Goodnight, Annie: Remembering Diane Keaton

Diane Keaton’s first feature film was 1970’s Love and Other Strangers. I haven’t seen it. I don’t know anything about it. But, I can guarantee she lights up the screen whenever she appears. Two years later, with just some stage work in between, she was starring in The Godfather as Michael Corleone’s decidedly non-Italian girlfriend and eventually wife, Kay. 

She doesn’t have much to do in that first film, but as the outsider and audience surrogate, it is through her eyes that we watch Michael’s ultimate descent into evil. Let us not forget that the final shot of one of the most important American films ever made is of Keaton, skeptically observing a world she could never be a part of until she is shut out entirely. It doesn’t work without Keaton’s blend of weariness, longing, and naivete. Anyway, she gets her short-lived vengeance in Part II.

Keaton died yesterday at 79 years old. The world is a little dimmer without her in it. The movies are a little less delightful and magical. She exuded charm, both on screen and off. Her contemporaries like Jane Fonda and Faye Dunaway were all toughness, angles, and sharp edges. They seemed to be hiding something. With Keaton, everything was on the surface. She was honest, vulnerable, and soulful. Don’t get me wrong. She could play characters with sharpness and danger – she could do anything – but the essence of what made her such a one-of-a-kind performer was always right there under the surface.

It is hard enough in Hollywood to build one career. Over six decades in the industry, Keaton had many. Her final two films came out last year, and both exemplified the kind of female-driven ensemble dramedies she was drawn to once she had the luxury of being choosy. The recent Book Club films, Mad Money, and as far back as The First Wives Club typified this mode of Keaton. And, no matter if she was playing first, second, or third fiddle, she made beautiful music.

In 2003, she found late-career box office success with Nancy Meyers’ Something’s Gotta Give, the movie that taught young people that older people could be sexy – never mind that Keaton was just 56 when the movie was filmed and as beautiful as ever. This kicked off a cottage industry for about a decade worth of “late in life” romances in which she would team up with the greatest actors of her generation: Jack Nicholson, Kevin Kline, Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas, etc.

Around this same time, she found herself taking on mentoring roles to young ingénues playing the kind of roles she would have in the ’70s. This would be the Morning Glory, Family Stone, Because I Said So era. If you’re around my age, some of these movies probably mean quite a good deal to you. These were a natural outcropping of her work in the hit Father of the Bride remake with Steve Martin (as well as its lesser sequel).

 A relatively quiet ’80s still began and ended with a bang – 1981’s Reds with writer-director-star-romantic partner Warren Beatty and 1990’s The Godfather Part III, once again reuniting with Al Pacino, whom she called the love of her life in her memoirs. In between, she found time to plant the seeds that would become Something’s Gotta Give by doing Charles Shyer’s Baby Boom, written by Shyer and wife Meyers.

If those roughly 45 years of films had been all she ever gave us, it would count among the most successful careers for a woman in Hollywood history, particularly in the way she navigated the transition from an ingénue into a more mature performer. This remains a frustratingly difficult task for most women in the industry, but Keaton handled it with aplomb, though I’m sure there was great difficulty behind the scenes.

Anyway, if all we ever knew about Diane Keaton, née Diane Hall, were the films from 1981 to 2024, we still would be celebrating her. However, from 1972 to 1979, she cemented herself as one of the most important performers of her generation and crafted a legacy that shines brighter today than perhaps it did even then.

Yes, the two Godfather films are key and she is vital to them. Looking for Mr. Goodbar in 1977 was a fascinating exploration of Keaton’s depth and range as a performer. It remains underseen and underappreciated to this day. But, of course, the key to Keaton’s stardom, the rosetta stone to her screen persona lies in her six collaborations in the decade with former romantic partner and lifelong friend Woody Allen.

We can litigate Allen, the Man, some other time, if you like. I look forward to that discussion. It should be noted that Keaton never wavered in her public support of Allen, even presenting the Golden Globes’ Lifetime Achievement Award to him in 2014 and accepting it on his behalf when he predictably refused to appear. However, he did make an appearance in 2017 to present Keaton with the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award. You may feel any way you like about their friendship or about Keaton for supporting her friend. Today, I am solely interested in their artistic collaboration.

