By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit they deserve. In this installment: actor/director Tony Goldwyn, who helmed A Walk On The Moon, Conviction and Ezra.
Wilful multitaskers usually find themselves unsung in least a few of their creative endeavours, often garnering garlands of praise in one field while being left near wholly under-celebrated in others. The Unsung Auteurs column has certainly featured its fair share of these, and you can add to that list Tony Goldwyn, an actor, producer, singer, recording artist, political activist, and finally, director. Most likely know him as either the asshole who betrayed and was then responsible for Patrick Swayze’s death in the 1990 classic Ghost; US President Fitzgerald Grant III in the popular legal/political drama Scandal; or Manhattan district attorney Nicholas Baxter on Law & Order, but Tony Goldwyn is also an accomplished director, both of episodic television and feature films.
Tony Goldwyn was always destined for public life. Born in LA in 1960, he is the son of actress Jennifer Howard and film producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr., while his paternal grandparents were mogul Samuel Goldwyn, and actress Frances Howard. His maternal grandparents were playwright Sidney Howard and actress Clare Eames. One of his maternal great-great-grandfathers was Maryland Governor and Senator William Thomas Hamilton. After studying acting in New York and London, Goldwyn featured in a wide variety of roles, making his debut in 1986’s Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, and then appearing in a host of TV guest spots before his first major role in the aforementioned Ghost. After a decade of strong supporting and character roles in films like Kuffs, The Pelican Brief, Nixon, Kiss The Girls, Disney’s animated Tarzan, and many more, Goldwyn quietly made his move into the director’s chair.
Goldwyn made his debut with the terrific and sadly unheralded 1999 romantic drama, A Walk On The Moon, which was barely released in Australia. Written with rare intimacy and understanding by first timer Pamela Gray (who went on to script the low-key Meryl Streep vehicle Music Of The Heart), A Walk On The Moon is directed with appropriate care and sincerity by fellow debutante Tony Goldwyn. It’s a real adult (not in the porno sense) romantic drama, movingly portraying a love triangle sympathetically from all sides. The perennially underrated Diane Lane is Pearl Kantrowitz, a devoted housewife who heads off on her regular vacation in the Catskills with her husband Marty (Liev Schreiber in one of his best performances), her fourteen-year-old daughter, Alison (the excellent Anna Paquin), her slightly obnoxious younger son, Daniel (Bobby Boriello), and her caring but over-involved mother-in-law, Lillian (Tovah Feldshuh).
It’s the late sixties, and the Kantrowitz family is Jewish, conservative and decent. Pearl is not the kind of wife who would ever contemplate an affair, but when she encounters “the blouse man” (Viggo Mortensen in a typically unusual and magnetic performance), a hippy travelling salesman trading in women’s clothing, she’s intrigued by his sexy diffidence and the sense of adventure and rebellion he represents. The unlikely pair eventually embarks on an affair, which will have consequences for them both. The best thing about A Walk On The Moon is the respect with which it treats all of its characters. Despite their flaws, they all cling to a core of decency, which makes this modest romantic drama resonate with rare emotional power. It was a highly impressive from Tony Goldwyn but is now almost completely forgotten by all except hardcore fans of Mortensen and Lane, who share a voluble chemistry in the film.
While Goldwyn’s 2001 follow-up Someone Like You (a truly lame romantic comedy in which Ashley Judd’s columnist on male-female relations falls for her slob roommate Hugh Jackman) was a major disappointment after the quiet, unassuming joys of A Walk On The Moon, Goldwyn course-corrected nicely with 2006’s barely remembered but solidly engaging The Last Kiss, a remake of Gabriele Muccino’s Italian drama L’Ultimo Bacio. This admirably thoughtful and serious-minded drama focuses on Michael (the excellent Zach Braff, then hot off Scrubs and Garden State) and his seemingly committed relationship to his pregnant fiancee Jenna (Aussie actress Jacinda Barrett in a superb performance), which begins to crumble when his close-knit group of friends force him to reflect on its tenuous status, made more so by the intrusion of the sexually aggressive college student Kim (Rachel Bilson). Effectively dotted with humour, and well handled by director Goldwyn, The Last Kiss is a profoundly sensitive relationship, just like his debut.
Goldwyn directed solidly for episodic television (Private Practice, Dexter, Dirty Sexy Money, Six Degrees) before returning to the big screen in 2010 with the powerful legal drama Conviction. Punchily directed by Goldwyn, this is the incredible true story of Betty Anne Waters (played with typical commitment and passion by Hilary Swank), who fought to have her brother (the excellent Sam Rockwell) – who had been found guilty of murder – released from prison and his name cleared. An unemployed single mother with only limited education, Betty Anne goes back to school, then college, and finally to law school, so she can defend her brother in the appeal against his conviction. Along the way, she relocates crucial evidence that had apparently been destroyed, proves that the policewoman (Melissa Leo) who had arrested Kenny was corrupt, and seeks out witnesses who may have given false testimonies. She also obtains support from The Innocence Project (for which Goldwyn serves as an ambassador), an organisation which helps those wrongly convicted of serious crimes.
Strong, compelling, richly characterised and very well performed, Conviction would disappointingly be Goldwyn’s last feature film until this week’s cinema release, Ezra. It’s a welcome return after over a decade of various acting roles and directing episodes of high-quality series like Justified, Hawthorne, Chambers and The Divide. The film is written by Tony Goldwyn’s longtime friend Tony Spiridakis (an accomplished director, writer, actor, producer and playwright), and details his own life story raising his autistic son. In the film, Spiridakis’ alter ego is stand-up comedian Max (Bobby Cannavale), who juggles his own career aspirations with both his crumbling marriage to Jenna (played by Cannavale’s real-life missus Rose Byrne), and his fraught relationships with both his curmudgeonly father (Robert De Niro) and his eleven-year-old autistic son (charming newcomer William A. Fitzgerald). Considering his decades-spanning friendship with Spiridakis, Goldwyn was naturally drawn to the material. “It just called out to me,” Goldwyn told A.Frame. “I felt like I had to do it. Given our relationship to the material, I was the only person who I felt like should do it.”
The authentic and deeply moving Ezra marks a very welcome return from Tony Goldwyn…and makes you wish that he was a little more prolific when it comes to getting behind the camera.
Ezra is in cinemas now. Click here for our review.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
