Forty years later, Looking for Mister Goodbar offers one of Keaton's best and most powerful performances, and remains her most controversial film.īased on Judith Rossner's novel of the same name, Looking for Mister Goodbar was inspired by the true story of Roseann Quinn, a young New Yorker who was in the habit of picking up men in bars for one-night stands, and was brutally murdered by one of them in 1973. That film was released in 1977, the same year Keaton earned a best-actress Oscar® for her comic tour de force in Allen's Annie Hall. With the exception of the first two Godfather films, she had appeared mostly in comedies until she took on the role of Teresa Dunn in Looking for Mister Goodbar. Around the same time, she played Kay, the wife of Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972), reprising the role in subsequent sequels. Keaton began her career on the New York stage and had some television roles, but it was not until she began working with Allen in the early 1970s that her career really took off. I can’t remember now if Theresa was reading it in the book or not, or if the filmmakers threw that in as an in-joke.For decades, Diane Keaton has been so firmly established in the public imagination as a Woody Allen muse and brilliant comic actress that it's easy to forget that she has turned in some equally impressive dramatic performances. I like the scene where Theresa (Keaton) is sitting at the bar reading The Godfather when she first meets Tony (Gere) and he riffs on it a bit, saying something like “I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse.” Of course, Keaton had already starred in The Godfather Pts 1 & 2 by that time. They really did use the cream of the crop of songs. At that time I thought I hated “disco” and was firmly in the “DISCO SUCKS” camp, yet I owned the soundtrack (on 8-track because my car had an 8-track player) and listened to it over and over. Besides the movie as a whole being good, IMO, Diane Keaton is at her most beautiful (or maybe second to Reds from a few years later), the young Richard Gere is fun to watch, a young Tom Berenger is terrifying to watch, a young William Atherton is interesting to watch, TUESDAY WELD is in it! and the soundtrack is absolutely killer. I went through a brief fascination with the book, movie, soundtrack and the true story it was based on. It’s pretty faithful to the book if my memory serves me.
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