Diane Warren: Relentless (2025)

In 1915, in Portland, Oregon, Louise Bryant attends a public lecture where she first sees the radical reporter John Reed speak. Married at the time and active in the suffrage movement, she listens to his rhetoric and feels drawn to his fervor. After the lecture she arranges an interview about international affairs that extends through the night. During that long conversation she recognizes that writing provides her a way out of the constraints of her present life. Within weeks she separates from her husband and moves to New York City to live with Reed in Greenwich Village, inserting herself into the bohemian circle of agitators and artists that surrounds him. She meets the anarchist Emma Goldman, who is already a well-known critic of government repression, and the playwright Eugene O'Neill; she participates in neighborhood salons and writes pieces that begin to mark her as a vigorous feminist and a radical voice in her own right.

John Reed immerses himself in labor activism and begins covering strikes, aligning with members of the Industrial Workers of the World. He and Louise relocate to Provincetown, Massachusetts, to focus on their creative work and to take part in the flourishing local theater community. While Reed grows more consumed by the cause of labor and revolution, Louise's writing and public presence steadily build her reputation. Reed accepts an assignment to report on the 1916 Democratic National Convention in St. Louis because the restless urge to be where history is happening drives him away from home. During his absence in St. Louis, Louise initiates an intimate relationship with Eugene O'Neill, a liaison that complicates her personal life and creates tension between her and Reed when he returns to Provincetown.

On coming back from St. Louis, Reed confronts the affair and, despite the rupture, acknowledges that he still loves Louise. The two marry in a private ceremony and establish a household in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. In their domestic life they repeatedly clash over their differing ambitions: Reed's obsession with political action and Louise's desire for both a career and personal fulfillment pull them in conflicting directions. Reed admits that he has been unfaithful on his own part, and the couple's fragile truce breaks when Louise accepts a position as a war correspondent and boards a ship for Europe to cover the conflict. Before she departs, Reed experiences acute trouble with his kidneys that leads doctors to remove one of them; physicians warn him that the operation has weakened him and that he should avoid strenuous travel and intense stress. He disregards that advice and soon follows Louise across the Atlantic so they can work side by side reporting events abroad.

They arrive in Europe and travel to Russia as news breaks of upheaval. In Petrograd, they witness the collapse of the czarist order and are swept into the events of the 1917 Revolution. Reed's reporting captures the fervor of the moment and he becomes increasingly enthralled by the structures emerging under Bolshevik rule. During the upheavals, Louise keeps working as a correspondent and frequently interacts with other expatriates and revolutionaries in the city. After the immediate revolutionary events subside, both return to the United States and Reed composes his eyewitness account, Ten Days That Shook the World. Back in New York, Louise is summoned to testify before the Overman Committee, which is investigating radical activity and alleged subversives in the wake of wartime dissent.

Reed moves from journalism into active party politics. He joins the Left Wing Section within the Socialist Party of America and presses for more revolutionary tactics and structure. The Left Wing wins control of twelve of the fifteen seats on the Socialist Party's National Executive Committee in internal elections, but sitting committee members block the takeover by invalidating those results and expelling the elected Left Wing members. The expelled activists fragment: ideological disputes split them into rival organizations. Reed organizes the Communist Labor Party of America, claiming it as the true communist movement on U.S. soil. He grows determined to secure formal recognition and support from the Soviet Comintern; he plans to travel back to Russia to obtain that endorsement. Louise, worn down by the constant infighting and fearful for the couple's future, issues an ultimatum: if he goes to Russia she will end their relationship. Reed leaves nonetheless, promising to return by Christmas.

Because U.S. authorities have made travel to Russia illegal, Reed takes a clandestine route. He crosses into Finland and then slips over the border into Russia. Once inside, however, he finds that the reality of the Bolshevik government does not match the idealized vision he had hoped to help build; he becomes disillusioned by the authoritarian measures that the new authorities impose. Reed decides his best course is to leave and return to Bryant in America. Attempting to cross back into Finland, he is apprehended at the border and detained by Finnish officials. News of Reed's capture reaches the United States; the American government declines to intervene on his behalf because he faces an indictment for sedition at home and thus lacks official protection.

In response, Louise organizes her own trip to Finland without official sanction. She travels across borders and backgrounds to locate Reed, but when she reaches Finnish soil he is no longer there: Finnish authorities have returned Reed to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange between the two governments. Louise continues onward into Petrograd to find him. In the city she encounters Emma Goldman, who had already been deported from the United States and is living in the same émigré community. Emma informs Louise that Reed has been dispatched to deliver a speech in Baku and that he was last known to be traveling to that region. Louise presses on through Petrograd and through channels of revolutionary and expatriate society in the hopes of locating him.