That collaboration began on screen in 1972 with the Herbert Ross-directed Play It Again, Sam, based on Allen’s own play, which apart from being the origin of one of film history’s most oft-repeated misquotes, was where Keaton and Allen met and began dating when they starred together in the stage production in 1969. They had separated as lovers but grown as friends and artists by the time of the film adaptation, which is a delightful little screwball farce that is ultimately just a showcase for Keaton and Allen’s remarkable comedic chemistry. There are worse things to showcase.

The next year came Sleeper, which some will say is the funniest film Allen ever made. I love Sleeper, but even among his famed “early funny ones,” it’s not my favorite. It is, however, wonderful proof of just how game a performer Keaton was and just how committed she could be to a gag. Allen ultimately stopped making this kind of film, but I wonder if that is partially due to the fact there would never be another actress who could communicate Allen’s particular zaniness so effortlessly.

In 1975, we got Love and Death, for my money the peak of Allen’s early period and possibly the most goofily self-aware movie ever made, by Allen or anyone else. A parody of Russian literature and Western philosophy, the script breathlessly quotes Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Socrates, all set to a booming Prokofiev symphony, and at the same time, it deflates the balloon on the self-importance of all this philosophising and pedantry.

Once again, Allen and Keaton proved there would be few comedic duos to match them. Just look at this exchange of dialogue from early in the film:

Keaton: Boris, let me show you how absurd your position is. All right, let’s say that there is no god and each man is free to do exactly as he chooses. Well, what prevents you from murdering somebody?

Allen: Well, murder’s immoral.

Keaton: Immorality is subjective.

Allen: Yes, but subjectivity is objective.

Keaton: Not in any rational scheme of perception.

Allen: Perception is irrational and implies imminence.

Keaton: But judgment of any system or a priori phenomena exists in any rational or metaphysical or at least epistemological contradiction to an abstracted empirical concept such as being or to be or to occur in the thing itself or of the thing itself.

Allen: Yeah, I’ve said that many times.

If you’d like an insight into how my sense of humor and view of the world developed when I was younger, that 30-second exchange is about as comprehensive an understanding as I can offer outside of the next film we’re going to discuss. It’s perfectly aware of the absurdity of its own high-falutin airs while being smart enough to prick its own pomposity by the end.

That said, if it only works on the page, you don’t have a film. The only reason this works on film is because Keaton is the only actress in the world who could wrap her teeth and tongue around probably the only monologue in film history to reference both a priori phenomena and epistemological contradiction. Again, in her hands, effortless and hilarious.

And then, there was Annie Hall. Or, should I say, and then, she was Annie Hall. The Best Picture winner of 1977, famously beating out Star Wars, among others. Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, neither of which did Allen show up to collect. And, most importantly for our purposes, Best Actress winner Diane Keaton.

Alongside the Godfather films, Annie Hall is another of the most important American movies ever made. It is the template for any serious romantic comedy that would come after it. It is the quintessential relationship movie. It’s goddamn funny to its very core. And, it is, if pressed to name just one, my favorite film of all time. I could write 10,000 words on this film alone, but I will spare you that to focus solely on Keaton.

In brief, Keaton’s performance in Annie Hall is the reason words like singular needed to be invented. Keaton embodies the character in mind, body, soul, and iconically in wardrobe. Though Allen based the character in part on Keaton, it is distinctly a character, and in being so, it is one of the most richly layered and honestly observed characters ever committed to film.

She’s a flibbertigibbet, yes, but she knows it, and to the extent that she thinks it’s an issue, she’s working on it. But, she is also wholly herself, seeking to discover more of who she is through experiences and inquiries. She’s not afraid to try things. She chastises herself for claiming to “dabble” in photography, but she commits to taking photographs and those pictures become part of the film’s texture. She wants to sing, so she sings. She believes it goes horribly, but she does it again anyway.

Annie is an aspirational figure in so much as we should all aspire to be so open and honest, so willing to try and so willing to fail and try again.  But, Annie doesn’t exist without Keaton, that most open, honest, and vulnerable of performers, willing to try anything on screen, to fail, and try again. You don’t get to “La di da, la di da, la la” without being truthful about yourself as a performer and locating that same truth in your character. It is a performance that is unmatched, irreplaceable, and irreplicable.

