Beth Goodman’s mission to ‘save one life’
- cdavis884
- Aug 6
- 3 min read
By Thomas R. Ellen
To depict a whole life on the screen, the page or the canvas — to make the story or image true and good — is a task not many choose. Those who do are often inspired by the masters before them or persuaded by contemporaries not to let a talent go to waste. But some are compelled, forced by circumstance, driven on by events. It could be a sublime revelation leading them on to be lawmakers of nations; or, its dreadful inverse, a devastating grief, an anger and fury enflamed by loss.
To depict a whole life influenced by the signs and symbols of the world around you, to make a new creation lifting fragments from the repository of our collective history, is a difficult task by itself. To create a work based upon your own loss, your own tragedy, is even more so.
But that is what Beth Goodman intends to do, for she is of the compelled, of those who understand demands have been placed upon them.
Revisiting her own life using film, she is attempting to separate the prosaic from the infused, all to understand what led to her older brother Harold Heyman Goodman taking his own life on February 26, 2021.
Ms. Goodman is an actress and former model whose life has spanned from Charleston to Los Angeles. Now, she hopes to launch her own feature film, titled Surviving Ben, about her family and the loss of Harold Goodman.
A script has been written. It is a movie that covers all stages of life with her brother. Yet, as when we revisit our past in idle moments, the movie, like the mind, turns and shifts, skips decades and returns — winding the way through the maze. It attempts to clarify those moments when evidence presented itself, some foreshadowing of what was waiting years or weeks or days or hours or even minutes in the future. Balanced against these are the ambitions and daily lives of other family members: Life is about exclusion, one choice over another, a thin rope to trapeze. But it doesn’t have to be so simplistic: The movie hopes to convey to the viewer that there are times when all it takes is a phone call.
Ms. Goodman hopes the film can save even one life. Artists throughout history are all too eager to romanticize the act of self-destruction — this film hopes to show its actual consequences. The great strength of the project is its reaffirmation that we are not burdens, that we are not useless or insignificant — a common sentiment in this age. Ms. Goodman’s film, with artful subtlety, demands you know you are a brother or a sister, a son or a daughter, a father or a mother. These are the titles of distinction conferred upon you at birth, and to deny your parents or your siblings or your children your title by your own volition is to destroy not only yourself but them. They will become something different, something weaker, without you.
To save that one life, Ms. Goodman hopes the film can help end the lingering stigma around mental illness. Often, those who suffer blame themselves, believing themselves to be weights on their families and those around them. She wants to use her film to demonstrate this is not the case, that families and friends are not merely those we visit but rely upon without the need for reciprocity.
Ms. Goodman spent her formative years in Charleston and plans to start filming here in the fall of 2026. Robert Carradine of Revenge of the Nerds fame is set to play a part in the cast. So little of what gets filmed here actually uses the city itself and its people to inform the story — Outer Banks choosing to film hundreds of miles from the true barrier islands is a mystery none can solve — but Ms. Goodman wants this story of her brother and her family to be set where it all happened. We are indeed a product of our surroundings.
With the increase in social isolation during the lockdowns, with the very word anomie entering our daily discourse as a cause of our alleged collective malaise, a project like Surviving Ben is timely.
If you are interested in supporting the project, do reach out to Ms. Beth Goodman at her email: bethgoodmandavis@yahoo.com.
Thomas R. Ellen is a writer in Charleston, S.C. He lives with his wife slightly North of Broad.
