The Night Listener

The Night Listener (2006)

You never know who's listening.

In the midst of his crumbling relationship, a radio show host begins speaking to his biggest fan—a young boy—via the telephone. But when questions about the boy's identity come up, the host's life is thrown into chaos.

Date of release
2006-02-12
TMDB
5.5 / 10 (292)
Runtime
1h 31m
Genres
Crime, Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Director
Patrick Stettner

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: The Night Listener
  • Filmed in: New Jersey

The Night Listener is a 2006 American psychological thriller film directed by Patrick Stettner and starring Robin Williams. The screenplay by Armistead Maupin, Terry Anderson, and Stettner is based on Maupin's 2000 novel The Night Listener, which was inspired by Anthony Godby Johnson.

Production

In The Night Listener Revealed, a special feature on the film's DVD release, Armistead Maupin discusses the inspiration for his novel. In 1992, the author was sent the manuscript of a memoir allegedly written by fourteen-year-old Anthony Godby Johnson, who had been sexually and physically abused by his parents since childhood.

Maupin was impressed with the maturity of the boy's writing and called him. The two quickly developed a close telephone relationship, and Maupin frequently discussed the boy's various physical ailments (he had been diagnosed with AIDS) with his adopted mother, Vicki Johnson.

Following the publication of the novel, Tad Friend, a friend of Maupin's who wrote for The New Yorker, initiated an investigation. The story was reported by 20/20, which revealed that the photo of "Anthony" that Vicki had sent to Anthony's supporters was a childhood photo of Steve Tarabokija, now a healthy adult and a New Jersey traffic engineer, who was shocked to find his photo being represented to people as the face of Anthony Godby Johnson.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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