening. Oh, and did I mention that the boys, all of them, were going to spend the night, too? I was late. The movie started at six. My toe was killing me. I was speeding and screaming at drivers, especially those who respected the speed limit. I got home at five forty-five, grabbed the boys from Sandra, piled them into the car, and headed to the AMC in Santa Monica. I could barely keep my anger inside. With no time to buy popcorn, we ran into the theater at the end of the credits.

  Grown Ups 2 opened with a frightened elk inside Adam Sandler’s bedroom urinating about six gallons of piss all over Sandler’s face. Okay, the guys started howling. And me? I couldn’t help but laugh, too. I knew it was juvenile. But it felt good. When Kevin James was forced to cliff-dive naked into a lake and landed testicles first on the head of David Spade, who made some rude joke about being trapped inside Kevin James’s asshole, we all laughed, me included. When Richie Minervini, as “Principal Tardio,” an overweight man in a belly-exposing T-shirt, pulled a Froot Loop out of his navel and ate it, I was howling with the boys. It was the best thing to happen all day. The movie was awful, as in awful funny. Belly-laugh funny. And the audience agreed. When David Spade’s character found himself accidentally pushed inside a monster truck–sized tire, which then rolled down a hill until it bounced off Shaquille O’Neal and fell onto its side, making Spade vomit fifteen feet across the road onto a nearby police officer who looked exactly like the cop who gave me the ticket, that’s when I laughed louder than anyone in the theater.

  I’m not the only one who loves a pratfall served with slapstick humiliation. It’s called low comedy. Low comedy is looked down upon because it’s targeted toward people who want to feel better by laughing at someone else’s misery. Obviously it’s not respected among certain circles, and yet comic geniuses like Buster Keaton, the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Steve Martin, Martin Short, Jerry Lewis, and Jim Carrey are some of its masters. To me, sight gags are as intellectually challenging to pull off as a pun. Watch the setup to a great pratfall, and you’ll see the tension build to some form of physical gag that releases it, and BOOM … that’s where the laugh comes in. No one has to feel guilty, or apologize for laughing at Adam Sandler’s misfortune, in the safety of a theater. In fact, it makes us, the audience, feel better about our own trials and tribulations.

  Melissa McCarthy may be the first female low-comedy genius in film. She can do anything, say anything, and get away with it. She’s a foul-mouthed truck-driving ball breaker who can dish it out with the rest of the guys. The difference is, she can also make you cry on a dime. That’s the female in her. She’s vulnerable. But in The Heat, when Captain Frank Woods says to her, “You look like one of the Campbell Soup kids who grew up to be an alcoholic” and she says, “That’s a misrepresentation of my vagina”—come on. That’s funny. I know, ’cause I’m laughing just writing it down. The Women in Film organization should stand up and applaud Kristen Wiig, too. Only in Bridesmaids do the gals get to be the gals and the guys as well. Bring it on, Melissa and Kristen. The world is theirs. Bridesmaids was groundbreaking. Take the scene where Kristen Wiig, playing Annie, is about to have a meltdown when she’s confronted by a snotty teenage girl at the jewelry store she works at. The girl walks in and stares at Kristen.

  13-YEAR-OLD GIRL: You’re weird.

  ANNIE: I’m not weird. OK?

  13-YEAR-OLD GIRL: Yes, you are.

  ANNIE: No, I’m not! And you started it.

  13-YEAR-OLD GIRL: No, you started it! Did you forget to take your Xanax this morning?

  ANNIE: Oh, I feel bad for your parents.

 
13-YEAR-OLD GIRL: I feel bad for your face.

  ANNIE: OK … well, call me when your boobs come in.

  13-YEAR-OLD GIRL: You call me when yours come in.

  ANNIE: What do you have, four boyfriends?

  13-YEAR-OLD GIRL: Exactly.

  ANNIE: OK … yeah, have fun having a baby at your prom.

  13-YEAR-OLD GIRL: You look like an old mop.

  ANNIE: You know, you’re not as popular as you think you are.

  13-YEAR-OLD GIRL: I am very popular.

  ANNIE: (sticks tongue in cheek and mimics fellatio) Oh, I’m sure you are … very … popular.

  13-YEAR-OLD GIRL: Well, you’re an old single loser who’s never going to have any friends.

  ANNIE: You’re a little cunt!

  Unlike Kristin and Melissa, when it comes to comedy, I’ve mostly played sidekick half-wits. In Annie Hall I was elevated to the role of an inarticulate young woman who wanted to mold herself into someone more sophisticated. Duh!!! Inarticulate! Awkward?! It was a walk in the park. With Baby Boom, Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers gave me the role of crackerjack businesswoman J. C. Wiatt, a woman who needed to be taken down a couple of notches by a baby in order to triumph. It was more of a stretch to pull off. I guess you could say it was my attempt to enter the lofty world of high comedy, characterized by witty dialogue and biting humor.