While Reed is returning from the Baku engagement by train, forces of the White Army attack the line in an attempt to disrupt Bolshevik transport and propaganda. Rebel troops fire upon the carriage, producing explosions and casualties along the route. John Reed's train comes under assault but he survives the ambush and completes the remainder of the journey into Petrograd. When the train pulls into the station, he reunites with Louise on the platform; they embrace after the peril of attack and the exhaustion of political labor. Shortly after their reunion, Reed contracts typhus, a fever that saps his strength rapidly. Medical attendants admit him to a hospital where Louise remains at his side and administers care. She bathes him, brings his meals, writes and reads to him, and watches his condition decline.

On the day that will end his life, Reed and Louise exchange tender words about their time together and speak of hopes and recollections in quiet tones. Louise leaves his room briefly to fetch water from a basins down the corridor. When she returns to the hospital bed she finds that John Reed has died; the fever has taken him. She proceeds into his ward, takes his hand in hers, and sits beside him until officials attend to the body. No one kills him; his death results from the disease contracted during the strains of revolutionary work.

After Reed's passing, Louise remains in Petrograd long enough to handle arrangements and to say farewells among the community of exiles and radicals. Emma Goldman continues to figure in the circle of internationals, and the structures Reed helped to create in America--his splintered political organizations and the publications that reported on labor and revolution--persist in a divided and embattled domestic scene. The film's final visual sequence depicts Louise sitting beside Reed's lifeless hand in the hospital room as colleagues and acquaintances file through, offering condolences and performing administrative duties. The narrative closes with that image of Louise at Reed's bedside in Petrograd, bearing the immediate consequences of his death and the end of their shared, tumultuous journey.

At the end of Diane Warren: Relentless, the film closes on Diane still working restlessly, her Oscar quest unresolved, as a new song she wrote, "Dear Me" (sung by Kesha), plays over the final stretch and into the credits, framing her story as an older Diane speaking reassuringly to her younger self while the film leaves her future--especially whether she will ever finally win a competitive Oscar--open. Diane is very much alive, still writing, still nominated but not victorious, defined not by an ending but by ongoing work.

Now, here is the expanded, scene‑by‑scene style narration of the ending, in simple chronological order:

The final section of the documentary settles into the present tense of Diane Warren's life. The camera is primarily with Diane, and in these last movements she is the clear, central figure: there is no separate "main character" competing with her. Other recurring figures--friends, collaborators, industry voices--have largely moved back into the space of talking heads and memories, while Diane carries the present‑day action.

Scene 1: Late‑career momentum and the tally of nominations
We are near the end of the runtime when the film makes explicit just how many times Diane has been recognized but not crowned by the Academy Awards. The documentary returns to the subject of her Oscar nominations, an idea it has revisited several times, and now it lets the numbers land.

Archival clips and graphics, or spoken lines on‑screen, mark the count: the film specifies that Diane has received a long string of nominations--fifteen in total at the time the film is capturing, including a recent streak of consecutive years--yet she has never won a competitive Oscar. Footage and stills from earlier ceremonies appear: red carpets, stage shots, the official nomination lists, and brief glimpses of other winners. We see her name appear, then lose out. These images are intercut with Diane now, older and composed, talking about those losses.

In present‑day interview material, Diane sits in a familiar interior--either her office environment or a simple interview setup--recounting how many nominations she has accumulated. The film lets her voice describe the repetition: nominated again, waiting again, hearing another name called. She does not collapse or rage; instead, she speaks with the same mix of sardonic humor and visible frustration that has characterized her throughout the documentary. The camera holds on her face as she describes the "umpteenth time" she has been passed over, and there is a slight pause, a beat that allows the information to sink in.

In this moment, the fate of Diane in relation to the Oscars is clear: as of the end of the film, she is still Oscar‑less in the competitive category, despite a long list of nominations. The documentary emphasizes that this does not equal retirement or defeat. Rather, she continues to write, continues to be nominated, and her story regarding that award remains unfinished.

Scene 2: Present‑day Diane at work and in motion
The film has already shown Diane's work habits--her compulsion to write, her office space, her constant motion. Near the end, these images return one more time as a kind of closing statement on who she is in the present.

We see Diane moving through her contemporary workspace, surrounded by instruments, equipment, or walls lined with the physical evidence of her career: albums, posters, certifications. She is not framed as someone winding down. Instead, she is shown in mid‑process, either at a piano, at a desk, or in an environment that makes clear that songwriting is still her daily reality.

