Diane Keaton and me: Director Gillian Armstrong’s tribute to a unique artist

I flicked on the telly on Sunday morning to check the weather and there was Diane as Annie Hall. Oh no! It only meant one thing. I was stabbed by sadness. Diane. Our Diane! She is gone. She had to be too young.

Sadly, she wasn’t. I soon discovered that she was 79, which is a pretty good innings, but I thought she would be here forever.

Australian director Gillian Armstrong (left) on the set of her 1984 film Mrs Soffel with her first “superstars”, Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson.

Diane Keaton starred in my 1984 MGM film Mrs Soffel with our Mel, who by that time was superstar Mel. Mel Gibson. So, two superstars. Not always a fun thing for them, I discovered.

I want to write about Diane because she was such a special person. A good person. Funny, yes. Extra talented, yes. But she had a huge heart and great compassion and I loved her.

A unique artist: Gillian Armstrong on set of Mrs Soffel with Diane Keaton.

Diane and Mel were the first two stars I had worked with and both were the antithesis of the Hollywood Star. My young producer Scott Rudin had approached me to work on this true story with the writer Ron Nyswaner. I was captivated by this tragic love story. It was set in an incredible jail in Pittsburgh that looked like cages set in a chapel.

Once we had a script, I was flown to meet Ms Keaton in some faraway US city like Chicago. I remember I was transfixed by her cool black shiny lace-up shoes and we both loved the same movies. I just got a great feeling about her. Oh, and she said yes to me!

And how lucky I was to have her.

Diane would sit in the front seat of the car that took her to the studio. She greeted all the crew by name, was always on time, word-perfect and smart and thoughtful about her character and the film. No tantrums, no power games, no complaints even when out shooting in the hideous Toronto snow in period clothes, while the rest of us were all rugged up, standing around in full Down coats, hats and Arctic boots.

When the studio bosses started pressuring me to cut scenes and to lose shooting days, I discovered that Diane and Mel had called them secretly and told them to back off the director, me. We learnt much later that MGM, for whom I was possibly the first female director, was about to crash big time, which meant there was huge pressure to do those cuts. Our release budget was chopped, our marketing manager was fired on the very week of that release when the plan had been to push for Oscar nominations for both Diane and Mel.

I, unfortunately, was back in Sydney, about to have my first baby. No wonder our film disappeared.

I am always supercritical, but Diane was transcendental as the oppressed Mrs Soffel, the prison warden’s wife who fell in love with a death-row prisoner. Owen Gleiberman, from Variety, wrote regarding our film on Sunday: “Keaton showed you how deeply she could enact not just the wistfulness of love but the danger of it.”

Her scenes reading the Bible to Mel, the troubled prisoner, and their touches through those sexy bars were heartbreakingly beautiful. I was transported just watching along with our incredible Australian cinematographer, Russell Boyd, and later in the cutting room, holding Diane’s every breath with another Aussie, our brilliant editor, Nicholas Beauman.

You completely believed the relationship and the life-changing risk the real Mrs Soffel did take. For Diane and I, the key to telling this true story was that we must truly feel what happened to make her give up her whole life and children.

The night before we were to start the shoot, Diane’s manager, Arlene, had dinner with us and cheerily announced that NO ONE would want to see Diane Keaton in this film, that they just wanted her to be funny ... to be Annie Hall.

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Aagh! The last thing we needed to hear.

Looking back, in many ways she was right, I too was a huge fan of Diane as Annie, and there was a lot of Annie in her: the charm, the girlie nervousness and gentle comic timing. But she was also an incredible actress, and I think she wanted this; she wanted to stretch herself as a unique artist. (My fave Diane movie, apart from Annie Hall and Manhattan, would have to be The Godfather with Al Pacino, a chilling and heartbreaking and un-Annie performance.)

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By the end of our shoot, I had a lot of sympathy for both Diane and Mel and the downside of stardom. Their trapped lives meant they couldn’t just go wandering out and about. A radio station even put out a competition with a prize to anyone who could find out where Mel was staying.

Diane overheard me discussing in the make-up room where to go for my week off post-shoot to escape the cold. My mad friend Stu was coming over from Sydney. Our Canadian hairdresser and the costume person knew of somewhere in the Caribbean, on Saint Barthelemy, and offered to come. Diane said, can I come too?

And she did! We forget that superstars can be lonely. We were the oddest bunch and had the greatest time, including bursting into giggles at the first dreadful accommodation and doing a hysterical runner, led by Diane! And she did enjoy our mad, funny Ballarat boy Stu (who could be an acquired taste).

Diane the artist wasn’t just styling those incredibly unique clothing looks; she was photographing clever themes way before anyone else, like her crazy hotel foyers book and ultimately directing and producing along with an acting career in Nancy Meyers’ brave Something’s Gotta Give with its dynamic older-women love story. We all loved her romantic scenes with the wonderful Jack Nicholson.

She was fun and great with the little kids on our set, and her love life was never good, so I wasn’t totally surprised when she told me some time later, as we wandered around the LA Museum of Modern Art, that she had made the giant decision, backed by her sisters, to adopt as a single parent. This was super brave at that time.

We lost contact over the years as my work took me to the UK and Europe and home, but I followed her very fun doggie posts. She was a great labrador lover, so I bet she was an even greater mum.

A humanist, an original, an artist, funny and humble and smart as a whip. She will be missed but forever loved. RIP Diane, Gill.

Gillian Armstrong is an Australian director of films including My Brilliant Career, Mrs Soffel, The Last Days of Chez Nous and Little Women. She was MGM’s first non-American female director.

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