Then Again - Diane Keaton [26]
I think I had a date with him. We went to Frankie and Johnnie’s famous steakhouse. Everything was going well until I scraped my fork against the plate and made a normal, I stress normal, cutting noise. It must have driven him nuts, ’cause he yelped out loud. I couldn’t figure out how to cut my steak without making the same mistake, so I stopped eating and started talking about women’s status in the arts, like I know anything about women and the arts. What an idiot. The whole thing was humiliating. I doubt we’ll be having dinner together anytime soon. Today he sent me a little note. I think you’ll relate.
Love,
Diane
From Woody
Beet Head,
Humans are clean slates. There are no qualities indigenous to men or women. True, there is a different biology, but all defining choices in life affect both sexes & a woman, any woman is capable of defining herself with total FREEDOM. Therefore women are anything they choose to be & frequently have chosen & defined themselves greater than men. Don’t be fooled by THE ARTS! They’re no big deal; certainly no excuse for people acting like jerks & by that I mean, so what if up till now there were very few women artists. There may have been women far deeper than, say, Mozart or Da Vinci but contributing their genius in a different socially circumscribed context. Note how I switched from pen to pencil at this moment because in Lelouch’s film, A MAN & A WOMAN, he switches from color to black & White—So I underline my point using the same symbolism—Very clever? OK, then, very stupid.
Woody
March 20, 1969
Diane was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress for the Tony Awards coming in April. Randy’s writing teacher read two of his poems in class. One, called “Out of the Body,” was submitted to the school yearbook. He’ll make it.
Out of the Body
All the voices of my past are here in this grassy clearing
At the foot of the mountain.
At first I thought it was the rattle of nesting birds,
perhaps rocks falling from a cliff.
Like bells, the words took shape.
Paragraphs etched out of trees.
Stories of lives hung sadly in the air, like pages of failure.
I didn’t want to listen
I heard my own voice on the flat face of the mountain; small, and weak.
I heard the sound of myself dying in the cold,
Another animal;
An animal with the gift of language
caught in the trap of distance.
June 14, 1969
Sunday night 10 p.m. The Tony Awards. Diane lost to some other gal. She was on TV, but we couldn’t see her more than once, and it was fleeting.
July 7, 1969
A letter arrived from the draft board asking for verification from Randy’s psychologist that he’s unable to serve. It felt like a threat. Grandma Hall called. She thinks Randy was scared! Well, why not? He probably was. Who wouldn’t be? “If we could learn how to prevent war, wouldn’t that be enough?” he said. These are divisive times.
July 16, 1969
Department of the Army
To Whom It May Concern:
I have known Randy Hall for more than 15 years during which time I had the opportunity to observe the boy both as a neighbor and as a patient. Though he has never been mentally ill in the classical, clinical sense of the term he has demonstrated a prolonged condition of emotional instability which, in my opinion, would make him unfit for military service. Recent observation of the boy would cause me to have no change in that opinion, though he has managed to develop some covering behaviors which may have the impression of greater maturity and development than actually exists.
As a psychologist currently working with the Department of Defense in an overseas setting I believe that this boy would not fit into the military service and would actually be a liability rather than an asset to the military community.