All Good Things (film)
Encyclopedia
All Good Things is a 2010 romantic mystery film directed by Andrew Jarecki
Andrew Jarecki
Andrew Jarecki is an American filmmaker, musician, and entrepreneur. He is best known for Capturing the Friedmans, which won eighteen international prizes including the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the New York Film Critics Circle award, and was nominated for an Academy...

 starring Ryan Gosling
Ryan Gosling
Ryan Thomas Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician. He first came to public attention as a child star on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club and went on to appear in other family entertainment programmes including Are You Afraid of the Dark? , Goosebumps , Breaker High and Young Hercules...

 and Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories...

. The film is inspired by the life of accused murderer Robert Durst
Robert Durst
Robert Alan "Bobby" Durst is a son of the late New York real estate mogul Seymour Durst, and brother of commercial developer Douglas Durst.-Early life:...

. All Good Things was filmed between April and July 2008 in Connecticut and New York. The film was originally scheduled for a July 24, 2009, release, but was further delayed with a limited release of December 3, 2010. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

reports that Robert Durst likes the film.

Premise

In 1970s New York City, David Marks (Gosling), the son of a powerful real estate tycoon, marries a beautiful working-class student, Katie McCarthy (Dunst). Together they flee the city for country life in Vermont — only to be lured back by David's father. Upon their return, Katie goes back to medical school while trying to understand David's mood swings and unwillingness to have children. As she becomes increasingly independent, David mysteriously turns more violent and controlling. Family secrets are slowly revealed as Katie disappears without a trace. Years later, when David's best friend turns up dead, the 20-year-old case is re-opened, with David as the main suspect, and the Marks family’s dark secrets pave the way to a disturbing truth.

Cast

  • Ryan Gosling
    Ryan Gosling
    Ryan Thomas Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician. He first came to public attention as a child star on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club and went on to appear in other family entertainment programmes including Are You Afraid of the Dark? , Goosebumps , Breaker High and Young Hercules...

     as David Marks
  • Kirsten Dunst
    Kirsten Dunst
    Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories...

     as Katie Marks
  • Frank Langella
    Frank Langella
    -Early life:Langella, an Italian American, was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of Angelina and Frank A. Langella Sr., a business executive who was the president of the Bayonne Barrel and Drum Company. Langella attended Washington Elementary School and Bayonne High School in Bayonne...

     as Sanford Marks
  • Kristen Wiig
    Kristen Wiig
    Kristen Carroll Wiig is an American film and television actress who currently appears as a cast member on Saturday Night Live. Wiig was a member of improvisational comedy troupe The Groundlings, and has appeared in several films and television series, including Bridesmaids, MacGruber, Flight of...

     as Lauren Fleck
  • Philip Baker Hall
    Philip Baker Hall
    -Early life:Hall was born in Toledo, Ohio, the son of a factory worker father who was from Montgomery, Alabama. He attended the University of Toledo. As a younger man, Hall served in the military, started a family, and became a high school English teacher. In 1961, he decided to become an actor...

     as Malvern Bump
  • Diane Venora
    Diane Venora
    Diane Venora is an American stage, television, and film actress.-Early life:Venora was born Diana Venora in East Hartford, Connecticut, the daughter of Marie and Robert P. Venora, who owned a dry cleaning establishment. Diane graduated from East Hartford High School, class of 1970. During her...

     as Janet Rizzo
  • Lily Rabe
    Lily Rabe
    Lily Rabe is an American actress. She is the daughter of the late actress Jill Clayburgh and playwright David Rabe and attended Northwestern University and the Hotchkiss School....

     as Deborah Lehrman
  • Nick Offerman
    Nick Offerman
    Nick Offerman is an American actor best known for his role as Ron Swanson in the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation. He is also a skilled woodworker.-Early life and career:...

     as Jim McCarthy
  • Liz Stauber
    Liz Stauber
    Liz Stauber is an American actress. She attended North Central High School in Indianapolis, Indiana.-Selected filmography:Film*All Good Things as Sharon McCarthy*Shut Up and Sing as Michelle...

     as Sharon McCarthy

Production

The All Good Things screenplay was written by Marcus Hinchey and Marc Smerling as a narrative loosely based on the real life experiences of Robert Durst, a real estate heir whose first wife, Kathleen McCormack, disappeared in 1982. The film's title is a reference to a health store of the same name set up by Durst and McCormack in the 1970s. After the script was completed and Andrew Jarecki had agreed to direct the film, Ryan Gosling was attached to star and Kirsten Dunst in negotiations by late January 2008. By early April, Frank Langella was in final negotiations with the film's producers to join. Soon after, The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...

 closed a deal to distribute All Good Things, and the film's budget was set at US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

20 million.

Filming began in April in New York City and various locations in Connecticut, which were chosen for "the tax incentive, scenic and period locations" provided by the state. Shooting on Lillinonah Drive in Brookfield, Connecticut
Brookfield, Connecticut
Brookfield is a town located in northern Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 16,452 at the 2010 census. First settled in 1710 by John Muirwood and several other colonial founders who bartered for the land From the Wyantenuck Nation Under the Sachem Waramaugs who lived...

 commenced in early May, at a lakefront house. Five locations at the Fairfield University
Fairfield University
Fairfield University is a private, co-educational undergraduate and master's level teaching-oriented university located in Fairfield, Connecticut, in the New England region of the United States. It was founded by the Society of Jesus in 1942, and today is one of 28 member institutions of the...

 campus were used for several scenes over a week of filming. The set moved to Carl Schurz Park
Carl Schurz Park
Carl Schurz Park is a 14.9 acre public park on the Upper East Side of New York City, named for German-born Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz in 1910, at the edge of what was then a solidly German-American community of Yorkville....