They made Interiors together the next year, an Ingmar Bergman-inspired family drama that was Allen’s first capital-S Serious film. For my money, it’s another masterpiece that has fallen a bit by the wayside in the director’s filmography. Keaton does not have the showiest of roles in the film – those would belong to the Oscar-nominated Geraldine Page and the also-nominated Maureen Stapleton – but it is invigorating to watch the longtime comedic collaborators try something wholly different and succeed so well.

Finally, there is Manhattan, which is perhaps the most tainted and controversial of all of Allen’s films. Tellingly, it was not controversial then. In fact, it was his biggest box office hit. However, despite being undeniably brilliant and one of the most gorgeous films ever made, it becomes harder and harder to love with each passing year. While this is a necessary cultural corrective, it is also no fault of Keaton’s, who plays the adult love interest in the movie. 

Her caustic self-assurance is miles removed from Annie Hall (same great fashion sense, though), and it is remarkable to watch the nuance Keaton finds in a kind of proto-Clementine for Eternal Sunshine fans (“just a fucked up girl who’s looking for her own peace of mind”).

Keaton would make a brief appearance in Allen’s 1987 film Radio Days as a singer, and she would take over the Mia Farrow role in 1993’s Manhattan Murder Mystery once working with Farrow became … not an option. Those are both fun, and in light of the success of Only Murders in the Building and similar concepts, I do believe Manhattan Murder Mystery is ready for a reappraisal, but this is all later at different points in both of their careers.

Ultimately, Keaton’s work left an indelible mark on the history of the medium. The Godfather, Annie Hall, Reds – that would be enough, and yet, there was so much more. It is a cliche to say that there will never be another performer like her, but there will not be. There could not be. So just know that if you’re walking through Central Park, like so many of her characters did, and the changing fall leaves seem a little duller than usual, it’s because Diane Keaton isn’t around anymore, and the world’s a little less magical.

Fall of the House of Usher(s): 10 Most Anticipated Movies

Ruben Ostlund's Palme d'Or winner, The Square

Labor Day has passed, the film industry’s official end to summer, and this will go down as the worst summer box office in 25 years. Labor Day weekend was the worst on record. Grosses are way down, which means, given the steep rise in ticket prices, attendance has fallen off a cliff. Studios will fall all over themselves, trying to figure out where they went wrong, then come back next year and repeat the same mistakes. Analysts will present their theories, and some will be compelling, others less so. Ultimately, cause and effect will remain murky, and business will proceed as usual.

There certainly is not one answer to this problem, if we want to call it that, but if I may humbly suggest a possibility: This summer’s movies just were not that good. Audiences see good movies. This is a fact of moviegoing. People go to films with positive reviews and see movies their friends like. Should a movie tick both boxes, so much the better. Over the past four months or so, there has been a dearth of films that meet either category, let alone both.

As someone who spends much of his life in theaters, even I have had a hard time getting excited about any of this year’s crop of films thus far. I hope soon to take a deeper dive into the year so far – both the highs and lows – but suffice it to say I am ready for the fall movie season, when smart movies made by and for adults rule the day.

Last year’s list featured what would turn out to be some of the best films of the year, including Martin Scorsese’s Silence, which was the No. 1 most anticipated film and finished at No. 2 on our year-end best-of list. Beyond that, there were Jeff Nichols’ Loving (No. 3 most anticipated) and Ava DuVernay’s 13th (No. 8), which both earned honorable mentions. I have no doubt we will be talking more and more about the following films in the months ahead, so without further ado, Last Cinema Standing’s 10 Most Anticipated Movies of the Fall:

10. Downsizing, directed by Alexander Payne

Release date: Dec. 22

Payne really started to catch fire around Election in 1998. I was a little later to the party, going into Sideways blind and with no forewarning of the acerbic wit and naked humanity (and naked humans) I would witness. Since then, the director has refined his observational style and honed his ability to make us care about and root for even the schlubbiest schlubs. Here, he reteams with his Sideways and Election co-writer Jim Taylor to take on a fantastical science-fiction premise to which they will no doubt add a grounded sense of reality and frailty.

