SASHA STONE: Diane Keaton Was One of a Kind.

Her career spanned over 60 films, and her range extended from screwball comedies like Play It Again, Sam, Sleeper, and Annie Hall to serious dramas like The Godfather I and II.

Woody Allen made her a star and captured her spirit in Annie Hall. The film is a loose sketch of her original name, Diane Hall, which she changed to Diane Keaton. How she transitioned from someone naive to someone more sophisticated and educated, ultimately leaving him behind. I’ve seen it so many times I could recite almost the entire movie by heart.

Speaking of which: Diane Keaton’s Best Roles from The Godfather to Annie Hall. Two guesses as to what the London Times considers her best role:

This is Keaton’s everything. Annie Hall is the star-making moment, when she erupted into the movie-going consciousness as a new and idealised, never-seen-before female protagonist. She was bookish, sporty, quirky, confident, nervous, open, reserved and prone, in moments of extreme anxiety, to staring at the ground and sighing in a singsong voice, “Oh well, la dee dah, la dee dah.” She dressed like Buster Keaton and was the perfect vehicle for Allen’s postmodern rom-com, a film that mish-mashed the French New Wave with Preston Sturges comedies and TV documentaries. She embodies the character and the film. The Oscar win for best actress was rarely more deserved.

Despite Star Wars smashing box office records in 1977, it was beaten out for best picture at the Academy Awards by Annie Hall in large part due to the latter’s repeated showings on Z Channel, the movie-oriented L.A. cable TV channel, which was required viewing for everyone in the industry. As the Washington Post noted in 1988:

Most years around this time, at least one film gets a special Academy Awards push via home video. The practice started in 1977, when frequent showings of “Annie Hall” on the Z Channel — an all-movie cable channel broadcast only in Los Angeles and widely watched within the film industry — were deemed largely responsible for that movie’s Best Picture award.

Here’s my look at the 2004 documentary on the rise and fall of that quirky L.A. institution: Z Channel: Closed-Circuit TV for Hollywood’s Ruling Class.