There may be intercuts of colleagues or collaborators describing how she will disappear during filming sessions to go write, reinforcing the idea that this drive has not lessened with age. The film does not stage a final confrontation or a dramatic decision point for her. Her "ending" within the documentary's timeline is a continuation: she is living in the middle of her creative life, despite how long it has already lasted.

In terms of fate, the documentary shows Diane as still active in the music industry, still centered in her routine and in her identity as a songwriter. There is no scene of retirement, no suggestion that she is stepping away. Her story, as the film stops filming it, is one of ongoing work.

Scene 3: The setup for "Dear Me"
As the film moves into its final stretch, it introduces or returns to a new composition: a song called "Dear Me," written by Diane Warren and performed in the film by Kesha. The documentary positions this song as a direct, emotional address from the older Diane to her younger self.

Before the full song plays, there is either a brief mention in dialogue or a contextual cue indicating what the song represents. The idea is that this is Diane looking backward from her current vantage point, speaking to the version of herself shown earlier in archival footage and anecdotes: the awkward, driven, often misunderstood kid and young adult who would not give up.

There is no fictional dramatization or re‑enactment of Diane literally meeting her younger self in these final minutes. Instead, the connection is made through the song's placement and its lyrics as they are performed. The film lets the audience understand that the speaker in "Dear Me" is the older writer, and the intended listener is the girl she once was.

Scene 4: "Dear Me" over closing images
The documentary transitions into its ending montage with "Dear Me" rising on the soundtrack. Kesha's voice carries Diane's words. As the song plays, the screen shows a series of images. These may include:

• Shots of Diane in the present, moving through everyday spaces: perhaps leaving or entering her office, walking through a hallway, riding in a car, or simply sitting in a studio or at a piano.
• Archival photos and footage from earlier in her life, already seen in the film: her younger years in California, early career stages, glimpses of past performances and collaborations.
• Possibly images of the people around her--friends, collaborators, family--briefly included as part of the larger tapestry of her life.

The editing pairs the audio of the new song with these visuals so that the song functions as a final message. The lyrics, aimed at a younger Diane, talk about assurance that "everything will be okay," conveying that the future turned out to contain success, survival, and a place for the person she was.

As the song continues, the camera does not follow Diane into a new, uncharted plot event. Instead, it treats this sequence as the visual coda: her life summarized through images while her latest work plays. The documentary does not overlay new narration during the bulk of the song. It allows the music to serve as the last primary voice.

During this montage, there is no new twist regarding her career fate: no sudden announcement of an Oscar win, no surprise reversal. The film holds to the reality that, despite all these achievements, the Academy Award remains elusive. The focus stays on the persistence of her work and the emotional closure of speaking to her past self.

Scene 5: Final mention of the nomination record
Before the film fully yields to the credits, it includes one last explicit reference to the Oscar nominations. This comes either as on‑screen text, as a closing verbal note, or as part of the last spoken anecdote before the montage ends.

The information is simple and factual: the tally of her nominations is stated one more time. This final mention functions as a numeric capstone on the theme that has threaded through the film: repeated recognition without victory. It is not dramatized as a verbal breakdown or outburst. Instead, the fact stands: Diane Warren has been nominated many times, including a recent consecutive run of years, and has not yet won a competitive Academy Award.

This line marks her status at the moment the documentary concludes. For Diane, this means her future remains open. She is a working songwriter with an exceptional record of nominations and no competitive win, still actively creating music that may yet change that outcome after the cameras stop.

Scene 6: Credits under "Dear Me" and the state of each end‑participant
As "Dear Me" plays out, the film transitions into its credits. The music continues over the scrolling names. No new scenes of story development appear beyond this point.

The fates of the main figures who are present in the ending are as follows:

• Diane Warren: At the close of the film, she is alive, active, and continuing her career as a songwriter. She remains without a competitive Oscar win but with a large number of nominations. She is working on new music, including the song "Dear Me," and the documentary leaves her in motion, not at a stopping point.
• Kesha (as performer of "Dear Me"): Kesha appears in the ending through her recorded performance of the song written by Diane. The film does not depict her fate beyond this contribution. She is presented strictly as the voice delivering Diane's final musical message.
• Other interviewees and collaborators (Cher, Common, and others seen earlier): In the ending segment, they are mainly absent as active participants. Their material appears earlier in the film. The closing scenes do not revisit them to show any specific change of status or updated fate. They simply recede from the narrative as the focus narrows to Diane and her late‑career perspective.

Once the credits finish and the song concludes, the documentary has not redefined Diane's life with a singular, neat resolution. It ends with her still writing, still nominated, and still in the process of living out the future that the film itself cannot predict. The last concrete artistic act we witness from her is the creation and presentation of "Dear Me," a song to the girl she was, played as the film lets the story of Diane Warren continue beyond its final frame.