9. Suburbicon, directed by George Clooney

Release date: Oct. 27

A double-dose of Matt Damon to kick things off, this one looks like a wild ride indeed. If the trailer, particularly its final joke, gives you the impression of a latter-day Coen Brothers comedy – think Burn After Reading or Hail, Caesar! – there is a good reason for that. Joel and Ethan Coen share a writing credit with Clooney and his writing partner, Grant Heslov, on the script. While Clooney the director has tackled an array of filmmaking styles to varying degrees of success, this satirical take on suburban paranoia looks to be right in his wheelhouse. With the Coens jumping in, as well, expect this to be one you cannot miss.

8. Lady Bird, directed by Greta Gerwig

Release date: Nov. 10

Gerwig is the talented writer-actor behind films such as Mistress America and Frances Ha, and after appearing in three of last year’s best films – Jackie, 20th Century Women, and Weiner-Dog – she steps behind the camera with a chance to deliver one of this year’s best. This will be Gerwig’s first solo directorial effort – she co-directed the 2008 mumblecore comedy Nights and Weekends with Joe Swanberg – and she appears to be sticking firmly to what she knows, subbing in her Northern California hometown for her usual New York City milieu. With the promise of a great Saoirse Ronan performance in tow, Gerwig needs only to bring her consistently deft touch with human foibles to make this a sure-fire success.

7. Kings, directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven

Release date: TBA (Toronto International Film Festival

Halle Berry, in Kings

Ergüven, the writer-director behind the brilliant coming-of-age protest film Mustang, would at first seem an odd choice for this material. A Turkish woman with a French education would not likely jump to the top of most people’s list to direct a film about the Rodney King riots, and indeed, there has been controversy around Ergüven taking on the project. However, she proved with her directorial debut Mustang she is capable of making an angry, powerful film about tearing down the structures that oppress and dehumanize. If that is not precisely what we want from a film about the L.A. Riots, then I don’t know for what it is we are looking.

6. Battle of the Sexes, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

Release date: Sept. 22

Dayton and Faris do not work nearly often enough. The list of projects the husband-and-wife team have had fall through is extensive and storied. After breaking through with the influential independent hit Little Miss Sunshine in 2006, it took six years for them to return with the underappreciated romantic comedy deconstruction Ruby Sparks. It is now five years since that feature, and Battle of the Sexes arrives. The performances by Emma Stone and Steve Carell look to be stellar, the subject matter timely, and the approach dead-on. Dayton and Faris have been gone from cinemas too long. Let us hope they do not depart so long again.

5. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, directed by Martin McDonagh

Release date: Nov. 10

Another director gone from multiplexes since 2012, McDonagh’s absence can be attributed mostly to the fact he is a rock star in the theater scene. The famed Irish playwright has written and directed just three feature films, but each is an event, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri looks like his best chance yet for mainstream cinematic success. Although, if mainstream success were something McDonagh were interested in, I am quite certain he already would have achieved it. Operating in the darkest possible realms of comedy, as always, here McDonagh brings along Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, and Woody Harrelson for a journey that looks to be his most fun but most human yet.

4. Mother!, directed by Darren Aronofsky

Release date: Sept. 15

Not that she needs the help, but Jennifer Lawrence looks here to be getting the Black Swan treatment from Aronofsky, which is to say the director will run the “it” actress of her generation through the emotional wringer. Aronofsky’s most recent film, Noah, was troubled but unfairly maligned, mostly due to its impossibly high budget. This time, he scales back for the kind of psychological horror story that put him on the map in films such as Pi and Requiem for a Dream. Aronofsky is as much the stylist as ever, and Lawrence seems to be taking her gifts to another level. The combination of the two should produce nothing short of magic.

3. The Killing of a Sacred Deer, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Release date: Nov. 3

Greek auteur Lanthimos made the jump to English-language features with last year’s wondrous The Lobster, in which he teased out career-best work from Colin Farrell. Farrell now is joined by Nicole Kidman and Alicia Silverstone for a film that won the best screenplay award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Co-written by Lanthimos and his The Lobster collaborator Efthymis Filippou, The Killing of a Sacred Deer seems to take the director’s icy, detached view of human endeavors and marry it to the intense thriller we might expect from someone such as Michael Haneke – think Cache or Funny Games.

