Academy award-nominated actor, Mark Ruffalo has his directorial debut, SYMPATHY FOR DELICIOUS, out this month. The film was written by Christopher Thornton who Mark Ruffalo met while studying acting at the Stella Adler Theatre in Los Angeles. Ruffalo and Thornton also star in the film. SYMPATHY FOR DELICIOUS is about a paralyzed man’s (Delicious Dean, played by Christopher Thornton) journey to cope with his tragedy and a Priest (Joe, played by Ruffalo) who is trying to encourage him to realize Dean’s gift and his own dream to build a shelter for the homeless on skid row in Los Angeles. Dean is paralyzed in a motorcycle accident that leaves him unable to walk, in a wheel chair and living out of his car on skid row. However he is also left with the ability to heal people. It should be mentioned that Christopher Thornton is also paralyzed from a rock-climbing fall when he was 25. Ruffalo’s and Thornton’s 10-year collaboration leaves us with a film that explores the effects of tragedy, the conflicts between spirit, ego and superficiality and the struggle of compassion over material obsession and in the end the victory of salvation.

Released this year by Magnolia Pictures, Countdown to Zero is a powerful documentary that explores the nuclear weapons’ potential for unimaginable destruction and offers a singular solution for preventing such catastrophes. Lawrence Bender, the film’s producer, has been nominated for Academy Awards for films such as Inglorious Basterds, Good Will Hunting, and Pulp Fiction. The last documentary Bender produced was the Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
     Jeff Markey got the chance to speak with Bender last week in LA, and discussed his involvement with the anti-nuclear proliferation group Global Zero, the film’s portrayal of the current threat of nuclear disaster, and what citizens of the world can do to help.

Why and how did you get involved with a documentary about nuclear weapons?
Well, having produced An Inconvenient Truth, I was able to witness firsthand how a movie can educate and inspire a movement. It was a great thing I got to do on that film and with Al Gore. I recieved a lot of incoming phone calls when that movie came out [from] people wanting to do an Inconvenient Truth of different subjects and issues. I got a phone call from Bruce Blair and Matt Brown from the Global Zero organization. … They said, “We want to do a documentary about another great threat facing us — nuclear weapons.” And that made sense.