Chicago Tribune (Sunday)

Ruffalo guides twins’ saga to screen

‘I Know This Much Is True’ adaptation had languished in developmen­t for years

- By Meredith Blake

Before it was even published in the summer of 1998, Hollywood began circling “I Know This Much Is True.” Despite its Tolstoy-esque length and often grim subject matter, Wally Lamb’s novel about identical twin brothers became a massive bestseller, boosted by what was then the ultimate endorsemen­t: Oprah Winfrey selected it for her book club.

Twentieth Century Fox gobbled up the movie rights for a reported seven-figure sum. Bigname talent including Matt Damon, Jonathan Demme and Jim Sheridan were attached to the project along the way, and numerous screenwrit­ers attempted to tame the 900-plus-page book, which spans from the 1920s to the 1990s and includes a story within a story about the brothers’ Sicilian grandfathe­r. But the adaptation languished in developmen­t hell.

“I had written an unreasonab­ly long story and nobody could quite figure out how to fit something that large into a two-hour box,” Lamb recalled by phone from his Connecticu­t home. The author longed to bring his story to a wider audience but grew weary of empty overtures from the industry. “I thought, OK, this is just what happens when Hollywood starts flirting with you, like the cute girl who says, ‘I’m going to go to the prom with you’ but it never happens.”

Lamb can finally buy that corsage: “I Know This Much Is True” arrived on HBO this month, thanks in large part to star and executive producer Mark Ruffalo, who helped rescue the project from developmen­t limbo.

Written and directed by Derek Cianfrance, the six-part series charts the saga of Dominick and Thomas Birdsey (both played by Ruffalo), who are raised in a tense and sometimes violent household in a working-class town in Connecticu­t by their mother (Melissa Leo) and stepfather (John Procaccino). The identity of their biological father is a gnawing mystery.

Born on either side of midnight on New Year’s Eve, their lives follow similarly divergent trajectori­es: Thomas is a paranoid schizophre­nic in and out of institutio­ns most of his adult life, while Dominick is a house painter who is both utterly devoted to and resentful of his brother, at the cost of other relationsh­ips — including his marriage to ex-wife Dessa (Kathryn Hahn).

When Thomas is committed to a bleak, state-run mental hospital after a horrific act of self-mutilation, Dominick — assisted by a no-nonsense social worker (Rosie O’Donnell) and therapist (Archie Panjabi) — gradually comes to understand the cycle of trauma in his family.

After 15 years and many false starts, the rights to the novel reverted to Lamb. When his agent asked him who he’d like to play the twins, he immediatel­y thought of Ruffalo, an actor he’d admired since “You Can Count on Me.”

Ruffalo, who was just getting into producing at the time, gobbled up the book within a few days and quickly realized it was something he wanted to pursue. “It was just beautiful, and it was personal, and it was really challengin­g and all these things that ticked the boxes for me,” says the actor via teleconfer­ence from his home in upstate New York.

“I’m a second-generation Italian immigrant from really poor people who worked their way up as house painters. We were taught that family’s everything. I could relate to this idea of a family curse — we’ve had a lot of hardship — and the way the women in Dominick’s life are the ones who teach him how to be whole in the end,” Ruffalo says.

Ruffalo quickly judged that the book was better suited to an episodic television series than a feature film. At the time — circa early 2015 — the director-driven limited series was in the initial throes of what would become a full-scale revival. “It’s not an accident that there’s 22 drafts of this, and they couldn’t figure out how to do it,” he says. “And we’re in this beautiful golden age of television where we can novelize a TV show.”

In a transforma­tive feat that seems all but guaranteed to earn him an Emmy nomination, Ruffalo plays both the Birdsey brothers. He lost 20 pounds before production began, then spent 16 weeks filming his scenes as the aggressive Dominick. Then he took six weeks off, gained 30 pounds by subsisting on oatmeal and mashed potatoes, and returned as the more vulnerable Thomas.

But his commanding work was shaped by a performanc­e viewers never see.

Early in developmen­t, Cianfrance decided he wanted Ruffalo to perform opposite a real actor performing both roles, rather than a mere stand-in. Gabe Fazio (“A Star Is Born”) was enlisted to play Thomas when Ruffalo was in Dominick mode, and Dominick when he was Thomas. (Fazio also has a small part on screen in the final version of the series.)

“It was scary because someone else is doing your performanc­e on the other side,” Ruffalo says. “But what it allowed us to do is just to play, be in the moment and have chemistry and to be alive and vibrant, so there’s an immediacy there. I would never have been able to do (that) by myself or with somebody just standing off reading the lines.”

Even by the standards of premium cable, “I Know This Much Is True” is a difficult watch, portraying mental illness, racism, grief, domestic violence, rape, child abuse and infant death — a litany of trauma that Lars von Trier might find daunting.

Whether such an emotionall­y taxing story will appeal to viewers in an already dark period remains to be seen, but the show’s creators believe its themes of loss, family and redemption are universal. “What we were hoping to do with the whole film was to open this experience up to everyone,” says Cianfrance.

The final episode is dedicated to the memory of Ruffalo’s brother, Scott, who was murdered in 2009, and Cianfrance’s sister, Megan Cianfrance McGinnis, who died last year.

“I don’t think it ever really heals,” Ruffalo says. “You just sort of integrate it, encapsulat­e it. What we both realized is we were making love stories to our families and just telling the truth about it. There’s so much of our lives that are informed by those moments, those tragedies and also those joys.”

 ?? SCOTT GRIES/INVISION 2019 ?? Mark Ruffalo stars as both brothers Dominick and Thomas Birdsey in the HBO six-part series “I Know This Much Is True.”
SCOTT GRIES/INVISION 2019 Mark Ruffalo stars as both brothers Dominick and Thomas Birdsey in the HBO six-part series “I Know This Much Is True.”

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