Ghost reunion panel featuring Executive Producer Steven-Charles Jaffe, Casting Director Jane Jenkins, and actor Tony Goldwyn (“Carl Bruner”) at Oscars Outdoors.
This video contains some really interesting insights into the making of Ghost, including Patrick Swayze’s influence on Whoopi Goldberg’s casting as Oda Mae, and the origin of the unique “absorption” visual effect when ghosts in the film go through solid objects.
Of course, my favorite bit is Tony Goldwyn’s recollection of his part in defining Carl’s character at 1:48:
“I came out here and screen tested, and I remember having an argument with Jerry Zucker, the director, uh, at my screen test! Because he said, um, ‘I need you to play it more… like, darker, like, more edge, more like, you know, like you’re not a good guy.’ And I said, ‘No, that’s totally not the way to do it! Because you need to win the audience’s trust, and they need to believe in me, and then they’ll feel doubly betrayed. And that’s how you’ll really–it really will work.’ And, and he said, ‘Well, yeah, I know, they’ll want you to have life in prison, but they won’t want you to be dead.’ [laughs] I just–And, and so we had this big debate about it, and I stuck to my guns, and uh… got the part!”
What some people may not realize is what Tony did there was a big deal. Like, huge. It depends on the film, of course, but generally an actor does not second-guess a director in a big-budget Hollywood film. I remember one time I was talking Star Wars with someone, and they were going on excitedly about how in Revenge of the Sith, Ewan McGregor had gained permission to draw his lightsaber differently than was originally planned.
Read that again. An actor had to fight for permission to draw his weapon differently.
And Ewan McGregor already had the part, and had kept it for two previously released films. Meanwhile, Tony was in a screen test–he was being seriously considered for the role, but did not yet have it. And he had the balls to argue with the director–not about some minor detail, but about the character’s entire demeanor–before he even had the part. And he actually won.
And of course, his instincts proved to be spot-on. In fact, that sense of betrayal may have worked a little too well. The audience hated Carl so much that Tony got hate offscreen!
