By Fred Topel | Images property of Universal Pictures.
Diane Keaton is such a screen legend, she's earned the right to bring her input to any material. Playing an overbearing mother in Because I Said So, Keaton turned Daphne into a Diane Keaton role.
Interview: Diane Keaton on Because I Said So
"I put my two cents worth in, definitely," Keaton said. "I give a lot of notes, as much as I can. I know that pictures are pretty much what they are. You can tweak them and mess with them and put in ideas here and there but the core of what they are is essentially the same even if you try to pee on it, like most of us do in some way. So I'm sure it didn't mean much. But they were wonderful people. They were very nice about listening to what I had to say."
Don't ask which lines Keaton invented. Those aren't the kinds of contributions she makes. "I'm not really a line type. I'm more the big ideas. I don't mean big ideas, don't get me wrong, but 'this scene didn't seem quite right because…' It's about the tone of it. I'm interested in the tone, like how's the scene working tonally? Does that seem believable? Maybe yeah, maybe not."
Diane Keaton in Because I Said So
Because I Said So
If taken to the extreme, such behavior could be more difficult than helpful. Keaton knows how to keep things in balance. "You know, you make a deal, I'm gonna act in your movie. I don't want to undermine the movie. It's not my job to undermine the movie. My job is to try to do the best I can with what I can and if they want to hear what I have to say and they're agreeable to that, that's fine but I can't get in the way when we're shooting. You only have so much time. You don't want to eat it up and destroy all that money that was invested in it."
Daphne looks like a Diane Keaton character though, thanks to Keaton's own fashion sense. "I thought she was kind of a flamboyant gal in this one, but in her own world. It didn't really connect to anybody at all in life except herself which also said a lot in a way about how she was walled off from her feelings and walled off from the influence of her daughters in that way. I think she was an eccentric."
Because I Said So opens to theatres this Friday, February 2nd.
For the trailer, movie stills, more interviews, synopsis and more movie info, go to the Because
I Said So Movie Page.
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