When Mark Ruffalo calls ‘action!’ on his directorial debut, Sympathy For Delicious, next week in Los Angeles, it will mean much more than just another milestone in his increasingly impressive career.
After all, Ruffalo’s brother, Scott, died in early December following a shooting incident. Understandably, it pushed Ruffalo’s professional life to the wayside, but now he’s decided to return to work. And what better way than by getting Sympathy For Decisions, which had been due to shoot around December, going again?
Due to a scheduling conflict, though, the previously-cast James Franco won’t be able to make the movie. Orlando Bloom has instead signed on to play the lead singer of a tough rock band. Laura Linney will play the manager of the band, but the lead role in the movie goes to Christopher Thornton, a wheelchair-bound theatre actor who also wrote the movie.
Thornton will play a disabled DJ who discovers that he can heal the sick (but not, as it turns out, himself). Rather than exploit his gift for the good of others, though, he decides to follow his dreams of a rock’n’roll lifestyle.
Ruffalo will also appear in the movie, as a priest.
The indie film doesn’t have a distributor in the States yet – it’ll be shopped around at the Berlin Film Festival. And we know that we’re always wishing filmmakers well with their projects – we’re nice like that – but we particularly mean it in this instance.