(6 of 7)
Brooks is a tough, bony man of 65, with a tough, bony reputation. He is an old baseball player, newspaper reporter, rider of freights. He played chess with Bogart. He directed and wrote the screenplays for Key Largo, Blackboard Jungle and In Cold Blood. His regular practice is to give actors segments of the script just before scenes are to be shot, then collect them afterward and destroy them in a paper shredder. "I don't trust anybody," he yells. "I've seen it happen too many times. The best goddamned thing in your movie shows up in a goddamned TV show six months before the movie is out. I don't want anything stolen." He yells a lot.
Brooks is a studio baiter, a closer of sets against both pooh-bahs and publicity rodents. To get what is called "final cut" of Goodbar—which means complete control of the film and no changes to be made without his approval—he agreed to work for a minimal salary and a percentage of whatever profit there may be. To meet expenses, he is selling his house. Today this furious man speaks of Keaton with a kind of awe: "She has more artistic courage than anyone I know."
Brooks and Keaton mulled over the character of Theresa Dunn, who teaches devotedly in a school for the deaf by day, and then, as "Terry," prowls for rough sex in the singles bars at night. Terry is frighteningly disconnected from any feeling that lasts longer than the time required for nerve ends to stop tingling. She goads men and feels invulnerable.
Both Brooks and Keaton were concerned about the sex scenes. The basic question was simple: Could she do them? They had to be done nude. Keaton is a woman who hides imagined flaws behind high collars and long sleeves.
Brooks recalls telling Keaton, " 'Look, there's going to be some tricky lighting in this movie, and I've got to start thinking about how to photograph your body. And, well, Diane, I'm going to have to see what you look like.' She just stared at me. She was shocked. And then, after a few moments, she said, 'O.K., Brooks.' "
The sets would be closed, he explained, but there would be cameramen, technicians. "You're going to lie there like a piece of meat while they adjust the lighting. We can't use a double; the skin colors would be wrong. And some camera guy is going to run a tape measure down from his lens to your ass—zip!—to get his focus right. Can you work with that?"
Keaton worried, talked with her parents, talked with her analyst. (She has seen a psychiatrist several days a week, most weeks, for five years. She began on the advice of Allen, who has been in analysis, he says, for 20 years.) She decided to go ahead.
Keaton was on the set for 76 days, playing in every scene of the film except one. Halfway through she cracked a rib when Actor Richard Gere, who plays a stud named Tony, threw her to the floor. "It was my fault," she said. "I knew how to take the fall, but I blew it. Besides, it's fun to do that wild, physical stuff. And it's nice to get really angry and scream, and then walk away from the responsibility for all that when the shooting is over."