The Night Listener

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: August 4th, 2006 (limited)

Starring: Robin Williams, Toni Collette, Sandra Oh, Rory Culkin, Joe Morton

Directed by: Patrick Stettner (The Business of Strangers)

Premise: A psychological thriller that revolves around the celebrated writer and popular late-night radio show host, Gabriel Noone, who develops an intense relationship with a young listener named Pete and his adopted mother, just as his own domestic life is undergoing changes. When a troubling question arises regarding the boy's identity, it causes Gabriel's ordered existence to spin wildly out of control as he sets out on a harrowing journey to find the truth.

[MacGuffin]

The True Story Behind The Night Listener


*SPOILER WARNING*



Robin Williams may be starring in Miramax's drama-thriller The Night Listener, but the unpredictable comedian just can't help being funny even when it comes to his suspenseful and uncanny new role. Before the interview even started with Williams, he was already rather jovial when he came into the room unannounced as we were still talking to writer Armistead Maupin and said in one of his signature wacky voices, "Armistead pizza delivery." This caught the author off-guard and he starting laughing saying, "Jeez you're good. You can see what a gloomy set we had."

The movie is based on a true story, which inspired the bestselling novelist to write about the events that actually happened to him when a young fan claimed he was the survivor of a devastating and tragic upbringing. However, as the friendship continued, Maupin began to question whether he really existed because his over-protective adoptive mother would never let them meet. Maupin didn't know he had been fooled until his partner noticed the mother's voice and the boy's voice sounded very similar. It was quite a shock. This woman not only deceived Maupin, but several other celebrities as well.

"She duped many of them and a lot of them won't talk about it and he [Maupin] will," Williams told ComingSoon.net.

It all started when a NY publisher sent Maupin a manuscript of a book that was written by a 14-year old boy who was dying of AIDS and suffered abuse from his pedophile parents. He was asked to write a blurb about the piece and was so impressed and touched by the boy he wanted to talk with him. And so a six-year phone relationship began.

"The basic setup fell into my lap 13 years ago and I knew instantly that I would have to write about it," Maupin explained. "I found him to be feisty and charming and bright. Not at all depressing considering all of the things he'd been through...This kid was expected to die within six months."

Turns out this is not the first time an incident like this has happened.

"I've helped a lot of Make-A-Wish kids, but I've never had one call from the Bahamas going, 'I'm thirty. Thanks for the money for the machine, the dialysis machine. I'm riding it.' I've never been duped like that, but I have met other people who have been. There was also a woman going around here who was with a lot of comics, a coincidence, who claimed that she had a son who was severely handicapped or suffering from something and engaged them I think for money and for companionship. They were going with it and had never met the kid, or maybe at one point she did bring the kid, but it turned out later that it wasn't even her kid. She borrowed some kid and so it is out there," Williams said.

In the film, Williams plays Gabriel Noone, a colorful public radio storyteller, which is only partially based on Maupin, and Toni Collette magnificently plays the adopted mother of the boy.

"I think that she is someone who has had a really tough life and we all want love and not all of us are lucky enough to get it. I think she's probably been abused in the past and she's someone who needs attention and needs love and she'll go to any lengths to get it. I think she's actually really really intelligent, but she uses her smarts in a really destructive and manipulative, frightening way," Collette stated.

Maupin said he tried many times to see the boy "and was invited many times and the invitation was invariably retracted at the last minute for a number of reasons. 'Oh he's come down with something. He's not feeling well now.' Terry, his partner, was HIV positive and she said 'Terry might get something.'"

Even though Maupin had his doubts as to whether this kid existed, he remained hopeful he did throughout.

"It wasn't until I saw a voice analysis that I realized fully. I said alright there it is. There's the truth...There was something very strange in telling this person that you've talked to for so many years, 'I don't think you're real.' So I did it through the novel. I actually told him I was about to write a novel about the two of us and what happened when doubt was cast on the existence of the boy the way it had been done by Newsweek."

To this day, the woman still claims the boy exists, even though nobody has physically seen him, and the book he wrote was published. It is being sold as a memoir.

"I think a lot of people close to this story are really embarrassed about it and I don't think they have any reason to be. All they were caught at was being compassionate. I'm not embarrassed," Maupin said.

During one of the few serious moments in the interview, when Williams was asked if he felt sympathy for the woman who did this, he said, "I do and I don't, because you also have kind of this compassion and say that there is something motivating that aside from the fact that she can. There is something disturbing her. If you've tracked her history like Armistead has, she went on to marry some man and that turned out to be a car wreck and then the fact that she contacted us - Toni [Collette] got a letter during the filming of this. Armistead said that it was most likely from her. There is that weird kind of stalker mentality combined with the ability, she does have that ability, she convinced these people and she used it. You have to say wow to that. What did she do with it? She scammed people. She had them going and there's a certain amount of skill in that as with all great sociopaths who do that."

The Night Listener opens on August 4.