Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Diane Keaton puts on the veil

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Thursday, May 17, 2001
Diane Keaton puts on the veil
'Sister Mary' is a part that Keaton was sure she could not do
By Luaine Lee
Scripps Howard News Service

Scripps Howard

Diane Keaton plays the part of an authoritarian nun in Showtime’s ‘Sister Mary Explains it All.’

   Diane Keaton wanted to play the part of an authoritarian nun because she felt she couldn't do it.
   When she was offered the role of Sister May Ignatius in "Sister Mary Explains It All," she says she was positive it was not for her. "I saw it when it was in a workshop many years ago, and I just thought, I knew that that was a part that I could never do."
   Even so, you'll see Keaton and her black and nasty habits when Showtime airs the dark comedy on May 26.
   So much fun
   "It's too scary a role," continues Keaton. "It's great to have done it. I loved doing it, as you know. It was just so much fun with these people, they're fabulous, each one of them. And look, there's Marshall, he's wonderful too."
   "These people" are her co-stars Brian Benben, Jennifer Tilly, and Laura San Giacomo, who play former students who return to repeat a Christmas pageant for Sister Mary they presented 20 years earlier.
   The Christopher Durang play, on which the Showtime special is based, was always controversial, especially among the Catholic community. Sister Mary, spouting dogma without the slightest brush of humanity, is no Mother Teresa.
   Keaton was so worried about her performance as the despotic nun that she employed two acting teachers to observe her sweating through the part. "I worked with a coach, actually. I do that. I have to do it. I need to, you know, get up and exercise a bit. So that's what I did."
   Not interested
   When Jennifer Tilly was called about playing a role, she wasn't interested. "When Victoria Tennant, who's the producer, called me up and offered me the play, I said, 'I know the play. I love it. I'm familiar with it. Who's Philomena, which is my character?' And Victoria said, 'She's the front half of the camel.' And I think it's a bit part. But I said, 'Send it over.' I'm very interested in doing theatrical renditions made into screenplays."
   But when Tilly saw that Philomena had only seven lines, she refused the part. "And they got somebody else. And the other person fell out, also probably because she counted her lines," says Tilly.
   Eighteen months later Tennant approached Tilly again. "She goes, 'Jennifer, you would be doing me a huge favor if you did this, this is who we have.'" Tennant rattled off the cast list to Tilly, which made her think twice.
   "If scenery had calories, then Jennifer would weigh about 600 pounds," says Brickman of Tilly, who gets to chew the scenery in "Sister Mary."
   Keaton finally agreed to do the play because she was convinced no one would ever see it. Brickman agreed.
   Need to laugh
   Brickman, who at one time devised skulky little tricks for the "Candid Camera" team to try on ordinary folk, is no newcomer at humor.
   "Somebody once said that the human being is the only species that laughs, or needs to," he says. "There are different kinds of laughs: there's a satirical laugh. There's a laugh where the person laughing feels very superior to the thing being laughed at. There's satire or farce, where you're laughing at a cultural stereotype or social stereotype.
   There's laughter where there's empathy, you're identifying and laughing out of sympathy. There's a laughter of agreement. There's the laughter of infantile word play, a laughter of puns," he says.
   Whatever category "Sister Mary" falls into, it won't be benign.

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