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The Australian-born-and-bred actress, who has been a favorite among gay film fans ever since her star-making performance in Muriel's Wedding (1994), says that she appreciated knowing Maupin and being aware of the true-life circumstances that gave rise to The Night Listener. “The novel was based on Armistead's real life experience,” she explains, “and he was around a lot of the time on the set. It was great having him there on tap. He's a very warm, open person.”

She continues, “He was pretty much taken for a ride, and was very affected by it. He's very open about it. It was a huge part of his life, and he was very forthcoming.”

Because The Night Listener was so personal for Maupin and Anderson, Stettner understood that his role was to be an objective, detached participant in the screenwriting process. “I was very up-front about the project when I was brought in,” he recalls, “and told [Maupin and Anderson] what my issues were, and what I'd like to do. I also highly involved them. The process would be: I would write a scene, send it to them, get their opinions, retool it, and if they felt I didn't capture the scene they would help me, and we'd work on it together.”

For ex-lovers Maupin and Anderson, revisiting old resentments and relationship issues during rehearsals and filming proved to be emotionally difficult. Maupin recalls, “I can remember times on the set when the two of us would be sitting there watching Bobby and Robin play out a scene that had echoes of our own life. It was extremely hard for us.”

“Sometimes I was a little bit of a mediator between them,” Stettner admits with a laugh, “but we were all in the same place concerning the characters, the film being a thriller, and how we wanted to hone the story down.”

Maupin agrees that working with Stettner was beneficial. “It helped in every aspect of writing the script,” Maupin says, “because he brought a filmmaker's eye to the material. There were times when we realized we were just getting too wordy. He could convey the same idea in a visual. Yet he was fairly faithful to the central dilemma.”

Maupin cites an example. “The central problem of the adaptation was: How do you take a large number of phone calls and make it more active? And what do you do with the person on the other end of the line? In a novel the reader will quite obligingly provide the visuals. In a film you have to see who's on the other end of the line or you will start getting suspicious. Hence Patrick's decision to depict the child that Gabriel is imagining.”

Much of Night Listener's intrigue is built around the darkly menacing character of Donna, Pete's supposed adoptive mother. To play such a spooky, shape-shifting role, the filmmakers sought out Academy Award-nominee Collette, whose diverse film credits include roles in The Sixth Sense, The Hours, and the new Little Miss Sunshine.

“I found the story of The Night Listener to be so unbelievably intense,” says Collette. “I was drawn to this woman who is so needy and just wants love and has taken that need to an extreme degree.”

Stettner was thrilled to have Collette on board. “I wanted Toni from the beginning,” he states. “Right away she was completely committed to who this character needed to be. We talked about the early Donna as being this kind of pretty uber-mother figure, almost with a Kim Novak vibe. We had a lot of fun playing with the idea that this wasn't a real character, but rather a vision of how Gabriel's imagination would see a mother figure.”

Maupin adds, “I found her right on the mark in terms of how I always pictured Donna. Toni brought to the role an amazing combination of homespun ordinariness with a layer of craziness just below it. She manages to be both terrifying and vulnerable, and something that is even more gripping: a real wounded human person, who seems to have depths of true creepiness.”

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