Conviction stars Hilary Swank as a single mother putting herself through law school in an attempt to help her wrongfully-accused brother. (courtesy photo)
Sunny silence lends eeriness to the opening scene of a brutal crime for which Kenny Waters was charged. The camera approaches a shack-sized trailer house with the screen door swinging unlatched. Inside, all the walls are smeared with blood, and Katharina Brow lies dead on the floor. This isn’t a spoiler to a fictional movie—it’s what actually happened.
This was the event that led to Kenneth Waters’ wrongful conviction, his 18 years in prison, and his sister, Betty Anne Waters, completing her high school, college and law school degrees in order to become his lawyer and prove his innocence using DNA testing in “Conviction.”
In an interview with the CUI, Director Tony Goldwyn called the film “a brother-sister love story.” Betty Anne Waters (Hilary Swank) juggles scholarship and motherhood, struggles with a divorce, crams to get papers in on time and falls asleep at her computer, only to be brought breakfast by her two sons in the morning.
Minnie Driver plays Abra, the only other adult in Waters’ class. The two become friends and their relationship develops as the film goes on, with Abra being a big help in the final exoneration of Kenny (Sam Rockwell).
The film was independently financed, and took nine years to complete.
“I’m glad it took nine years,” Goldwyn said. “I needed to do it even if we had really bad setbacks. If you have something in your heart and it’s an act of faith, it’s a tiny sliver of what Betty Anne did.”
Regarding why he opened the overwhelmingly heart-wrenching story with the gory scene of the crime, Goldwyn said he didn’t want to lose sight of the victim.
“In every wrongful conviction for a violent crime a human being did something unspeakable to another human being,” he said. “I didn’t want to forget that premise. A woman was brutally murdered and it led to this series of events that affected so many people’s lives.”
But Kenneth Waters was later proven innocent of that unspeakable deed.
The coincidental evidence against him and his blood type matching that of the perpetrators, along with his rambunctious reputation in his home town of Ayer, Mass., didn’t much help his case. It had become protocol to pick him up just about every time anything went wrong in Ayer and in the movie he is practically on joking terms with most of the officers.
Betty Anne Waters said the Waters’ children—nine in all—used to break into houses to pretend that they lived there and had normal, pleasant lives. Their mother was neglectful, and Kenny and Betty Anne took to taking special care of each other.
“We had a lot of fun,” Waters told the CUI. “We would go into Tom’s Food World and my sister and I would steal candy, cupcakes and cookies and put them in our shirts and go to the ladies’ room and throw them out the windows to our brothers. Then we would go across the street where they sold trailers and we would each have our own and we’d play house.”
The movie doesn’t portray it, but Waters said after Kenny was caught in Brow’s home as a kid his mother sent him to reformatory school. He was thought thereafter to hold a grudge against Brow.
Later on, Kenny and Betty Anne were separated and sent to foster homes. Betty Anne and her sister Carolyn went together to a total of four different foster homes and Kenny went with their brother, John.
“They never stayed,” she said of her brothers. “They would run away and come see us.”
In the movie, young Kenny and Betty Anne are played by Tobias Campbell and Bailee Madison. The scene in which they are separated, sobbing and clinging to each other in a police office, is particularly crushing.
Goldwyn said working with Campbell and Madison was amazing.
“There are two kinds of child actors: kids who do a really good mimicry, who fix a performance and are really good at repeating it, and then there is the rare breed who think about their character, have a fluid approach to their work and are very free,” Goldwyn said. “Both are that kind of actor.”
Goldwyn said there is also something to be said for child actors having nothing really to lose.
“They didn’t have any adult ego stuff, anxiety about their career,” he said. “They had nothing at stake, just this joy of playing.”
Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell display incredible performances as well. Goldwyn said his father, Samuel Goldwyn Jr., influenced his decision to cast Swank as Betty Anne.
“He called me one day and told me, ‘I just saw Betty Anne Waters. Go watch Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby,’’” he said.
“We’ve not collaborated much,” Goldwyn said of his father. “We’ve sort of played around with doing some things together but haven’t yet … we’re good friends and we keep each other in the loop. He’s got a wise perspective on things.”
Waters said Swank was great.
“She even had to learn to talk fast, like me,” she said.
Waters said she was also pleased with Rockwell’s performance.
“Sam was my brother in the movie: his feelings, the way he acted,” she said. “[Kenny] told me he wasn’t allowed to see ‘The Green Mile’ in prison—we actually talked about how they cut scenes out. He saw it when he got out. He liked Sam Rockwell.”
Kenny never found out that Rockwell played his part, as he died six months after his release in a freak accident falling off a wall and hitting his head.
He did, however, know about the plan to make the movie.
“I’m very shy,” Waters said. “I’m introverted, not extroverted. Kenny wanted it, why shouldn’t he have it after 18 years? On the phone with Hollywood, he was all ready to take on this movie, to take on the world. He was in his glory.”
Goldwyn said the decision to omit Kenny’s passing from the film was not an easy one.
“I tried really hard to keep it,” Goldwyn said. “I thought it was very powerful. Whatever hardships Waters went through and whatever life throws at you, love will transcend those … . But people would read the script and not recover from it. I tried mentioning it in the crawl and experimenting with audiences. Ninety-eight percent said it completely disrupted how they felt at the end of the movie.”
After dedicating 18 years of her life to freeing her brother, Betty Anne Waters seems to exude an incredible optimism about his passing.
“Those six months were the greatest six months of his life,” she said. “And he died a free man.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Ana McIntosh at Anna.mcintosh@colorado.edu.
