Director Tony Goldwyn

Interview by Serena Donadoni

When he was growing up in Los Angeles, actor/director Tony Goldwyn decided that no matter what he did, he wouldn't go into the family business. While this conflict goes on in families everywhere, for Tony Goldwyn it was conducted in the public arena, because the Goldwyn name is synonymous with the movies.

Tony's grandfather, Samuel Goldwyn (born Schmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw, Poland) was one of a powerful group of Jewish immigrants who defined the American movie industry. His father, Samuel Goldwyn Jr., is an independent producer and film distributor. So when Tony began acting in high school plays and found he loved it, the realization that he had discovered his future vocation was peppered with dread.

"As any actor will tell you, once you get bit by the bug, you can't do anything," Goldwyn explains via telephone. "I just thought, 'Oh, no, I have to do this,' and the fact that it was associated with the family business was very frustrating to me."

But Tony Goldwyn still made his own way, attending Brandeis University and the London Academy of Music and Art before becoming a regular performer at the Williamstown Theater Festival. In addition to plays (he won an Obie for The Sum of Us), Goldwyn, 38, has appeared in independent films (The Substance of Fire), Hollywood hits (Ghost) and cable television (playing Neil Armstrong in the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon). Now he's gone behind the camera to direct his first film, A Walk on the Moon, set in a Catskills bungalow colony during the summer of Woodstock.

Written by Pamela Gray, A Walk on the Moon (1999) follows Pearl Kantrowitz (Diane Lane) as she struggles with the conflicting desires of security and freedom. Her daughter Alison (Anna Paquin) has reached her contentious teenage years, and marriage to the reliable Marty (Liev Schreiber) has few thrills. When she meets "the blouse man" Walker Jerome (Viggo Mortensen), a travelling salesman and free spirit, they begin an affair that forces Pearl to re-examine her past and make important decisions about her future.

THE CINEMA GIRL: Is your impression of the Jewish Catskills bungalow experience as a cherished retreat from the outside world?

TONY GOLDWYN: I didn't know anything about the Catskills world. I grew up in LA, and although my grandfather was Jewish, I didn't really grow up in a Jewish household. We were non-religious: he married a Catholic and my mother was Protestant. It was a mish-mosh household. So the traditional Jewish world of Brooklyn and the Catskills in the 1960s was completely foreign to me, and I thought it was fabulous and charming and I couldn't believe it. Yet it rang so true to me.

TCG: Was part of the attraction of the script seeing the conflict between this cloistered world and the rapidly-changing outside?

GOLDWYN: That's it exactly, and it was also the perfect metaphor for what was happening inside Pearl. It exactly mirrored her situation psychologically.

TCG: How much of Pearl's actions are triggered by seeing her daughter coming to the age when her life took the path she's on, and also seeing that with the social changes, Alison might have more opportunities and choices than she had?

GOLDWYN: I think it's both, but I think Alison is certainly the catalyst to the whole thing. It's very complicated. Seeing Alison blossoming in a way that she was never allowed to, and wanting to nurture that impulse, at the same time being envious of that and also being frightened of Alison becoming like her. Alison's awakening is everything; it's an alarm clock for Pearl.

TCG: In making the transition from acting to directing, how difficult is it going from being concerned about your individual performance to being the person who's ultimately responsible for the film?

GOLDWYN: I loved it, it wasn't hard at all. It was challenging, but it was a very natural transition for me. I'd worked with enough first-time directors that I knew to immediately admit what I didn't know and surround myself with people who are good at what they do and to rely on them. I loved it not just being about my thing: my thing was everything. So it was like playing every part, kind of.

TCG: What special skills do you think having been an actor brings to directing?

GOLDWYN: It's just an immediate common vernacular with the actors and a sensitivity to the creative process. I guess the biggest thing is an understanding of what it takes to create something, what it takes to do good work and to make something authentically happen, which is something you can only experience, you can't really describe or learn in an intellectual way. You have to understand what the creative impulse is, then you can immediately connect and communicate with other creative people.

TCG: The filmmakers of your grandfather's generation were very concerned about not being too Jewish in the movies that they made, yet in your first film as a director, you focus on characters and a place that are so matter-of-factly Jewish, and it's a central plot point.

GOLDWYN: Well, the times they are a changin'. That is an interesting coincidence and maybe it has deeper psychological meaning that I'm not aware of. I read the script and thought it was so beautiful and I had to do it. So I didn't set out to do something Jewish-themed, it wasn't something that I had a keen desire to explore. It was a happy coincidence that it ended up being profoundly connected to my cultural roots. But I only realized that late in the game, as I was really getting into it, I felt this tremendous identification with that world and with the immigrant experience. I felt [the Kantrowitzs] were sort of a branch of the family that went a different path than mine did. My grandfather kind of skipped all of that. He came here alone as a Jewish immigrant and renounced all of that and wanted to be mainstream American. That was his dream and that's what he did.

TCG: Do you find that you get put under a lot more scrutiny because of the Goldwyn name?

GOLDWYN: Very much so. It was very tough at first. I felt that it worked very much against me when I was starting out because people tend to be dismissive and assume that it's just nepotism. This is a business where nepotism doesn't really pay. The first couple of years were very tough because anybody that knew my family — and since I got to Hollywood, it was everybody — would not take you seriously, so you have to fight to doubly prove yourself. Once I got established, it was less of an issue for me, because then your work speaks for itself. Either you're good or you're not, and once you have enough work out there that people can decide whether you have ability, then it's fine.

© 1999, Serena Donadoni. All rights reserved.

Director: Tony Goldwyn | Writer: Pamela Gray | Cinematography: Anthony B. Richmond | Music: Mason Daring | Production Design: Dan Leigh | Costume Design: Jess Goldstein | Editing: Dana Congdon | Producers: Jay Cohen, Tony Goldwyn, Lee Gottsegen, Dustin Hoffman, Neil Koenigsberg, and Murray Schisgal | Released by Miramax Films | Running time: 107 minutes | Rated R

Cast: Diane Lane (Pearl Kantrowitz), Viggo Mortensen (Walker Jerome), Anna Paquin (Alison Kantrowitz), Liev Schreiber (Marty Kantrowitz), Tovah Feldshuh (Lilian Kantrowitz), Bobby Boriello (Daniel Kantrowitz), Steward Bick (Neil Leiberman), Star Jasper (Rhonda Leiberman), Jess Platt (Herb Fogler), Lisa Bronwyn Moore (Norma Folger), Mahee Paiement (Mrs. Dymbort), Ellen Cohen (Eleanor Gelfand), Victoria Barkoff (Selma Levitsky), Tamar Kozlov (Wendy Green), Lisa Jakub (Myra Naidell), and Julie Kavner (P.A. Announcer).