2. The Square, directed by Ruben Östlund

Release date: Oct. 27

As the winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, The Square would already be high on my must-see list. That it comes from Östlund only raises its profile. The Swedish filmmaker’s previous effort, Force Majeure, is among the century’s best films, a landmark of emotional exploration and familial disintegration that should be watched and studied for years to come. If The Square, the satirical targets of which seem fitting for our current era, equals or even nears those heights, it will be a transcendent experience.

1. Wonder Wheel, directed by Woody Allen

Release date: Dec. 1

My favorite filmmaker directing my favorite actress, there could be no film more anticipated for me. Allen’s late-career output at this point is famous for its unevenness. For every Match Point, there is a Whatever Works. For every Blue Jasmine, there is a To Rome with Love. I am a fan even of much of the director’s most slapdash work, while still admitting to some of its haphazard construction. The reason: Despite it all, Allen still has the potential to dazzle – Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Midnight in Paris being just two recent examples.

In Wonder Wheel, Kate Winslet is said to deliver a career-topping performance. The New York Film Festival has selected it as the closing-night film, not an honor bestowed lightly. It is scheduled at the height of awards season, whereas much of Allen’s work lately has been offered up as a summer trifle. For these reasons and more, there could be no other film at the top of this list.

*A quick note: Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film surely would have made this list if I could be reasonably certain it would come out this year. I cannot be. As of now, it has no official title and a tentative release date at the end of December. Anderson can work as long as he wants to make the best possible film, and when it finally does come out – with what is sure to be another brilliant Daniel Day-Lewis performance, I will be first in line.

Taxi Driver Week: Five best New York films of the new century

Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is the definitive portrait of New York City at its lowest point.

Welcome to Taxi Driver Week at Last Cinema Standing, a week-long celebration of Martin Scorsese's bruising, beautiful modern classic in honor of the film's 40th anniversary and a special screening as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Two films defined the highs and lows of New York City in the 20th century. Woody Allen’s Manhattan is the black-and-white postcard image of the city. It is a gorgeous love letter filled with romantic overtures and nostalgic glimpses at a past long since gone but still informing our feelings about the world it depicts. Its upper-crust characters stroll through Central Park at night, visit soda fountains, and go to museums. The wealthy and their romantic foibles are the film’s chief concerns, but the city always buzzes with life and energy in the background.

Taxi Driver resides on the other side of the street – the dream that became a nightmare. It is the dirt and grime and hate and ugliness of a world teetering on the brink of destruction. Martin Scorsese films on the same streets Allen did, but Scorsese litters his sidewalks with trash, shows steam pouring out of every sewer grate, and envisions a city slowly circling the drain. It is an angry mess, overflowing with blood and bile. It is barely habitable. It is hell, as Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) says.

For better or worse, Manhattan and Taxi Driver are the definitive portraits of that era in New York’s history, but as with all such things, time marches on, and the city has moved beyond both depictions. The city is now high finance and culture war, gentrification and class divide, Disneyland and cemetery. As such, it seems only right to look to the new century for films to define what it is to live in New York City today. In 100 years, audiences could look back on any of these five films and understand what it once meant to be in New York.

25th Hour (directed by Spike Lee; 2002)

Barry Pepper and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in 25th Hour

The only one of these films to deal directly with 9/11 (though The Visitor could only be set in a post-9/11 world), 25th Hour bravely explores the stain left on an entire city’s soul. Like Scorsese and Allen, Lee is a quintessential New York filmmaker, and it is fitting he has made perhaps the best film about living in New York City in the aftermath of one of the greatest tragedies in American history.

Adapted by Game of Thrones creator David Benioff from his own novel, the screenplay digs deep below the surface of a city in mourning and unearths the kind of pain that flags and bumper stickers and slogans cannot mask. The story revolves around Monty (the excellent Edward Norton) on his last day of freedom before a long prison sentence. To view the city through the eyes of someone who will not see it again until he is an old man is to see it anew. The sights, sounds, and emotions blend together, and the city becomes one magnificent blur.

Even now, nearly 15 years since 9/11, the city still carries those wounds right there on the surface, and the sensory overload Monty experiences has only become more pronounced. The film argues there is no one you can really trust, but if you are going to make it in this life in this city, you have to rely on someone, otherwise you will be swallowed whole.

