A disabled athlete fights seeks to overcome his obstacles in Director William Goldenberg’s biographical sports drama, Unstoppable.
Goldenberg’s film tells the inspiring true story of Anthony Robles, a wrestler born with one leg who defied the odds to win a national championship in 2011 while competing at Arizona State University.
On December 7, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Goldenberg discussed the making of the film during a Q&A moderated by Director Ben Affleck (Air).
During the conversation, Goldenberg shared what part of directing his first feature made him the most nervous.
“The thing that concerned me the most was talking to actors. I mean all of it scared me, but I felt like I know what coverage I need to make a scene work. I knew what I wanted it to look like. I knew what I wanted the wrestling to be. But I haven’t had that much experience talking to actors on a set. So, the idea of using the right language and getting performance out of them or shifting performance, talking about intention and things like that... I knew what I wanted but getting them to understand what I wanted. What I realized is how Directors talk to me as an editor is the way I ended up talking to the actors because it feels very similar. It’s just them understanding what movie I’m making, what intentions I have with any given scene or line or whatever it is. And it feels that way when a Director talks to me. There’s a certain way I like to be spoken to in terms of I just like to get all the information I can. Just keep telling me stuff. I want this to be what you want the scene to be, what you want the pace to be. I often say to the Director ‘tell me how you want to feel, and I’ll be able to do that in the editing room’. I knew this was how I liked to be talked to, so I kind of ended up speaking to the actors that way. And because these actors are so gifted that seemed to work.”
Unstoppable is Goldenberg’s directorial debut. He became a DGA member in 2023.