At the end of the 1972 masterpiece The Godfather, Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone tells his wife Kay, played by Diane Keaton, never to ask him about his business. After some pushback, he sighs and allows that “this one time … this one time I’ll let you ask me about my affairs.”
The 77-year-old Oscar-winner Keaton maybe had this in mind when she caught wind of Godfather auteur Francis Ford Coppola holding an “as me anything” session on Instagram Stories. The 84-year-old vintner, five-time Oscar-winner, and two-time Palme d’Or-winner, who recently wrapped production on his long-in-development Megapolis, got on the social media app to encourage fans to hit him with questions.
When one person asked if he’d be interested in making a fourth Godfather picture, Coppola said that he considered the first two movies to be “1 film” and that his new edit of part three, The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, to be an epilogue. (This doesn’t precisely answer the question, though.) He also said he could never pick a favorite one of his movies, but gave a special shout-out to Rumble Fish.
After some additional queries, something unexpected happened—Diane Keaton raised her gloved hand.
“Why on Earth,” she wondered, “did you choose me for The Godfather?!”
Coppola wrote back, “I chose you, because although you were to play the more straight/vanilla wife, there was something more about you, deeper, funnier, and very interesting. (I was right).” He added, “I was invited by Fred Astaire to accompany him to see Hair, which he couldn’t make ‘hide nor hair’ out of. You were in it, and I remember your beautiful singing voice.”
Instagram Stories, as we know, are ephemeral, but New York Magazine film critic Bilge Ebiri grabbed this one for posterity and put it on Twitter.
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Prior to her role in The Godfather, which she continued in Part II and, much later, in Part III, Keaton had very few roles in film and television. The most notable was as part of the ensemble Joseph Bologna-Renée Taylor romp Lovers and Other Strangers. When The Godfather wrapped production in 1971, she went directly to co-star in Play It Again, Sam, reprising her role from Woody Allen’s hit play. She continued to work with Allen, culminating in her Oscar-win for 1977’s Annie Hall. (Indeed, there’s a weird moment in Annie Hall when Allen’s lead character, surrounded by a bunch of Luca Brasi-esque tough guys, later complains to Keaton that she stranded him with “the cast from The Godfather.” So believable is Keaton as the bubbly-and-stylish modern New Yorker, you kinda forget that she is the cast of The Godfather.)
Clips of Diane Keaton in Hair aren’t too easy to come by, but you can see her in the background of this video from a 1968 taping of The Dick Cavett Show. She’s the one blowing someone’s hair at the 2:30 mark.
Jordan Hoffman
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