Actor Joel Edgerton to appear at Randwick Ritz screening
ACTOR, writer and director Joel Edgerton will be live on stage at the Ritz Randwick for a special screening of his new film Boy Erased.
Southern Courier
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ACTOR, writer and director Joel Edgerton will be live on stage at the Ritz Randwick for a special screening of his new film Boy Erased.
Despite only having its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in the US last month it is already being talked up as an Oscar contender.
The film tells the story of the son of Baptist parents who is forced to take part in a gay conversion therapy program.
The film has a distinct Aussie feel. As well as Blacktown-born Edgerton, who plays the head therapist, Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman star as the Baptist mother and father. American Lucas Hedges plays their son.
“There are a few Australians in it actually and I didn’t necessarily do this out of patriotism,” Edgerton said.
“When I read the book and when I met the parents, Russell just seemed like the only guy who could have done it service and really would capture this guy’s essence. And Nicole was the same when it came to the mother.”
Edgerton wrote and directed the film which is based on Garrard Conley’s book Boy Erased: A Memoir.
Conley was brought up in Arkansas and was forced to enrol in conversion therapy after being outed as gay.
Edgerton, who has also appeared in T he Great Gatsby, Warrior and Red Sparrow, will watch the film with the audience on October 16 before taking to the stage for a question-and-answer session.
“I’m obsessed with cults and prisons,” he said about the film earlier this year.
“I felt like I was going to get this glimpse into a world I’d heard about in conversion therapy that kind of interested me.”
DETAILS
Boy Erased at Randwick Ritz
Tuesday, October 16, 6.30pm.
Ritz Cinema, 45 St Pauls St, Randwick
Tickets: $25 members/$28 non members.
Visit ritzcinema.com.au