From "Rolling Stone" (1977):
Two years ago, when Freddie Fields made his production deal with Paramount, Goodbar‘s lead character — Theresa Dunn — became one of the most coveted roles available for actresses. Keaton had read the novel. “It struck me as a nightmare, but I wanted to do it.” Keaton was actually rejected, out of hand, when her name first came up at Paramount. She was considered too old — by some ten years — and too much a comedy actress. Over the next six months, some 300 actresses were considered, including all the big, obvious names: Streisand, Dunaway, McGraw and, for some time, Sally (The Flying Nun) Field. But Freddie Fields himself pushed for Keaton — “I had seen her in everything, and I was dedicated to get her, to sell her to everybody that needed to be sold.”
Brooks, a former reporter, dug into the incident on which Judith Rossner based her story and came up with his own vision of Goodbar: “It’s a story about a girl today who is influenced by many things — her background, her father, her family, her church, advertisements, the sexual revolution. These places, these singles bars, are her living room. She wants to feel the sensations, the passions of life. And who doesn’t?” Yet, by day, Terry Dunn, as Brooks has written her story, is a devoted teacher — not a public-school teacher, but a teacher for deaf children. In short, he was looking for a Dr. Jekyll/Ms. Hyde. From several of her films, Brooks saw Keaton’s sensitive side. “The next question was, what about the sensuality of the story. Well, Diane is a sensuous woman. She doesn’t dress like it, but that doesn’t mean the woman is not sensual.” After a meeting with her she became the first character cast. Keaton began preparing for the part by studying the script with her acting coach, Marilyn Fried from the Actors Studio, and doing, by herself, “sensory exercises.” She is hesitant with specifics, but the daily routine included “exercises in my fantasy life and trying to be free sexually.” The exercises were a “freeing agent.” She would close her eyes and imagine that she was Terry Dunn, who “acts out a lot of her things much more than I would. And your imagination works a lot.” Keaton was even able to recall teenage fantasies. “Sure,” she says. “I mean, I had all those fantasies … and that’s where it can work for you, fessing up to having fantasies that involve being aggressive or that involve hostility, because all those elements are there in your mind.”
Brooks wrote Keaton into every scene, so that Diane was required on the set for 76 days straight, at least eight hours a day. Brooks clamped the set tight and, for the sex scenes, kicked most of his crew off the sound stage. “And he devised all types of methods for me to feel comfortable,” says Keaton, “so if I could feel more comfortable wearing a pair of stockings, then that was great… . . . . Also, the thing is, when you’re performing it, it’s okay, as long as you’re doing something. It’s before and after, when you have to wait before they say ‘action.'” Brooks says that after certain scenes of violence, Keaton became physically ill. “She would say, ‘I don’t know what’s inside of us!'” But Keaton lasted out the 76 days, even with a fractured rib for the last two weeks, following a scuffle in one scene. “She’s a gutsy broad,” says Brooks.
In her most difficult assignment yet, Keaton has done well by her new director. She even made him laugh, and helped inspire him to add laughter to the film character of Terry Dunn, as differentiated from the character in the book. “I tried to utilize Diane’s natural sense of comedy,” he says. “In the movie, the girl has tremendous joy in living. She is not sorry for herself — I can’t stand that in anybody!” Keaton herself is hopeful. “I’m real scared. I hope it’s good.” Since she is in the entire film, she reasons: “If this movie bombs I’ll have to take a lot of the responsibility. If people look at me and say, ‘I don’t like this person,’ then it’s not going to work.”
