Fourteen years ago, director Raven Magwood Goodson had a vision for a film that was similar to one of her favorite movies, Remember the Titans. Resembling the film’s emotions of laughter, sadness, and perseverance, Goodson wanted to create something that had the same feeling, and she did that with the upcoming movie Finding Tony.
Goodson spoke with rolling out about her vision for the film and what it was like directing such a project.
Why did you want to add different layers of emotions in this film, similar to Remember the Titans?
I want audiences, no matter what your age or what you’re going through, to be able to relate to this story in some way. So whether you relate more to Destiny’s story, or you relate more to Tony’s story, there’s something in here for you, because we all go through life, and we all have things happen to us. Whether it’s mistakes that are made or just adversity that we go through in general, we go through life. I wanted to show people that there’s light at the end of the tunnel and that God does work in mysterious ways. Sometimes we can’t explain everything but things come together for good. I think that is explained really well in the story and I’m just super excited to get such a positive response from the older crowd, but then also your teenagers and things of that nature.
What is your vision as a director?
Depending on the film, the message could be different, but I always, as a director, want my audiences to feel. If it’s a horror movie, you want them to be scared, you want them to feel uneasy. If it’s a film like Finding Tony, you want them to laugh, you want them to cry, you want them to feel all of the things, and just even from our screening last night, the audience felt, and that’s what gives me satisfaction as a director. I could hear the laughter. I had audience members come up to me after and say they were crying and say “Raven, why did you mess up my makeup tonight, I was in tears.” That made me feel good, just to know what the audience was feeling and that’s what you want.
You never want someone to leave your movie just not feeling anything, whether it’s happy, whether it’s sad, whatever it is. That’s my goal as a director, but of course, the themes in the movie, you want people to understand that they’re in control of their life, control the controllables, and even though bad things may happen to you or you have a bad day, it doesn’t mean you have a bad life. There are so many awesome messages that are within the themes of the story, but as a director, you want to just make sure your audience feels.
With the rise of women’s basketball today, how big was it to lean into that storyline in this film?
When I first wrote this script, like I said, 15 years ago, women in sports weren’t as big, especially women in basketball. And that’s not to say there weren’t awesome players out there, it just wasn’t centralized on the TV like it is right now. So to be able to release the film, when you have all of these amazing athletes and you have Juju Watkins and Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and Raven Johnson and all these amazing female athletes, whether it’s basketball, gymnastics, whatever it is, it’s just really cool to be able to highlight women in sports through the film and then in return highlighting the actual athletes that are out there doing their thing. It’s pretty cool to have that double feedback.
