Synopsis The Night Listener
Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams), a popular gay New York City radio show host, is dealing with a separation from his partner, Jess (Bobby Cannavale). Noone is given a memoir written by teenager Pete Logand (Rory Culkin), who chronicles the many years of sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his parents and their friends. Diagnosed with AIDS, the youth has been adopted by Donna Logand (Toni Collette), the social worker who handled his case.
Noone begins a telephone relationship with the boy and Donna. He and Pete become increasingly close and form a father-son relationship, much to the dismay of Jess, especially after he speaks to Donna and suspects she and the boy are the same person. Noone's personal secretary Anna adds fuel to the fire by discussing her research into people who fabricate stories for attention or love. Determined to prove the boy exists and his story is true, Noone decides to pay a surprise visit to him in his hometown in rural Wisconsin. Noone discovers the return address on Peter's correspondence is actually a mail drop. Soon after, while eating in a local diner, he overhears another patron and recognizes her voice as that of Donna. He's stunned to learn she's blind and uses a guide dog. Noone follows her home and Donna senses he has followed her. She invites him into her home and talks openly about Peter, who she says is currently in the hospital undergoing tests. She assures him he can visit the boy the following day, then suddenly becomes angry and tells him she will not allow him to meet her son. Increasingly suspicious, Noone contacts all the hospitals in Madison, the site of the nearest facilities, but none have the boy registered as a patient.
Gabriel's paranoia about the boy's existence grows and, hoping to find proof of his existence, he breaks into Donna's home. A police officer arrests him for breaking and entering and then, mistakenly believing him to be one of the boy's abusers, attacks him with a stun baton before taking him to the station. Noone convinces the police he meant no harm and is released, only to find Donna waiting for him with the news that Pete has died and was staying in a Milwaukee hospital, not one in Madison. Distressed that Noone doesn't believe her, Donna collapses in the middle of a road and tries to hold him with her in the path of an oncoming truck. She then moves everything out of her home and disappears before the police can question her. Noone is now convinced that the boy is a figment of the deranged woman's imagination.
In response to a phone call from Donna, Gabriel goes to a motel where she was staying, and finds Pete's stuffed rabbit and a videotape under a blanket. He plays the video of a child, who seems to be Pete, but who could have been anyone. The phone rings and the caller claims to be the boy, waiting for his mother at the airport. Gabriel asks some questions after finding out that his mother lied about his death, but the caller ends the conversation after Gabriel asks what happened in Donna's past and how she became blind. In the final moments of the conversation Pete's voice changes to sound more womanly, just as the conversation is cut off.
Gabriel returns to Manhattan and uses his experience to create The Night Listener, a new radio story. In the final scene, Donna is searching for a new home in a coastal town, telling the realtor she needs it for herself and her sick child, who has just lost his leg but will be released the next day. She has drastically changed her appearance and no longer has a guide dog or dark glasses, revealing her blindness was also an act.
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