Chop Shop (directed by Ramin Bahrani; 2007)

Alejandro Polanco in Chop Shop

By the late Roger Ebert’s favorite young director, this was Ebert’s favorite film by Bahrani, and it is easy to see why. All of Bahrani’s films are stories of American lives and what it means to exist on the fringes of the American Dream. No city represents the American Dream more than New York, whose fringes are overflowing with the forgotten, the discarded, and the disillusioned.

Ale is an orphan living with his older sister above an auto-repair shop. They both scrape together any money they can any way they can, mostly through petty crimes. They scrimp and save, get knocked down and get back up, and their only goal is to buy a van they can turn into a food truck. Like everybody else who comes to this city, they just want to make their own way, but fortunes are fickle, and there is no prize for hard work but more work. The city is tough, and so must they be, no matter what stands in their way.

The Visitor (directed by Tom McCarthy; 2008)

Richard Jenkins and Hiam Abbass in The Visitor

Multicultural is a mostly meaningless word now. Where once homogeny was the rule, it is now the exception, and multicultural life is a given. That does not make it any easier for those unwilling to accept the new paradigm. However, for those willing to explore the worlds of others and embrace the melting pot, life becomes a rich tapestry of new experiences and joys. That is the truth at the heart of New York City and the core of Oscar-winning writer-director McCarthy’s superb film.

Walter (Richard Jenkins) is a lonely college professor who returns to his Manhattan apartment to find a pair of illegal immigrants squatting there, though they believed they were renting it legitimately. Of course, Walter has every right to call the authorities or throw them to the curb, but he does not. Instead, he invites them to stay, and in so doing, he drives the loneliness out of his own life and enriches his view of the world.

McCarthy’s script smartly focuses on the small indignities visited upon immigrants trying to eke out a meager existence and the post-9/11 suspicions used to divide people into categories of us and them. The Visitor points the way forward for all of us. We can either push people away based on race, religion, or whatever factor we choose and live out our miserable, lonely lives, or we can embrace change and accept the vibrancy of this world as a wonderful reality.

Shame (directed by Steve McQueen; 2011)

Michael Fassbender in Shame

For those unable or unwilling to reach out, loneliness, isolation, and alienation are facts of life. All the money, power, and beauty in the world cannot make you happy if unhappiness is at the core of your being. Featuring knockout performances by Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan and gorgeous direction by McQueen, Shame is a dark, despairing journey through the life of a man whose dissatisfaction and disaffection spring from wells running deep inside him. He spends every second of the day numbing the pain, but all that leaves him is numb.

Brandon (Fassbender) works in high finance, he lives in an impossibly opulent loft, and he is a sex addict. His sister, Sissy (Mulligan), has her own set of vaguely defined but deeply felt sexual issues. Together, they spiral into desperation and heartache. They are broken people, but as Sissy says to Brandon, that does not make them bad people. The city acts as an amplifier for their vices and allows them to indulge in all manner of self-destruction, but it also creates more noise, drowning out their cries for help.

It is a bleak but accurate depiction of life on this island. It is all too easy to push away those who love us and choose those who do not know us. If we refuse to let people get close, they cannot touch us, but that distance, that space between, leaves its own marks. The hardest part of living in New York City is letting yourself care, letting people in, and letting yourself be open to others. It is a lesson we all must learn at some point, whether or not we are willing to listen.

Frances Ha (directed by Noah Baumbach; 2013)

Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha

Every film on this list features a fairly low-concept premise. They are not overly clever or precious stories. They are not needlessly labyrinthine, nor do they seek to wow you with flash or grandeur. They are stories of real people from across the spectrum of human experience. Perhaps Baumbach and co-writer-star Greta Gerwig’s film speaks to me most because it most closely resembles my experience, if not in the details, then in the feeling.

During the events of the film, Frances (Gerwig) is the age I am now. She has the following conversation with her friend, Benji:

Frances: Do I look old to you?

Benji: No … Yes.

Frances: How old?

Benji: Older than I am.

Frances: Older than 27?

Benji: No. Twenty-seven is old though.

That brief exchange is possibly the best summation of how I feel every day. I do not feel very old – nor very accomplished – but my perception of where I am in life changes with every passing minute. Frances struggles for everything she gets, but at the beginning of the film, she sets her sights so low, the struggle is not worth it. New York City is a beautiful place for exploring who you are and who you want to be, but as Frances learns, it is not enough to figure out who you are. You have to want to be something more. That makes the struggle worth it. That makes New York City worth it.

