by MATTHEW HAYS

Given various recent literary-hoax scandals, The Night Listener, the feature film version of the Armistead Maupin novel, couldn’t have arrived at a better time. While fiction, it’s based on the true story of a strange series of phone calls the celebrated San Francisco author received a decade ago.

The film stars Robin Williams, who plays a radio-show host obviously based on Maupin. Early in the film, his literary agent approaches him with the manuscript for a book written by a teenager, a boy who, the agent proclaims, is intensely talented. Williams reads the manuscript with great interest, and is flattered to learn that the adolescent wants nothing more than to get a phone call from his literary hero, Williams himself.

Devastated by his recent break-up with his boyfriend (if you were going out with Bobby Cannavale and he dumped you, you’d be devastated too), Williams soon finds himself obsessed with this poor boy’s story. Williams learns from the lad’s guardian that the young writer suffered from years of parental abuse and is now dying of AIDS. But then things become mysterious very quickly: why does the boy’s voice sound so similar to his guardian’s voice (she’s played by Toni Collette)? Does the boy really exist? Is Williams victim to an elaborate hoax?

The Night Listener builds in a way that’s truly satisfying, pushing the creepy factor as things roll along. Williams is well cast—he fills his role as an aging gay writer with a good degree of nuance and no gushy pathos. The film unfolds almost like a film noir as it drags us further and further into the mystery that consumes its protagonist.

The Night Listener is well worth seeing. Watching it also made me yearn for the DVD commentary by Maupin himself. There is clearly a lot of autobiography in the script, and that, in turn, continually raises one burning question: how much of this actually happened? It’s a fantastical story, and the fact that so much of it is true only adds to the suspense and pleasure of getting lost in it.

The Night Listener opens Friday, Aug. 4

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