Actors find the human pulse in HBO's 'Normal Heart'
Ned Weeks is stubborn, irascible and, at times, even unlikable — just the kind of soldier needed during the early years of the battle against HIV-AIDS.
Ned (Mark Ruffalo) is at the center of HBO's The Normal Heart (Sunday, 9 p.m. ET/PT), a film adaptation of Larry Kramer's 1985 play that centers on a group of gay men in New York who band together to fight a mysterious disease first identified as a "gay cancer" that eventually claims people from all walks of life.
Ned, a screenwriter and Kramer's alter ego, is the raging voice in a cast of characters based on real people that includes his eventual lover, New York Times reporter Felix Turner (Matt Bomer); the closeted banker and military man Bruce Niles (Taylor Kitsch); and a deceptively steely Southerner, Tommy Boatwright (Jim Parsons).
Ned confronts everyone from government officials who don't respond out of fear, ignorance or prejudice to his loving but homophobic brother, Ben (Alfred Molina), to other gay men, many of whom do not want to give up hard-fought sexual freedom in order to avoid infection.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2014/05/21/hbo-adapts-normal-heart-with-mark-ruffalo-julia-roberts-jim-parsons/9348269/