Thelma Adams: Novelist, Critic, Oscar Expert

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Interview Prep: Mark Ruffalo

June 1, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Infinitely Mark Ruffalo

Infinitely Mark Ruffalo

I had a wonderful Sunday crowd-sourcing questions from my social media coven yesterday. I threw out the first ball: I’m interviewing Mark Ruffalo Monday morning for his movie Infinitely Polar Bear. He has become the thinking woman’s stud muffin — who reals/reels us in with his bruised charm and keeps us awake with his political activism and emotional engagement. Questions? Thoughts?

Writer Sheila Weller, who just published an amazing article on the Black Dahlia murder case for DuJour Magazine, chimed in immediately and wrote, in part, “I am in the Older Woman Who Have the Hots for Mark Ruffalo club. I love his voice — it is utterly distinctive and has a kind of…slow, shhh-for-sss earnestness…for lack of a better word…that tantalizingly complicates his gritty sexiness. Does he know that? An d `use` it?”

I’m curious about Ruffalo playing a bipolar father in this current movie, and his character Bruce Banner/The Hulk is arguably a bipolar superhero in the Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde mold. There is both huge charm and huge vulnerability and darkness to this man — and is that what modern women are seeking? (Or not?)

There is an eight-minute CBS interview with Ruffalo during the Foxcatcher Oscar campaign that netted him a second nomination for Best Supporting Actor but the link is wonky. So, instead, I’m adding two lighter moments from Ruffalo on the Graham Norton Show, including one where he gets a smooch from Meryl Streep:

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV Tagged With: Actor, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Best Supporting Actor Nomination, Dr. Bruce Banner, Foxcatcher, Infinitely Polar Bear, Mark Ruffalo, Marvel, Oscar, Sheila Weller, The Hulk

My Book: The Movie (Oscar Edition)

February 26, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Mark Ruffalo,Best Supporting Actor,The Kids Are All Right,Playdate,Lance

Ruffalo contemplates the ceiling with a "what have I done?" look

Now Showing at “My Book: The Movie” on Marshal Zeringue’s Campaign for the American Reader Blog

Here,Thelma Adams shares some casting ideas for an adaptation of her new novel, Playdate:

Inspired by the upcoming Academy Awards, I’m casting my book from current Oscar nominees. Playdate began with a simple movie pitch: Shampoo meets Mr. Mom. Clearly, Warren Beatty and Michael Keaton have aged out of playing my stay-at-home-dad (SAHD) protagonist. And the book has grown well beyond its one-sentence premise, so that each character, male and female, child and adult, became their own ornery being.

Cast Lance, the SAHD, and the rest of the book falls into place. This modern, easy-going dad loves his daughter Belle, is trying to father another child with his distracted wife Darlene, and has Tantric sex with Wren, the wife of Darlene’s business partner Alec. See  Mark Ruffalo in The Kids Are All Right as the charming sperm donor trying to wiggle his way in to his biological children’s nuclear family after a lifetime of casual sex, and there are the seeds of Lance.

What about Lance’s Tantric sex partner? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Books, Playdate Tagged With: Academy Awards, best actor, best actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best supporting actress, Blue Valentine, Colin Firth, Jennifer Lawrenc, Mark Ruffalo, Marshal Zeringue, Michelle Williams, Playdate, The Campaign for the American Reader, The Kids Are All Right

Playdate Excerpt: Dad & Daughter discuss plugs and outlets

February 15, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Lance,Belle,Playdate,novel,Parade Magazine,Oprah pick,NY Times rave,Home Depot,difficult discussions,birds and bees

Three pages into Playdate, ten-year-old Belle walks in on father Lance and mother Darlene making love. OK, she’s freaked out. As he drives her to school that same morning, Lance tries to discuss what she may or may not have seen.

WHEN Lance and Belle climbed into the van, he slid his coffee mug into one cup-holder; she slotted her chocolate-milk box in the other. He fumbled for his Wayfarers; she pulled them off his head and handed them over. “Buffalo Springfield or Hannah Montana?” she asked, fingering the CD’s.

“How about a compromise:  Judy Collins?”

“Too depressing,” Belle said.

“Dusty Springfield?”

“Cool.”

Lance pulled out of the driveway, passing their neighbors, the Montoya Mediterranean Revival mini-mansion and the scarred earth of the building sites to the right, the new homes with their glowing white driveways, the industrial greenhouses that emitted a pasty sweet jonquil smell.

“So, if Mom wasn’t choking you, what exactly were you doing this morning?” Belle asked, although she had her theories.

“Some stuff kids don’t need to see,” Lance said, and paused, searching for the right phrase, “like their parents having sex.”

“So, that’s what making love is?”

“Yep,” Lance said.

“I still don’t get it,” said Belle. “I used to think parents made babies if they shared the same bed, but that’s not right. I’ve laid in bed with you and nothing happened.”

“Don’t go there,” Lance said. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Books, Playdate Tagged With: Belle, Birds and bees, Daughter, Father, father-daughter bonding, father-daughter relationship, father-daughter talk, Lance, Mark Ruffalo, NY Times rave, Oprah Book Choice, Parade pick, Playdate, sex chat, tween

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