The daughter of filmmaker Nancy Meyers is forging her own path in Hollywood as a writer/director.
In the words of director Hallie Meyers-Shyer, it was “Michael Keaton or bust” when it came to her second film, Goodrich.
While posing for cameras and walking the red carpet in Los Angeles’ AMC The Grove 14 for the premiere of Goodrich, Hallie stopped to talk to TooFab about the film, starring Keaton and Mila Kunis.
“I just have been a Michael Keaton fan my entire life,” she told TooFab exclusively.
“I was very excited at the idea of seeing him in a tender comedy again, where he gets to be a father and to be in a comedy,” she continued. “And he’s just, I think, a national treasure. So I would write for him as much as he’d have me.”
The comedy film, written and directed by Meyers-Shyer, follows art gallery proprietor Andy Goodrich [Keaton], whose life is completely upended when his wife enters a 90-day stint in rehab, leaving him to take care of their nine-year old twins. Goodrich then calls upon his older daughter from his first marriage, Grace [Kunis], for help.
Their relationship is somewhat fractured, as the audience watches Grace realize her father is doing a better job with his two new kids compared to how he was with her growing up. However, Goodrich grows into the father Grace never had, she she embarks on her own parenting journey.
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The story of a complicated father-daughter relationship was something Meyers-Shyer wanted to explore as she hadn’t seen it on screen before, believing men are often “excused” from having to manage a work/life balance.
“In many ways, there’s a lot of unexplored things with men on screen. I’ve seen a lot of complicated mother-daughter films, but father-daughter films are always very sweet,” she told TooFab.
“I hadn’t seen a complicated father-daughter film on screen, and I hadn’t seen these kind of, you know, men are very excused, I think, often for going to work. And we’ve seen that in cinema for as long as I can remember.”
Meyers-Shyer explained: “The dad goes off to work, and I think seeing on screen potential repercussions from that and time away from your family and how that feels for your children … That’s something I thought would be an exciting thing to try to capture.”
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If Hallie’s surname sounds familiar, that’s for good reason.
She’s the daughter filmmakers Nancy Meyers (The Parent Trap, Something’s Gotta Give) and Charles Shyer (Father of the Bride, Alfie). The 37-year-old director grew up on her parents’ sets and was even cast in some minor roles for a handful of their films, including The Parent Trap and What Women Want; She previously directed Reese Witherspoon and Candice Bergen in Home Again — which she also wrote.
While Meyers-Shyer is forging her own path in Hollywood, it doesn’t mean she isn’t taking some skills from her mother’s sets.
“My mother’s sets are very orderly, but with lots of joy and lots of fun. And that’s something I always really admired about her sets. They run smoothly, but I, knowing her personally, I could see how loose she would be around the actors and how she would allow the magic to happen. That’s something that I hope I have emulated,” Hallie told TooFab exclusively before adding that her favorite “Nancy Meyers film” is the Christmas classic, The Holiday.
Goodrich also stars Andie MacDowell, Carmen Ejogo, Kevin Pollak, Michael Urie, Laura Benanti, Danny Deferrari, Jackie Sandler, Poorna Jagannathan, and Vivien Lyra Blair.
Ketchup Entertainment releases the film theatrically on October 18.
