Original-Cin Q&A: Hallie Meyers-Shyer on Drawing from Her Filmmaker Dad's Life for Goodrich
Hallie Meyers-Shyer has been surrounded by the film world since she was born. Her parents are veteran writer/directors Nancy Meyers (Private Benjamin) and Charles Shyer (Father of the Bride) who divorced when Hallie was a young girl.
Her latest film, Goodrich comes from the heart and stars Michael Keaton as Andy Goodrich, an art dealer who finds himself in over his head when his wife suddenly checks into rehab, leaving him to care for their young children by himself.
His oldest daughter from his first marriage, played by Mila Kunis, is about to have her first child. And the film follows how he navigates his past mistakes to become a better person and father.
Michael Keaton stars in Goodrich.
Bonnie Laufer spoke with writer-director Meyers-Shyer about the film. Goodrich is in theaters October 18.
ORIGINAL-CIN: Hallie, it's been seven years since your last film, Home Again. What took so long?
HALLIE MEYERS-SHYER: Well, a few things. We had this little bit of a global pandemic. I had a baby boy, so that took up a bit of time (laughs). Making an independent film is a really long and difficult process, and I wrote this movie six years ago, and it's taken this long to get it to this point.
O-C: Writing this had to have been very personal and a cathartic experience for you. Tell me a little bit about the inspiration behind it.
MEYERS-SHYER: It's so funny because at first I thought, “I don't need to say it's a personal movie.” But now I’ve come to terms with it.
The cats out of the bag, because when you see it, it feels so personal. It could only be a personal movie. My father had children when I was in college, and that was complicated for me. It was a lot to digest and process, and I love those kids. And it was just an interesting thing to watch your parent, parent a new set of kids. So I thought that it should be a movie. I'm very inspired by movies like Kramer vs. Kramer, so I combined all these different themes in my life and I wanted to write a movie for Michael Keaton because I could only see him taking on a role like this.
Director Nancy Meyers-Shyer
O-C: That was bold writing with Michael in mind. Did you know beforehand that he would say yes?
MEYERS-SHYER: Oh, not at all. In fact, he's very selective as to what roles he takes on, so I thought there was a very good chance he would say no. I really just wrote my heart out, and I wrote it to Michael, the way you write to great music.
I watched all of his films, I watched interviews with him, and I felt like I got to know him a little bit, and I just wrote as honestly to his talents and his strengths as I could, and prayed that he would say yes, and he did and quite quickly actually.
O-C: He’s wonderful in it and brings his own real-life experience to it. It brought me back to his performance in Mr. Mom. When you started to work with him, what impressed or surprised you about him?
MEYERS-SHYER: What surprised me about Michael was that he asks extremely smart questions. And in retrospect, that doesn't really surprise me, because he's such a smart and thoughtful person.
I really appreciated that and it kept me on my toes, because they were the kind of questions you would really want to be asked about a character.
It makes you realize how deeply he's thinking about this person and he's not just coming in and saying, Okay, let's go. Let's do it. He has questions about the wardrobe. He has questions about the settings. He really fully immerses himself and being a Michael Keaton fan, that was so exciting for me. I was like, Michael Keaton is taking this part that I wrote so seriously? How cool is that?
O-C: Can we talk about Mila Kunis? My goodness, she really went there for this role.
MEYERS-SHYER: She really did. I hadn't thought about her because I'd never seen her do something this way before.
But I've always been an enormous Mila Kunis fan. I loved her performances in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Bad Moms and Black Swan. We do see her in a lot of comedy of course, but she is such a great dramatic actor.
I think she's just always incredible, and she's shown so many colors, and she's been on screen since she's a child so she has so much experience behind her. You haven't seen this version of Mila yet, so as soon as her name came up, I thought we would be so lucky to have her in this movie and show another side of her. We’re used to seeing her as a cool girl, and this is a really raw performance,
O-C: Mila and Michael’s chemistry felt very real. Did they hit it off immediately?
MEYERS-SHYER: They did hit it off immediately and also as actors, they have very similar strengths. They can weave in and out of comedy and drama. They both talk really quickly, which on the surface seems maybe not to be a big deal, but it does when you're in a scene with somebody, because their rhythms really matched each other's.
O-C: Your mom, Nancy Meyers has given us such wonderful classic films over the years. You practically grew up on film sets. What was the best advice you’ve gotten from her or learned from her about diving into this business?
MEYERS-SHYER: I can tell you really clearly what I think the most important thing is I learned from her, which is, everything matters. No detail is too small for her and I think I've really innately inherited that.
But I also tried to model that because you can see how her films are very bespoke. And I hope to do that as well. I've never seen somebody care so much about anything as she cares about the films that she's making, and it's extremely admirable. So I learned a lot from that.