Ha! Judd Apatow and Sick in the Head

Writer-producer-director Judd Apatow's book Sick in the Head is an essential read.

When you’re always picked last, you always get the worst position, like right field in baseball. Then, since you are always in the worst position, the ball never comes your way, so you never get a chance to show anyone that you are, in fact, good at this sport. But the truth is, you are not good at this sport because you are never involved in a play, because you are always in the worst position. When it is time to step up to bat, you feel so much pressure to do something incredible, like hit a home run, that you usually whiff. If you somehow manage to get a hit, your accomplishment is ignored by your peers, who chalk it up to luck … Then the kid who is picked last never gets a girl to like him, because he has been labeled a loser. Therefore, what else is there to do except decide that everyone else is the loser and you are the cool one?

– Judd Apatow, Sick in the Head, “Introduction: Why Comedy?”

I have a short list of celebrity idols – the people on whose careers I wish to model my own, whose work ethic I admire, and whose approach to life and philosophy either lines up with mine or more likely has directly informed mine. Roger Ebert, Woody Allen, Sam Raimi, Albert Brooks, Dan Harmon. In ways both large and small, these people have made me the person I am and give me targets for the person I want to be.

Recently, another prominent figure has cropped up whose views on work and life I find intoxicating. Much to my surprise, he comes from the world of comedy: Judd Apatow. Now, I enjoy comedies (see above: Allen, Brooks, Harmon), but it is not really what I do. I am drawn to the dark, the serious, and the macabre, but seen in that light, maybe it is not so surprising. The old cliché often seems true: There are few people darker or angrier than comedians.

Apatow discusses this topic at length in his recent collection of interviews with comedians, Sick in the Head. He is fascinated by what drives comedians to do what they do and how a few performers – notably, Jerry Seinfeld – pull off the trick of being funny and being happy. It is among the many themes running through the book, a New York Times bestseller released earlier this year.

My copy of Sick in the Head, signed by Apatow.

The premise of the book is simply that Apatow has spent his life in comedy and talking to comedians about their craft. At its most basic, Sick in the Head is a collection of this accumulated knowledge related through interviews with famous comedians at various points in their careers. However, beneath the surface, it is much more than that. It is a guide for overcoming fears and anxieties, for putting our troubled pasts behind us, and for carving out a better future for us and ours.

My single biggest takeaway from the book – which is as revealing about Apatow as it is about his interview subjects – is, to paraphrase Nike, just to do it. We all have problems. We all have concerns. We all have excuses. In the end, none of that matters. There is either action or inaction. Admittedly, this is the kind of moral shared elsewhere countless times, but for me, to hear it articulated by people I admire so much while learning of their personal struggles, well, it is invaluable.

Fellow writers will attest to this: Writing often is easy; sitting down to write is one of the hardest things in the world. Sick in the Head inspires me to write. It makes me want to sit down and fill blank page after blank page with ideas, and I cannot convey how empowering it is simply to have the will to write.

I recently returned from Hollywood, where I was in town for three days to pitch movie ideas to studios, agents, and managers, which is a draining and dispiriting process even when it goes well. I packed only the essentials – a change of clothes, some toiletries, and an autographed copy of Sick in the Head. I read it the whole flight there and the whole flight back. I read it in my hotel room. I read it at the bar. There is something essential in those pages, something that got me through times when I felt bad or exhausted or like packing it in and going home.

I don’t know that I can ask for more from a book than the will to carry on. I don’t know that I can ask for more from anything. So, thanks, Judd Apatow, and thanks to everybody who inspires anybody to do better.

New movie review: Irrational Man

Joaquin Phoenix stars in Woody Allen's Irrational Man.

There is a barely perceptible line between theory and reality. Most of us walk right up to it every day without even knowing it. It is the line that separates our beliefs from our actions, and stepping over it represents a decision to act on our feelings – for good or bad. The whole concept of morality is based on the underlying idea that what we do reflects who we are. The culture lionizes those who stand on the strength of their convictions and decries those who do not, but it is that same culture that decides what convictions are worth celebrating and when.

