The Wide-ranging World of Robert Ginty

by Daphne Charette

The name might escape you, but the face is easily recognizable- broad, mutable, with an ingenuous grin and alert gaze. He moves from irrepressible insouciance to laconic menace with startling ease. Best known to audiences for a string of action films in the 80's and early 90's, including The Exterminator, Mission Kill, and Code Name Vengeance, Robert Ginty is also a writer, painter, producer, and award-winning director. Woman of Desire, which Ginty both penned and directed, starred Robert Mitchum and Bo Derek and won Ginty the Silver Lone Star Award at the 1993 Houston International Film Festival. Vietnam, Texas, which he produced and directed, took Best Director at the same festival three years earlier. He directed the CBS comedy Evening Shade and the Vietnam drama China Beach, both Emmy Award-winning shows. And these are only brief highlights from a career that has spanned two decades, three continents, and has garnered Mr. Ginty nine best director awards.

Trained at the Yale School of Drama, Mr. Ginty also studied at some of the most prestigious studios in New York, including the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actor's Studio, founded in 1947 by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Elia Kazan to explore and teach Stanislavsky's Method. That rigorous early training helped develop a versatility reflected in Robert's range of roles- from a man transmuted by an evil spell into a nocturnal predator in the cult classic, The Alchemist, to a Vietnam veteran turned priest in Vietnam, Texas, to the philandering husband in TriStar's comedy, Loverboy, with Kirstie Alley.

Mr. Ginty also founded the Irish Theater Arts Center in Los Angeles. Now in its seventh year, the Irish Theater Arts Center sponsors Director's Labs, produces new and classical plays, and encourages the development and visibility of Irish artists in an international forum. In the past three years, the ITAC has toured to Ireland, England, Germany, New Zealand, Hawaii, Calgary, Banff, and Vancouver, Canada, Chicago, and the Lincoln

Center for the Performing Arts. One highlight of the ITAC was a stage production of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, which Mr. Ginty starred in and directed.

Robert Ginty's current project is Green Shadows, White Whale, a screenplay co-written with Ray Bradbury. Mr. Ginty kindly took time out of his schedule to speak with me about some of his many projects.

DC: Where did the impetus for Vietnam, Texas come from?

Robert: A mixture of fatherhood, Catholicism and action movies.

DC: Were you raised Catholic?

Robert: Yes.

DC: What was your reaction, being a young man during the Vietnam War? Did it influence the work you did on China Beach and Vietnam, Texas?

Robert: I was thrilled that I was lucky enough not to have to partake in it. (It influenced my work) in as much as I had a strong point of reference.

DC: What was it like, working with Hal Ashby on Coming Home?

Robert: He's the best unrecognized director in American film.

DC: Did working with him affect how you approach directing now?

Robert: Very much so. He "walked me through" the entire script. He was truly one of the last great "human beings" in the film industry. We would go page by page with his giving thoughts and suggestions on how to proceed to film it. Hal was one of the industry's best editors before he became a director so this was enormously helpful.

DC: You studied with some of the best drama teachers in the country- what differences do you see between working in theater and in film, as an actor?

Robert: The cliche is true; theater is an actor's medium whereas film is a director's medium,

even though now its become more of a corporate medium.

DC: Do you feel that 'corporatization' of film has diminished the quality of work being produced?

Robert: Obviously. The major mergers that have taken place in the last few years has created a nearly totalitarian state with regards to the limitations placed on creative expression. It also creates a world in which no one is allowed to make a decision.

DC: Was that part of what led you to start your own production company?

Robert: Like anyone, its better to have your own business than be working for anyone else, but in no way is my company competition for global conglomerates.

DC: Can I ask about the screenplay you're working on with Ray Bradbury? How did that project get started?

Robert: Briefly, its a biographical film of Ray's young life on his first important assignment writing the movie Moby Dick and living in Ireland with director John Huston.

DC: Did you approach him about writing it?

Robert: As they all do, you start it yourself. I loved the book, wrote the script, met with Ray, and have spent the last three years trying to get it made.

DC: What in the book captured your attention, made you want to write the script?

Robert: A positive, optimistic view of Ireland and two characters I'm equally fond of.

DC: Which leads me to the Irish Theater Arts project- when did you start that?

Robert: 1994, a few days after the famous Los Angeles earthquake. it gave everyone a certain nervous edge to be in the theater.

DC: It's obviously very much been a labor of love.

Robert: I enjoyed the artistic side of it. The management side is unpleasant.

DC: Do you think that entertainment has the potential to have a positive effect on the world?

Robert: I think it goes both ways and presently certainly more towards the negative.

DC: Yes- In your works, does an awareness of the effect it might have on the audience influence your choices? Is what the piece is saying an important consideration for you?

Robert: It's why I stopped doing gratuitously violent action movies. And since I tend to develop my own scripts, the answer to that is very much yes.

DC: I wanted to ask, as a writer, director, and actor, do you find it easier to direct your own material?

Robert: By no means. I think its better to work in collaboration. The more minds the better.

DC: What is it in a story that makes you say, I really want to explore this?

Robert: That the characters are interesting and it's well crafted. It's shocking how hard that is to find.

DC: Looking at the range of things you've done, what have you not done yet that you'd really like to?

Robert: Publish a novel.

DC: Have you been working on one?

Robert: For what seems like for ever.

Robert Ginty maintains a website at www.robertginty.com that reflects some of his many interests, including The world's Greatest Parties, a celebration of cultures throughout the world.

Daphne Charette is an award-winning screenwriter and current president of The Screenplayers (www.screenplayers.net).Daphne graduated magna cum laude from the State University of New York with a degree in theater and English. She is represented by Brian Overland of Overland Literary Management.