(3 of 3)
Still, says Lange, a friendly intimacy has developed. "No one has any desperate need to be center stage. We've all been there." She notes: "I don't believe in living and becoming the character off screen. I find that a little sophomoric. But your mannerisms and speech are affected. The two older sisters, for example, are tremendously protective toward Babe, little Babe. Diane and I treat Sissy the same way." Spacek says that Babe "taps a real part of me. The side of me that's Babe got me into a lot of trouble in school. Teachers couldn't get me to shut up. I have so much fun playing her that sometimes I get carried away. Watching myself at dailies, I realize I have to pull it down." Keaton, still the lovable tangle of insecurities she played in Annie Hall, worried at first about her Mississippi accent, and says, "Phoo" or "Oh, no, no, no" to herself when she is not pleased with a take. Her habitual air of distraction seems to manufacture comedy, even off the set. In a Southport restaurant, she says, a local fellow asked her to dance, and she declined. "Why?" said he, "I don't have any holes in my socks." And then, she goes on helplessly, he took off his shoes to prove it.
With the shooting in Southport down to the last few days, Beresford is pleased but cautious: "It's all just puzzle fragments until you put it together." He will solve the puzzle somehow in August in Los Angeles. Crimes will be released in December. The house on North Caswell Street is to be sold. Southport's mayor has asked that it be accorded landmark status.