Take murder, for example. That seems like an easy one, but if we recontextualize it just a bit, the waters quickly get murky. As a moral maxim, let us say it is wrong to take a life. Now you are a solider. Does that hold true? Now you are a policeman. Does that hold true? Now, the life you have taken was that of an evil-doer, and the world is a better place without him. Does that hold true? Who decides any of this?

Irrational Man finds writer-director Woody Allen in thought-provoking, philosophical mode as he tells the story of a university philosophy professor who grapples with the question of what actions he is allowed to take in a moral universe. This is my favorite mode for Allen to work in, and his latest film reminds of masterworks such as Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point. However, whereas the characters in those earlier films were debating how to handle immediately life-altering problems, the professor in Irrational Man is dealing with a far more existential crisis.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Abe, a middle-aged college professor with a reputation for radical thinking but who has lost the will to live. This is a classic Allen character – the person who is too smart for his own good; too morose to find satisfaction; distraught, despairing, and suicidal but too self-important to carry out the act. Phoenix is an interesting choice for the part, and he does not allow himself to drift into the Allen impersonation so many of the director’s other leading men have tried. Phoenix is more restrained, more inside himself, and seemingly more dangerous.

Phoenix and Emma Stone in Irrational Man.

Parker Posey plays Rita, another teacher at the school who sees Abe as her ticket out of the drab life in which she finds herself trapped. Emma Stone is Jill, the student who inevitably develops a crush on Phoenix’s character. He does his best to keep his relationship with Jill platonic as he carries on an affair with the married Rita, but as one might expect, complications ensue.

If that had been the end of it, Irrational Man would have had the makings of a light-weight romantic comedy romp leavened by solid performances, particularly from Phoenix and Posey, and Allen’s usual flair for effortlessly witty dialogue. It should be noted as well that cinematographer Darius Khondji’s work makes for the best-looking Allen film since Midnight in Paris, which Khondji also lensed. There is a lot to like in the bare bones of the film, but Allen has his sights on something else entirely.

Abe’s problems are not merely romantic. They are philosophical. He is in crisis. He is impotent, creatively blocked, and lacking the will to change. As several characters observe, including Abe himself, he has no lust for life. Allen drives this point home marvelously as Abe engages in a game of Russian roulette in front of Jill and her shocked college friends at a party. This is a man teetering on the edge.

Then, by a stroke of luck, everything changes. He and Jill are sitting across from one another at a diner when she beckons him to her side of the table to listen to the conversation going on behind them. A woman, whom neither Jill nor Abe knows, laments to her friends that she is on the verge of losing her children to her lout of an ex-husband seemingly due to her having drawn a particularly corrupt family court judge. The woman wishes cancer on the judge, and Abe observes in voiceover that he will not get cancer and that wishing will not make it so. That is when everything clicks into place for him.

Jill later confesses to Abe she thought about the judge and also wished him dead of a heart attack or some other unfortunate incident. Abe has something more direct in mind: the perfect murder. This idea takes hold in him, and his life is saved by the simple notion he could end another’s. The thought alone is enough to get his juices flowing, as he says at one point. He is sexually reinvigorated, creatively inspired, and infused with a love of life he thought he had long forgotten.

There is nothing to say whether he will carry out his plan, and opinions among his friends vary as to whether Abe is capable of committing such a heinous act. One thing is certain, though. He would have no trouble justifying himself if he did. Abe is a philosophy professor. He knows the ins and outs of moral reasoning, and he is well acquainted with the line between theory and reality. The question is: Will he step over it?

Early in the film, the first time we see Abe in the classroom, he lectures on this very subject. He asks his students if in a moral universe in which lying is never justifiable they would have given up Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis. Believing in a moral universe and that lying is wrong is all well and good, but Abe argues such theoretical beliefs mean nothing in the face of real-world atrocities.

Let’s revisit what we said at the top. It is wrong to take a life. Now you are Abe with the chance to rid the world of a corrupt judge and help a good woman keep custody of her children. Does that hold true? Does Abe get to decide? Whether or not Abe goes through with his plan to commit the perfect murder, the fact he would he would consider it is scary enough. As Irrational Man argues, it seems you can only stare at the line so long before you are tempted to cross it.

See it? Yes.