The Night Listener

Synopsis: A troubled radio talk show host's desperate attempt to contact the ailing teenage author of a disturbing manuscript leads him to a shocking series of revelations in director Patrick Stettner's big-screen adaptation of Armistead Maupin's controversial novel. Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams) is a popular radio talk show host whose turbulent personal life has become little more than fodder for the airwaves. Night after night, Gabriel shamelessly sits behind the microphone documenting the deteriorating health of his HIV-infected boyfriend Jess (Bobby Cannavale) to a rapt audience of loyal listeners. When Jess' health unexpectedly improves and he decides to break off the relationship in order to embrace his newfound independence, Gabriel soon finds that the sudden elimination of his most personal subject matter has left him with little means of relating to his audience. Subsequently handed a shocking, autobiographical manuscript by his publisher friend Ashe (Joe Morton) documenting the harrowing home life of a 14-year-old, AIDS-afflicted fan named Pete Logand (Rory Culkin), Gabriel soon receives a telephone call from a person claiming to be Pete, and the two strike up a fast friendship. The conversations between the pair ever more frequently punctuated by reports from Pete's overprotective stepmother, Donna (Toni Collette), concerning the teen's rapidly deteriorating health, Gabriel's growing suspicion that a literary hoax is in the making prove enough cause for the hesitant the publishing house that employs Ashe to back away from a lucrative distribution deal. Now, as the guilt of sinking a potentially lucrative deal for the long-suffering child begins to weigh down on Gabriel's increasingly frail shoulders, the guilt-ridden radio host boards a plane for the Logands small-town Wisconsin home to solve the strange mystery once and for all.     Source: RottenTomatoes.com