, New York City, briefly before switching back to Connecticut. Three scenes were shot at Canal Street, Shelton, Connecticut
Shelton, Connecticut
Shelton is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 39,559 at the 2010 census.-Origins:Shelton was settled by the English as part of the town of Stratford, Connecticut, in 1639...

, on May 30–31 after the production team's filming license for the scenes was completed less than a week beforehand. Much of the Canal Street filming focused on the "heavy, industrial features" of the area, while other touch-ups such as graffiti removal were made. A single minute-long scene was shot on a bridge over the Housatonic River
Housatonic River
The Housatonic River is a river, approximately long, in western Massachusetts and western Connecticut in the United States. It flows south to southeast, and drains about of southwestern New England into Long Island Sound...

. Scenes were shot on Route 7 in Gaylordsville, Connecticut
Gaylordsville, Connecticut
Gaylordsville is a village located in the northwest corner of the Town of New Milford, Litchfield County, Connecticut. It was founded in 1725 by William Gaylord.-History:...

, on June 3, where a shop opposite the local fire department was used as a health store. The following day, filming commenced in Waterbury, Connecticut
Waterbury, Connecticut
Waterbury is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, on the Naugatuck River, 33 miles southwest of Hartford and 77 miles northeast of New York City...

. The Hospital of Saint Raphael
Hospital of Saint Raphael
The Hospital of Saint Raphael or Saint Raphael Hospital, located in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, is a 511-bed community teaching hospital and an academic health center affiliated with Yale University School of Medicine. It was founded by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth in 1907...

 was used as a filming location on June 6. The film set at the hospital was built on a vacant floor scheduled to be renovated, and took a week for set designers to prepare. Filming later returned to Brookfield, Connecticut, and shot for two days at the Ridgefield Community Center—standing in for New York's Gracie Mansion
Gracie Mansion
thumb|250px|Western sideGracie Mansion is the official residence of the mayor of the City of New York. Built in 1799, it is located in Carl Schurz Park, at East End Avenue and Eighty-eighth Street in Manhattan...

—in Ridgefield, Connecticut
Ridgefield, Connecticut
Ridgefield is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. Situated in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains, the 300-year-old community had a population of 24,638 at the 2010 census. The town center, which was formerly a borough, is defined by the U.S...

. Manhattan, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

's West 38th Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues, stood in for the old 42nd Street on June 25–26 where shops were converted into 1970s Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...

 sex shops and strip shows.

Jarecki, who previously produced and directed the 2003 documentary Capturing the Friedmans
Capturing the Friedmans
Capturing the Friedmans is a documentary film directed by Andrew Jarecki. It focuses on the 1980s investigation of Arnold and Jesse Friedman for child molestation...

, said that making All Good Things "was less about wanting to do a narrative feature vs. a documentary and more about the merits of this particular project". He shot "hundreds of hours of footage" of real people associated with the true story of Robert Durst, saying that "It was part of the process. Maybe it will end up on the DVD some day."

Release

The film was originally set for release on July 24, 2009. In spring 2009, the film was delayed. An insider from The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...

 stated that "the movie is really strong. We just needed more time to complete it." Soon after, the film was set to release on December 11, 2009, only to be delayed again. The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...

 released their upcoming film slate, with All Good Things listed for a March 2010 release. This never materialized. In March 2010, director Andrew Jarecki
Andrew Jarecki
Andrew Jarecki is an American filmmaker, musician, and entrepreneur. He is best known for Capturing the Friedmans, which won eighteen international prizes including the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the New York Film Critics Circle award, and was nominated for an Academy...

, bought back the US distribution rights and was searching for a new distributor for the film. The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...

 still holds the international rights, as well as basic cable television rights. As of August 24, 2010, Magnolia Pictures
Magnolia Pictures
Magnolia Pictures is an American film distributor, and is a holding of 2929 Entertainment, owned by Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban. Magnolia was formed in 2001 by Bill Banowsky and Eamonn Bowles, and specializes in both foreign and independent films....

 had acquired the American rights to the film and gave the film a theatrical release on December 3, 2010.

Critical reception

All Good Things met with mixed reviews from critics. On review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 the film holds a rating of 33%, with average score of 5.5/10 based on 26 reviews. The consensus was: "It's well-acted, and the true story that inspired it offers plenty of drama -- which is why it's so frustrating that All Good Things is so clichéd and frustratingly ambiguous." Both Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories...

 and Ryan Gosling
Ryan Gosling
Ryan Thomas Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician. He first came to public attention as a child star on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club and went on to appear in other family entertainment programmes including Are You Afraid of the Dark? , Goosebumps , Breaker High and Young Hercules...

 have been praised for their performances. Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

awarded the film three and a half out of four stars and said "
I don't understand David Marks after seeing this film, and I don't know if Andrew Jarecki does."
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