Conviction, the latest film directed by filmmaker/actor Tony Goldwyn, almost didn’t happen.
The story was certainly compelling enough to become a movie. It focused on Betty Anne Waters, a single parent and high school dropout with two kids who went to school for 12 years to obtain a GED, college and law degrees, all in order to prove the innocence of her brother Kenny, a diner employee convicted of killing a female customer.
Goldwyn had set the film up at Universal Studios, with Naomi Watts playing the determined working- class Waters. But a shift in studio executives put the project in limbo. Watts eventually exited, leaving Goldwyn with a film he desperately wanted to make, only with no star and no studio. Like Waters, who eventually did get her brother out of prison after 18 years with help from the organization the Innocence Project and newly discovered DNA evidence, Goldwyn had an uphill battle with a film with such serious subject matter for an adult audience in mind.
But Goldwyn, whose most recent behind-the-scenes work was helming episodes of Dexter, Justified and Dirty Sexy Money, raised the money independently, bringing Conviction home at half the price of a studio film.
In the process, he got a two-time Oscar-winning actress for his lead—Hilary Swank, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress playing the transgendered Brandon Teena in Kimberley Pierce’s Boys Don’t Cry and boxer Maggie Fitzgerald in Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby.
How did Goldwyn know that Swank would click in the part that is already bringing about Oscar buzz?
“When I met Betty Anne, I was driving up to meet her and I thought I’d get an outwardly emotional woman and was ready to be intimidated with her,” recalls Goldwyn, 50, from a Philadelphia hotel suite. “I thought she’d be kind of a tough, salty woman with her armor up, maybe because Erin Brockovich was in my head.
“Then she opens the door opens and she’s this bright light—sweet, humble, funny, super-smart and an incredibly modest person. What you get from Betty Anne is her heart. It was hard to get her to admit she had done anything extraordinary. That said, I thought that was the heart of the film. I needed an actress who had that in her essence, and yet had the steel spine and lion’s heart that this woman had.
“Few actresses have the ability to struggle or fight without losing their fury. Hilary has all heart. In Million Dollar Baby, she’s a violent boxer but she’s also an innocent girl who just wants to box, but she feels at home in the ring where she’s at peace. I can’t think of another actress who embodies that.”
Goldwyn—perhaps best known for his acting credits as memorable villains in Ghost (as Patrick’s Swayze’s underhanded friend) and The Last Samurai (as Tom Cruise’s nemesis)—says the key to bringing Betty Anne to life was the tone of the performance. “Another actress would have played Betty Anne in a much darker way,” he says. “They would play it heavier and that would have been fine, but that’s not Betty Anne.”
Adds Waters herself, who joined Goldwyn in Philly: “She (Swank) would have been my first pick. I saw Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby. She came to my house with Tony, and I opened the door and we had the same flat turtleneck sweater on and she was wearing jeans. It’s like I knew her for the longest time. I remember we were filming the scene about the day Kenny gets released from prison. She was crying her eyes out. She said, ‘There’s a good side to everything bad that happens, but I don’t get it.’ I had to console her. That’s how compassionate she was.”
Sam Rockwell, also in town, turns in an intense performance as the troubled tough guy Kenny Waters in the film. He recognizes why some people compare Swank and her character to Julia Roberts and her award-winning turn in Erin Brockovich, but sees similarities to other great screen roles as well.
“I think she’s more like the leads in Fargo (played by Frances McDormand) or Silkwood (essayed by Meryl Steep),” says Rockwell of Swank. “And this is one of the most vulnerable, maternal parts she’s done. She has a soft side here you haven’t seen before.”
What drew Goldwyn to Conviction was the fact he saw it as a love story.
“It’s all about the people,” says Goldwyn matter-of-factly.”What drew me first was I was moved between the relationship between Betty and Kenny. When I heard about this on the news, I didn’t think this is material for a movie, look at what this person did. What blew my mind is that she spent 18 ½ years on an act of faith. And what is that about and what is that relationship about? She had so much faith in her brother.
