6/14/2023
I had already read every possible Woody Allen biography and autobiography I decided it was time to move on to the Diane Keaton biographies.
I was disappointed in that I didn’t learn very much about Diane Keaton. Most of the book is about her family her parents and her adopted children. I think that her family is interesting particularly her mother was very interesting. But still it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. I wanted to know more about Diane Keaton so I could understand why things didn’t work out with Woody Allen. Because I’m a child of the 70s when I first saw Annie Hall in the movies I thought to myself but why can’t they still get together and be a couple? Maybe they were still a couple, I thought. It turned out that when he made the movie Annie Hall they had already been broken up for a certain time period, about two years?
It was incredibly disappointing when Woody Allen took up with Mia Farrow and then started making all of his movies about her instead of about Diane Keaton. So after looking at the data that I saw I’m gonna say that the reason that they broke up is because Woody was not that interested in her. In all the Woody Allen biographies and autobiographies Woody Allen never explains very much about her at all.
I read the book Brothers and Sisters which I thought was a terrible title because it reminded me of that song Brothers and Sisters from the album Free to be You and Me and every time I see the title that song becomes lodged in my mind again. I think she should have called the book something like “My Brother Randy” because this was more clearly explain what we were talking about. The book is not an overall look at brother and sister relationships.
But the book just didn’t have enough information about Randy for me to really understand what was going on with him either. It seems like his life was not terrible. He did the things he wanted to he had a good life I think compared to of how he could have ended up possibly homeless. I wanted to say more about it, but I can’t figure out how to describe Randy’s situation. I write things and then delete them because the words come out as didactic or critical. Dementia needs to be addressed when one is still young enough to take steps to reduce or prevent it. Alcohol was the biggest issue with Randy. Alcohol can accelerate dementia. Maybe the best way to handle dementia is to start with prevention at a young age?
A lot of the book is about her mother’s dementia and fears that she might also get dementia and maybe that’s why she thought it would be better to adopt? But there was also the situation that she was actually too old to have children when she did adopt. But at least she was more reasonable about adoption whereas Mia Farrow adopted a ridiculous amount of children. She didn’t have the means to take good care of all of them.
The one thing I did get as a take away the main component of Diane Keaton’s personality is insecurity and self doubt. These are things she needs to work on in therapy because anyone looking at her from the outside would say she’s incredibly talented, successful, beautiful and absolutely anyone would say that she more than excelled in her life. I wonder if she had or still has body dysmorphia? I think this book would be good for people with body dysmorphia to read. It may help them just to know someone so beautiful feels this way. The book is called “Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty.”
The question that she asked more than once in the series of books she wrote is does insecurity contribute to dementia. I think that it does not. But insecurity leads to overall poor health because it can lead to one making poor health choices. And I think health choices are the most important things you can do in terms of dementia prevention. It is absolutely crucial to do cardiovascular exercise for the brain and particularly walking. Drinking and smoking are both terrible for dementia. The reason that Randy (although he is younger than Diane) has dementia now could be that he drank much more than she did throughout the course of his life. I don’t see Randy’s life as a tragedy and I think that his artwork (if Diane chooses to release it) will actually sell for good money. I wish that Diane Keaton would see this post and offer to sell me one of the artworks. Well that will never happen, but I just want to let her know that I’ll always be a big supporter of her acting.
Macy Makes Magic 