A matter of 'Good' and evil

"We had started a relationship, which was based on two Jewish people screaming at each other -- even back then," recalls Isaacs.

So when she asked to meet with him about making a movie out of C.P. Taylor's 1981 play, "Good," they had another argument. In fact, Isaacs informed his friend that she should be ashamed of herself.

"It's a disgraceful play," Isaacs, who is Jewish, told her, though he had never seen or read "Good." "It apologizes for Nazism, and you as a Jewish woman should be running a million miles from it."

But Segal insisted he take the play home with him and read it. As soon as he finished the play, he called her with an apology and pledged to Segal he would "help you the best I can."

"Good," which opens in limited release Wednesday, is set in Germany during the 1930s and '40s. Viggo Mortensen plays John Halder, a well-regarded, morally decent college professor who has a crazy wife, two unloving children and a whiny mother with dementia. His only real friend is the outspoken, gregarious Jewish shrink Maurice, played by Isaacs. Halder finds himself embraced by the Nazis because of a novel he has written on the need for compassionate euthanasia.

The book becomes fodder for the Nazi propaganda machine and Halder is quickly taken under the wing of several highly placed political figures. Enjoying the good life, Halder turns a blind eye to what is really happening in the country, especially to Maurice.

It took Segal several years to get "Good" to hit the screen. At one point, says Isaacs, the film was ready to start production in Germany with a different actor as Halder and a different director. "There was just some tiny rubber-stamp thing that needed to happen at the bank," he says. "A lot of people hadn't been paid in such a long time. Miriam has sacrificed her rather booming production company, apartment and car to finally get this thing up."

Isaacs wrote a check to help keep things going, but the production still collapsed, "leaving huge debts everywhere, including me. But she was determined."

After few more false starts, Segal finally secured the financing and the film went into production last year in Budapest.