“The heart of the film, this relationship between a brother and sister, is its emotional core. It’s about the transcendence in love. I really didn’t have an interest in making a great legal drama or courtroom drama. That wasn’t the appeal to me. The emotional entry point is the two of them (Betty Anne and Kenny) and that’s how you draw an audience in. In this case, fact is stranger than fiction. You can’t make this up, and I didn’t.”
Conviction marks another interesting turn in Goldwyn’s show business career. The son of producer/distributor Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. and actress Jennifer Howard, and grandson of legendary Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn and actress Frances Howard, Goldwyn seems comfortable in many facets of entertainment. Currently on Broadway singing and dancing as the heel Mr. Sheldrake in Promises, Promises with Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth, the Brandeis University and London Academy of Music Art graduate also has extensive dramatic stage credits, including a turn in The Sum of Us, for which he won an Obie award, and an acclaimed run in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing.
Goldwyn’s screen performing career began with a role as a victim of the hockey-masked murderer in 1986’s Jason Lives!: Friday the 13th Part VI, but it was his attention-grabbing role as Patrick Swayze’s scheming business partner Carl Bruner in Ghost that really jumpstarted his acting career.
With his brown sandy hair and slim good looks, Goldwyn says he was thrilled to get the part of in the hit film and wasn’t afraid of being typecast as a villain. “I didn’t have any fears after Ghost was released,” he says. “I was just so grateful to be part of that movie. Before that, I was happy to get a job. To be in a big hit like that was great for me. To be honest, I’d rather be typecast as a villain than as a more all-American guy. You play the hand that you’re dealt and you make the most of it. If it’s a big commercial movie, I don’t have a problem playing villains.”
After steady work in TV shows like Designing Women, L.A. Law Murphy Brown and the HBO series From the Earth to the Moon in which he played astronaut Neil Armstrong, and more high profile screen assignments in The Pelican Brief, Nixon, Kiss the Girls and providing the voice of Tarzan in Disney’s animated feature, Goldwyn got a shot behind the camera in 1999, helming A Walk on the Moon. The underrated drama (penned by Pamela Grey, who also scripted Conviction) focused on a married Jewish woman (Diane Lane) who has an affair with a young blouse salesman (Viggo Mortensen) in the Catskills during the summer of 1969. He went on to direct such other films as the 2001 rom-com Someone Like You… with Ashley Judd, Greg Kinnear and Hugh Jackman and 2006’s The Last Kiss with Zach Braff.
Goldwyn, a New York City resident with two daughters by his production designer spouse Jane Musky, claims he never really had an interest in directing. “I was interested in initiating projects, so I figured I would be a producer and actor,” he says. “I got into directing because I was too afraid to give projects to anyone else.”
As for his style as a director, Goldwyn’s works have been unobtrusively directed and straightforward in their storytelling technique.
“I think I cater my style to the way the film feels,” reflects Goldwyn. “For example, maybe the films I’ve done have a commonality of style because they’ve been intimate character studies. Then I look at the television I directed and the style is much different, and I’ve adapted to that. The material drives it.
“My style tends to be ‘I never want my work to be front and center.’ I’d rather the directing be more invisible, so the characters and world seems very real, so I’m not creating a style between the characters and the audience. So that doesn’t mean I’m not doing some cool shot, for me it has to be organically motivated and serve a storytelling purpose. Some directors create a whole universe of their own.
“That’s just not how my brain works, maybe because I’m an actor first. My directing hero is Mike Nichols, because his films are always about the people, yet some of his films have incredible style. They’re unadorned, but he’s about the people. And I idolize him for that.”
Did Tony Goldwyn glean any gems of wisdom from the legendary family members who has been through the show business loop?
“The main thing I learned was there isn’t much they can help you with,” says Goldwyn, surprisingly.
I discovered that you have to forge your own way. It’s an intuitive understanding…it’s about the work. It’s a survivor’s game and it’s about endurance, not about the brass ring, winning an award or having the big hit. If you keep a workmanlike attitude towards what you do, success will come. You have to reinvent yourself with every last project. And I learned I had a real gift for that.”